Bit. Trip: Beat

Over on Offworld Brandon Boyer has posted a video of Beat, one of the six games in Gaijin Games' WiiWare offering Bit. Trip. The thing looks to be made of pure concentrated awesome:

It's like something I'd expect to see on Live Arcade or PSN; stylish and minimal yet impossibly shiny. Nintendo needs to let people know that games like this and other WiiWare titles exist. I'm willing to bet that half of the Wii userbase doesn't even know that it can connect to the net.

Asshole Mario

There's a legend to this one. I haven't bothered to look it up, but the story goes that there's this Super Mario World champion in Japan who's friend challenged him to complete his hacked levels. These are fiendishly hard levels that require just as much luck as skill. A more reasonable name is Kaizo Mario but I find the YouTube poster's choice to be more accurate in describing the pain:

That's just the first level. There are close to a dozen more of these. And if that's not enough there's a sequel that begins with this masterwork:

What I love about this one is how it totally subverts the Mario conventions. Hidden blocks are a punishment instead of a reward and the mechanics of stage completion are used against the player. It's all at once an example of what to do and what not to do in the area of game design.

Zack & Wiki: Quest for Recognition

Holy crap, if you own a Wii, or even if you intend to own a Wii in the future, you owe it to yourself to go track down a copy of Zack & Wiki. Especially if you love puzzle and adventure games.

Some reviews have cited the setup of dividing the game into independant stages as a contrivance unique to this game, but I found it to be plesantly reminiscant of The Bizarre Adventures of Woodruff and the Schnibble and other Coktel Vision adventure games. You might not have played any of these games either, but believe me this is high praise.

Really, go get this game now. Send a message to Nintendo, Capcom, and other developers that we want unique, quality games on the Wii.