Nintendo Wii Fanboy

Is Mercury Meltdown Revolution a part of your Wii collection? If not, it absolutely should be, for Ignition's addictive puzzler must be one of the most criminally overlooked gems on the platform. And now Costco has it for $10.99, along with a bunch of other titles that range from pretty damn good to shovelware (oh, hai Pool Party). Angelina Jolie favorite Ghost Squad is also on sale, giving you a chance to knock terrorists from their speeding, swan-shaped jet skis, and save money in the process. If a better offer has come along this century, we've yet to see it.

Below are the six titles that most stood out to us (the full list is past the jump); we expect at least two of these to be in your house by June 22nd, when the sale ends:

• Ghost Squad
• Sonic and the Secret Rings
• Sega Bass Fishing
• Mercury Meltdown: Revolution
• Super Monkey Ball: Banana Blitz
• SSX Blur

So there's this picture depicting many what-if Marios, and it's probably old. Maybe it's even old enough to be all Jesus riding a dinosaur old, but we don't care, because a reader sent it in and it's funny. In fact, it's especially funny due to the Mario-izing of avatars around these (Joystiq network) parts. This blogger has the sudden urge to slap a mustache on her own avatar, but it might get in the way of the teeth. We're particularly interested in any other serious 'staches you can come up with, however, or any creative way you can find to add a little facial hair to your pics.

Also, if anyone happens to know who's behind this, we'd love to know. After all, "my neighbour" is one of the best of the lot, and we have the urge to find that guy and compliment his look.

After discussing character creation and the lack of features (and faces) in Carnival Games, we spent a little time thinking about the different ways people approach customization in games that offer the option. We know a lot of gamers, after all, and we've noticed they all approach character customization differently. Some like to try to recreate themselves as closely as possible, while others will go all out with the craziest, most unrealistic avatars ever. Some people like to switch genders. Some like to recreate the likeness of a celebrity or a character from another game. What's your style? When given the chance to design your own avatar or character, how do you approach it? With Miis, do you use a Mii that resembles yourself, or something else?

Also, bonus points (in the form of applause and kudos) to readers who are familiar with the literary quotation in the title of today's post. No fair Googling!

[Used this particular South Park character creation engine, with a little hair-help from Photoshop.]

Nintendo's quirky little "Mii" service may or may not incite a tingling sensation in your gamer glands, but chances are that you'll be making a little digital avatar of yourself before long. At the Nintendo press event, the lengthy creation of an avatar of Samuel L. Jackson was shown, which paged through just about every menu in the software. A programming demon of a fanboy (thanks, Yann!) decided to faithfully and painstakingly recreate the entire process in a flash-based applet, and thus you now have the ability to create your future Mii from the comfort of Nintendo Wii Fanboy. How convenient!

We were able to recreate reasonable facsimiles of ourselves, but only after quite a bit of playing around. Does this feature need more options? We say yes ... unlockables through gamer achievements, anyone?

[via Joystiq]

So, how 'bout that super sweet black Wii? White is nice and all, but you know what they say about -- actually, there's really nowhere that joke can go except to court, so we're just going to say hurray for choice! The clean, mean white Wii we've seen over the past months is sleek and beautiful, but it's nice to get some flipside images. How will we ever decide come release date?

Oh, right, the rest of the story ... these images come courtesy of IGN, where their staffers got a chance to sit down with THQ for a Wii marathon with some of their launch games. Because our big daddy blog Joystiq knows what we really want (black Wii wins over Spongebob, y'all), they've compiled the best pictures for your drooling viewing pleasure. That's doubly nice, since the black Wii pics are now MIA at IGN. The IGN feature also includes some hands-on impressions of THQ's Wii-lease games: Avatar: The Last Airbender, Cars, the latest Spongebob title, and Barnyard, the game that offers us the chance at Wii darts we so crave.

[Thanks, Marc!]

It's expected that we'll be waving the Wiimote around on Nintendo's own games, but some have expressed concerns that third party developers may not be making full use of the unique new controller, especially when it comes to cross-platform titles. Fear not, fanboys and fangirls -- Siliconera took some time to investigate THQ and their upcoming games with regard to how they'll work with the Wii controls.

The pieces focuses on three games: Cars, SpongeBob SquarePants: Creature from the Krusty Krab, and Avatar: The Last Airbender. Though these titles are each coming out on other systems as well as Wii, THQ has worked to ensure that the control scheme takes advantage of the Wiimote. How? Slashing melee attacks in Avatar, using the Wiimote as a steering wheel in Cars, and for SpongeBob, the controller serves as an aircraft control stick in one of the mini-games. Siliconera has the full story. Things are looking up when it comes to Wii ports.

[Thanks to the folks at Siliconera!]