A reader of my weekly newspaper column once praised me for giving due coverage to non-mainstream games, though I never considered it a great difficulty to do so. The world doesn't need another review of Grand Theft Auto, not when games like Everblue 2 and Disaster Report may otherwise go unnoticed. Coincidentally, both those games have real-world settings with no hint of magic or mysticism. Instead, players take control of everyday heroes with the fantastic powers of scuba-diving or photography. I don't know why this form of escapism isn't more popular, but I'm glad to see these two games getting sequels.

Everblue 2 was one of my favorite PS2 games. Its score of 8.3 suggests it doesn't have the jaw-dropping impact of a more mainstream title, but it did have the staying power that kept me playing through to the end — a rare quality these days. Unfortunately, its 2008 sequel for the Wii, Endless Ocean, stripped the franchise of its stickier qualities, leaving me disenchanted.

Conversely, Disaster Report had unrealized potential which its sequel may fulfill. The first game suffered from pacing, control, and graphical issues, barring many gamers from the variety of challenging situations the game offered. Its sequel, Disaster: Day of Crisis, may suffer from corny dialogue, but the various trailers I've seen suggest ready access to a breadth and depth of activities. As a prologue to that, here's the game's first few minutes:

Is it a coincidence that both Everblue 2 and Disaster Report, originally PlayStation 2 games, are getting their sequels on the Wii? Is there something about Nintendo's platform that's inherently friendlier to niche or offbeat titles? Regardless, I'm hoping when it finally releases sometime in 2009 that this new Disaster is not the same disaster the old Disaster was.

(Hat tip to Nintendo Wii Fanboy)

Mega Man 9 was finally released today for download from the Wii Shop Channel. It's a purchase I'll be making tonight, though I will likely take the opportunity to fill my shopping cart with other goodies, such as these four SNES games:

• Zelda 3: A Link to the Past — one of the greatest 16-bit adventure games ever made. I've played this title over and over, finding its rituals comforting. I've not done so in years, and it'd be fun to go back and compare this experience to the newer ones offered by the likes of Twilight Princess.
  
• Contra III: The Alien Wars — little beats the old-school Contra games for fast action shoot-em-up, and the franchise's only SNES entry is no exception.
  
• Super Metroid — another game I've rehearsed over and over, yet I seem to forget the order of levels and locations of power-ups every time, making each play-through feel like the first time.
  
• Super Mario World — I once mastered this game so thoroughly, I was able to beat every level and find every exit without activating a single Switch Palace. Mario games have always been a balance of action and exploration, and I'd like to revisit the pack-in that once came with every SNES.
  

Besides the Virtual Console and Mega Man 9, the new WiiWare platform also offers other intriguing titles, including Block Breaker Deluxe and Groovin' Blocks, which appear reminiscent of arcade games Arkanoid and Columns, respectively. Granted, the only other WiiWare game I've purchased, VIP Casino Blackjack, was disappointing, but it hasn't deterred me from the venue's potential.

The cost for all seven of the above games is $58, which may sound like a lot, but consider that the same amount would buy only a single game at retail. And by making this purchase now, it gives me time to save another $20 for two more classic games revisited: Space Invaders Get Even and Bomberman Blast.

Though between this bounty and the undeniable lure of other downloadable games for the Xbox 360, destitution seems inevitable… but who needs food and water when you have games like these?

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!

Those of you in New England looking to prove your mettle should know about two upcoming events:

If you can't wait for the March 9th release of Super Smash Bros. Brawl, then head to Worcester Polytechnic Institute on Saturday, March 1st, for a Nintendo-sponsored Brawl tournament. This event is hitting only four sites in the entire country — Los Angeles, San Francisco, and New York City being the others — with gamers competing for home theater systems, crystal-coated Wiis (whatever those are), and a thousand dollars in Best Buy gift certificates. (Hat tip to nightskyre)

For those who eschew such modern offerings in favor of classic hits, head up to Laconia, New Hampshire (as I do every summer) to Funspot, a "non-profit corporation… established to promote and preserve the history of coin-operated arcade games" — through hands-on experience, of course! With nearly 200 machines from the Golden Age, Funspot offers an annual tournament to challenge the current high-score holders; it was there that Billy Mitchell achieved the first-ever perfect Pac-Man score. Funspot's tenth annual such competition will be held May 29th to June 1st — so break out the quarters, get your Dig Dug on, and kick some classic butt!

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?

The current console generation has brought many additions to the gaming experience — high definition visuals, motion sensing controls, downloadable expansion packs, widespread online gaming — but by far my favorite addition to the console arena this generation has been the addition of cheap downloadable games.  All of the major systems have their own version: Wii has the Virtual Console where for $5-$10, you can download great games from the NES, Genesis, SNES, N64, TurboGraphx-16, Neo Geo, and more. Early next year, the Wii will also have a channel from which original games can be downloaded.  The PS3 has the PlayStation Store, where there are a few good original games (I hear Super Stardust HD and Everyday Shooter are especially good) for around $10, and some original PS1 games for $6-$10.  The especially nice thing is that the PS1 game downloads work on the PSP: I can think of quite a fun old PS1 games that I'd love to have on a portable system at $10 or less a pop.  Finally, the Xbox 360 has the Xbox Live Arcade where original games and ports (often upgraded) generally come out at $5-$10 a piece and the recently added Xbox Originals — older Xbox games for $15 a piece.

I've noticed that these download services have had a drastic impact on the games I play and favor.  Back in the 8-bit and 16-bit eras, I gravitated toward console RPGs almost out of necessity.  As a young child without a lot of disposable income, it just made more sense to spend $60 on a massive epic like Dragon Warrior II or Final Fantasy that would take me weeks to finish, rather than spend it on an action game that I might beat in a couple days.  However, now I'm faced with dozens of high quality games from a variety of genres that only cost $5-$10 to download.  Sure, I might not have gotten as many hours out of, say, Mutant Storm Reloaded (a fast paced shmup played in the Robotron fashion) as I would out of the latest and greatest RPG, but I've definitely gotten my $10 worth.

All of the console download services have good games on them, but the online store that gives me the most fun is Xbox Live Arcade.  Although the first year of the service was a little bumpy with frequently delayed releases and many weeks with nothing new, now it's really gotten going.  Good XBLA games come out faster than I can play them, and I really can't offer better praise than that.  The breadth of the service is really remarkable: you have old Arcade classics (often with update visuals) for $5, high quality ports from the PSP like Lumines, EXIT, Puzzle Quest, and Gripshift (one of today's releases, a weird yet awesome mix of racing, platforming, and puzzles), ports from other systems like the PS1 classic Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, various PC casual games, and of course, original games.  Just recently, Microsoft implemented a new XBLA Greatest Hits line where older XBLA games have their download prices reduced.  Now, besides Geometry Wars (great Robotron-esque game), Space Giraffe (Tempest on acid) and all the old arcade classics, $5 will buy you Zuma (a really fun puzzle game somewhat similar to Bust-A-Move) or Marble Blast Ultra (think Marble Madness in 3D).  And hey, everything on the service has a free demo version so that you can see if you like the game before you buy the full version.

I could talk about many of my favorite XBLA games (and I probably will over time), but first I'll talk about what is probably my favorite: Pac-Man: Championship Edition.  Watch for a full review soon!