More than ten years have passed since the last Mega Man game was released. Mega Man 8 came out for both the Playstation and the Sega Saturn and its sequel has finally been announced. One would rapidly assume that the whole Mega Man fan base would be extremely thrilled because Mega Man 9 is currently under production and its launch may be just around the corner. But one quick glance at the recently released screenshots of the game will allow you to notice the aspect of the game that is bothering many fans: the graphics.

I will have to agree that the decision of using 8-bit technology on a game that is going to be released at a time where high definition and games that are so realistic they could as well be considered movies is very strange and daring. And that is one of the main why reasons you need to love what Capcom has decided to do with one of its main franchises. It will make the game stand out among other current platformers, and playing a new 8-bit game on the 21st century is unique experience.

Creating it as an 8-bit platformer was a decision made because Capcom knows that the best games of the Mega Man series were released during the eighties. According to one of the companies executives, when asking fans which one of the Mega Man games were their favorite most of them would say that Mega Man 2 is the absolute masterpiece among so many adventures. Therefore producing a game that would feature simple commands and just a couple of buttons to be used was a non-brainer.

However, some fans think such a simple game would be a step in the wrong direction. After all, instead of exploring new areas the franchise would be returning to the exact same place it had reached twenty years ago. Particularly I think that Mega Man 9 will be a homage to the series itself, a modern game with an old-school look that will make fans feel like they are once again experiencing Mega Man for the first time in their lives.

It will remind us, and show new gamers, that games like Mega Man don't need fancy effects or a deep storyline to be fun and entertaining for long hours. All it needs is some great level design, and a bunch of exciting tunes being played on the background to get players excited about the adventure that is unfolding right in front of their eyes.

At first it looked like the game would be available to all the current gen platforms, but so far Capcom has only confirmed the WiiWare version. According to them the Live Arcade and PSN versions are false. Sadly I don't think this game will remain a Wii exclusive because Capcom is aware that there are fans of the series supporting all the systems of this generation.

Once again Mega Man will have to deal with eight different robot masters. This time around he will have to prove that Dr. Light - who is being accused for all the confusion - is actually innocent. No release date has been confirmed for the US but I believe we will be playing it before the end of the year.

And what about you guys? Are the 8-bit graphics a bad or a good idea?

It has been reported by GoNintendo that on the latest edition of Nintendo's official UK magazine there is a full page featuring some really big news concerning one of the most anticipated titles for the Wii. On this page the magazine states that their next issue - that will come out on the first day of August - will present two new big Wii games to the readers, and just above this small paragraph there is a pick from Animal Crossing: Wild World.

Obviously by the time the next edition of the magazine comes out those games will not be big secrets anymore since they are bound to be unveiled in around twelve days, which is the time that separates us from Nintendo's press conference at E3. Of course most of us were expecting Animal Crossing to appear at E3 anyway, but for those who were still skeptical I guess there is no better proof right now than this tease from the UK magazine.

I am hoping Nintendo will give this game a heavy online support. I would be willing to pay-to-play if they got rid of the Friend Codes and allowed us to meet other Crossers on a hub village or something like that. However, we are talking about Nintendo here and when it comes to online support they have been known for not making the wisest decisions such as the lack of leaderboards in Super Smash Bros Brawl and the shallow gameplay that most of their Wi-Fi titles have.

Now the question that remains regards the second game. I would definitely say that besides Animal Crossing, the other two huge titles Nintendo will unveil are a new Kirby adventure for the Wii and Kid Icarus. If not, expect at least one of those to be revealed. I would say that Kirby is a lock because early this year Nintendo confirmed its release in Japan before the end of the year.

As for Kid Icarus, Matt posted an article on IGN and as most people who have been following IGN's weekly podcast were expecting he once again hinted that Nintendo would bring the franchise out of its apparent eternal limbo. According to him this time around Nintendo, or whoever is producing the game, will portray him as an adult Pit, which in my opinion does not make any sense given the title of the franchise. Particularly I would gladly settle for the character model used in Brawl.

I guess comparisons to God Of War will be unavoidable if the developers take the more mature approach since the game makes heavy references to mythology. I think they need to be very careful because both of them are very different games and I would dislike the idea of turning Kid Icarus into Nintendo's God of War. The talent Nintendo has on its staff is outstanding and using all that creativity to create something new that doesn't resemble anything we have played during the last ten years will be an important factor for this game's success.

It is finally here. Two long months passed since the release of Steven Spielberg's first gaming endeavor, and after such a long time I was at last able to sit down and enjoy Boom Blox this past weekend. The game arrived on Friday but I got home really late and I was so tired I had to go straight to bed and I didn't even notice that the game was there on the kitchen table.

I woke up early the next morning because on Saturdays I go to my English Course at 11 a.m. and I had to finish some homework before heading there. But I was not able to finish it all because my mother showed me that the game had arrived and I quickly turned on my Wii to send some blocks flying off the screen and make some big explosions happen.

I would have played it for the rest of the weekend but this week I got three really important exams on College so I needed to sit down and study for a bunch of hours. However, I managed to log around six hours into the game and so far I can say that it is simply amazing. According to the percentage bar that is displayed below my file I have completed half of the game, but I know that the fun is far from over.

The game features an incredible amount of levels, and it is impressive how each one of them presents a unique challenge to be figured out and conquered. On one level you will be using catapults to send bombs flying onto the air to make huge piles of blocks explode while on the next one you will be using some sort of lasso to slowly remove pieces of a big tower without making the structure collapse thereby killing all the blox cows that were at the top of the pile.

You will have a certain goal for each level you are playing. If your goal is to topple point blocks you will have to reach a certain amount of points within a number of throws to get a bronze, silver or gold medal, but if you are disassembling a tower you will need to remove a certain quantity of blocks without destroying the structure. Getting gold medals on as many levels as possible is very rewarding and challenging, therefore it increases the replay value a lot. But sometimes you will find yourself replaying some early stages just because you feel like watching a massive explosion again or because you want to discover a new way to start a chain reaction powered by the game's outstanding physics engine that is close to flawless.

There are a huge variety of blocks on the game and knowing how to use all of them is a great way to achieve your goals. Chemical Blocks explode when they touch other blocks of the same type, vanishing blocks disappear when you throw a ball directly at them, and so the list goes on and on.

The game's graphics are far from overwhelming but there is a very good reason to that. Mainly because the game's goal is to be as simple as possible to attract new fans and that the physics system is so powerful - since it is important to the overall experience of the game - that having any kind of graphical improvement would most likely slow the game down when blocks start flying all over the screen and chain reactions and explosions combine to destroy many big piles of blocks. And none of us would want something like that happening on the game's most exciting moments.

Besides the single player mode - that is awesome - there is also the party mode, where you and your friends compete to see who is able to cause the most devastating effects on those block formations and the level editor. I haven't tried the former yet because my friends didn't drop by this weekend, but I tinkered a little bit with the level editor and the options are close to endless.

The interface is quite simple and a quick video tutorial will show you all the capabilities of the editor. I created a couple of levels and I can't wait to put them to test once my friends come here. One of the coolest things of the editor is the fact that you can edit any of the levels that are originally in the game. So if you think one of the structures you saw on the single player mode would be useful to your new level you are free to copy it and use it.

Those are basically my first impressions. I'm not sure when I'll write the full review on this game since right now it looks like I'll still play it for many hours, and I only write my reviews once I'm finished playing the game.

At first I naively thought that it would never happen. When Nintendo first displayed the Wii's technical specifications many people were automatically shocked and disappointed by the fact that the system didn't have any kind of hard drive. Instead, Nintendo boldly - or stupidly if you prefer it that way - decided that its upcoming system would only have 512 MB of internal flash memory.

Given Nintendo's track record with online systems and downloadable content I thought we would never need to use this "large" amount of memory, it would only happen if someone managed to get a hold of every single Wii game and had a save file stored on the system's flash memory for each one of those titles.

But later Nintendo would unveil the Virtual Console with up to three new classic games being added to the system every week, which opened the possibility of a close to endless library of old-school games. Suddenly the future of the Wii and its storage system started to look quite bleak. And finally here we are, sitting one year and a half after the Wii was launched we have downloaded tons of Virtual Console titles and we are quite proud of having all those little screens showing the game's starting screens on our Wii Menu.

However, with the WiiWare being brought to life last month many of us quickly went online to download games that are in most cases much bigger than Nintendo 64 titles. Unfortunately when many of us pressed the download button for certain games we had to finally look at a really sad message at our TV screens, our Wii's had finally ran out of space. We were hoping it would never happen, but we knew that it was inevitable. The truth is there is a very simple measure to be taken by us gamers, all we need to do is delete a few Virtual Console games, perhaps even some downloaded channels and we shall be able to happily enjoy our new software.

But that sounds like something people had to do with old consoles, or CPUs where hard drives were either non existent or very expensive. This is a new generation, a time where storage devices are getting bigger and faster, we shouldn't have to do all that stuff to simply get a new game into our systems. When I decided to get LostWinds and Dr. Mario a month ago I had to get rid of Paper Mario, Mario Kart 64 and Star Fox 64 in order to make room for those games. Instead of simply deleting them I thought that placing them on my SD card would be better since I wouldn't have to download them once again if eventually one day I felt a sudden urge to play those old masterpieces.

It took a long while to finish the process of copying and deleting the games, but I wouldn't have minded doing that if I could execute the games directly from the SD card but that's not even an option. If I feel like playing them I will have to redo the whole process and lose fifteen minutes of my day doing it. Not a fun activity indeed.

The storage problem is very blatant, but at first a Nintendo spokesperson said that there isn't such a thing and that the fans were very happy with what hey had, simply denying the major problem that was right in front of them. All they had to do was ask a few journalists that were present once they released the statement and they would see how badly mistaken they were.

Fortunately, on their latest statement concerning the problem they said that they were working on a solution. But apparently it is not a hard drive as most of us were expecting. I thought it would be a much simpler solution since producing hard drives doesn't demand any kind of out of this world technology. I wonder what they are working on, because this problem gets bigger by the hour as more and more downloadable games are being released every week. Whatever the solution is, we need it, and we need it as fast as possible.

Warning!! Very big review approaching!

More than a decade ago Mario was simply a plumber whose only activity was to save Peach and the Mushroom Kingdom from doom, on his way to his goal he squashed Goombas and used fireballs to get rid of many foes. Due to the astounding success achieved by Mario it would only be a matter of time before he started appearing on a bunch of different games performing a huge array of activities and sports. Nowadays it is pretty common to see that familiar mustached face on the cover of many games that don't present any kind of jumping or platforming, and the game that started it all was Super Mario Kart.

The truth is at first Nintendo didn't plan on placing Mario and his friends on Karts and letting them race through famous venues spread across the Mushroom Kingdom, but while the game was developed a programmer had the idea of replacing a character model for Mario to see how cool it would look like. After that, Mario would never leave his seat on his red vehicle. Super Mario Kart was a masterpiece and sold many copies, since then the series has seen a new version for each system that Nintendo puts out on the market. And that's how we get to Mario Kart Wii, the latest and sixth installment of the series.

With each passing version the game gains new features that attract gamers that have been playing Mario Kart since its first version and at the same time improve the overall gameplay experience drawing new fans to this frantic racing game. While trying to keep the game fresh and innovative Nintendo has made some significant changes this time around. The most blatant being the control system.

Mario Kart stands out among its peers simply because of the way you control the game. The game comes packed with the Wii Wheel which is a plastic shell where you place your Wiimote so that you can use the controls exactly like a steering wheel of a car. This "piece of plastic" may sound rather simple, but you will quickly notice how much the Wheel enhances the gameplay once you try to control the Kart by using just the Wiimote, without any additional shell.

The wheel works fantastically well and is the definite way to play the game. Just steer it and your character will perform the exact same action that you just did, this control scheme has an impressive response time and is very accurate. Casual fans will love using it because it is much easier to play with it and it reduces the number of buttons you need to press drastically. But truth is that the learning curve of the Wheel is very long and steep, and becoming a great driver with it is a rewarding and demanding journey. Therefore more experienced players will definitely feel compelled to take on this new challenge.

The other control schemes also work fine. But in my opinion using the Wheel is much more fun and interactive. The Gamecube control is another great choice and if you spend a good amount of time with Mario Kart Double Dash you are going to be quite good just after picking the game up.

Another major change that longtime fans of the series will encounter is the drifting mechanic of the game. In order to drift and perform a boost in this version all you need to do is press and hold the B-button (on the Wii Wheel) for as long as possible while making a turn. The longer you hold it, the more powerful the extra boost will be. This new mechanic is very good because it prevents "snakers" who are players that like using this drifting technique on straights. On the Nintendo DS version of the game "snakers" became a huge problem online since players who were not able to do it would be destined to lose every single race. Nintendo managed to balance the game.

However, making the assumption that the game doesn't reward skill anymore is totally wrong. Being able to find the best path on each one of the tracks and drifting accurately will help you open a nice gap in relation to other players, which will come in handy since this time around there are twelve players racing simultaneously on the track therefore the appearance of devastating items is more frequent than in previous versions. This can be quite frustrating for some skilled players since losing a race because you have been hit by three blue shells on the same lap will happen more often than you would like to.

Speaking of items, this is one of the few areas where the game is not as good as it could have been. A couple of new items have been added and some others like the bullet bill and blooper show up for the first time on a home system. The new items are: the Mega Mushroom (that first appeared on New Super Mario Bros) that makes the player bigger, better and invincible so that you can squash everyone that is in front of you, the Pow Block that causes drivers to spin as if they had hit a banana peel and a cloud that will hiver over your head and give you extra boost for a while before hitting you with a thunder.

Nintendo has also added a new vehicle this time around. Bikes can now be used instead of Karts. The main differences between the two vehicles is that Bikes are lighter, are easier to control, have relatively weak boosts when drifting and can perform wheelies that will give you extra speed on straights while Karts have a better drifting boost. As you may have noticed bikes have a huge advantage on Karts since performing wheelies gives them a massive advantage, so players who prefer to stick with karts either because they think they are cooler or because they dislike the fact that bikes have been added will have to practice a lot to beat skilled bike players, especially online.

The game has a total of 24 characters, besides your Mii that can be used when unlocking one of his/her two available outfits. Some of the additions are very surprising such as Funky Kong and Rosalina while other characters simply scream lack of creativity from the developers such as two of the four baby characters in the game. The character models are far from sharp as they are very similar in quality to the ones present on Double Dash. I assume the reason for this is that Nintendo wanted the game to run as smoothly as possible when twelve players face on online races, and if I'm correct they made the right decision since their appearance is not so bad and it won't interfere in the gameplay.

A total of 32 tracks are available, half of them being new circuits. Some of them are new versions of old-school tracks such as Bowser Castle, Rainbow Road, Moo Meadows and Moonview Highway (a fantastic new version of Toad's Turnpike) while others are overflowing with brilliancy and are extremely creative like Koopa Cape, Maple Treeway, Daisy Circuit, Toad's Factory, Coconut Mall and Wario's Gold Mine. Having played all titles of the series up to this day I must say that this is the version with the most impressive group of new tracks I have ever seen. These circuits are graphically amazing and are filled with nice details and some hidden shortcuts that can be very useful.

The rest of the circuits are directly brought from the game's past versions. Clearly the sixteen tracks that have been picked won't please everybody but the selection is pretty decent. Nintendo did a great job here since they were able to graphically enhance many of those tracks while maintaining the feeling that their original games had. Being able to play a new version of Mario Circuit 3, Peach Gardens and Ghost Valley 2 in 3-D and at the same time being able to see all the polygons on the barriers and on the scenario is one of the most nostalgic moments you will ever have when playing a game.

As for game modes, the game contains all the usual ones as Grand Prix, Time Trial, Vs. and Battle Mode. The Grand Prix mode has four different difficulty levels each one with eight different cups, which means that you will be spending a long time trying to collect all trophies especially because you will get a rank once you finish each cup, so trying to get three stars on all cups is quite a challenge. When compared to Double Dash I find the Grand Prix mode of Mario Kart Wii to be much harder since the AI is much faster - making use of the rubber band effect to keep up with you - and getting hit by items when you are in first is much more common, as I have already mentioned. Some may see it as a cheap way to increase the difficulty while others will say that it is great, the truth is it can be quite frustrating sometimes.

Playing Time Trial is great now because when you are connected to the internet you can automatically post your time once you have finished the race. When you post your time using the Mario Kart Channel you can see how your time matches up against times from players from all around the world and you can quickly download ghosts of the best players in the world in order to try to improve your time by watching their performances. Overall this increases the replay value a lot, making a mode that was considered by many to be "boring" quite fun.

The versus mode is where the game truly shines. When sharing the screen with up to three other friends the game gets really intense. The number of frames per second diminishes a lot and overall the details of the tracks disappear, but having fun is the most appealing aspect of this game and when it comes to that this mode doesn't disappoint.

The battle mode is slightly flawed. It has great new stages and great battles stadiums from the past, but it is quite unfortunate that you can't play battles in individual groups. Whenever you play the Battle Mode you will have to join a team of six people therefore sometimes you will lose not because you simply couldn't hit anyone with an item, but because you have been paired with a bunch of stupid CPUs. Not being able to play Battle by yourself is a huge letdown to fans of the mode.

Finally, the online mode is the true pinnacle of this game and the reason why most people purchased it. It is by far the best online experience that the Wii has to offer up to this point and I find it hard to believe that it will be surpassed. When going online the game will look for up to another eleven players to race against you, the races are completely lag free and are very smooth despite the fact that twelve players are controlling their characters simultaneously. Once you finish the race you will receive a certain amount of points that will be summed to your VR (Versus Rating).

Overall Mario Kart Wii is another great version on this unique racing series. It is far from flawless because Nintendo failed to balance many aspects of the game but the addition of the online mode makes the replay value skyrocket. Technically it may not have used all of the Wii's hardware power, but it is undeniable that the game's multiplayer is as fun as it can be. A must buy for all Wii owners.

Three weeks ago, on a Saturday, I decided to finally download my first WiiWare games. LostWinds and Dr. Mario were my first two choices and I got both. I purchased the former because it is considered by many to be the definite WiiWare game and the latter because of its online content. Unfortunately since that weekend I haven't had much time to play games, but yesterday I got home earlier than I'm used to and I decided to finally spend some quality time with LostWinds.

I played it for almost an entire hour and I believe I am halfway through the game since I have heard that the adventure is about three hours long, so I think it is about time I write my impressions on the game. Being a game that only lasts for a meager amount of time has brought some criticism from many reviewers, but I think many people forget that they paid just ten dollars for this game. So by doing some quick math you will see that if the game had been priced $50 it would contain at least fifteen hours of gameplay. This is basically the same amount of time for a more experienced gamer to blast through an epic masterpiece like Metroid Prime 3: Corruption.

I'm still shocked that Frontier was able to craft such beautiful scenarios and squeeze them into a file whose size is fairly limited. This just goes to show how lazy many third party developers are, for a game that was produced to be downloaded and had a very small space to be developed is basically more graphically impressive than half of the games available for the system.

The scenarios are gorgeous and everything runs as smoothly as possible. While walking through villages or caves you can see how careful the designers were. There is a lot of depth in the backgrounds and despite the fact that it is a side-scroller you can actually see villagers moving on the background and nature unfolding as far as the eye can see. Inside caves there aren't so many details but the game manages to keep you deeply involved in the whole experience while you are playing it. The game also has a unique personality and art.

On the game you meet a wind spirit that will help you on your adventure. This wind spirit will be by your side throughout the game in the form of a cursor that appears on the screen. By using it you can help the starring character - a little boy with no apparent abilities - to jump to high platforms, defeat enemies using the power of the wind and solve very interesting puzzles by moving different wind-related powers you will gain during the adventure. That definitely sets the game apart from old-school platformers like Donkey Kong and Mario, and it feels like a totally different and fresh game that even new players that have never tried a side-scrolling adventure can enjoy.

The game also has some amazing tunes that can be compared to many Zelda songs when it comes to the epic feeling that that series has. The sound effects are also very good as you can even hear the leaves of nearby trees shaking when your wind cursor moves over them.

Overall LostWinds is a must buy. Especially now when there aren't many major titles to be purchased for the Wii. It is a charming little adventure and a game that is worth the ten bucks you will spend. Fans of old side-scrolling titles that can't wait to play the new Wario Land can easily pick it up and see that inventive side-scrolling games are still being produced, and that with a little effort from the developers the Wii can finally show its full potential that has yet to be explored by most companies not named Nintendo.