If you already have the other two consoles, then the Wii is a nice complement. I'll admit that my Wii does not get as much love as my 360, but there are still some great games that are different than what you would play on the other systems. I just started playing Super Mario Galaxy, and this may just be the best 3D platformer ever made. If I am having a lazy day playing games, I will usually play a game for a couple of hours before I burn out, and have to play another game or go do something else. I played Mario Galaxy for somewhere around 9 hours on Sunday (with a couple of breaks of course).

That game aside, there are plenty of others that people have mentioned above. There are a few games that are a blast to play with friends and and can bring in your more casual friends if you buy at least one extra controller.

I guess you will already know whether the Virtual Console is for you or not.

Ah, of course I meant heart attack, not heat attack!

There are a number of responses that seem to think this is actually real... that's scary

As a video store owner, my perception is that piracy is nowhere near as rampant in gaming as it is in movies (at least this generation). One of the major differences would be because of theatrical windows. Movies are often pirated and distributed before they have domestic DVD release. People want to watch the film in their home but not the cinema, and may be willing tolegally pay for it if it is available, but don't want to wait. In contrast, games get finished, then shipped. There is no gap.

This generation, online is a bigger factor, and the console makers are trying to curb piracy via online monitoring. I haven't come across any pirate games this generation, though I know they are out there.

I would also contest the 'pirates weren't going to buy your game anyway', at least to some degree. In a Utopian world if piracy suddenly became impossible, does that mean those people will give up gaming altogether because they don't want to pay? I doubt it. Sure, not all of them would buy all the games they would have otherwise pirated. If developers/publishers picked up 1 in 10 sales for each pirate copy, that would still be substantial extra dollars in their pocket.

While I appreicate the methods being taken to verify online that you have a legitimate copy of the game, problems have already been identified in the likes of the soapbox and forums. When I buy a game, I want to own it forever. The potential lack of being able to sell it 2nd hand, or even playing it at all if the company disappears, scares me a little. I guess the publishers have taken these negatives on board, and decided that potential stemming of losses from piracy (even if temporary) outweigh sales they might lose from legitimate customers not liking such side effects.

Piracy IS affecting game developers, but I don't think anywhere near the impact it is having on the movie industry... at least for now. Whatever the level of piracy, it doesn't change the fact that it is immoral and illegal.

I don't agree with Legend of Zelda. I played it for the first time a couple of months back. I got about halfway through before I could no longer be bothered. It's not that the game was bad, and I certainly appreciate that at its time it was revolutionary. It's still a good game, just not compelling enough for me to complete. This is coming from someone who is looking at the game fresh, not through nostalgia-tinted glasses.

I'm currently playing Legend of Zelda : A Link To The Past, which is fantastic; it takes thecore gameplay from Legend of Zelda and improves on it in just about every way. So I would nominate that.

I'd like to see a monthly video recap for each system.

I'd suggest including 30 seconds of footage (perhaps a montage of 3 10-second clips for diversity's sake) for each game released that month, with a voice over giving a summary of the game review, and it's final review score. You could also cover any news about the console (or PC) such as features added via updates, any noteworthy downloadable content, and new accessories (like Wii Zapper or PC graphics cards). I'd suggest a length of about 15 minutes for each platform (available as seperate downloads for each platform).

I don't know if it's quite feature worthy, but I'd be interestedto hear aboutstrange rules or game modes that people force upon themselves. I remember Rich Gallup saying on 'On The Spot' that he played head-tp-head Forza 2, and the player in the lead was not allowed to use brakes. As I said, I don't know if this is feature worthy, but some vids of strange stuff like this could be entertaining.

Earlier in the year I made a large list of games from previous generations I want to check out. But I've got plenty of great or at least solid Xbox 360 and Wii games to play that I have hardly looked at the list. There may be few truly innovative or revolutionary games these days(Portal stands out for me), but there are certainly refinements to aspects of gaming along the way. Gears of War was hardly innovative, and it wasn't the first game to have a cover mechanic, but everything was so refined that it was an absolute blast to play. Regenerating health in 1st/3rd person shooters has been around for a few years now, but that was a nice refinement to what was often tedious health-pack hunting. In Forza 2 I race around tracks the same as I did in Indianopolis 500 on my Amiga, except the experience has been refined with physics, intricate car control and better AI.

The innovative games are out there. They are just often overlooked, or perhaps because they are unproven ideas, don't get the green light and never get developed in the first place. Also remember, games can be innovative as hell... but that doesn't matter if they aren't fun to play.