First Black Friday, then Cyber Monday, and now's it's Wii Wednesday over at Amazon.com. They've got Wii game deals all day long, and despite the rather crappy Deal of the Day (Active Life: Extreme Challenge Bundle with Mat? The hell?), there's still plenty of bargains to be had in the Gold Box section, if you're quick.

Spore Hero, the first deal, went live at 6AM Pacific, and as of this writing (around 6:50AM) they are completely sold out. Makes you wonder how fast games people actually want will sell out, doesn't it? Looking at the clues we've got a Star Wars game at 9, Guitar Hero World Tour at 11, Little King's Story at 1, Wii Sports Resort at 3, and what I am assuming is Drawn to Life for the Wii at 6.

Be vigilant, Wii owners and Christmas shoppers. Be strong.

Amazon Gold Box Deals [Amazon.com]

While the list below isn't a rundown of all of the reviews that ran this year on Kotaku, it is a fairly strong sampling. Use it to help you decide what you should and shouldn't get.

Which games make your list for wishlist or gift list?

A Boy and His Blob

Price: $39.99
Rating: Everyone
Genre: Platformer
Subject Matter:A Boy and His Blob is a platform game in which the titular duo use their wits and the Blob's transformative powers to overcome obstacles as they try to save the planet from an evil alien overlord.
Value: Moderately lengthy for a platformer, A Boy and His Blob's main draw is it's combination of platforming and puzzle-solving, using the unique morphing blob mechanic to create ladders, holes, trampolines and more to help traverse increasingly hostile environments. The graphics are gorgeous and the presentation is charmingly bare. It's almost artistic.
Buy it for: fans of the original game and people with a strong bond to their pets
Read the Full Review

Bakugan Battle Brawlers
Price: $49.99
Rating: Everyone
Genre: Marble-shooting, creature-battling action game.
Subject Matter: Based on the wildly popular collectible toy game and cartoon series, Bakugan follows in the footsteps of Pokemon but adds transforming marbles to the mix. The game does a good job of capturing the essence of the franchise.
Value: With a relatively robust single-player campaign and ability to battle up to three friends on one television in a slew of interactive arenas, this game is a pretty good deal.
Buy it for:fans of Bakugan and maybe even curious fans of Pokemon.
Read the Full Review

The Beatles: Rock Band
Price: The stand-alone game sells for $59.99, the Limited Edition Premium Bundle sell for $249.99, the Rickenbacker 325 Standalone Guitar and the Gretsch Duo Jet Standalone Guitar sells for $99.99.
Rating: Teen
Genre: Rhythm music game
Subject Matter: The Beatles: Rock Band is a musical journey through the history of one of the world's most popular bands.
Value: For those new to the Rock Band phenomenon and fans of The Beatles, this 45-track game is well worth a purchase because this is the only way you'll play The Beatles music in a Rock Band game. If you're not into the band, give this a pass.
Buy it for: huge Beatles fans.
Read the Full Review

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare Reflex
Price: $49.99
Rating: M
Genre: First-Person Shooter
Subject Matter: The Call of Duty series jumps from old school wars to modern combat in an edgy politically-charged tale of nuclear warfare.
Value: With Wii shooters few and far between, this is a must-have for FPS fans.
Buy it for: FPS fans who also happen to be Wii owners. Or your grandma, if you're trying to get un-invited to the family reunion.
Read the Full Review

Contra ReBirth

Price: $10.00 (WiiWare)
Rating: Teen
Genre: Action
Subject Matter: A new entry in the Contra series in glorious, Super Nintendo-era 2D.
Value: It's short and hard, like a body-building elf. ReBirth takes the classic 2D run-and-gun gameplay of the Contra series and...doesn't do all that much with it. It's a new game with an old look.
Read the Full Review

Dead Space Extraction
Price: $49.99
Rating: M
Genre: Dynamic on-rails first-person shooter.
Subject Matter: Sci-fi horror prequel to 2008's Dead Space, featuring survivors on the run from alien horrors.
Value: A short Wii game, but one of the best-looking and most exciting ones in recent memory.
Buy it for: Fans of the Dead Space series and Wii gamers looking for a game targeted to an older crowd; this one's too profane for kids.
Read the Full Review

DJ Hero
Price: $119.99
Rating: Teen
Genre: Rhythm
Subject Matter: DJ Hero is a rhythm game featuring a replica DJ turntable so players can mix and scratch to the beat of original music mash-ups.
Value: DJ Hero features upwards fo 100 different DJ-driven mash-ups featuring songs from the 70's on up to present-day hits. Unlike the latest Guitar Hero or Rock Band games, however, it's only good for one or two players, so the party element just isn't there. The innovative turntable-based gameplay makes it a breath of fresh air in the currently band-centric music genre, but it certainly isn't as social.
Buy it for: Fans of eclectic music mixes and lonely Guitar Hero fans.
Read the Full Review

Excitebike: World Rally

Price: $10 (download only)
Genre: Arcade racer
Subject Matter: An update to the classic Nintendo racer Excitebike, with a few minor gameplay tweaks and a revised link.
Value: A touch pricey for what is essentially a modern day port of a classic racer, but I suppose nostalgia has no price.
Buy it for: fans of classic Nintendo games and pick up and play gaming.
Read the Full Review

Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: My Life As A Darklord

Price: $10 (download only)
Rating: E10+
Genre: Tower Defense
Subject Matter: In an twist on the genre, evil princess gets to stack one tower against invaders.
Value: Lots of levels, but the creators charge extra for a lot of the cooler items and features.
Buy it for: Tower defense fans who want a major change to the traditional formula
Read the Full Review

Ju-on: The Grudge

Price: $29.99
Rating: M
Genre: Horror, Action
Subject Matter: Relive the eeriness of the Japanese horror sensation in this "haunted house simulator."
Value: With a second Wii Remote, you can randomly inflict scary "haunting" moments on the person playing the game by mashing A.
Buy it for: Japanese horror film fans and anybody you secretly hate but don't dare give lumps of coal to.
Read the Full Review

LEGO Rock Band

Price: $49.99
Rating: Everyone
Genre: Rhythm
Subject Matter: It's the family version of Rock Band, with adorable LEGO characters.
Value:The value in LEGO Rock Band comes mainly from knowing your children won't be exposed to any suggestive lyrics or imagery, so if you're the type of parent/aunt/uncle that actually worries about such things, then there you are. Otherwise, you get somewhere around 44 songs that will just be released as downloadable content for the main game anyway.
Buy it for: Younger fans of good music who already have access to Rock Band instruments.
Read the Full Review

Little King's Story

Price: $49.99
Rating: T
Genre: Role-playing game mixed with empire-building
Subject Matter: A fairy-tale-style king at odds with increasingly clever and culturally-interesting enemies tribes and kings.
Value: High. Lengthy, imaginative single-player quest.
Buy it for: Wii owners who want a game that will last; fans of quirky, more artsy video games.
Read the Full Review

LostWinds: Winter of the Melodias

Price: 1000 Wii Points
Rating: Everyone
Genre: Platform
Subject Matter: It's the sequel to 2008's LostWinds with the new ability to switch between seasons (winter and summer).
Value: Small touches, like the character being realistically refracted when standing behind ice, made us forget this is not a packaged retail release. The graphics and music are both deliver — as does the Wii Remote gameplay.
Buy it for: Gamers looking for a breezy and cute platformer.
Read the Full Review

Marvel Super Hero Squad
Price: $39.99
Rating: Everyone 10+
Genre: Beat-em Up
Subject Matter: A standard tale of good versus evil told with tiny, superdeformed Marvel characters
Value: While the adventure mode will only last a couple of hours, Marvel Super Hero Squad features a Battle Mode that lets your kids fight against each other using iconic Marvel Comics characters, so there is some lasting value there, if only for the youngins'.
Buy it for: kids old enough to enjoy Marvel Characters but not old enough to handle Captain America getting shot and killed
Read the Full Review

Muramasa: The Demon Blade

Price: $49.99
Rating: Teen
Genre: Action RPG
Subject Matter: A highly Japanese hack and slash RPG with very striking 2D visuals.
Value:A gorgeous single-player action RPG, Muramasa has a great deal of gameplay but very little in the way of story development. Lots of over-the-top action and some very impressive boss fights make up for the overall lack of depth.
Buy it for: Japanese RPG and anime fans.
Read the Full Review

MySims Agents

Price: $49.99
Rating: E
Genre: Action/Adventure
Subject Matter: Make your MySim into the ultimate secret agent by unraveling a huge mystery.
Value: Lots of customizable costumes and outfits, plus a secret alternate ending and bonus puzzles lend the game replay value.
Buy it for: Your kids and play it when they aren't looking.
Read the Full Review

New Super Mario Bros. Wii

Price: $49.99
Rating: Everyone
Genre: Side-scrolling, nostalgia-tugging platformer
Subject Matter: New Super Mario Bros. Wii doesn't explore any new narratives, you're still Mario who is still trying to save the princess, but this time around you can play with three friends, and the game is there to help you when you get stuck.
Value: New Super Mario Bros. Wii feels like two games in one, and there are several mulitplayer modes to add to the fun after you've beaten the game.
Buy it for: Anyone with a Wii, anyone considering a Wii.
Read the Full Review

Rabbids Go Home
Price: $49.99
Rating: E10+
Genre: Comedy platformer
Subject Matter: Three manic rabbit-like creatures and their shopping cart put to task to rob humanity of its junk in order to build a pile and pathway to the moon. Plus, the Rabbids can and must yell the clothes off ridiculous people.
Value: A pleasant and funny adventure that will last a weekend, but longer for those who want to collect 100%.
Buy it for: Gamers who want a game that makes them laugh out loud; fans of platforming looking for a Mario alternative; people looking for the Rabbids to finally star in something that isn't a mini-game compilation.
Read the Full Review

Resident Evil: The Darkside Chronicles
Price: $49.99
Rating: M
Genre: On-rails shooter, Resident Evil retrospective
Subject Matter: Single-player or co-op light gun shooter takes on Resident Evil 2 and Resident Evil Code: Veronica, wrapped up in a short, new pre-Resident-Evil-4 campaign, all presented with RE's mix of horror and cheese (though this one isn't scary).
Value: Light gun games are usually very short, but this one has three campaigns and enough unlockables to offer at least nine hours of first-time play.
Buy it for: Resident Evil fans; people looking for a less innovative Wii light gun game than Dead Space Extraction and a less outrageous one than House of the Dead: Overkill, but, of the three, the one with the most content. A solid game.
Read the Full Review

Spyborgs

Price: $19.99
Rating: Teen
Genre: Beat-em Up
Subject Matter: Spyborgs is a simple arcade-style beat-em up with cartoon tendencies.
Buy it for: Young children and early teens who've yet to develop discerning tastes.
Value: $19.99 could very well translate into keeping your kids quiet (or at least only yelling at each other) for a few hours, or some quality parent-child bonding time. It's not particularly exciting, but it'll do in a pinch.
Read the Full Review

Sword & Soldiers

Price: $10 (download only)
Rating: E10+
Genre: Side-scrolling real-time-strategy game.
Subject Matter: Vikings vs. ninjas vs. Aztecs
Value: High, given the amount of levels, the gleefully violent cartoon visuals and the creative campaign.
Buy it for: Fans looking for cartoon violence on the Wii and fans of Patapon the only game remotely like this.
Read the Full Review

Wii Energizer 4X Charging Station

Price: $49.99
Rating: N/A
Genre: N/A
Subject Matter:An induction panel that charges up to four remotes at a time.
Value: With four rechargeable battery packs included with the induction panel, this seems like a fairly good deal.
Buy it for:Wii owners sick of burning through batteries and people who have their console set up in a place where space is at a premium.
Read the Full Review

Wii Fit Plus

Price: $19.99 (game only), $99.99 (with Balance Board)
Rating: E
Genre: Fitness, Sports
Subject Matter: A slew of next mini-games and a handful of new exercises round out Nintendo's home fitness tool.
Value: With a new multiplayer function and the ability to weigh your cat, baby or dog, Wii Fit Plus pushes its fun on the whole family.
Buy it for: Yourself because you're too lazy to go to the gym, your grandparents who need help getting over last year's hip surgery, or your brother-in-law who should really be watching his weight.
Read the Full Review

Wii Sports Resort

Price: $49.99
Rating: Everyone
Genre: Casual sports
Subject Matter: Wii Sports Resort drops you on an island with a dozen sports to attempt using the Wii's new, more accurate MotionPlus device.
Value: Packed with a MotionPlus remote add-on and a hefty collection of sports, this is a must have for Wii owners.
Buy it for: Fans of Wii Sports, casual gamers, anyone looking for some family time on their Wii.
Read the Full Review

The Mall Experience is intended to make "it easier than ever for holiday consumers to sample the year's most sought-after games" for the Wii and DS/DSi. Demo stations will be set up at 35 malls all over the country starting next week to let people play games like The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks (which will be hot stuff which won't be available 'til it goes on sale Dec. 7), Style Savvy (whose ads on MTV cause me physical pain), Professor Layton and the Diabolical Box (yay!), New Super Mario Bros. Wii, Wii Sports Resort and Wii Fit Plus.

Hm. I hope they're set up next to the food court.

Here's the list of malls they're hitting up between Nov. 23 and Dec. 20:

• Chandler Fashion Center in Chandler, Ariz.
• Westfield Culver City in Culver City, Calif.
• Westfield Parkway in El Cajon, Calif.
• Ontario Mills in Ontario, Calif.
• Westfield San Francisco Centre in San Francisco
• Danbury Fair Mall in Danbury, Conn.
• Orange Park Mall in Orange Park, Fla.
• Florida Mall in Orlando, Fla.
• Tyrone Square in St. Petersburg, Fla.
• Lenox Square in Atlanta
• River Oaks Center in Calumet City, Ill.
• Greenwood Park in Greenwood, Ind.
• Arundel Mills in Hanover, Md.
• South Shore Plaza in Braintree, Mass.
• Burlington Mall in Burlington, Mass.
• Mall of America in Bloomington, Minn.
• Southdale Center in Edina, Minn.
• Deptford Mall in Deptford, N.J.
• Queens Center in Elmhurst, N.Y.
• Roosevelt Field in Garden City, N.Y.
• Galleria of White Plains in White Plains, N.Y.
• The Mall at Tuttle Crossing in Dublin, Ohio
• Penn Square Mall in Oklahoma City
• Franklin Mills in Philadelphia
• Wolfchase Galleria in Memphis, Tenn.
• Grapevine Mills in Grapevine, Texas
• Irving Mall in Irving, Texas
• Ingram Park Mall in San Antonio
• Chesapeake Square in Chesapeake, Va.
• Virginia Center Commons in Glen Allen, Va.
• Tysons Corner Center in McLean, Va.
• Potomac Mills in Prince William, Va.
• Northgate Mall in Seattle
• Westfield Southcenter in Seattle
• Southridge Mall in Greendale, Wisc.

Image Cred — and I so wanted that game for Hanukkah as a kid!

Starting October 12, the game will come packed with not one, but two MotionPlus accessories. Of course, you'll be paying more for the pack - $60 - but $10 for a second MotionPlus is a good deal.

Big week for Nintendo-related price issues, this!

Such as? Fishing, a "water slide activity," and a game built on a type of cup-and-ball toy, producer Katsuya Eguchi told Wired.com

"We considered fishing and a water slide activity before deciding on the final twelve events," Eguchi said. "As for more unconventional concepts, we created a pretty fun prototype of kendama, a traditional Japanese toy, that just didn't fit the game's theme."

Fishing I could imagine; use the Nunchuk as your reel and with the Wiimote, make a jerking motion with (snicker) your rod. I'm not sure what the watersliding game would be, but I guess it'd be like bobsledding - follow the fastest line and don't go up the walls. Kendama, the real thing looks difficult enough. I'm sure the Wiimote would adjust for that, but yeah. Looks kinda boring.

Eguchi drops a few more quotes about the game's development, and the future of video game controls, in the rest of Wired's article.

Wii Sports Resort Games That Didn't Make It [Wired.com]

Can you top 105 in Archery on expert difficulty? How about 999 on the Table Tennis return challenge? Probably not, but if you've got a bit of free time you might want to check out the official Wii Sports Resort records, as you can never really tell if you're just average at a game or some sort of supernatural freak without official scores to compare yourself to. I personally think I might have a chance at the expert Wakeboarding title, as long as no one has to actually see me doing it to qualify.

Check out a selection of the scores below, or head over to http://www.twingalaxies.com to see how you rank in thousands of other games. Your next obsession could be waiting just around the corner. Next stop, your own hot sauce.

Selected Wii Sports Resort Records and Rankings as of 9/2/09:

Archery (Expert Difficulty)
1. 105 points - Brandon Skar, Snoqualmie, WA
2. 80 points - Nick Manns, Huntington, WV
3. 68 points - Lance Eustache, Arverne, NY

Table Tennis (Return Challenge)
1. 999 - Brandon Skar, Snoqualmie, WA
2. 271 - Marc Cohen, Henderson, NV
3. 204 - Lance Eustache, Arverne, NY

Bowling (100 Pin Game)
1. 2,098 - Marc Cohen, Henderson, NV
2. 1,682 - Julie Mee, Rhyl, United Kingdom
3. 1,182 - Ronald Loch, Garland, TX

Basketball (3 point challenge)
1. 26 - Lance Eustache, Arverne, NY
2. 25 - Brandon Skar, Snoqualmie, WA
3. 24 - Clabe Anglin, Krum, TX

Wakeboarding (Expert Difficulty)
1. 1,581 - Brandon Skar, Snoqualmie, WA
2. 1,266 - Lance Eustache, Arverne, NY
3. 820 - Ginger Stowe, Grand Rapids, MI

Not only has the game sold a million copies, but the Wii MotionPlus add-on has racked up a total of two million in sales in the U.S. alone.

"Millions of consumers worldwide have demonstrated that they want their summer vacations to keep going," said Cammie Dunaway, Nintendo of America's executive vice president of Sales & Marketing. "Wii Sports Resort provides both novice and veteran players a fun, virtual escape to a resort island with their friends and family — something that will be even more appealing as the weather turns cooler this fall and winter."

Going on sale on July 26 and bundled with Wii MotionPlus, the game features archery, sword fighting, table tennis, basketball, golf, bowling, air sports, power cruising, frisbee, cycling, canoeing and wakeboarding.

The game launched on June 25 in The Land of The Rising Sun and was met with brisk sales. The second week was a sharp drop off, but as the chart below points out, the title has recently seen an upswing in sales during its eighth week in release.

The title is bundled with the Wii MotionPlus add-on peripheral.

Bleep Bloop: Wii Sports Resort [College Humor]

* Combined, that is. The PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 versions of this year's NCAA Football joined forces to sell over 613,000 copies, besting Wii Sports Resort in multi-SKU semantics. Across all platforms, the NPD Group says, EA Sports' college footballer moved over 689,000 units. I smell sequel!

The line up is, like most months, Nintendo platform heavy. Seven of the top ten games are Wii or Nintendo DS titles, including plenty of evergreen entries like New Super Mario Bros. and Mario Kart Wii.

Here are July 2009's bestselling games, from the NPD Group.

01. Wii Sports Resort (Wii) - 508,200
02. NCAA Football 10 (Xbox 360) - 376,500
03. NCAA Football 10 (PS3) - 237,400
04. Wii Fit (Wii) - 164,300
05. Mario Kart Wii (Wii) - 156,600
06. Mario Kart DS (DS) - 132,200
07. Pokemon Platinum (DS) - 116,400
08. Fight Night Round 4 (Xbox 360) - 116,400
09. New Super Mario Bros. (DS) - 101,800
10. EA Sports Active (Wii) - 96,800

All that spending amounted to $436.99 million by U.S. consumers, off 26% from the previous year.

Anita Frazier, NPD analyst, has some bad news for some portions of the industry. "Of all genres, the music/dance genre has suffered the greatest declines this year, with nearly $390 million less revenues than the same time period last year," she says. "In order for the industry to come in flat or slightly up for the total year, the back five months of the year have to come in 11% (or more) higher than the last five months of last year."

That means Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 really has its work cut out for it.

"While year-to-date results are weak, there are some big titles set to be released over the next several months, including Madden this month, which should help spur sales," Frazier notes. "The worst comps should be behind us, and looking beyond August we have The Beatles: Rock Band, Halo 3: ODST, and of course, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 to look forward to."

In both written and video form, Wall Street Journal technology reporter Katie Boehret tackles Wii MotionPlus, Project Natal and something called Canesta, which works kind of like the Clap-on for your TV and stuff. Of Wii MotionPlus, she writes:

However enjoyable, the Wii MotionPlus is more of an evolutionary change than a revolutionary change. If you've never played video games on a Wii before, you wouldn't know what you were missing if you used the remote without MotionPlus.

But even so, Boehret seems just as sold on Wii Sports Resort as the rest of us. Now if she could just transfer some of her enthusiasm from her article into the video...

Playing With a More Sensitive Wii [Wall Street Journal]

Last we saw, Wii Sports Resort has sold 500,000 copies in the US since launch. And that was earlier this week. In roughly same timeframe, it's sold 600,000 copies in Europe. Add that to the 350,000+ sales its racked up in Japan, and yes, we're looking at our first serious challenger for "biggest-selling game of the year".

Wii Sports Resort Tops 600,000 In Europe [Edge]

That's still a long way from the more than 45 million copies the original game sold, but Wii Sports Resort, with its included Wii MotionPlus peripheral, likely won't stop there. The game moved over 360,000 in its first week on sale in Japan, passing the 763,000 mark in the country as of last week, according to sales tracker Media Create.

Nintendo of America estimates one Wii Sports Resorts sale every 1.5 seconds, give or take a fraction, between its release on July 26 and August 3.

Wii Sports Resort is Nintendo's first-party showcase for the Wii Motion Plus, the controller add-on that adds 1:1 movement sensing to the Wii remote. Some consider the peripheral to be a fix for the Wii remote, adding in functionality that should have been there in the first place, but that's neither here nor there. The important thing here is that up until now, we've really only had a couple of third-party sports titles we could use to test out the new device, and now we've got a dozen tiny doses of Nintendo-created goodness.

But how good is this Nintendo-created goodness? Should players immediately go out and buy three more Motion Plus adapters, or should they wait until something better comes along? The assembled game critics take a stab, shoot an arrow, and otherwise swing their Wii remote in a dramatic fashion at the question.

The Onion A.V. Club
The sequel to arguably the best freebie pack-in game in 20 years arrives bearing a $50 price tag, 12 tropical-themed mini-games, and one Wii MotionPlus, an inch-long attachment for the Wii remote that purports to vanquish the pesky lag between player movement and onscreen movement. Cynics will say that the game features only 10 mini-games, since two of the games-Golf and Bowling-are do-overs from the original. Cynics will also say that this game is a Trojan horse designed to sell Wii MotionPlus attachments. Those cynics wouldn't be wrong on either front.

Eurogamer
With 12 basic activity types rather than the first game's five, the first indicator that something's lacking comes when you spot a couple of familiar faces in the crowd - and not just in the form of the Mii Plaza residents you zip past while barrelling through the sky. Repeat performances from the original Wii Sports' golf and bowling games are enough to suggest that maybe even Nintendo knows it's packed the sequel with pretty distractions, but is lacking the big events to bind them all together.

CVG
We've had it for weeks. Are we bored of it yet? Absolutely not. On the contrary, we can't wait to get the game home so we can smash our mates and mums over the heads with plastic sticks in Swordplay, ace them with our now-killer top spin in Table Tennis and slaughter them with our epic Archery skills. Those are easily the three best new games in Resort, so we'll start here. Swordplay is the game we all imagined we'd be playing when we first saw the Wii Remote. It's that Lightsaber game we all wanted, only without the Lightsabers.

Nintendo Life
There's certainly no denying that Wii Motion Plus brings a much more realistic and accurate form of motion controls to the table and Wii Sports Resort makes great use of it from start to finish. Sure some of the games are better than others and you'll have to occasionally re-calibrate the Wii Remote by placing it on a flat surface for a few seconds, but as a whole, the package features plenty of playability to go around. As a single-player experience, the game is solid and will provide you with plenty of hours of fun...But if you want to see what Wii Sports Resort is really all about, you need to round up some players to come over and have some real fun. Because as much fun as the original Wii Sports release was, Wii Sports Resort absolutely blows it away in terms of overall fun factor.

Giant Bomb
By offering 12 events and covering a variety of different styles, Nintendo has almost ensured that anyone who remotely liked anything about the original Wii Sports will find Wii Sports Resort to be a lot of fun. On top of that, it's still just as accessible as the original was, making it a great choice if you're looking for games to play with people who don't play a lot of games. You know what? It doesn't even need that layer of qualification. Wii Sports Resort is great.

Kotaku
With a dozen sports and a total of two dozen ways to play them, Wii Sports Resort packs in the play with mostly fun games. You'd think that Wii Sports and Wii Play would have exhausted the minigame catalog for the Wii, but these mostly new games are a worthwhile addition to anyone's Wii. Even without the MotionPlus add-on, Wii Sports Resort is a must-have, must-play for anyone wanting to get the most out of their Nintendo console.

I like to move it, move it...

First there was Wii Sports and then came Wii Play, which sweetened the deal with a free remote. Now we have Wii Sports Resort which comes with a whole new piece of technology and a chance to play Swordplay, Wakeboarding, Archery, Frisbee, Basketball, Power Cruising, Cycling, Golf, Table Tennis, Bowling, Canoeing and Air Sports.

Are the games a new enough experience to make Wii Sports Resort worth picking up or is this just a glorified accessory?

Loved
Sword and Archery: My two favorite games in the collection are Swordplay and Archery. In Swordplay you swing the remote like a sword, holding the B button to block in four directions, or swing in the same directions to attack. It sounds simple but can make for some pretty intense battles. The mode includes two-player duels, and a speed slicing contest, but my favorite is the showdown which pits a player against a horde of enemy Mii as you work your way along a map. The game includes ten maps, which can then be played in reverse. While Archery only includes one mode, there are three difficulty settings. To play righties hold their remote in their left hand and the nunchuk in the right and then pull back the nunchuk like it's the string and release the Z button to fire. The object is to hit distant, sometimes moving or occasionally blocked targets. The sensitivity of the controls make the game equal parts difficult and rewarding.

Air Sports: Air Sports has you hold the remote like a paper airplay and guide it around to either control a skydiving Mii or a plane. This sport is broken down into three modes: Skydiving, Island Flyover and Dogfight. Skydiving is pretty straight forward, and a little dull. The Island Flyover essentially lets you practice flying a plane while collecting site-seeing points. The real fun in this mode is Dogfighting, where you and a friend fly around the island with balloons in tow, trying to blast away each others balloons away to win. The game is responsive enough to make this quite a bit of fun.

Table Tennis and Bowling: Both of these sports offer enough nuance to make competition fun. In Table Tennis, you play against a Wii-controlled Mii or a friend in the classic paddle game. The controls are fairly similar to the original Wii Sports Tennis, though this time around the game can sense the angle of your paddle, meaning you can put some pretty wicked spin on the ball. Bowling is also like the original, though now with the addition of MotionPlus players will feel like they have a bit more control of the ball's spin. The inclusion of an easier to unlock version of a 100-pin game mode, adds just enough to Bowling to make it worth playing again.

Cycling: In Cycling, your hold your remote and nunchuk as if they were the handles of a bike and then take turns sort of swinging them down and up as if they were pedals. To steer, you tilt both controllers back and forth. The sport includes one or two player road races against a pack of Mii and a head-to-head two-player race. The game is a bit simple, but when you factor in drafting, and the fact that you can tire out and have to pace yourself, it makes the game an amusing diversion.

Frisbee: I wasn't a fan of Frisbee initially. To play you hold your remote like a Frisbee and snap it like your throwing the disc. Then a dog runs and catches it. The object is to make it as close to the glowing circle as possible. But, once you play Frisbee Dog you unlock Frisbee Golf which lets you play with up to four players on the game's golf courses with three discs. Plenty of fun here and expect lots of practice to perfect your throw.

Basketball: Basketball was another game that didn't really catch my interest initially. You play by swinging the remote down, pushing the B button and then pulling up the remote and making a shooting motion. The object is to sink as many baskets as you can in the time limit from the different positions. But, once you play the 3-point contest mode it unlocks the pick-up game. In the one to two-player pick-up game you control three Mii as you try to out dribble, pass and shoot. And yes, there are Mii slam dunks. The controls are fairly rudimentary, relying heavily on button pushes and motion (you don't ever actually control the Mii's movement) but it's a ton of fun, and dunking on someone with a Mii is hilarious.

Hated
Constant Calibration: Constant may be a bit of an overstatement, but as you move between sports there will be plenty of times when the game tells you to put the controller on a flat surface for a few seconds so it can recalibrate. The game also has the option to pause at any time so you can do this manually. I think this calibration paranoia is more about being overly careful that the experience always delivers, but it can get annoying at times. I was interested to discover that there is an option in the game to let it also use the Sensor Bar to help refine the motion control detection.

Golf: This feels as phoned in as it likely was. The experience really hasn't changed much at all from the one you find on Wii Sports. Sure, it can better detect hooks and slices, but no extra modes and no bells and whistles makes for a pretty mundane experience.

Water Sports: Most of Wii Sports Resort's dozen games deliver, but Canoeing, Power Cruising and Wakeboarding all felt a bit wet behind the ears. In Canoeing you use the remote as a paddle, working your way along a water course either against a clock or a friend. The mode felt more like a workout than fun. Power Cruising should have been a no-brainer, but the controls are awkward, and the Mii version of a Jet Ski underpowered. Lacking any real opportunity to do tricks, the races are a bit boring. Wakeboarding has you hold the remote sideways and use it to tilt your Mii back and forth across the water, hitting the wake of the boat pulling you to jump. With the tricks automated, the game boils down to keeping the remote level at the right time.

Single MotionPlus Add-On: The game ships with a single Wii MotionPlus accessory, but to play any of those multiplayer games you're going to need two or more MotionPlus controllers. Not deal breaking, but a little disappointing.

MotionPlus works, and it works well. If nothing else, the games of Wii Sports Resort make that abundantly clear. This is the promise of the Wii remote finally delivered. Now lets see what third-party developers can do with it.

With a dozen sports and a total of two dozen ways to play them, Wii Sports Resort packs in the play with mostly fun games. You'd think that Wii Sports and Wii Play would have exhausted the minigame catalog for the Wii, but these mostly new games are a worthwhile addition to anyone's Wii. Even without the MotionPlus add-on, Wii Sports Resort is a must-have, must-play for anyone wanting to get the most out of their Nintendo console.

Wii Sports Resort was developed by Nintendo EAD and published by Nintendo for the Wii on July 26. Retails for $49.99 USD. Played all games and game modes both alone and with my son.

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But instead of fading away, the Wii Bowling movement seems to keep growing. In a recent piece in the Chicago Tribune, Alicia Fabbre talks about a particularly popular Wii Bowling league in a Chicago suburb.

The league started 3 1/2 years ago (Nintendo says it was the first in the country) and soon expanded from 12 teams to 30. The league now has 96 bowlers and 47 subs.

"It gives you a lot of exercise," said Alice Lukaszka, a 72-year-old bowler who has been in the league since it started at Carillon Lakes.

Like others, Lukaszka noted that Wii bowling is easier for her than going to a bowling alley. For starters, her score is better. (Her average is 213. At a bowling alley she would score in the low 100s, she said.) And while a remote can have its technical (or operator-induced) difficulties, at least it's not as heavy as a bowling ball.

"This is a lot more fun," said Florence Davis, 74, who has been playing since last year. "There's a lot more pressure in a [regular] league."

I'm curious what sort of impact Wii Sports Resort and it's more accurate version of Wii Bowling will have on this movement. Are the controls, and it's ability to detect flaws, going to mean aging virtual bowlers won't upgrade or will they simply up their game?

Wii bowling leagues right up seniors' alley [Chicago Tribune]

At the center of this stunt? 50 tons of New Jersey sand, part of a promotional island for Wii Sports Resort.

(Apologies for the low video quality. Last time I take a video with my Blackberry, folks...)

I had fished for news, but I wasn't going to get it from Nintendo of America's Denise Kaigler. Not today. Not at this Times Square, Manhattan promo event which was geared to generate the spectacle of kids and tourists walking into Nintendo's faked beach resort to play this weekend's Wii Sports sequel.

So, she said, how about we take our shoes off? And go into the wading pool that might or might not support our weight. And hope little kids don't follow our example and make a mess of things. And...?

Into the pool I waded with Kaigler. How was I going to get a Kotaku post out of this? She said she was still figuring it out.

So... she started splashing me. And I splashed her back. Photos were taken and a little girl squealed when I accidentally kicked some water her way.

My feet were wet. A PR guy kindly grabbed me my shoes.

And I thought doing forward rolls with a woman dressed as Lara Croft was the high point of my journalism career.

Dear Sony and Microsoft vice presidents of corporate affairs, please don't feel the need to one-up this. You don't want to see more of my feet.

This stumble in Nintendo's stride has gained little attention as its competitors chase its dust. It's about the key tool for movement in this big gaming movement.

The original promise of the Wii's controller, the Wii Remote, was that it would augur a revolution in game control, a Motion Control Revolution.

Yet nearly three years later, with the Wii Sports' sequel, Wii Sports Resort,on the verge of its U.S. release, the triumph of the Motion Control Revolution is debatable at best. At the very moment when the wisdom of releasing the Wii is beyond dispute, it can be argued that the Motion Control Revolution has stalled — failed even — and that Wii Sports Resort is the next best hope (the last one?) to save it.

First shown at a game conference in Tokyo in September of 2005, the Wii Remote was going to make imitation swordsmen and dentists of us all. It was going to turn us into sharpshooters and champion fishermen, or so Nintendo's video sizzle reel hyped.

When Wii Sports was released in November 2006, that Motion Control Revolution seemed assured. We swung the Remote like a tennis racket and heaved it like a bowling ball. Those motions first delighted our families at holiday gatherings and then an audience at The Oscars. Day after day, the anchors of cable news seemed charmed to play a game on a console whose name they struggled to pronounce.

Yet, since the Wii Remote birthed the great Wii Sports, it's no stretch to claim that the revolutionary Remote has spawned no other great motion control games.

That's Nintendo's hidden stumble, this struggle for the motion-sensitivity of the Wii Remote to prove itself the equal of traditional button and stick controls, to say nothing of establishing itself as the superior option. Gamers groan at the flimsy motion controls mapped to action games. A shake of a hand replaces what could have been the press of a button. In game after game, motion control presents a different option, but one that seldom seems better.

As right as Nintendo was about so many things, maybe it was wrong about this. Or, as is so often the case with Nintendo's Wii project, the failure here may be one of critical imagination. That happens. Forty years ago on Monday, a human being first stepped on the moon, and what people assumed would happen in the next four decades — trips to Mars, cities in space — have not been built. The guessers often guess wrong.

The future we may have expected in 2006 — of a 2007 and beyond filled with motion-based greats manipulated with a Wii Remote — has not come to pass. The lightsaber, magic wand and music-conducting Wii games we expected were made. But they felt constrained and inaccurate. Mario and Zelda have not been transformed into adventures of motion-based brilliance. Magnificent as that motion control in Wii Sports was, the ability to let a player control their game by swinging the Wii Remote appears to have inspired little confidence and limited mastery even in some of the world's most expert game creators.

Even in Wii Fit, the great successor to Wii Sports, the Wii Remote was all but relegated to a laser pointer used to select menu options. Meanwhile, the mechanism for the game's motion was the Balance Board, a controller inspired by a bathroom scale.

Other Wii designers minimized their use of the Wii Remote's motion control even more. Chart-topper Super Smash Brothers played without it. Blockbusters Mario Kart Wii and Guitar Hero tucked it away in shells shaped like wheels and guitars, doing little to convince anyone that motion control was a must.

A new Zelda down-played it. A new Mario limited its motion-control element, as have so many Wii games, to the occasional vibration of a player's right hand. This fall's New Super Mario Bros. Wii, made in the two years since the last Wii Mario, uses motion control no more than the last.

Some games have used the Remote's motion control aggressively. MadWorld, No More Heroes and Manhunt 2 harnessed its potential for violence. Wii Music marshaled motion for musicality. Boom Blox made it the mechanism for hurling baseballs at stubborn bricks. But fun as some of those games were, they were not hits.

In that dust behind Nintendo's Wii, Microsoft and Sony are in the chase. Last month they revealed their own Motion Controllers, tied to cameras and, in the Xbox's case with Project Natal, absent the need for players to hold anything in their hands. One wonders if the companies have noticed Nintendo's struggles with motion control amidst the Wii's triumphs. The use of arm and body movements to play games has not proven a game-changer in and of itself. By making games more appealing a wider audience, its been a component of a bigger change. But it's also been a red herring.

Designers borrowing ideas from Wii Sports had had better success drawing from the game's accessibility than strictly from its motion controls. The simplicity of its design made Wii Sports approachable, streamlined and friendly, the least intimidating game many people had played since Pac-Man. It has one of the shortest gaps between being turned on and being fun. These have been its smarter qualities — and have revealed that the genius of the Wii Remote may not be its swing but its shape. It can be understood when seen from across a room and clearly it's no threat.

If the lack of games doing great things with motion control was one sign of trouble for the Motion Control Revolution, another was last summer's revelation that Nintendo was building a gadget that would enhance/repair/improve the Remote's motion-sensitivity. Bundled with copies of next Sunday's Wii Sports Resort and made to be plugged into the base of a Wii Remote, the MotionPlus add-on is, in Resort, a necessary attachment for better sword-swinging, archery, bowling, golf and more. A swing is a swing and a flick is a flick, and the controller feels like it finally knows — instead of merely simplifies — how the player is moving.

After years of playing games made during Nintendo's era of the Remote, playing Wii Sports Resort with MotionPlus attached suggests that we've been using a tool that was too blunt for the task. It is a technological success but also an admission by its manufacturers that the original Wii Remote was not capable of the motions we imagined — or that were teased in that sizzle reel.

Wii Sports Resort has greatness in it. A couple of days playing it — of going back for more and more — reveals it to be another joyful construction, a game with plenty of fun to share. The necessary bolting on of MotionPlus could be proof that, like Wii Fit or Guitar Hero, the greatest, most accessible motion-based games needs a unique device of its own, a controller shaped to the actions and fantasies of the game it supports. Wii Sports Resort suggests that for all the virtues of the Wii Remote's simplicity, it was too simple on its own to enable a line of games made great by its motion control.

By exposing what's been wrong with it, Wii Sports Resort may be the game to save the Motion Control Revolution.

(All images via Nintendo of America's press site. Super Smash Bros. player image from Nintendo/Stuart Ramson)