A major third-party publisher is going to release a game with online multiplayer in 2009 that is reportedly going to be unrestricted by Friend Codes. According to IGN's latest Nintendo Voice Chat podcast, the developers of the title discovered that it was possible to access the Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection without them, and built a custom engine that did so. The quote about this shows up about 49 minutes into the original podcast.

IGN's access to well-placed sources is unimpeachable, so there's no reason to seriously doubt this claim. Right now the game in question is unnamed and possibly unannounced -- Joystiq independently confirmed that it wasn't The Conduit. My money would be on it being an Electronic Arts title, since they've got a better track record for building their own online infrastructure for consoles than almost any other publisher right now. What's your guess? 

Either way, this is news to be excited about. Assuming Nintendo doesn't stop the publication of the game or force in Friend Codes, one third-party publisher pulling off online multiplayer free of the Friend Code system means others are going to follow. It'll be a much-needed shot in the arm for the Wii's appeal to the hardcore crowd.

Wind Waker occupies a place in the upper echelons of my personal list of Bestest Zelda Games Ever, and the music is one of the reasons why. So check out this super-nifty "one man band" arrangement of Wind Waker's main theme, which does incorporate some traditional bits of Zelda music... but really not in a way you expect it. Now, all of you out there who just got a new Wii for Christmas, go out and buy copies of Wind Waker for them! Keep the Toon Link spirit alive!

I think I'm about a week late to covering this, but you know, it's still pretty freaking awesome. YouTube user blinktwice4y, who I believe may in fact be one Sam Hart, decided to write a love song about Mario Kart. It is the best love song about Mario Kart ever. What gaming woman could resist the offer of protection from red shells and banana peels?

IGN finishes off their podcast duties for the year with this entry. There's a lot more non-Nintendo stuff in this podcast than usual, but the section where they discuss NPD sales figures and the Wii is tremendously worth tuning in for. What's the top-selling third-party Wii title? How well do casual games sell compared to hardcore games? The answers aren't necessarily what you'd expect.

By the way, is it just me, or is really weird that IGN's Wii-k in review is being brought to me by the... Sony PlayStation 3?

There's nothing like a good podcast, and this one's pretty interesting. If you're curious about No More Heroes or Wii Fit, there's a ton of hands-on impressions here to whet your appetites. There's also some discussion of a wave of Wii titles developed by Data Design Interactive that sound truly awful, with Offroad Extreme fingered as the worst of the lot.

(A 1 out of 10 at IGN? Seriously? I can only surmise that this game killed an intern.)

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A shockingly good and compact Radio Free Nintendo covers a lot of aspects of the Super Mario Galaxy launch, from the low supplies to the sky-high review scores. The hands-on impressions are sort of interesting, but my favorite part of this was the debate about the meaning and validity of review scores. I'm not a fan of scored reviews myself (they encourage people not to read the accompanying text), but I think they linger because no one's thought of anything better yet. Once someone does, maybe we'll see some change. In the meantime, 10/10 is almost the only intelligible thing to say about a game like Galaxy.

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