Nintendo Wii Fanboy

Some of you may not be prepared for this news. We're kind of not prepared for it ourselves. The new Sonic Riders game, Zero Gravity, has a feature that we think is great: online rankings. That's something we've asked for in more Wii games (specifically VC games, but we'll take it in anything), and we think it's a nice way for people who ... like to compete to do so.

We could also see lag being a big-time problem in a racing game, especially one that uses wireless connections only for Internet play. Rankings sidestep that issue nicely. Good job, Sega! Keep showing us evidence that work is being done on this game! With the game due out in January, there's still plenty of time to add new stuff-- like graphics.

Dude, so we were playing some Alien Crush, and we killed the bonus stage with the dragons over and over again. We totally scored like five billion points and it was so AWESOME that we had to call everyone we knew and tell them about it.

Okay, we're embellishing a bit. When we say we "totally scored like five billion points," we mean that we "continue to be awful at Alien Crush despite playing and loving it for eighteen years." But without our humble admission, you'd have no reason to doubt us! And that leads into our discussion.

Simply put, we want leaderboards. We aren't going to get online play in VC games any time soon (or ever,) so we'll ask for the next best thing. We want to be able to see the high scores for games that, you know, have scores. We don't need prizes or anything. We'd be motivated enough by the idea that we could put our three-letter tag (mine: JC!) at the top of a nationwide or worldwide list if we were any good, which we aren't.

Are high score leaderboards worth doing? Do you see value in friendly competition like this? Or did you always flip right past the high score page in old gaming magazines? Perhaps most importantly, what are your high score initials?