I watched Nintendo's press conference live online earlier this week and was generally underwhelmed. There were no new entries in their best-selling franchises (Mario, Zelda, Metroid … Kid Icarus), and the sequels they demonstrated, such as Star Wars and Call of Duty, hardly left anyone's jaws hanging.

I was especially disappointed by the lack of attention given to WiiWare. This two-month-old venture is Nintendo's answer to the Xbox Live Arcade, but we were given neither numbers of its nascent success or promises of future titles from big-name companies. When the stage dimmed for one last surprise, what I expected was not Wii Music, but a final opportunity for WiiWare to shine — in the form of Mega Man 9.

This WiiWare game, due from Capcom in 2008, is an original title that looks like it was created 20 years ago, ignoring even the graphical advances of Mega Man 7 and Mega Man 8. I'm fascinated not only that the reception to this game has been so popular — 15 years ago, the formulaic Mega Man games were almost a joke, yet now we're hungry for more — but that Capcom has dedicated their time and resources in creating an original product for such a niche audience. Will MM9 appeal to newer gamers who have been weaned on 128-bit graphics and never played the original Blue Bomber titles? Have enough older, hardcore gamers stuck with the Nintendo brand that they'll be available to buy this game on WiiWare and not XBLA? Will MM9 stir up interest in the years-old Mega Man Anniversary compilation? I'm not sure what Capcom's angle is, but between this and Bionic Commando, they're certainly being generous to us retrogamers.

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Everyone's mind works hard to make sense of the world around us — but some minds work harder than others. The result for me was that, around the same time I was getting into Nintendo, I was hearing voices.

Or ambient noise, anyway. We lived in an old house that settled every night, with creaking floors and hissing radiators. My imagination took all these noises and tried to interpret them into something I could understand. Never mind that it was nonsense. I'd learned that it made sense to stomp on turtles and throw boomerangs at fireball-spitting mermaids, so it only seemed logical that similarly nonsensical rules could be imposed on the real world.

So I'm rather relieved to know I'm not alone when I see other people also compelled to apply method to madness, such as in this aural interpretation:

Hat tip to Chris!

Today marks one year since my last day of unemployment — and what a day it was! Knowing I was soon to be initiated into corporate America, I spent my last day of freedom engaged in a task I'd long overlooked: completing the second quest of the original Legend of Zelda.

Oh, I'd finished this classic quest many times before, but it'd probably been 15 years since I'd last done so. In that span, I had periodically revisited the first quest, confirming that I still knew every square pixel of Hyrule's Overworld and Underworld — the result untold hours of my childhood spent exploring its ruins and poring over its maps in Nintendo Power. I was comfortable with this routine and found solace in the motions. But the second quest? That was a whole 'nuther story.

The second quest's challenge is twofold. First, it's simply harder: there are new tricks to learn (like walking through walls), strong enemies come at you sooner, and old men are as likely to rob you of your heart containers as they are to bequeath them. But second, and more important, is the unfamiliarity and strangeness of it all. Long before A Link to the Past brought gamers to the Dark World, this game's second quest took what was familiar and made it foreign. Though geography is roughly the same, everything about this Overworld is even less reluctant to reveal its secrets than before. And since the second quest is not the default adventure on which Link sets out, the times it'd been mastered and the players who have done so is all the fewer.

So I dedicated a Sunday to revisiting this brave old world, resolved to see my way to the end without any assistance, cheats, or FAQs. And you know what? I was astonished at how many memories came flooding back to me. Walking past a river, I'd double back and scrutinize the landscape, sensing something was out of place. Many bombs later, a gaping hole invited me into a dungeon, and I knew I'd found what a ghost of a memory had only hinted would be there. Altogether, it took me five hours to meet Ganon and rescue his captive princess. That may not sound like much in this age of 80-hour RPGs, but consider that the record time for beating the second quest is less than 40 minutes.

It wasn't the first time I'd beaten the second quest, and I hope it won't be the last. But that final day of freedom was perfectly spent revisiting my youth, slowly yet surely making my way to Spectacle Rock.

I received an email last week from Nintendo, informing me of the January 21st release of their Wii game Endless Ocean. I'd never heard of the title, but some cursory research quickly earned it my preorder.

Endless Ocean is a scuba-diving simulation game developed by Akira. This is notable because Akira has already proven their expertise in this environment with Everblue 2, which ,despite the relatively low score I gave that PlayStation 2 title, is one of my favorite games for the system. Much of my distance from the current state of gaming is due to its increasingly violent nature, so to find a game that involved all exploration and collection and no combat or weaponry was a welcome relief. Diving into the great unknown and discovering lost ships and treasures was neither "relaxing" nor dull; it was exciting, as was seeing how deep one could dive while leaving enough oxygen to permit a safe escape. The temptation and risk to search down just one more corridor is omnipresent.

What I've seen of Endless Ocean looks like it's more focused on the natural environment and its inhabitants than Everblue 2's claustrophobic wrecks:

I'm not sure I find coral reefs as fascinating as ship graveyards, but for only $30, I'm willing to give it a go. At the very least, the Wii interface will offer the series enough innovation, perhaps featuring environmental interaction similar to that of Metroid Prime 3.

Today's The Joy of Tech proposes why Nintendo can't ship enough Wiis. It is rather astounding that a console that shipped a year, a month, and two days ago still can't be found on store shelves. I don't think the shortage is manufactured, though it's certainly saved Nintendo the cost of marketing.

I never had a problem getting my Wii: waiting in line for an hour before GameStop opened one October morning guaranteed me #12 of the 14 Wiis they were promised for launch day. It's the first and only time I've ever waited in line outside a store for a product. What about you — is everyone here getting (and giving!) what they want for the holidays? To what extremes have you gone to get your goodies?

It's Monday — and that means three new releases for the Nintendo Wii's Virtual Console. Let's review today's additions:

• Pokemon Snap — imagine the theme of a Disney World ride, crossed with the gameplay of the original Star Fox and Fatal Frame. Despite sounding like a chimeric horror from the Stygian abyss, it's actually a fun, if simple, game.

• Baseball Stars 2 — I've never played this game, but I have many fond memories of the NES original. I'm still trying to figure out how it is Nintendo can offer Neo Geo games to be downloaded to the Wii's wee 512MB hard drive. I remember Neo Geo cartridges having huge capacities, and a quick visit to Wikipedia confirms then run up to 90 megabytes. Will Nintendo eventually update the Wii to support external hard drives through its USB port, similarly to how v3.1 of the system software allowed USB keyboards? Or will we have to use SD memory cards? I don't own any of those, but I do still have my Neo Geo memory card — all 8 KB of it.

• Ghosts 'n Goblins — the original game in the franchise and the third for the Virtual Console. I remember tearing my hair out over this one as a kid, not just because of the difficulty (which is still high enough to turn me bald), but because I could never get the level select code in the Official Nintendo Player's Guide to work. No wonder: it was misprinted.
  

Rather than check the actual plodding Shop channel every Monday, my weekly fix for this news is The Virtual Console Archive. Though their editing could stand some work, they provide a fairly thorough gist of each VC game, as well as a rating and YouTube video. Other parts of their site include indices and news, which is how I learned about the new Wii Gift feature. (Guess Nintendo decided this holiday option wasn't worth making my disc slot glow blue.)

In 1982, Billy Mitchell set the Donkey Kong world record high score of 874,300. He quickly found fame and fortune when LIFE magazine splashed his face alongside those of other elite gamers considered the greatest of their generation, in a photo-spread in their January, 1983, "Year in Pictures" issue. Many felt his amazing score would never be bested. Then, in 2003, an unassuming science teacher from Redmond, Washington, shattered the long-standing record. In a video-taped performance, Steve Wiebe posted a staggering 1,006,600 points. But there was a problem: the score only counts if it's certified by Twin Galaxies, the self-appointed official keeper of classic video game records. And TG founder and "World's Video Game Referee" Walter Day puts it succinctly: "Twin Galaxies does a lot to promote Billy, because it's to Twin Galaxies' advantage — and very much to the whole gaming hobby's advantage — for Billy to become a star."

Mitchell, a larger-than-life character with a world-class mullet, is a hot sauce mogul and successful restaurateur from Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. He's also the self-proclaimed "World's Best Video Game Player". Unfortunately, in The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters, the new movie from director Seth Gordon (now in limited release), Mitchell comes off as something of a very big fish in a very small pond: in fact, the only thing big enough to match Billy's legend is his ego. Mitchell's opening line in the movie not only sets the tone for the upcoming competition between Billy and his challenger, lovable loser Steve Wiebe, but also gives us a fascinating glimpse into the psyche of an egomaniac. King of Kong is littered with priceless Mitchell one liners: "He is the person that he is today because he came under the wrath of Bill Mitchell"; "Since I so-called debuted on the scene at LIFE magazine in 1982… there hasn't been anybody who's played even close"; and "Maybe they'd like it if I lose. I gotta try losing some time." With a gaggle of video gamer disciples at his beck and call, including one who considers Billy "the champion" and himself "the prodigy", it's clear that Billy Mitchell is very invested in maintaining the mystique of his image. "Everything about him is perfect; Billy is just that person," proclaims one. Even Walter Day seems entranced by Mitchell's charisma: "There's no reason why Bill Mitchell couldn't end up on a Wheaties box someday."

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I moved to a new apartment last month, which meant taking down my 5.1 surround sound system and mounted speakers and disconnecting my five video game consoles, DVD player, VCR, switchbox, and 36" CRT TV. I knew this day was inevitable, and at one point I wondered if it would be easier to leave the sound system and entertainment center, which had been assembled in that room, where they were for the next tenant, and start from scratch in my new home. Of course, my budget wouldn't allow for that, so it all came apart.

Fortunately, this move had not been anticipated a mere three months earlier, when I completely rewired my setup to a) have five consoles connected simultaneously instead of four (I used to have connected only one from each manufacturer: Nintendo, Sega, Sony, Microsoft. Now I can have both my backward-compatible Wii and N64 side-by-side); and b) upgrade my Wii connection from composite to component. Given that recent surgery, I was familiar with what needed to go where and was able to recreate it in the new setup without much difficulty.

Since this reconfiguration also affected my DVD player, you can read the full details of what hardware was needed and why on my film blog, Showbits.