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Once again, it is time for Art Attack Friday, or AAF for short. This week, the spotlight of awesome has fallen upon Bonus-kun, so named after the famous Bonus Kun from Waku Waku 7 (and you may have noticed the punching bag as you explore past stories on Dtoid too).

Aside from the Bonus Kun loving, Bonus-kun seems to be a giant Nintendo fan. For starters, just look at the above piece with the major Nintendo characters going all-out. There’s so much detail all over this such as Bowser crushing Pichu and Ganondorf about to Warlock Punch Toad and Peach. Then there’s the Earthbound love, with the teenage look of Ness and crew plus the animated gifs.

My favorite is easily the Wario meeting The Shining piece. Wario always looks like a psycho, so he’s just a perfect fit here. The zombie getting shot, based off of the House of the Dead games, is also another of my favorites of this week’s batch. Which did you like? Be sure to check out Bonus-kun’s deviantART for a few more pieces.

Game publisher THQ blames its massive fiscal 2008 loss in part on increased competition in the kids’ games market from Nintendo and “music games,” according to a recent conference call.

Calling the kids’ market in 2008 “the most crowded market for videogames for kids in recent memory,” THQ president and CEO Brian Farrell said that “new competition from Nintendo’s first-party titles, as well as new music games” hurt the company’s kids business, CasualGaming.biz reported.

Kid-oriented brands in THQ’s stable include Pixar, DreamWorks Animation, and Nickelodeon.

On Tuesday, THQ reported a net loss of $35.3 million for the fiscal
year ended March 31, 2008. Last year, the company made $68.0 million.

Only question now is, which music games does Farrell mean? That sounds like a very careful way of pointing out that Disney’s Hannah Montana and High School Musical games, which have done extremely well on the Nintendo DS, are sapping THQ’s audience.

I can see why THQ might want to avoid mentioning Disney by name. Some
of THQ’s strongest kids’ titles are based on Pixar films like Cars and
Ratatouille, and Disney’s rapid expansion into the game space could
threaten that deal in the long term.

THQ’s biggest kids’ game this year is likely to be Wall-E (pictured), based on the upcoming Pixar film.

Image: THQ

THQ: Nintendo Success Making Kids’ Market Tough [CasualGaming.biz]

Hiroshi Yamauchi now wealthiest Japanese man.

Nintendo’s former president Hiroshi Yamauchi is the wealthiest Japanese man alive, adding $3 billion to his fortune in the past year alone.

Click here to read the full article

Filed under: Game Night

Update: The staff has left the Game Night chat, however there were tons of folks still in there, getting their game on. Try your luck by entering the chat here.

True, last week we weren’t able to get our game on because Nintendo’s servers were down, but we anticipate tonight will be different. We’ve got the DS charged, put fresh batteries in the Wiimote and have been doing stretching exercises all day. We’re pumped to get our game on tonight!

So, be sure to hit up the site around 7pm ET tonight to get the lowdown on where to go for the Game Night chat. After that, connecting with your fellow readers for some gaming action will be a snap. Hope to see you there!

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