Here’s mine: How I cheated Christmas with an NES in 1988.

Have a favorite Christmas gaming memory you’d like to share? Leave us a brief voice message at 434-535-BIGN (2446) to be featured on our upcoming Christmas podcast, or leave a comment below. Only five more days left!

Do you want some of the best cross-platform indie games out there? Infendo reader Milom tipped us off to the incredible Humble Indie Bundle. Included are:

• Osmos, which I think you guys already know about! [mentioned on Infendo Radio]
• Braid, which is a seriously cool, mind bending platformer which allows the player to change the flow of time itself and even to question the meaning of life.
• Machinarium, a beautiful point and click adventure.
• Revenge of the Titans, an awesome neony tower defense game.
• Cortex Command, a fun little RTS game that’s really moddable and has a completely destructable enviroment.

The bundle is worth $85, but you can pay what you want and decide which charities or developers you want to support! Have you picked up this sweet deal?

[Thanks for the tip and game descriptions, Milom!]

Doing his accomplishments and personality a great service, the New Yorker has published an amazing write-up about Shigeru Miyamoto. Most of us have probably read most of this story before in one way or another, but it’s a well-written description of a man who continues to change video games with every new generation. Grab your favorite weekend beverage and delve into this grand tribute to the king of video games.

[Thanks for the tip, Josh!]

Who’s the black sheep of Super Mario games? How good is Tron Legacy? And should Link take a public speaking class? Find the answers to all those questions and more in this week’s episode of Infendo Radio:

• Radio Feed
• iTunes Feed
• Download links below

To sound off on this week’s show or be featured in an upcoming show, email tips@infendo.com (with audio recording if you like) or leave us a voice message at 434-535-BIGN (2446). Enoy!

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I shirked work this morning to watch an early bird screening of Tron: Legacy.

AWESOME.

You planning on seeing the movie tonight? If so, swing back here after you watch it and let us know what you thought. As for me, I think it’s better than The Matrix, and a lot more fun. 1000x better than the original Tron.

You?

Although not out until Jan. 11, game’s getting early praise in advance reviews and previews. Looks like it could be a fun little DS game, as all the Wrights before it have been. Anyone else interested in this?

This might be my favorite item to appear in the Club Nintendo reward shop to date. Cripes, this is dangerously adorable.

Two sets of patches (the other features Kirby and Prince Fluff) join some nifty-looking washcloth things (Nintendo calls them towels, but…c’mon, they’re not even ten inches square!) for your shopping enjoyment.

Is it just me, or has the shop gotten a lot more interesting in the past few months?

Best line from the parody: “Never bring a hammer to a gunfight.” Warning: Somebody drops both an s-bomb and b-bomb in the video. Viewer discretion advised. (Thanks, Josh)

It has been noticed by savvy consumers proficient in the black art of arithmetic that the new Super Mario All-Stars Limited Edition for Wii may not actually be the best deal. PC World recently advised against picking it up, noting that all four of the included classic Mario games can be purchased from the Wii Shop for a total of $21, which is $9 less than the $29.99 MSRP of the new Wii compilation. The author points out that with the money left over, you could throw in Super Mario World, which was inexplicably left out of the Wii remake, despite the fact that an alternate version of the SNES Super Mario All-Stars game also included Super Mario World, rounding out the collection with 5 games and making it an incredible value. They have a point.

That means the Super Mario All-Stars Limited Edition has the following advantages over the original (non-SMW included) SNES version and the Wii Shop downloads:

- Bonus 20-track soundtrack CD with music and sound effects by Koji Kondo
- 32-page booklet detailing history of the Mario series
- Features the same updated graphics as the SNES Super Mario All-Stars, which means this is the only way to play the updated versions on the Wii, since the versions in the Wii Shop are still the 8-bit originals (which are actually preferred by many gamers, making this more of a disadvantage than an appealing feature to some)

What do you think? Does the convenience of having all four installments of Mario’s NES exploits in a pretty Wii case with a couple bonus goodies warrant the $29.99 price tag? Or does it seem that it really wouldn’t have been that difficult to pack a few more Mario classics (say, Super Mario World 1 and/or 2) onto that ample Wii disc? Do you already have the original games and the Super Mario All-Stars SNES edition, and either way, will you be picking up the Limited Edition for Wii? Weigh in, Infendo darlings.

Released in 2002 for GameCube, Super Mario Sunshine was by no means a bad game. But it wasn’t great either — far from the caliber of  other Mario games. Anyone who says otherwise needs to take their Mario Goggles off. (Miyamoto is capable of releasing at least one dud, right? Two if you count Wii Music.)

Whatever your opinion of the game, I think it’s safe to say Sunshine is definitely not the best Mario game. So what did the others have that this game didn’t? What was wrong with Sunshine, noting everything that was right about other Super Marios?

Let’s hear it, Infendo. I know you have the answer.