Even though the upcoming Ghostbusters for Sony PlayStation 3, Microsoft Xbox 360, and PC will be full of new story material, it's also worth noting that the big villains from the two films will appear in the game as well.  While not major factors in the game's main plot, both Gozer the Gozerian and Vigo the Carpathian will turn up during the adventure.  IGN has the news.

In [the game], you'll play as a new recruit to the famous slime-fighting unit, joining on in 1991, two years after the events of Ghostbusters II. No longer the subject of derision and litigation, the Ghostbusters are still regarded as heroes in New York, and the city itself has changed. As Creative Director Drew Haworth puts it: "New York has become sort of enamoured, fascinated with Gozer – everything Gozerian. Stay Puft has his own cartoon show now, he's on lunchboxes, and the Stay Puft brand is hitting all time highs, and [the city's] going to open a Gozerian exhibit."

But isn't worshiping Gozer the thing that summoned him to this dimension in the first place?  Remember how the first film explained that architect Ivo Shandor and his cult of Gozer worshipers held secret ceremonies atop the Temple of Zuul in the 1920s?  I wonder if this renewed attention risks summoning the Sumerian god once again.  As for Vigo ("What was will be, what is will be no more"), apparently the actor who portrayed the Carpathian warlock passed away some time ago, so his voice will come from a sound-alike.  As long as the writers can come up with more bombastic dialog like "On a mountain of skulls in a castle of pain, I sat on a throne of blood" for him, I think I can go with the change.

Back when Nintendo first unveiled the controller paradigm that would become the Wii, I was concerned.  My fear was that with all the remote shaking and twisting going on, making Mario run and jump would become some odd pointer-based affair.  As I originally said back in 2005, "How do I make Mario run and jump?  That's all I really want to know.  Tell me how I make Mario run and jump."  Then Super Mario Galaxy appeared, a game that went light on the pointer action compared to other Wii games.  My concerns have been calmed, but there's always that little doubt in the back of my brain that wonders if Mario's next adventure may go heavy on the pointer and light on the control stick.  Luckily, Nintendo's Yoshiaki Koizumi, director of Super Mario Galaxy, had this to say in an interview over at Game|Life:

When we first learned about the concept of the Wii, and were given prototypes, we researched exhaustively: What things are fun to do? What do people want to use it for? From those concepts, we came up with a lot of things that could certainly become games, but at the same time, most of these are not Mario games. It's not a Mario game if you're not controlling Mario moving around. So there's quite a bit of a challenge in applying a pointer function to that.

I'm happy to see that Nintendo's creative folks see the value in making Mario run and jump.  Somehow I don't think I need to worry about that anymore.

The Nintendo Wii has walked among us for a year now.  Are you still trying to find one?  Did you brave the madness of the Black Friday sale a few weeks ago?  Here's your chance to experience (or relive, as the case may be) the craziness of descending on Best Buy (er, make that "Big Box") on the day after Thanksgiving in search of the elusive video game console.  Platypus Comix has a new comic feature available, Wack Friday, in which the battle for Wiis rages on.  Who will leave the store victorious?  Who will get caught in the crossfire and wind up with the Friends complete series DVD box set?  You'll just have to read the comic for yourself and find out.

DVD distributor Shout! Factory must be nearing the end of the pre-Pokemon library of Saturday morning cartoons featuring popular video game characters.  Captain N has been released, the various Super Mario cartoons are out there, The Legend of Zelda has even made an appearance, and now it's time for Sonic the Hedgehog's next DVD outing.  Sonic Underground is coming to DVD later this month in North America.  Hmm, Sonic Underground... I don't think I know that one.  What was that one about?

As told in an ancient prophecy, Sonic is reunited with his two siblings, Sonia and Manic, to form a band – Sonic Underground – using their electric guitar, keyboard, and drumset (which seamlessly transform into weapons during battle) to fight the evil Dr. Robotnik, all while searching for their mother, Queen Aleena Hedgehog. But there's still one more problem: the queen doesn't want to meet her children at the wrong time, thus altering the fate of her family – but only when the prophecy is fulfilled can the planet Mobius return to a world of peace and harmony!

Ah.  Hmm.  OK, if you say so, Shout! Factory.  I think I'll pass on this one.  I like my video gaming plots to be completely crazy, but one is just too far gone even for me.

Manic the Hedgehog?  Oy...

Remember how The Legend of Zelda character Tingle starred in his own Nintendo DS game not so long ago?  And how the game has not (and most likely will not) come to North America?  MTV's Stephen Totilo imported the European version of Freshly-Picked Tingle's Rosy Rupeeland and discovered the game's awful secret: it demands money.  A lot of money.  A whole lot of money, even.  All the time.

In most adventure games the cost of items is clearly established. Need to buy a shield? Some armor? A golden chicken? A village merchant or town elder tells you what you must give to get what they’ve got. In Tingle the non-player characters will rip you off. Want a 10-ingredient pot in Tingle? Don’t know how much it costs, because the lady cook won’t tell you? Well, make an offer. In a miserable twist to classic bartering, most of the game’s character to whom you make a lowball offer will pocket the money you offer them. And then they will start negotiations over from scratch. So when I found a character who promised a great secret if only I could pay him “four figures,” I made a mental note (only possessing three figures of rupees at the time). I came back to him later in the game when I had about 3000, offered him 1000 , got laughed at and left with just 2000. Did anyone else know that Nintendo published games this mean?

I really haven't had any interest in this game, but now that I've read about how it manages to turn so many gaming cliches upside-down, I find that I want to try it.  I also understand now why this game hasn't come to North America.  It sounds as if Tingle won't hold the player's hand all the way through the game.  Players are left in the dark often, and if there's one thing we don't tolerate in our games here in North America it's a requirement of patience and ongoing clueless exploration.  We need a map where X marks the spot every time and a big gun to blow up that X when we get to it.  Tingle doesn't seem to provide that.

I've come away from Super Mario Galaxy like most of you out there in that it met my expectations and even exceeded them at times.  I've collected all 120 stars and have moved onto the "second quest", as it were.  Galaxy is a fantastic game and I can't recommend it enough to platformer fans.

Speaking of recommendations, the firing of Jeff Gerstmann from GameSpot continues to spark discussions and debates.  There's even a movement to boycott the site and its parent network, CNET.  Does the alleged revelation that GameSpot rolled over for publisher Eidos change the way that you look at reviews?  Do you still trust reviews?  Did you ever trust them?  Let's hear your thoughts.

Remember when we all pointed and laughed at a couple of Legend of Zelda games that were produced for the Philips CD-i as part of a contractual obligation?  Sure you do.  You can't forget images like this one no matter how hard you try.  Well, as it turns out, there's actually a game embedded in the middle of that horrible animation.  Yeah, who knew?  Hardcore Gaming 101 had the opportunity to speak with CD-i developer Dale DeSharone and learned just where things went wrong on the path to glory.

Given the amount of time we had, and what we were creating at the time in terms of company infrastructure, I thought we did a good job. You know, we weren't Nintendo. And Nintendo makes fantastic games, which are exceptionally well tuned in terms of gameplay. And they have amazing game designers. So, I would imagine that anything was going to fall short of that, in terms of the amount of time and energy that Nintendo puts into gameplay. Given the amount of time we had, and the fact that we were developing two at once, on a platform that was pretty limited, although the Nintendo machine at that time was also pretty limited and they did a great job with it... At the same time Philips was expecting, and I think we were all expecting, more graphics, more production values in terms of music, visuals, animation... So there was a lot of push there. You put effort into that, and it doesn't go elsewhere. I felt that, given the circumstances, we did a good job. It could have been better, of course it wasn't Nintendo.

It's quite a tale.  I find it interesting that development of these lackluster games spanned the globe.  After all, we're talking about characters licensed from a Japanese company by a Dutch company who in turn contracted an American game development firm that then outsourced the animation to artists from Russia.  All that effort for so little payout.