Many people have written off their Wii as a dead console. Probably most of the people who haven’t are the ones playing Skyward Sword or the ones still stuck on Wii Sports. At our house, the Wii game that sees the most play is Super Mario Galaxy 2. From the beginning, I’ve played the whole […]

Read the rest of The Games of 2011: Part XI

Disclaimer: There are many concerns about kids and video games, and so I’ll state up-front that parents absolutely need to be familiar with the games that their children play and the ESRB ratings of those games. You should no more let your child play Call of Duty or Grand Theft Auto than you should let […]

Read the rest of Single Player Games as Parent / Child Experiences

Now we’re into the home stretch. We started at top fifty, but now we’re into the top twenty: my favorite games of all time. Encouragingly, three games in this list didn’t yet exist when I wrote up my original list back in 2007. 20- Ultima V (Origin, Commodore 64, 1988) I’m a great lover of […]

Read the rest of Top Fifty: 17-20

One of the oldest game genres is the platformer, so named because you play a character that jumps to and from suspended platforms. Contra, Bionic Commando, Sonic the Hedgehog, and Super Mario Brothers all fall into this category. I should make it clear here that I never got into Super Mario World or Mario 64, […]

Read the rest of Platforming: A Retrospective

Keepers is a weekly segment in which I discuss games I’ve played that I’ve seen fit to keep after playing. I generally sell a game that I’ve finished, so the only reason I keep one is because I plan to replay the game some day. Classifying a game as a “keeper” is generally a badge […]

Read the rest of Keepers: Super Mario Galaxy