Mario and Luigi: Bowser’s Inside Story is the third installment in the action-oriented RPG series, and when I say action-oriented you better know about “timed hits”. This time around, the game focus’s more on the King of Badness, Bowser. Something Nintendo has rarely done in previous titles unless you count Super Mario RPG the joint Square and Nintendo venture way back on the Super Nintendo.

As always with Mario games since the new millennium; we get to see the small area of Mushroom Kingdom, Toad Town, as a peaceful and happy environment.  However, we all know that this peace is going to be short lived as a mysterious incurable disease starts effecting Toads everywhere. This diseases known only as the “Blorbs”  causes the Toads to bloat in size until they are huge balls capable of knocking down walls and buildings.

With this strange disease on the rise, Princess Peach, calls together a conference of the best minds in Mushroom Kingdom to find a solution to the Blorbs. However, Bowser shows up upset that he wasn’t asked to join the conference and starts a fight like usual.

In 2005, Nintendo was sitting on some pretty hot technology. Instead of a joystick for its next console—then named Revolution—the company planned to release a perplexing white TV remote capable of sensing motion. If only Nintendo had an equally smoking game to showcase what the controls could do.

Fast forward to today. That software turned out to be Wii Sports, which has since become a cultural phenomenon and best-selling game of the decade. Now Nintendo is releasing the first sequel to the game in the form of Wii Sports Resort. How does it stack up? It’s not as revolutionary as the original, but there are a half dozen events you’ll keep coming back to, archery primary among them.

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Developer Next Level Games must have studied Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out for years. Because they have recaptured the spirit of that classic game and revived it with slick presentation, tight controls, and fresh perspective in the all-new Punch-Out for Wii. It doesn’t happen often, but Punch-Out not only lives up to the hype of the original, it surpasses it.

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I had Puzzle Quest: Galactrix in my DS for a few hours this week and came away impressed.  As a fan of the first Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords for DS, the news that they were putting out “Puzzle Quest in space” got me salivating.  Galactrix is again an addicting game, but the story and world are much deeper than that in Challenge of the Warlords.  Characters have much more dialog than before and it’s mostly well written.  The universe you fly around in is much larger than the map from Warlords.  Even from the few hours I played, there was talk of aquiring more crew members (I already have four) and additional ships.  Along with this depth, there are additional load times which became a little frustrating, but actually gives you a break to stretch your stylus cramped hand.  Puzzle battles are basically the same, but using a Hexic style game instead of the Bejewled type of game from the first Puzzle Quest.

While it’s a relief that Galactrix isn’t just Warlords coated in sci-fi, it has a much bigger focus on the adventure and story.  This was slightly off-putting for me since the first one was more a matter of wandering around and battling without too much thought about who or why you were battling.  That said, it’s an excellent game and well worth checking out if you’re into puzzles or RPGs.

I detest Final Fantasy games. Truth be told, I loath all RPGs. Yup, I’m in the 40 percent minority of gamers that doesn’t enjoy a good role playing game. After downloading Final Fantasy: My Life as a King, however, I can confidently say that I now adore the venerable series. Of course, the latest game is anything but an RPG.

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