Even in this day and age of internet scoops, Nintendo managed to surprise us with a few announcements at the publisher’s E3 press conference this year.

At the top of the list was the Wii U, Nintendo’s next home console and the successor to the Wii. The tablet-like controller for the Wii U has a touchscreen, dual analogue circle pads, motion controls, speakers, a microphone and a camera. The controller screen can be used instead of or along with HDTV.

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Itadaki Street is a series that is built into the fabric of gaming in Japan. It was one of the first fan-service games ever, allowing players to play a board game as a Dragon Quest character. Now for the first time one is coming out in English on the Wii, published by Nintendo as Fortune Street.

The game is developed and published by Square-Enix in Japan, and it is basically a Monopoly-style board game where you race around a board buying, selling and trading properties. As you collect properties adjacent to one another they grow in value and you can charge other players who land on your shops a higher fee. While this sounds remarkably similar to Monopoly, there are some more advanced features to the game, such as a stock market. We’ll have to wait for the hands-on previews to get more details.

In Fortune Street you will be able to play as Dragon Quest characters or as Mario or other Mushroom Kingdom characters. Up to four players can play on one Wii console, and the game features 15 different boards to play on. Nintendo assure us the game will be out in the US in 2011, “Holiday 2011” to be precise.

Check out the heap of screenshots Nintendo have released below:

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