Thanks, guys. I'll check them out. Which of these games would be easiest for my 5 year old daughter? She's barely played games before, but it looks like she's going to be better than my wife soon.

I'd say guitar hero. I have a niece who is 5 and has been playing GH. She can pass a handful of songs on easy.

Plus you expose her to some decent music before peer pressure sets in.

Some games for entire family/kids/wife:

Cooking Mama
Carnival Games
Raving Rabbids
Mario Party

I did a double take to make sure this post wasn't from February 2007.

I have a 4 year old and I'm seriously thinking of getting her the new Go Diego Go game. It lets an adult use control 2 to assist the child during game play. She loves playing games, but at age 4 can get stuck and need help from time to time.

Is anyone lovin' on Geometry Wars: Galaxies? This game is the illegitimate space-alien 3-way love child of Space Duel, Robotron and Tempest 2000. (Almost expected to see Jeff Minter in the credits.) Pretty ironic, for a quick pick-up-and-play game, that I can't pull my hands off the controller after 3 hours (every time!).

Seriously, it is a great mass-destruction psychedelic-eye-candy twitch game. Highly recommended.

Yeah - it's a good one. I didn't expect it to draw me in like it has having played Geo Wars on the 360 a fair amount. I like the tweaks to spawning of enemies and the variants of the levels. Good stuff!

This is on my short list of games to buy. I'm currently trying to catch up on my pile of unplayed games and either finish them or sell them. I have played through most of Mercury Meltdown and Marble Mania so it may be time to pick up Geometry Wars.

BTW, Kororinpa: Marble Mania is fantastic. I enjoyed Mercury Meltdown, but this game was much better. I am not a fan of tilt control in any way, but this game did it pretty well and I really never felt that frustrated with the control. I did have some issues with 360 turns of the remote, but there are very few required in the game. Very inspired level designs and a really cool soundtrack. I realize this game is nearly impossible to find now, but if you see it used or something I recommend it.

Absolutely, and I'm even the rare guy who prefers the Wiimote control scheme. For some reason, I have a hard time wrapping my head around dual stick control.

Love this game...and it's a great value, believe it or not. Also really like the downloadable DS version of Retro Evolved.

Endless Ocean
The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess
Geometry Wars Galaxies
ExciteTruck

Battalion Wars 2
Resident Evil UC

Really. I think all the reviews out there felt the exact opposite.

I can see this as I really enjoyed them both and can see why Meltdown gets high scores.
It may have to do with the levels. Marble Mania has 60+ compared to the 150 in Mercury Meltdown. However, I found the level design in Marble Mania to be a lot more charming and enjoyable. I eventually got bored to death with all the split the mercury and color it and recombine and split and recolor and so on.

Mercury Meltdown is definitely the more challenging game overall so that is a plus, but doing the speed runs in Marble Mania when you unlock the fast marbles can really test you. Meltdown also has several cool multiplayer games to unlock so when you add up the total packages Meltdown has more.

Honestly, I think it has a lot to do with Meltdown being a $20 game compared to the $40 they were charging for Kororinpa.

To me though it comes down to this. Mercury Meltdown is just a port of the PS2 game and while its Wii control works it is inferior to the analog stick control. Kororinpa was made for the Wii and you can tell it was designed from the ground up for tilt control. If I had to pick one I would side with Marble Mania, but how can you pass on Mercury Meltdown for $20?

BTW, for anyone curious the game ranking for Kororinpa is 71% compared to 78% for Mercury Meltdown.

Does the Wii automatically update the News and Weather channels via wireless when in standby? It seems every time I turn the Wii to check those channels I get an error message and I have to hit "start" to get the latest info. What's the point of standby if this isn't the case?

I got the blue vagina and I went ahead with the touted update, but I don't notice anything different.

I didn't even realize there was a Diego game. My 4 year old son is the same way, plus Diego is his favorite now.

Nope. That was a much hyped feature that hasn't happened yet. You still have to go to the store to update whatever needs updating.

It probably wouldn't be good updating on its own. You could wake up and check your Wii only to find out it had bricked on you overnight. Not a good situation.

He's asking about the News/Weather channels not the system update. I wouldn't mind my system updating on it's own considering all of the Big N's updates thus far have been fine.

Yes it does automagically update, but if you don't log in to the channels every couple of weeks they won't update for some reason.

I will mention the only downside is the game is $39.99 on Wii and $29.99 on PS2. However, my daughter seems to do much better with a wiimote so I will probably get her that one. There is also a Dora game with the same features, but it seems to be PS2 only.

This game has been in my Wii since Christmas when I got it. I don't get much time to play, so the ability to pick it up and play fro 20 minutes or an hour then put it away is very nice. That said I am still in the middle of Mario Galaxy, but that's a game that needs at least an hour or two in one sitting just to feel that I've accomplished something.

I haven't played Mercury Meltdown yet, but I thought Kororinpa Marble Mania was fantastic. It reminded me of playing the Labyrinth game when I was younger.


I think it is definitely a game worth checking out, there is a very tactile feel to the controls, the Wiimote gives you a lot of control over the marble with even the slightest movements.

I also loved Kororinpa Marble Mania. If you're lucky, your local Circuit City may still have a copy for $16.96.

I just picked up some Wii component cables, should I be seeing a big difference? I just got a 47 inch full 1080p LCD. I hooked up the wii with the component cables, went into settings and switched it over to hdtv...what else would I need to do if anything? Thanks.

There won't be a huge difference, honestly. The best you're going to get out of it is 480p @ 16:9. I believe over the composite you could get 480i @ 16:9. So it's just a matter of progressive over interlaced and your display was probably doing a decent job deinterlacing that 480i signal anyway.

You can at least be confident that you're now giving the display the best the Wii can give it.

To me it was a huge difference. You're going from composite to component, which is the big factor. Interlaced to progressive isn't the thing makes much of a difference.