OMG Nintendo

As expected, the fourth Lightning Deal is We Cheer. This post is going to be short because, to be honest, I don't have much to say about this game. I want to say I played it at E3 last year and it wasn't too bad, but nothing I'd ever want to buy or have laying around the house at any price. Amazon's deal is slashing the price in half to about $20, though, so this might be a good pick-up for parents with little girls dying to play the cheerleading game.

Be warned before you buy this one for a kid, though: just about every major outlet to review it described the gameplay as excruciatingly hard. I didn't think it was so bad, but this is definitely more of a very precise rhythm game than the sort of free-waggling easy-going adventure you might expect from a Wii game for little girls. I mean, if the guy at 1up spends four hours trying to beat what is described as the easiest song in story mode and can't do it, then you may end up with a crying daughter on your hands. 

The clue for the final deal is "That's so cute! The animals think they're people!" I'd like for this to be Animal Crossing, but I've got this uneasy feeling that it'll turn out to be a Petz game or one of the other Wii Nintendogs shovelware knockoffs. 

I'm a little torn on this one. The next Lightning Deal, which is only going to go for about an hour, is Super Mario Galaxy at the "marked down" price of about $40. Amazon usually sells it for about $47, so... yeah, not really much of a discount. On the other hand, Super Mario Galaxy is easily the best game offered thus far and probably a game that some more casual Wii owners have neglected to buy.

If for some reason you're reading this and you don't have Mario Galaxy yet, I can't say Amazon's deal is really the best time to pick it up. On the other hand, if you'd set aside a bunch of money today for buying Wii games and don't own Super Mario Galaxy... what the crap is your excuse? Go spend your money on a good game! 

The next clue is "Give me a W! Give me an I! Give me another I! What does that spell?" It probably spells We Cheer or one of the Wii's other improbably high number of cheerleading games. 

Oh dear, we've gotten into the toxic deathbomb portion of the sale. Amazon's second deal is Ready 2 Rumble Revolution marked down to $30 from its original $39.99 and trust me when I say this game isn't worth it. Save your money for Punch-Out!! if you desperately need a new Wii boxing game. Ready 2 Rumble Revolution's utterly lousy motion controls renders the game hard to play at best and sort of unplayable at worst, given your expectations.

R2RR only came out a few weeks ago so it's unusual to see it offered as a deal so quickly. I wonder if it means the game is flopping, which would be... well, deserved. R2RR might've passed somewhat as a first-year Wii game, but at this point in the system's lifespan there's no excuse for shipping software like this.

While we're tracking the Amazon bargain madness, there's another good deal for Wii owners hitting today that you won't want to miss. Capcom's official store now has copies of both the Wii and original PS2 versions of Okami available for the ridiculously low price of  $20 each. The general price for Okami also seems to have dropped for other vendors, too, as Amazon is stocking both games at the new price.

So, heck, even if you aren't a Wii fan and happen to see this, you probably want to snag that $20 PS2 Okami and play it on one of those $99 PS2s. I don't recommend many games as must-plays for everyone, but I seriously don't see how someone could dislike Okami without, I don't know, just disliking video games.

So the first Lightning Deal which I kinda overslept through, eheh, looks like it's Rayman Raving Rabbids TV Party. It's going slooow, which is why I'm bothering to post at all. We're two hours in and it's only 27% claimed. If you want one, you can definitely get one.

That said, the price really isn't all that great. TV Party is down to $30 from $50... but Amazon usually offers TV Party for $40 anyway. At this point, even $30 is I think more than I'd want to spend on a Rabbids game. Ubisoft just cranked them out way too fast, which destroyed a lot of the novelty value the game kinda needed to be appealing. 

The clue for the next game is "Start training now," which right now feels like it could apply to basically anything. I'm sure I'll check what it is in a couple hours and feel like an idiot for not getting it just offhand.

Now here's an interesting Deal of the Day candidate. Amazon's offering Nintendo's much-maligned (63% on Metacritic) Wii Music, the game that lets you make all sorts of musical sounds by waggling your Wii Remote around and record the results for friends. A lot of people deride this as a non-game or at the very least as an experience that's unreasonably shallow, but Amazon's knocked the price down to a mere $29.98. If you're curious and want it on the cheap, now's a good time to bite.

When you pick up the Wii Music Deal of the Day you also get to buy a PC casual game called Airport Mania for a mere $.98. This game usually retails for around $10 online so this is a steal, but... well, buyer beware. At heart it's basically a Cake Mania clone whose graphics I find incredibly unappealing. There's a free demo you can try out here if you want to make sure you don't waste your dollar on this one and to be honest I would say a dollar for this game is too much.

Get seveal pots of coffee and your credit card info ready to go for tomorrow, folks. Amazon's announced that tomorrow's Gold Box deal selection will be six Nintendo Wii games, offered at prices that should be at least one-third off MSRP if previous Wii Gold Box days are anythign to judge by.

While there's usually a certain amount of junk and kiddie crap offered, I've also snapped up some pretty fantastic games for cheap during these promotions, too. As usual, we'll be liveblogging the festivities tomorrow with news and views on whatever Amazon has up for grabs-- though anything really good might be 100% gone before I can even finish a post!

The Wii is as popular as ever, maybe moreso, but it looks like the Wii shortage may be over. A few weeks back I said the definitive sign of the shortage's end would be tons of Wiis available on store shelves after Black Friday, and in most areas nationwide this has come to pass. I could walk into any GameStop or big box store in my local area now to buy a Wii, and you probably can, too. Buying online is still pretty tricky but not the outright impossibility it as at this time last year.

As if to underscore that the days of waiting in line for hours outside a local joint before 6 AM are over, Reuters ran a report over the weekend announcing that Wal-Mart was about to put "tens of thousands" of Wii units up for sale on its website later today. Wal-Mart is also going to offer select Wii titles with a two for $30 price promotion. Note that some of the Wiis are going to be sold as part of a "value bundle" for about $330 dollars, so you'll want to buy fast if all you want to snag is a standalone Wii unit.

Awesome, nothing like ending a Gold Box Deals day on an offer that is absolutely dire. The final officer is Disney High School Musical 3: Senior Year Dance! This is one of those games that is too impossibly bland to care about unless you have a lot of interest in the license. It's a better buy at $29.98 than the $49.99 MSRP, but it's still basically just a time-waster. (And no, I don't think a good game is going to be just a time-waster.)

That wraps up Gold Box Madness for today! Hmm, not really one of Amazon's better selections, except for Wario Land, which... I already had. On the other hand, this was a bonanza for someone who wanted to buy slightly lousy games for younger relatives who probably wouldn't know any better. Egh. Typing that has depressed me enough that I think I'll sign off for the night. Come back tomorrow when we resume our standard blogcast day.