I should have been a pair of ragged claws

I should never have entered my credit card number into my Wii. In the last two weeks I've already purchased four games: One sublime classic (Gunstar Heroes), an interesting Sonic Team platformer (Ristar), one of the first console turn-based strategy games (Military Madness), and a nostalgia-fueled waste of $5 (Ice Hockey [ 1 ] ). The Virtual Console lineup started with some fantastic games (Mario 64, the NES Legend of Zelda), but the most tempting nectar are the Monday releases of Genesis and Turbo Graphics 16 classics that I've never played before. Part of my enthusiasm for the virtual console comes from my bizarre laziness when it comes to changing games. Inertia is overly involved with my gaming choices; if the disk is in the system, then I'm probably going to keep playing that. It's as if taking out game disks is so hard . The Wii lets me play all these games without having to get out of my seat! It's great! My PC theoretically has the same feature, but it requi...

A few of co-workers have gotten Nintendo DSs for themselves or their family and some have asked me what I recommend. Well, how about recommendations in haiku form? Everybody loves that! Elite Beat Agents Male cheerleaders? Huh?! This comic music game grooves even with Believe [ 1 ] . Dragon Quest: Rocket Slime Look what's on my head! I'll fire it from my huge tank! Hope you like mad puns. Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow Has Metroid-vania [ 2 ] ever been done better? No. Take notes, Nintendo! Pokemon Mystery Dungeon Nethack [ 3 ] , lose no sleep; It's a puddle to your lake. Still, fun in the car. [ 1 ]Yes, Cher's Believe . While some may question the track list , Elite Beat Agents remains a fun game no matter how many hundreds of times you've heard the songs. [ 2 ] Metroid-vania is a sub-genre of 2D platformers defined by their maze-like non-linearity and the collection of abilities that open up new areas to explore. The first Metroid-vania was Nintendo's Metroid, a...

These impressions are from ~30 minutes of play time. I got it today from a co-worker. The controls feel almost uncomfortably loose; it takes a while to go from the analog stick to tilting of the wiimote in a racing game. It's seems closer to an SSX than a typical racing game in that it's more about crazy jumps than riding a tight line. It rewards "style" driving more than any other racing game I've seen. Progression through the game is based on the number of points you accumulate through the level. You get points for doing stunts, jumps, and smashing up others cars as well as your finish position, so theoretically you can come in last and still "win" and get an S rank. (It's certainly easier to get an S rank with the 1st place bonus points, but it's possible otherwise.) There's also these bizarre power ups that deform the terrain; typically they make steep ramps for some ludicrous jumps, but sometimes they just make a ditch. (Maybe some are b...

All the stars aligned for a week of gaming: the Nintendo Wii was released with the latest Zelda game the week before Thanksgiving and I had vacation days to burn, and my brother, Todd, was in a similar situation. So he took the bus from Manhattan on Monday and we tag-teamed the game, swapping between each dungeon, until it's completion last night. Todd and I have done this a number of times many years ago, but the change to act like children again and play (and complete) a game in one of our favorite series together made this week one of my most enjoyable vacations. No small credit can be given to Bessie who demonstrated saint-like patience with the bleary-eyed bums in her basement yammering on about heart containers, master keys, and the saddening absence of Tingle. She did indulge in some some light jeering, saying that Link is such a cute elf and wondering where Legolas could be. I have a good bit to say about Twilight Princess, the Nintendo Wii, and the Zelda series in general,...

Todd: This game needs a Tingle [ 1 ] ! DeathMonkey: :& DeathMonkey: what game? Todd: My game. DeathMonkey: hmmm Todd: Come on, every game needs a character that just freaks you out in it. :) Todd: Hope he's in the new Zelda [ 2 ] . Todd: If he's not I'm gonna be UP-SET! DeathMonkey: I'm sure he will be DeathMonkey: Though I'm really concerned about him being realistically rendered. :& Todd: And this time he'll be "realistic". :P Todd: Hahah Todd: Nintendo should pull a MGS2 [ 3 ] . :) DeathMonkey: :& DeathMonkey: NOOOOO Todd: Buy a Zelda game 3 hours in you're Tingle! Todd: On an epic fairy quest! DeathMonkey: NOOOOOOOO Todd: Best joke EVA. [ 1 ] Tingle has always been disturbing. He's a 35 year old "fairy" that's appeared in the Legend of Zelda series. His catch-phrase is "Tingle-Tingle, Kooloo-Limpah!" [ 2 ] Legend of Zelda: The Twilight Princess is the next game in the series. [ 3 ] Metal Gear Solid 2: ...

Just when I think that I'm somehow less nerdy that I was before, I do something that not only fastens the geek badge to my chest, it shines it up and makes me puff my chest out. That's how I felt at 8 a.m. this (Sunday!) morning driving around to various Targets and WalMarts trying to get my hands on Nintendo's revision of it's workhorse handheld. I wouldn't have felt the nerdiness as pronounced if I didn't have company. When I wandered into Target, there're four other people awaiting the system's release. A father and his 10 year old kid, and a young Asian couple. The Target said that it would release on Tuesday instead of Sunday, despite people arguing that Nintendo's own website listed it as releasing today. (I heard the manager say that they sold some of the systems early, and Nintendo may have fined them and forced them to release it at a later date. Who knows.) So I headed back home, called around trying to find the system somewhere. Called a W...

Names, by their nature, are definitive things and perception is more potent than reality. In the most crucial moment of Nintendo's existence, they cover the shoulders of their best hope with an albatross of a name.

I was going to write a reasonably big 2005 wrap-up post, but being mid-Feburary I don't see the point. I did write a couple of short reviews and I'd hate to see them go to waste. So here we go! Pheonix Wright: Ace Attorney ds Who said adventure games are dead? There's not much game there really - Capcom avoids the dreaded adventure game "getting stuck" by making a linear path with limited choices. The amusement comes from great characters and dead-on comic timing. It's 3/4ths Matlock with 1/4th of wacky Dragonball Z thrown in. Don't expect to learn anything about law, but you're sure to laugh and have a good time. Yoshi's Touch & Go ds Maligned as a throw-away tech demo, YT&G is the most refined touch-screen arcade game I've played. There's none of the structure, the bosses, the fire/ice/jungle levels that players tend to expect of platformers, but there's a surprising richness to the game in balancing the needs of clearing t...

I love the Nintendo DS and it has been blessed with a growing mountain of great, interesting games, but it has lacked a killer app to point to and say "here's why this is such a great system." Mario Kart DS is the system's Halo. Its Soul Calibur. It's the best in the series and its new tweaked rules and weapons, incredible track design, and multiplayer content make a stunning package that no DS system should exist without. Slipstreaming, the most substantial addition to the core gameplay, introduces an excellent risk/reward component to the series. Tailing another driver is typically a dangerous practice in Mario Kart games; most items can be dropped behind characters to force any tailgaters to spin out. In Mario Kart DS, driving in a character's wake provides a moderate speed boost. Remain there a few moments, and you're rewarded with a larger boost that often slingshots you in front of the character you were tailing. There aren't many changes to the ...

NFC Games has an excellent article on the visual evolution of Nintendo's Mario character. Comparing and contrasting the various character designs over the last two decades is enjoyable, but I don't agree with a bit of the analysis. The "Jumped the Shark" Mario section largely features designs not created by Nintendo's core development group in Japan - rather by Square and NST, Nintendo's in-house team in the US. I'd consider the Paper Mario 2 iteration of Mario to be the de facto 2D version of the famed mascot rather than the blurry Donkey Kong Country-style mess in Mario vs. Donkey Kong.

A recent WalMart faux pas showed that the Nintendo DS is releasing at the end of November with a retail price of $199.99. Regardless of the validity of this specific information, several industry analysts agree the Nintendo DS is launching by the end of the year. The trouble is, in this most crowded of Christmas seasons, Nintendo hasn't brought the hype. There's no "gotta-have" flagship title announced that tend to drive these sort of launches. (Then again, the last Nintendo system to have one was the N64's Mario 64.) The noise generated from E3 has subsided and there has been an acute silence on the PR front for one of Nintendo's most important hardware launches to date. Sending a clear message to gamers that the DS is cool and desirable will be difficult to convey with the hundreds of millions of dollars being spent by other game companies through the typical media formats this Christmas season. Convincing gamers that they should spend $200+ on new hardware...

OK, I was wrong . Pikmin 2 is great and is what the first game should have been. All that was wrong about the rushed, incomplete original is fixed in a beautiful, decadently polished experience. The thirty day time limit of the first game is gone; take your time exploring the worlds and collecting treasure. Once you get the original three Pikmin types, the game opens up to be a refreshingly non-linear experience. Go anywhere, do what you want to do, just get enough money to pay off Olimar's company debt. To replace the tension lost by removing the time limit, the overworlds in Pikmin now have a few dungeon entrances tucked throughout them. Only the Pikmin in your current group can be brought into the dungeon and you have to play it smart because you can't grow new Pikmin underground. The dungeon floors, in a surprisingly turn, are laid out randomly. Most of the time a floor contains a landmark puzzle or enemy encounter, but the position and order of the elements change each tim...

What the heck is up with Pikmin 2? The first Pikmin game was an interesting take on a console RTS/puzzle game; flawed, but well worth playing. I played Pikmin 2 at E3 and it was so similar that I had to remind myself I was playing the sequel. Now a year later more screenshots from IGN and Pikmin 2 looks. . . almost exactly the same . I was hoping N would do something to turn this title around and give it more reason to exist than to fill up an increasingly vacant release schedule.