quote

Summary:
- Main dude name is Nick.

- Cameo appearance shown are Katherine(Birdo), OtsuSan and Hikari (all are past minor Nintendo characters)

- It appears that there are mini games like golf, bug catching and fishing.

- Captain Rainbow is a reference to Masked Rider, you can tell from the rainbow belt that he is wearing and his transformation stance

- The island that you will be exploring are pack fill with past Nintendo minor characters

- In the video, Birdo aka Katherine was bascially introducing the game, characters and talking crap

- The genre of this game still remains a mystery

quote Emoliciousnot

I knew that Birdo was male, but in this game they gave him a feminine name so he could pass as male.

Because transvestite dinosaurs in E rated games are nonos. =(

quote therealNgamer

Is that fat guy Little Mac?

quote therealNgamer

August 28? That's pretty fast considering it was only announced about a month ago. Then again, this is Japan. There is no way Nintendo is gonna localize this. This looks more niche than Quendan and more obscure than Freshly Picked: Tingle's Rosie Ruppeland. But we can hope!

quote therealNgamer

quote Akira_EX

Quendan?

Holy crap, I never realized that! I always called it "kwen-dan." I guess it's Ouendan.

quote

The Adventure Part :Communicate with the island's inhabitants

-The inhabitants are Nintendo characters that didn't make it to stardom

Mimin Island's inhabitants are minor Nintendo characters that never quite made it to "star" status. They live on this island trying to make their wishes come true.
Hikari (from Shin Onigashima), Birdo (from Super Mario USA), Mappo (from GiFTPiA), Takamaru (from Nazo no Murasamejou), Little Mac (from Punch-Out!!) and other Nintendo characters await you!

-Communicate with the inhabitants - Enjoy the island life

You can cater to their requests, or fish, or do what whatever you want. It's all up to you. Don't be surprised if you get some pretty demanding requests all of a sudden. You can go fishing or bug collecting or even help with somebody's golf swing. Help people out and you may get Earth Crystals called Kirarin (Sparklies).

Captain Rainbow is a game that mixes action and adventure; it's an action adventure game.

The Action Part: Fight for the wish-granting "Stars"

Collect lots of Kirarin ("Sparklies") and a Star will fall from the sky. Thrilling action awaits as you carry the Star to the island's altar while chasing a mysterious silhouette to claim the Star for yourself. Attack the Sihlouette, or dodge its attacks to stop it from stealing the Star. If the Sihlouette gets you, be prepared for some relentless button pushing to win the minigame.

-Will it be your own wish? Or someone else's? "The Altar where wishes come true"

If you get the Star to the Altar, any one wish will be granted. Will it be your own or someone else's wish? Make the ultimate choice.

Scenario A
Grant an inhabitant's wish
The inhabitants that have their wishes granted will leave the island and it's back to adventuring for you.
Scenario B
Grant your own wish
You'll get to be a popular super hero once again. But what about the rest of the Mimin dwellers?

Which will it be? You know what a true hero would do…

quote 1UP

Nintendo's surprise pre-E3 revealing of Captain Rainbow on the Nintendo Channel in Japan made more than a few jaded Wii owners stand at attention -- and not just because of its fabulous title, either. The game, starring a down-on-his-luck superhero helping Nintendo's lineup of extremely minor characters with their problems, is a strange combination of side-view action and Animal Crossing-style NPC interaction and minigames, and this week's issue of Weekly Famitsu magazine reveals more about how this flamboyant superhero struts his stuff.

Generally, Captain Rainbow is divided into two parts: adventure, and action. The adventure segment is the more Animal Crossing-like, with the Captain (and/or his nerdy alter ego) exploring Mimin Island, solving puzzles, and helping out the residents. Playing the good guy and interacting with the islanders -- sometimes helping with their sword training, sometimes joining them for a minigame or two -- earns you "kirarin" (Japanese for "shiny"), and collecting 20 of these sparkling crystals triggers a storm of falling stars and leads to an action sequence. Here, the Captain is on a side-scrolling chase for the falling star he needs to help fulfill the Mimin native's wishes...but he'll have to dodge the evil Shadows along the way, lest he fall victim to one and be forced to play another minigame to save his hide.

The game's coming surprisingly soon in Japan, with an August 28 Wii release already announced. Is a US version totally impossible, Nintendo? Please?

quote Hoa Dao

I really do love the breaking of fourth walls in these games. XD

quote therealNgamer

I always love that phenomenon too.

quote Game|Life, Hands-On: Chibi Robo Devs' Latest Weirdness, Captain Rainbow

Want more hardcore games for Wii? How about a niche adventure game that like two people are going to buy?

Yes, it's that time again: Time for Skip, the iconoclastic makers of bizarre games like Chibi-Robo and Giftpia to unleash their first Wii game onto the world. It's called Captain Rainbow, and it's got all the hallmarks of a good Skip game: A quirky, endearing story, bizarre characters, lackadaisical gameplay goals, and (most critically) weird shit.

The weird shit this time around stems mostly from the fact that this is a game about a down-on-his-luck superhero who has been sent off to a mysterious island full of down-on-their-luck characters from old Nintendo games. Little Mac from Punch-Out, Birdo from Super Mario Bros. 2, the generic golfer from Golf, and many more of Nintendo's most forgettable characters are all on this island with you, and all of you are looking to have your wishes granted.

My impressions of the game's first two hours are below.

Things begin with the Captain Rainbow TV theme song, which you can watch over at the official home page. Following this, we watch a brief cinema scene explaining what's up with main character Nick. His secret identity is the superhero Captain Rainbow, who fights crime with a yo-yo.

As you might expect, Captain Rainbow isn't the coolest superhero around anymore, and the kids are now crushing on even cooler heroes. So Nick heads to the mysterious Mimin Island, which is rumored to have the power to grant wishes. On the way, he loses his belt that lets him transform into Captain Rainbow.

When you wash up on shore, you can explore freely and experiment with the game's controls. It uses a combination of the nunchuk and pointer: You use the stick to move Nick around, then point at items and people to interact with them. When you point at something when Nick is far away, he'll look at it and you'll get a brief text description of what it is. When Nick is close up, the pointer icon will change to an exclamation point and you'll be able to interact with whatever it is.

On the beach are seashells that you can pick up, crabs that run away from you, and fruit that you can eat, although it has no visible effect. There are also haniwa stone statues that you can punch and break by holding down the B button to charge a punch, then letting go.

Cr_hikari Wandering off the beach, you'll find some characters to talk to. One is Hikari, a shrine maiden from the Japan-only game Shin Onigashima. The others are the Mimin, the little rabbit-like creatures that inhabit the island and grant wishes.

Hikari says something about you being the chosen one, or something, I wasn't paying attention. At any rate, she shows you a secret ancient door in her house that just so happens to have an impression in it the exact shape of Captain Rainbow. If only you could transform into him!

But you can't. So at this point, you can save your game (by using the outhouse, of course) or sleep on a bed in Hikari's place -- this lets you jump to the next day or night cycle. Of course Captain Rainbow has a day/night cycle! Haven't you played a Skip game before? Different characters are doing different things depending on what time of day it is.

So now you get the run of much more of the island. You can go exploring around. You'll find:

• Hidden Mimin. If you run your pointer over certain parts of the level, you'll hear them squeaking, and you can click to unleash more of the little guys into the wild.
• The soldiers from Advance Wars. Well, Famicom Wars, actually. These soldiers are currently camped out in Mimin Island, learning to be the world's best... volleyball team. I don't get it either, but they tell you that if you're looking for anything, you should talk to Hikari in the mornings when she's praying.
• The robot policeman from Giftpia. He's locked up Birdo at the police station.
• Birdo. Amusingly, the old story from the U.S. version of the Mario 2 instruction book about how Birdo is a transvestite has now been retconned into canon. He's a cross-dressing dude, now.
• A bunch of rocks you can't break and paths you can't cross. You'll have to power up before you can explore the island.

Eventually, you figure out that you need to crash at Hikari's, then ask her in the morning where you should go. She tells you the location of your belt, and you can go retrieve it. Now, you can turn into CAPTAIN RAINBOW and break tiny rocks with your yo-yo. You can transform whenever you want, but you have to eat fruit to restore your energy bar, or you'll die.

And that's pretty much how far I got. Since I'm still just puttering around in the introductory phases, I can't tell you much about how it plays -- it's slowly ramping up. It seems like most of what you'll need to do is solve puzzles by collecting items and talking to people, trying to solve their problems.

What I can say for sure is that it's a really nice-looking game. Skip's graphics designers have made really nice use of 2-D and cel-shaded elements, blending them all together with straight up 3-D to create some really attractive and stylish cartoon environments. It's a pleasure just to explore the island -- with any luck, the gameplay will hold up.

Now, the big question: Will this come to the U.S.? I think it'll all have to do with what side of the bed Nintendo of America gets up on tomorrow, unfortunately. They left Giftpia in Japan, but brought over Chibi-Robo. We could see this happen over here, or it could, itself, be relegated to the land of misfit Japanese curiosities.