Well, he’s not quite Clyde Radcliffe but he’s a definitely up there!

Yep, ‘Mayhem in Monsterland’ returns as one of the greatest C64 achievements wangles its way onto the Wii by way of the Virtual Console.

How John and Steve Rowlands managed to create this slick NES-style platformer on the Commodore 64 is anybody’s guess, but it served as a fitting tribute to the machine which was, by 1993, wobbling on its last legs. But now, thanks to the Wii, for a meagre 500 points (roughly £3.50) you can once again enjoy this little gem on a telly where it belongs.

Read the original Commodore Force (Zzap! 64) review here!

Fabulous news, everyone. At some point during 2009, we can expect to be playing the sequel to one of the most controversially polarising games of all time. Its reviews ranged from reasonably high…

Okay, so it doesn’t win the award for most action-packed adventure on Wii, but it is a beautiful, innovative and very different kettle of fish. A breathtaking experience.

…to embarassingly low…

soothing and relaxing but it lacks a crucial element: fun.

…but frankly, the low reviews were all wrong. It’s completely amazing, the sequel is definitely going to be amazing, it is (of course) Endless Ocean 2!

Swim with whales in Endless Ocean! Wow!

Check out Nintendo’s forthcoming line-up on Eurogamer here!

The Edinburgh Interactive Festival showcases the continued popularity, growth and influence of video games and brings together the games industry’s key decision makers.

Games publishing, hardware and development alongside Government, TV, film, press and other entertainment industries as well as students seeking to work within the creative industries are all represented.

David Yarnton, Managing Director/General Manager of Nintendo UK, said: “We’re very proud to continue our support of EIF for the third year running. Edinburgh Interactive Festival raises our industry’s profile into the wider cultural arena and celebrates the input, talent and creativity from all with a common interest in video games.”

The Edinburgh Interactive Festival 2008 will take place from Sunday 10th to Tuesday 12th August in the Edinburgh International Conference Centre.

Registrations are open at the EIF2008 Website.

Register before Tuesday 1st July 2008 - £120 (ex VAT)
Register on or after Tuesday 1st July 2008 - £149 (ex VAT)
Scottish based developers and companies - £99 (ex VAT)
Students - £75 (ex VAT)

Well yes, obviously that’s not very shocking at all really - if there is any certainty in life it’s that any incarnation of Mario or Mario Kart will be at least ‘pretty cool’.

So the question really comes down to is it ‘good’, ‘really good’, or ‘pant-wettingly good’?

Well, on the one hand there’s the addition of motorbikes and stunts which, well actually considering that one of Luigi’s karts looked like a vacuum cleaner on the DS version isn’t that big a deal at all. Stunts? That seems a little un-Mario Kart-y but apparently it’s all just a bit silly and fun and doesn’t break anything at all, really.

What is brilliant, is the inclusion of the utterly pointless circular Wii remote holder - sometimes referred to as a ’steering wheel’. As Eurogamer say, “you can play the game just as well by holding the ends of the remote and steering”. So what’s the point? Well, as they go on to say:

But that doesn’t take into account Nintendo’s incredible ability to mould plastic in such a way that it inspires feelings of happiness as soon as you pick it up. The Wii Wheel is ergonomically brilliant, satisfyingly solid and adorably chunky. There’s a big fat B button extension underneath for hopping into a slide (or using an item if you opted for the mum-friendly auto-slide control scheme) which is much nicer than using the naked controller. You have a firmer grip, too. It doesn’t actually do anything - and yet, using it changes everything.

Yep, that sounds like our Nintendo and Mario Kart alright - was there really any doubt? Start your engines on 11th April.

Read Eurogamer’s review!

Charlie Brooker, what a guy! A shining beacon of all that is British, fed up, and grumpy in a way that Jack Dee could only dream of.

Well, in a nice little aside in his regular Screen Burn columns for Guardian Unlimited, Brooker’s taken a swipe at super-popular DS title, Brain Training.

The brain is also like a pet: you have to keep feeding it. That’s why that Brain Training game on the Nintendo DS is so popular. Have you tried it? What a con. It sets you a few tasks - makes you count beans like a monkey - then decides you have a “brain age” of 705 and commands you to come back day after day to count more beans, and do more sums, and stare at pinmen jiggling about on the screen.

After several weeks of this it says hooray, your brain age is now a healthy 25, congratulations, well done you, and it gives you a rosette and a pat on the back. But you’ve learned nothing. You’ve just got slightly better at performing a few specialised, pointless tasks. You might as well be operating a till. At least then you’d get paid.

You know what? He’s kind of right, really. Boy do I feel silly.

Read his full article here!

If you haven’t guessed by now, I think that Endless Ocean on the Wii is utterly brilliant.

I banged on about it a few blog posts back but I noticed a distinct lack of people shouting, “YES! I bought it - you’re right, it IS brilliant!” on the forums. Which was a bit disappointing.

Then… horror of horrors! Eurogamer, who up unto this point have been absolutely accurate in every review they have ever written, wrote a scathing review, awarded it a quite awful sounding 6 out of 10, and utterly failed to include it in their Top 50 games of 2007 despite including Peggle.

However, all is not lost. People who have souls on the Internet evidently do exist, as demonstrated by this lovely chap who has written a lovely blog piece about how wonderful Endless Ocean is.

(Hmmmmm, I may have slightly undersold the article there - it’s actually more of a commentary on designing products to transcend boy/girl, adult/child demographics)

Read the article here!

For £20 I really wasn’t expecting much from Endless Ocean (or Forever Blue if you’re Japanese). I thought it’d essentially be a sort of interactive screensaver where you can poke the fishies. I was wrong.

There’s a real sense of adventure, a story arc which I really wasn’t expecting, and various sub-missions to complete at your leisure. The sense of immersion is probably the greatest I’ve experienced in any videogame ever, and all that on Wii without the polygon-pushing power of the XBox360 or PS3 which was apparently essential to pull off this sort of thing.

The soundtrack features Hayley Westenra who, regardless of whether this sort of music is your cup of tea or not, has an undeniably perfect voice for this type of game.

All in all, Endless Ocean is the most emotive and pleasurable gaming experience I’ve had in a long time… and to top it all off, it’s all just wonderfully nice. Nothing dies, there’s no pressure, and you’ll end up playing with a massive grin on your face.

So more of this please, The Games Industry.

There’s an interesting piece up at MTV of all places about where Nintendo is going with all this multiplayer malarkey. Seems they’re pretty much bashing nails into the coffins for the good old single player game:

“Where I’m going with all of this is the idea that “The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess” may be a relic of a previous era. When the Wii is old, I expect that game to look like an aberration: a freakishly lonely experience offered in a library of titles designed primarily for group indulgence.”

Thinking about it, there’s nothing I like more than gaming when someone else is joining in. I haven’t cried so long and hard as the first few competitive games at Wii Sports.

Even stereotypically single player games like Lumines took on a whole new lease of life when chasing my girlfriend’s high score which, I hasten to add, is impossibly high; presumably due to torrid, torrid cheating on her part. Regardless, the banter between us is what made the experience remarkable.

I spent the weekend playing Half Life: Episode 2 with a good friend behind me reminding me to reload and laughing every time I fell to my death down a hole.

What do you think? Is the single-player experience destined to go the way of the Dodo? And what can developers do to make traditionally single-player games a more sociable affair?

We love this game already and it’s not out until some time next year!

If it’s not the ridiculous amount of characters that excites you, or the stages based on the catalogue of Nintendo games, then let it be this… the music!

Super Smash Bros. Brawl has got the most delightfully wonderful remixes of classic Nintendo tunes ever - I’d buy the soundtrack if it was ever available and play it on loop, forever. The music ranges from the cute (like the theme from Yoshi’s Story or Animal Crossing) to the grand (like the operatic Fire Emblem or Main Theme), with classics along the way that make you want to hug the musicians (like the amazingly fab Ocarina of Time Medley).

This could possibly end up being the most fantastic videogame soundtrack of all time at this rate (except for the ending song from Portal, of course). Click those links and go have a listen, or go here to listen to the complete set.

Well poke me in the ear and call me Susan if Super Smash Bros. Brawl on Wii doesn’t look absolutely and utterly amazing!

Not content with having the most stuff crammed into any Smash Bros. game to date, with at least 5 million playable characters (slight exaggeration), shed loads of multiplayer options, and a sparkly new adventure mode, Nintendo have blessed us with an awesome-looking level editor to boot!

The fact that levels you make get uploaded to Nintendo so that each day you can get a random stage from other players just adds icing onto the already well iced cake.

Get all giddy with excitement here!