The touchscreen of the Nintendo DS has always made it a console that could do what others could not, at least in some genres. Real Time Strategy is one of those genres that is simply hard to pull off without a mouse, or at least some equivalent. As a consequence, even the home consoles like the Xbox 360 - with lots of power to work with - have struggled to produce a really good RTS title comparable to what you can find on the PC. Control has always been an issue. DSI Games has released a budget title called Command and Destroy, a full featured RTS game that uses the Nintendo DS's stylus and touchscreen to the fullest advantage. While Command and Destroy does nothing to improve on the RTS formula established by Command and Conquer or Dune II - aside from making it smaller and portable - it does a fairly good job of executing that formula. As far as budget titles go, Command and Destroy is a solid game, and one I'd recommend to RTS fans.

According to Nintendo's statement, "A very small percentage of Wii consoles may have trouble consistently reading data off... [the disks used by Super Smash Bros. Brawl] if there is some contamination on the lens of the disc drive." Apparently, Nintendo is pointing to Brawl's high capacity disk format for causing the issue, but luckily Nintendo is offering to clean your Wii for free if you are experiencing the problem. Users that are facing this issue should go to Nintendo's online form, fill out your information, and be prepared to mail your system in for maintenance. Nintendo has agreed to cover shipping costs, and the cleaning is free of charge; the up side is that those of you unlucky enough to be having the issue might find yourself with a cleaner Wii, as a result. The drawback is you won't have your Wii for a bit, and you'll have stare longingly that shiny new Super Smash Bros. disk instead of playing it - at least for a little while.

Because of its popularity, the Nintendo Wii has been the focus of a fair amount of homebrew attention since its release; people have been trying with various amounts of success to make and run their own programs on Nintendo's console. Historically, the holy grail of console modders is getting Linux to run on a game console, a feat that occurred on the Nintendo Wii early last month. Honestly, it's in too early a stage to be very useful to the average person; the GC-Linux guys have only released a proof of concept Linux distribution. However, it's a start. In the past, console makers like Nintendo have held the homebrew scene to a fair bit of scrutiny, tending to confuse them with people intent on stealing games. Yet homebrew games produced by the community can be the home of some of the most creative works in the industry. Stealing commercial games is bad, but figuring out new ways to push your favorite console is just another way to be a little nerdy - something I've always supported wholeheartedly.

Professor Layton and the Curious Village is the first in a story-driven series of puzzle games. Containing puzzles that are similar to games like Brain Age, Professor Layton sets itself apart by progressing an interesting story every time you complete a puzzle. In between solving interesting and generally entertaining puzzles, Professor Layton contains an adventure game element that reminds me of the old movie Clue; plenty of suspicious characters, a dead man with lots of money, and an inheritance at stake. The result is compelling, and a worthy title that I would personally take over other big names like Brain Age or Big Brain Academy. While these titles boil the puzzle game down to its essence - puzzles - and nothing else, Professor Layton mixes that purity with a plot and presentation that is genuinely interesting, and simply leaves the others behind.

I've read articles that question the accuracy of VGChartz data, sometimes, but generally speaking they can be relied upon. Which is what makes it so interesting that an article on VGChartz points out that the Wii has just passed the lifetime sales record of the Nintendo GameCube. Throughout the years of its existence, the GameCube sold 21.545 million units. The Wii, out for a little more than a year, passed 21.490 million units as of February 9th, 2008. Selling at a rate in the hundreds of thousands of units per week, the Wii has most likely broken a curse that's plagued Nintendo since the launch of the SuperNES - a consistently shrinking hardware base. Every console that Nintendo has launched since the NES has attracted less buyers than the console before it. SuperNES sold less than the NES. N64 sold less than the SuperNES. Same with the GameCube. Not only has the Nintendo Wii blown by this record, it's on its way to being the best selling game console of all time, a title currently held by the Playstation 2. There's still a long way to go before that happens, though.

No More Heroes is a cross between Kill Bill and Grand Theft Auto, comparisons that are too obvious not to be drawn. It's certainly not a title that's likely to appeal to the casual gamer, but it's a much needed adult title on a system already saturated with games for the casual crowd. While I'm not convinced it's a truly good game, No More Heroes is certainly an interesting one. Partly, that's because while it is unquestionably an adult title, it is a game that so strongly appeals to the thirteen-year-olds in all of us. It has low-brow potty humor, lots of blood and gore, and over-the-top characters that behave like the barely adolescent. However, No More Heroes does what it sets out to do; it satisfies any player that's out hunting for the above. If that happens to be you, you'll love it. If it's not, then you certainly won't.

For months before the Wii was released, Nintendo fans mined the patent office for some hint of what their new gaming system was going to be like. That habit has held over, and occasionally interesting things surface. For example, 22Hundred.net recently came across a UK patent filed by Nintendo that describes some nifty uses for the Wiimote. When WiiFanboy reported on the patent application, they seemed to consider one of the designs in particular to be poorly thought out: the Wii headband-thing. However, I look at that and immediately think of Johnny Lee's Virtual Reality use of the Wiimote. The concept is a little different in terms of how the components are used, but it's obvious that the Nintendo and Johnny Lee were thinking along the same lines. Which is cool, because I would love a chance to play a game based on the 3D effects shown in the Virtual Reality video. Some of the other patents include a golf club with the Wiimote in the handle (nothing new, there), but also some creative ones, like putting the Wiimote in the peddle of a bicycle. I'm not sure how practical all of them are, but they're interesting, nonetheless.

Johnny Lee, a Ph.D. graduate student at Carnegie Mellon University, has made a name for himself in the gaming community by doing some pretty nifty things with the Nintendo Wii and the Wiimote. While I thought the Minority Report style interaction was interesting, and the virtual white board could be useful, none of his projects have inspired me as much as his most recent one: Using the Wii to create a VR display. With a little engineering trickery, Lee managed to use the Wii sensor bar and the Wiimote to create an interface that moves and interacts with you as if it were an actual window into another physical space. The 3D effect - at least to a camera's single eye - is more than a little impressive. Sadly, the effect is difficult enough to set up that I can't imagine a game developer ever releasing a title that requires you to do it, at least not without releasing some custom hardware for it. Still, as Lee basically says in his video, it would be pretty cool.

We're approaching the release of Nyko's Wireless Nunchuck, which is set for release near the end of the month, one of those events I'm anticipating with glee. While I've always understood the cost benefit of connecting the Wiimote and the Nunchuck with a cord, it's never made it less annoying when you whip yourself in the face while boxing. When Nyko announced their wireless Nunchuck at CES 2008, the contraption simply made sense. At the time, it was announced that the Wii peripheral was set to ship at the end of January, possibly early February. Well, we're almost there, and all I can think about is how much more enjoyable Wii Boxing is going to be once this little device hits the streets. It's not revolutionary by any stretch of the imagination, but probably one of the most useful additions to the Wii collection I can imagine.

The NiGHTS franchise has been generally ignored since the original iteration was released on the Sega Saturn back in 1996. While the original title received plenty of critical acclaim, it never sold very well and suffered from being overshadowed by the release of more prominent titles like Mario 64. It's too bad that it was, too, because NiGHTS on the Sega Saturn broke ground for sudo-3D platformers back when game systems didn't do 3D so well. Now, NiGHTS has returned for a run on the Wii, and it doesn't fair as well as it once did. While it's certainly a pretty and unique game, the somewhat repetitive gameplay doesn't demand much in the way of complex thought. While most adults will probably find little to hold them, you could do a lot worse than NiGHTS if you have someone in your life that enjoys the seamless imitation of flying, strong music and art design, and gameplay with very limited depth. Which means it might be a great game for the kids.