I've finally recovered practically all the games that were stolen... I guess I shouldn't say "recovered" so much as "replaced". This whole experience, combined with past experiences with theft, has done nothing more than confirm my belief that our police are an absolute waste of tax dollars and they know how to do nothing more than give speeding and parking tickets. I know who broke into my apartment, without a doubt. It's been long enough now that I just don't care to even go into detail on it, but none the less... I know, the cops know I know, but they don't give a flying frick about getting my stuff back... you know why? because whether or not I get my things back, they get paid the same. Police need to be on commission, and not a speeding ticket quota type of commission, but a solving real crimes commission. If a cop goes a month without solving someone's genuine problem, they should lose a week of pay. I don't know, there's got to be some way to make these piles of crap start to actually care about their jobs and remember why they wanted to be cops when they were little kids. I hate our legal system and until it serves me in a positive way (yeah, that sounds selfish, but oh well) I am not showing them any respect.

On a lighter note. Been playing a lot of PC and migrating away from the Wii lately, I find myself aggrivated by the lack of good first person shooters on the Wii console... and even when they bring one to the Wii, they dumb it down and take out a lot of cool features on the premis that the Wii can't handle the workload. Baloney I say! At least gives us some good RTS games, the infra-red pointer is just like a mouse... why aren't we getting some old classics (Starcraft?) ported over to the Wii?? Heck, Starcraft may be asking a bit much since Blizzard is hard at work on Diablo 3 and Starcraft 2... what about EAs Command & Conquer franchise? EA LOVES the Wii... give us some RTS respect bastards!

A couple of weeks ago, while my wife and I were out playing Rock Band 2 (awesome Christmas gift) at a friends house... some people broke into our house and robbed us. Luckily we had our Wii, Rockband 2, and Rockband 2 instruments with us and had a few games from our collection lended out to friends. The sons of B&$#hes still managed to make off with my laptop, my wife's family heir loom diamond, CD collection, and vast majority of Wii games. We had cops come and take prints, but after not hearing anything from the cops since, I'm getting comfortable with the fact that our stolen property is not going to make it back to it's rightful owners. So, with that in mind, we are now tackling the chore of replacing our collection of games... I've been using craigslist, ebay, and amazon... but I'm finding that it is still quite expensive and in these economic times, unrealistic. Since I own and operate a graphic design and printing business, the laptop obviously set us back a bit as it had many client designs and files on it that I must now also work toward replacing, which also means that the expensive laptop replacement takes priority over games. So I decided to come back to the Gamespot community that I've neglected for some time now, in search of help from fellow gamers.

If you have any of the games listed below (all for Wii, unless otherwise noted, and all games that were stolen), and you no longer play them, please reply or PM me with a lowball price you'd be willing to accept. For those of you who question the sincerity/truthfulness of this statement, please feel free to call the Albany, OR Police Department (541.917.7680) and inquire about case # 09-269 (robbery). The officer in charge of our case is one Scott Timm. Any help would be greatly appreciated, and I hope I don't offend anyone by turning down an offer that I know I can find cheaper somewhere else. Even if you're still reading this, I appreciate your time... thank you.

1. No More Heroes
2. NCAA Football '09
3. Zelda: Twilight Princess
4. Zack & Wiki: Quest for Barbaros Treasure
5. Metroid Prime 3: Corruption
6. Super Smash Bros Brawl
7. Wii Play
8. Resident Evil 4:Wii Edition
9. Dewy's Adventure
10. Guitar Hero III (we have the guitar)
11. Super Paper Mario
12. Shaun White Snowboarding (not Target copy w/ extra levels)
13. Boom Blox
14. Zelda: Wind Waker (gamecube)
15. Sonic Mega Collection (gamecube)
16. Outlaw Golf (gamecube)
17. NFL2K1, NFL2k2 (Sega Dreamcast)
18. Crazy Taxi (Sega Dreamcast)
19. Soul Calibur (Sega Dreamcast)
20. Skies of Arcadia (Sega Dreamcast)
21. MLB2k1 (Sega Dreamcast)

I'm sure there are more that have gone missing that I just can't recall, but this is the majority of them that come to mind off the bat. I hate asking for help in a charity case type of way, especially for something as little as video games... but these games help keeps us in the house, where we spend a lot less money than when we go out. Anyway, thank you again for taking the time to read this.

A couple of weeks ago, while my wife and I were out playing Rock Band 2 (awesome Christmas gift) at a friends house... some people broke into our house and robbed us. Luckily we had our Wii, Rockband 2, and Rockband 2 instruments with us and had a few games from our collection lended out to friends. The sons of B&$#hes still managed to make off with my laptop, my wife's family heir loom diamond, CD collection, and vast majority of Wii games. We had cops come and take prints, but after not hearing anything from the cops since, I'm getting comfortable with the fact that our stolen property is not going to make it back to it's rightful owners. So, with that in mind, we are now tackling the chore of replacing our collection of games... I've been using craigslist, ebay, and amazon... but I'm finding that it is still quite expensive and in these economic times, unrealistic. Since I own and operate a graphic design and printing business, the laptop obviously set us back a bit as it had many client designs and files on it that I must now also work toward replacing, which also means that the expensive laptop replacement takes priority over games. So I decided to come back to the Gamespot community that I've neglected for some time now, in search of help from fellow gamers.

If you have any of the games listed below (all for Wii, unless otherwise noted, and all games that were stolen), and you no longer play them, please reply or PM me with a lowball price you'd be willing to accept. For those of you who question the sincerity/truthfulness of this statement, please feel free to call the Albany, OR Police Department (541.917.7680) and inquire about case # 09-269 (robbery). The officer in charge of our case is one Scott Timm. Any help would be greatly appreciated, and I hope I don't offend anyone by turning down an offer that I know I can find cheaper somewhere else. Even if you're still reading this, I appreciate your time... thank you.

1. No More Heroes
2. NCAA Football '09
3. Zelda: Twilight Princess
4. Zack & Wiki: Quest for Barbaros Treasure
5. Metroid Prime 3: Corruption
6. Super Smash Bros Brawl
7. Wii Play
8. Resident Evil 4:Wii Edition
9. Dewy's Adventure
10. Guitar Hero III (we have the guitar)
11. Super Paper Mario
12. Shaun White Snowboarding (not Target copy w/ extra levels)
13. Boom Blox
14. Zelda: Wind Waker (gamecube)
15. Sonic Mega Collection (gamecube)
16. Outlaw Golf (gamecube)
17. NFL2K1, NFL2k2 (Sega Dreamcast)
18. Crazy Taxi (Sega Dreamcast)
19. Soul Calibur (Sega Dreamcast)
20. Skies of Arcadia (Sega Dreamcast)
21. MLB2k1 (Sega Dreamcast)

I'm sure there are more that have gone missing that I just can't recall, but this is the majority of them that come to mind off the bat. I hate asking for help in a charity case type of way, especially for something as little as video games... but these games help keeps us in the house, where we spend a lot less money than when we go out. Anyway, thank you again for taking the time to read this.

No More Heroes is frickin awesome! At first I felt kind of let down, the town so bland and the vehicle controls so clunky, and the inability to trash strangers on the street absent... but you realize after a little bit of playing that these are very unimportant details, and far from the point of the game. It's mocking of video games in general isn't made blatantly clear until you near the end of the game, and I don't want to spoil anything so I won't mention any spoilers, but be sure to beat the game on MILD and not just SWEET (for beginners) difficulty, because it will open the "real ending" and it is sooo much better than the generic ending. Anyway, if you hadn't headed the words of so many others and given this game a try yet, I figured I would voice my opinion on it. I just beat mild and am about to play through it again on BITTER (hard difficulty)... and I'm really really happy that I found it at a pawn shop for a mere $20... this game is totally worth the full price tag of $50 that it initially came out with.

What Madden 09 needs to do to convince me to buy it:

1) get a responsive control scheme. Previous Maddens have sacrificed quick and responsive controls in an attempt to make the movement look more realistic... this is pathetic. When I press the analog left or right, I want my play to cut left or right, I shouldn't have to press a juke button... I should be able to tap left, slam right and it will do the equivalent of a juke. This is how it worked in 2k sports' ESPN titles and it was awesome!

2) fix the frickin menus... I'm tired of running in circles to try and get around, EA seems to always have horrible user interfaces.

3) if you're gonna have on-line, have it work... provide valid support to reduce lag and actually allow for match-ups to happen.

4) Madden 08 didn't allow for custom made teams or players on the Wii, that is incredibly... unimaginably inexcusable... that's just frickin retarded for a lack of better words.

5) in a franchise, your players statistics (speed, power, agility, etc) should improve or drop based on the previous years performance. Games as old as NFL2k3 even got this part right....

6) this is a repeat, but I feel it necessary to emphasize it since it is the most important part in my opinion... RESPONSIVE CONTROLS. I'm tired of all these new era madden titles being so damn slow and unresponsive. Playing a defensive player has practically become useless due to this fact...

7) the coaching abilities need to be expanded. Take a look at NFL2k5 and NFL2k6... franchise mode was way deeper as far as your ability to change coaching staffs and change playbooks and all of that stuff. If you're noticing a lot of references to NFL2k titles, that's because they were by far superior to madden in every which way.

8) allow updated rosters to be downloaded on-line, 2k has this going too before you guys bought out the NFL players licensing... their game was half the price and allowed for updated rosters so you didn't even feel the need to buy the next years title... think about it, STOP BEING GREEDY PIECES OF DUNG EA!

9) Drop your price... year in and year out you don't change the game engine. you don't change anything except the controls and update the rosters and maybe capture a few new motions for the players. Yet year in and year out, you charge 50 bucks or more for your game... it's ludicrous. Once again, I point to the past when a brand new copy of NFL2k5 was a mere 20 dollars.

Do all this, and I will drop my boycott... but something tells me, the boycott will continue... and you still won't care, because all the idiotic fools out there that feel they NEED an up to date football game will still pay your ridiculous price and play your sub par product and never pay any extra thought to how easily manipulated they are.

I feel a little let down by the wii lately.... but maybe it's because I'm saving all my money to pay for my wedding coming up in less than 3 months, don't get engaged, it's crazy expensive! As is, I haven't been able to buy some things I'd really like to give a try... WiiFit, No More Heroes, Okami (yeah, I'm a little behind on NMH and Okami).. and I'm sure there's a few more that I just can't think of right now. But looking at E3 stuff, I can't help but realize that Nintendo's sales seem entirely driven by peripherals and not games... peripherals are generally gimmicks in my opinion... the WiiMote works because it is the sole controller, game developers HAVE to find a way to use it, it's not just some add-on that they can choose to ignore... but all these other add-ons will be short lived, I can practically guarantee it.

My hopes for E3 were for more footage and hands-on opinions of big titles for the Wii. I wanted to see a little teaser for the new Zelda game, I wanted some footage of Kid Icarus Wii edition... I wanted the news of Metroid Prime 1 & 2 to be confirmed as being brought to the Wii with Metroid Prime 3 controls. I didn't want more casual style games and kidsy art styles. I want a game with some serious plot to it, I've been hungering for this, something at least semi-realistic and a little more story driven... something where I will actually care about the characters and relate to them somehow. I can only handle so much of this cartoon stuff... I hope the Conduit delivers a little of these fronts, but I doubt it will be very story driven, but I will more than welcome the intense fast paced action that it is promising to deliver.

I guess I just expected this casual gamer thing to be a fad... to last a year or so before Nintendo realized they needed to remain loyal to the deep games, and work more closely with the 3rd party developers producing deep franchises of their own... no Final Fantasy on Wii?... OUTRAGEOUS in my opinion. Nothing since Zelda and Metroid Prime 3 with any real depth in the storyline, that's over a year now!!! I hunger for a game that makes me want to stay up late playing it, not a game that I tire of after playing it for 20 minutes. I know these games are out there, I remember playing them on the older consoles... I know I haven't outgrown it because I still head over to PC gaming once and a while to get my fix since Nintendo seems incapable or rather, unwilling to deliver on that front.

We need "Sadness" to deliver. We need the next Zelda title to take a turn towards the adult market. We need a new, not just a rehashed, Resident Evil title... hopefully one that copies Metroid Prime 3's control scheme. We need Starfox wii to go above and beyond what Starfox64 was (and I don't mean any disrepsect to Starfox64, it was awesome), with online dogfighting and the lot. We need a lot more than Nintendo is giving us to really get our money's worth out of this console in my opinion... there needs to be at least 3 more years of life (AT LEAST) for the Wii console... and right now, I just don't see that happening unless they expect us all to pitch out 1000's of dollars for gimmicky perpipherals that eat up space and make your house look like trash.

LOOK BACK AT SNES NINTENDO! It wasn't gimmicks that worked for you.. it was awesome third party support... and awesome first party games... it was the games! I know you're giving us some fun games, what with Smash Bros and Mario Kart having been released in the last 3 or 4 months... but these are shallow games... the last game with any real plot to come out was Metroid Prime 3 and that was over a year ago... what's with the hiatus?!?!? k, rant done.

The Wii has been out since November of '06... about a year and a half... and we're still hearing arguments about it's poor graphics making it a subpar "next-gen" console. I can't help but feel, that in this age of technology, a lot of us have forgotten what REALLY matters when it comes down to a console war. Think back to the good 'ol days of Sega VS Nintendo... their consoles were basically clones as far as hardware was concerned... so the deciding factor in success was? GAMES. Games make or break a console and everything about it, from it's ability to bring life to an otherwise dead get together with friends, to it's longevity... will you still play your console 10+ years from now? Personally, I have made lists of all the games I give a hoot about on each of the big 3 consoles, and Nintendo is leaps and bounds ahead of Sony and Microsoft. The Wii has fun games, and when perfectly spaced out games with indepth storylines. Thanks to No More Heroes you can even get your fill on the bloody adult humor front... I can't even keep up financially with the rate at which awesome games are being released for the Wii. Just bought Mario Kart Wii, and now WiiFit (which at first I had NO interest in, but all the reviews are pretty awesome for it, so now I'm getting interested), and before WiiFit there is Boomblox and then who knows for sure what is in store for us come the 2008 holiday season. I still haven't even gotten to buy No More Heroes or Okami, and just recently started playing through Zack & Wiki and I am fired up about playing catch up on awesome games for the Wii for years to come. Not to mention that it's practically been confirmed that there is another Zelda in the works for the Wii. Do the PS360 fanboys have so much to look forward to? or to go back and replay? They keep saying that the Wii will die soon, or that no one plays it for longer than an hour before getting tired of it... but personally, I couldn't find this any further from the truth. Does anyone else out there think that the only console that stands a chance at outliving the Wii is the PS3 because of it's ability to double as a blu-ray DVD player? I'm the type of guy that still occasionally goes back and plays a good Dreamcast game... and I can definitely see myself enjoying the Wii and it's incredibly fast growing library of games for the next decade or more. ps. please don't flame for typos and crap, these are leisurely blogs that I don't take the time to proof read after typing.

I am tired of big name developers coming out and calling the Wii a "virus" or a "toy"... these developers couldn't be more wrong, and yet right at the same time. The Wii is suriviving off of virus like behavior because it's awesome, and when a friend sees another friend playing it and gets to try it out, they want one... it's that simple, calling it a "virus" is NOT a bad thing like the developer seems to insist. Also, to the Bioware punk that called it a "toy"... aren't all consoles just a glorified toy?? This is another attempt at insulting the Wii that I think doesn't make any difference. The Bioware guy (name escapes me right now) said that he thinks of gaming as being involved in a story line and he claimed the Wii doesn't have any games like that, which is blatantly wrong! Twilight Princess, Metroid Prime 3, Resident Evil 4, etc... to generalize games to such a lame degree is to say that he thinks games are nothing more than interactive movies. WRONG... games are the digital equivalent of new slides for the little viewfinders we played with as kids.

Why can't these bastards just accept that the Wii is what is big right now, and will be for a while... which brings me to my next point of disturbing news. Apparently there are a lot of people worrying about the Wii's future, with a lot of bloggers predicting that the Wii will be dead by 2009... this is idiotic to say the least! The Wii is still selling out and hard to find at the majority of stores... unless you're lucky enough (like myself) to live in a somewhat small town, finding a Wii can be incredibly difficult if you're not willing to pay 500+ for a bundle at some big box type store. The worry, from what I can tell, is from the lack of announce games after May 2008. Nintendo has never failed a holiday season people, relax! We have some big things coming and that fact that we don't know for sure yet, what they are, is an incredibly GREAT thing probably...

These Wii hating developers are obviously just bitter because sales of their games is suffering due to the dominance of the Wii console when it comes to sales. They can't understand why the general public doesn't want to play their beautiful games that look 'real'... and so they seem capable of only throwing out insults, hoping that the Wii fans will hear it and be like "ya know what, he's right, I should sell my Wii and get a PS3 cuz then I can watch Blu-Ray movies"... retards. Good luck having a party with any game other than Rock Band on the other consoles... unless all your friends are hardcore dorks that can have fun just watching you play and trying to tell you what to do.

Another thing, the "hardcore" audience is apparently only interested in blood and gore... so the Wii has nothing to offer them... I guess they don't care for intense puzzle solvers like Zack & Wiki that actually require a little thought once and a while instead of just a fast twitch shot to an opponents head... oh wait, that's right, "fast twitch" moves aren't capable of being done on PS360 cuz you have to pull your analog stick in a direction and wait until your player is finally aiming where you wanted to aim in the first place... WiiMote's aiming ability dominates and finally brings the ability to respond quickly in first person games, granted not many games have taken advantage of this yet.... it is at least an option that the other "better" consoles don't have.

Now don't misunderstand this post... I like Xbox 360, and I have humored the idea of buying a PS3 myself... I'm just tired of development studios that develop only for these consoles throwing insults at the Wii... you don't see any Wii specific developers throwing insults at the other consoles' lack of intuitive controllers and high sales.

I know we all have a rough idea of what to expect from the Wii as far as software goes, and some deep hopes as far as hardware add-ons *cough*mic&hard-drive*cough* ... but I figured I'd write a little detailed "wish-list" so to speak of what I hope is in store for all us Nintendo loyals. 1) It seems really obvious to me that the Wii has the capability to play DVDs... so why not let us watch DVDs on our Wii? Just seems like it would be such a cheap little addition to the Wii's arsenal. 2) Nintendo is going to announce a big title at this years E3 supposedly, one that they say will make casual and "hard-core" gamers equally excited. Right now, everyone seems convinced that it is either Pikmin3 or another Kid Icarus. Personally, I really hope it's something brand spanking new... some new crazy franchise. 3) I'm not that interested in WiiFit... it seems like a silly gimmick to me, but I really want the Wii's success to continue because the longer the Wii stays at the top of sales, the more games we will see, and the more games we see come to the console, the longer the life-span of the console will be. So many games came out for SNES that I can still occasionally grab a game from the pawn shop and have a brand new experience on that console, and I'm looking forward to being able to do the same thing with the Wii years and years from now... so as such, I have to hope for the Wii Balance Board to be successful because 360 and PS3 fanboys will jump on the first tiny chance they get to point out any failure on Nintendo's part. It's bad enough that they have the online gaming thing hanging over our heads right now. 4) Sports & News ticker... wouldn't it be sweet if WiiConnect24 could have the ability to throw a little marquee of text at the bottom of the screen to give you a quick update on your favorite teams game or some major national news while you were already playing a game? Imagine it, you're bored and just killing some time in Mario Galaxy and a little news bar pops up letting you know that the U.S. is pulling all troops out of Iraq.. you'd get to keep playing games, and stay up to date with what's going on in the world at the same time! 5) Everyone has already said it, but I'll say it again... Wii need a hard drive. Let me rephrase that: Wii would greatly appreciate a hard-drive. I don't think it's a necessity, but it would definitely help with a lot of issues... I do have to admit that Nintendo may have incredibly solid logic as to why they haven't given us a hard-drive yet though. PS3 and 360 have both been hacked, and pirated copies of games are incredibly easy to get for their consoles.... the shared trait? a hard-drive. What I don't understand is why they don't just open up the ability of SD cards a bit more for the developers and all that. The idea of being able to put downloadable content onto and SD card and then have the game access the SD card to use the content in-game seems entirely realistic to me. While Harmonix complains that they can't give DLC because of the lack of a hard-drive (bullshat excuse btw, Harmonix are lazy bastards trying to squeeze an extra penny or two out of Rock Band) they should be able to make you register your songs with your Wii's friend code and then download the DLC to your SD card which would then be read by the game.... by registering your downloadable content with your friend code it would stop the songs from being able to be easily transferred to and played on another persons Wii... that should take care of their piracy fears. Is this not a realistic option?? I have a lot more, but this is taking more time than I realized... I guess I'll just sum it up and say that I have a lot of hopes for the Wii, and a tiny fear that Nintendo is already working on another console... and that the Wii's life-span won't be the 4 or 5 years that has become average, before they bring out the next generation of consoles. I said tiny fear... the fact that the Wii's sales are still through the rough is proof enough that I shouldn't worry I suppose...

Alright, I'm hoping to get some opinions from the gaming community. I consider myself an avid gamer, definitely better than your average player but not 'hardcore' by any means. So anyway, let me get to the point:

I was wondering what you guys (if anyone reads the blogs on Gamespot) think are cheap moves or fight styles in Super Smash Bros Brawl. I mean, is this an anything goes type of game, or is there some etiquette we should try to stick to? I ask, because I play as Kirby a lot, and right now I have only lost with him once or twice out of 20 or so matches... and I feel like I'm playing kind of cheap, but at the same... you should use whatever abilities your character has in order to win right?

What I feel is kind of cheap when I play as Kirby is that I do his up special, a lot.... where he flies up with his sword and come flying back down with it. It's not just that I use it profusely, it's that I sort of float above the battle waiting for the right time to strike... after the other 3 players have clobbered themselves a bit. It's sort of a vulture technique, and it works like a charm the majority of the time, but I was just wondering if this is pissing anyone off... since there is no in game communication, I can't really get feedback there. So speak up, voice your opinions, are there are cheap styles that start to annoy you? I like to occasionally play as Samus too, and avoid the crap out of people, launching missiles and plasma at them... this also feels cheap, but it also doesn't work very well and I usually lose, so maybe it's not so cheap.

In my defence, I rarely play Kirby multiple times in a row unless someone is whooping up on me... I try to alternate between different characters, it makes it more fun in my opinion.

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