Muramasa: The Demon Blade

Right about now the rest of the internet is tripping over itself to crank out the “definitive” end-of-year list. Well, they can stop. We already did it. Over the next few pages our unquestioned expertise will identify the coolest, most important games of 2009 with zero room for error. Yeah, it’s that big of a deal. That’s why they’re basking in the dazzling radiance of a Platinum Chalice.

The year in review. Part Two: Nintendo, with guest editor Matthew Castle from NGamer magazine

We began this year full of hope for software success on the Wii, the little system that did. As it entered its third year on the market, fans dreamed of seeing the end of shovelware, as developers had now had plenty of time to make great games for the console. Maybe we’d see some great original content at last? No more PSP ports and half-finished releases, now that developers had come to understand the console so well?

There’s something very special about the process of old-fashioned, frame-by-frame, 2D animation. In the old days, the only way to get your animated character to wave his or her arm was to spend hours upon hours painstakingly crafting each frame and constantly readjusting your work to make sure everything flowed correctly. Now you just set a couple of keyframes and let a computer do it all for you.

Wii is the punching bag of the games industry, regularly (though not undeservedly) saddled with the “kiddie crap” moniker and more associated with forgettable shovelware than legitimately good games. Those of us who own and actively play Wii obviously don’t share this view, but it’s almost impossible to read any piece of Wii news, be it feature, review or just straight reporting, without weeding out the “Wii sux who cares" crowd.

Editors Brett Elston and Chris Antista snuffed out the raging nerd-flames that demanded they stay on the move at last week's Comic-Con and sat down for some some 'professional' discourse with some of this year's biggest developers. The entire collection of interviews can be heard in the TalkRadar Comic-Con special, but if you're picky, you can listen to any of the individual interviews here. Allons-y!

Considering all the attention being directed toward huge, marquee juggernauts like Uncharted 2, Modern Warfare 2, and Beatles: Rock Band, you’d think they were the only games at E3. Not true. Sure, those look fantastic, but we also saw piles and piles of great games that nobody is talking about. Nobody but us, that is.

New Super Mario Bros Wii

Getting one of the best platformers of all time with four player support should be a godsend, right? Sorta. And even though the game retains the DS’s impeccable tight and intuitive, the characters goofily occupy a physical space in a relatively small field. “Up To Four Friends!” can now halt your movement, ruin timed jumps, and even swallow you while riding on Yoshi. Furthermore, one player

This time last year we only had Super Smash Bros. Brawl and Mario Kart Wii to fend off the baby sims and Mega Party Game Blasts. Nintendo was tight-lipped about E3 and the third party offerings were slim as usual – in other words, there was no respite from the casual flood in sight.