There is news outside of E3, you know.  Why just today I think I saw old man Withers from the end of the street – looks like he bought myself a brand new hat. Mrs Brinkley from Number 42 still hasn’t found her cat, it seems like they’re never going to fill in that pothole by the bus stop, and the second most famously white entertainment after NASCAR is going black and beautiful.

Jump with me…All the good folk here at SG habitually keep our collective ear pressed against the newswires for your edification and entertainment, but only certain Senior Staff (and by that I just mean that they’re really, really old) are at E3 in the flesh for the big scoops. The rest of us man the stations, keep eyes to the horizon, and hope that a story comes along that will be so radical that it will deserve breaking the dedicated E3 coverage. For this it will have to be mind-bendingly Big News – mountains will have to crumble into the sea, up will become down, left will become right, and white will become black.

And lo – it has indeed come to pass. The Nintendo Wii will be getting a glorious glossy black incarnation in the Japanese market as part of the Monster Hunter Tri promotional bundle. Complete with beautiful black nunchuck and Classic pad, this special edition Kuro Wii will be available August 1st. There’s no date yet for a US or European release, but from the promotional picture release the makeover makes it look pretty covetable, especially with the blue lights on the controllers and disk drive.

Folk can argue until Bluetooth in the face about the Wii’s place alongside next-gen rigs like the PS3, but what’s for certain is that with the ninja makeover the Wii certainly looks like it can hang in the club with Sony’s platform.  The temptation to dissolve into cheap, unacceptable stereotype humour is strong, but SG already has that in hand : if all goes to plan Dave is right now reading his pre-prepared questions and has just stood up in the main convention theatre of Los Angeles and asked maestro Hideo Kojima ‘What’s a Nubian?’.

This is the first time that the Wii has been offered in a new colour, if you don’t count the gold plated one sent to Her Majesty the Queen, which is unusual considering how keen Nintendo usually is to make all of their products available in all the most camp shades of the rainbow.   The new look may be a response to Nintendo’s slowing sales in Japan, so if this works you can look forward to getting one with Hello Kitty emblazoned down the side shortly afterwards.

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