Revolution Portal: Because it won’t be televised.

While there’s almost no chance whatsoever that a Viva Piñata title would ever hit Wii due to conflicting interest, Microsoft-owned Rare has one on the way for DS.

Rare engineer Joe Humfrey explained that Microsoft has a lot of respect for Nintendo’s handheld.

“They see DS as a very viable platform,” he said in an interview with Eurogamer.

“They put the Viva Piñata franchise on TV to reach a broad audience, they put it on PC to reach a different broad audience, and they’re doing the same thing with the DS,” he said. “They’re trying to widen the audience of the franchise, basically.”

Viva Piñata: Pocket Paradise is scheduled for release in North America this fall.

LucasArts has been around since before half of the staff at Revolution Portal were born, but in their heyday, their graphic adventure games could not be beat.

PR manager Chris Norris and Fracture assistant producer Jeffrey Gullett recently talked to Eurogamer about the potential of bringing some of those classic titles back for either Wii and DS.

“We have looked at it,” Norris explained . “It is something we are continually looking at - new venues to put out our library of games on. We’re not announcing anything about that because honestly I don’t know anything about it.”

Then Gullett said something that doesn’t make a whole of sense.

“The cart size of the DS makes it impossible to put out ports of any of our old graphic adventures,” claims Gullett. “There’s literally not enough room on those carts to put the games out.”

Anybody familiar with Homebrew knows exactly how easy it is to fit some of those titles on a DS.  After all, Manic Mansion fit on just a few floppy discs back in the late 80’s.

“It could still happen,” Gullett added. “We’ve got a lot of pride in our heritage and it’s definitely something we’re still leaving open.”

After countless weeks of PSP dominating the number one spot on the Japanese software charts, DS has taken the top spot.

Sega’s Let’s Make a Pro Baseball Team! for DS knocked off PSP’s Monster Hunter Portable 2nd G for the week of May 19 through the 25th, according to the early word from NeoGAF.

On the hardware side, PlayStation Portable was still the top dog with 64,449, but that’s down 6,087 from last week.  DS-wise, the handheld sold 37,404 units, which was up 2,499.  Is a trend forming?  We’ll have to wait until the latest charts come out to see if it’ll stick.

Wii was numero dos on the hardware charts with 49,047 consoles flying off the shelves, a hefty jump of almost 7,500. 

You just can’t keep a good Rabbid down.

Ubisoft revealed today that  Rayman Raving Rabbids TV Party will be coming to both Wii and DS.  And it not only will it take advantage of the Wii balance board, but it will be using it in a new fashion.

According to a new report by Eurogamer, there’s at least one minigame which uses one’s derriere to steer. Describing a snowboarding game which required a person to sit on the new peripheral, a commentator explained that “the Wii balance board is exceptionally sensitive towards his bottom.”

It’s not as easy as it may seem.

“The moves look fairly easy,” said the commentator, “But I challenge you to hit them all the first time.”

Seems like a superfun concept for most people, and a nightmare for germophobes. 

When it comes to handheld gaming, nobody has been able to touch Nintendo since the Game Boy was released back in 1989. 

So who better to a sponsor a heady conference about handhelds than the Big N?

The company will be the lead sponsor for London’s Handheld Learning Conference, scheduled to happen October 13-15.

“We are proud to be supporting this important event once again and look forward to hearing from the some of the world’s leading thinkers in the field of learning,” said Darren Gorton, Business Development Director for Nintendo. “With over 70 million DS units in peoples hands we are genuinely interested in the positive impact that they can have for self-improvement and collaborative learning.” 

“We are delighted to receive such confident support both from government agencies and industry alike. The provision of the Nintendo DShandheld is far from a gimmick as we are encouraging delegates to do the kind of things during the event that are often not allowed in classrooms throughout the world despite the power and possibilities of such devices,” added Handheld Learning founder Graham Brown-Martin.