One of the best new video games on the market requires you to take math tests. During summer break, no less. But before you cue up “Night on Bald Mountain” and run like hell, you really should play Big Brain Academy: Wii Degree. Any “party title” that can hold a…

We’ve all seen Super Mario eat copious amounts of mushrooms, but have you ever considered the care that goes into preparing such delicacies? In Cooking Mama: Cook Off for the Wii, Wolfgang Puck wannabes are thrust into the kitchen — alongside “Mama,” the game’s titular chef — where they’ll chop,…

A video game about birds flying biplanes makes as much sense as a game about fish captaining submarines, but there are far bigger gripes to be found in Wing Island for the Wii. “In a world ruled by birds,” explains the manual’s grim version of the future, Sparrow Wing Jr…

So you’ve beaten Zelda and can hurl a 90 mph fastball in Wii Sports without shattering your 50-inch plasma. Now what? It’s time to explore the rest of the “channels” — some of them included with your Wii, and most free to download. Like cable TV, Nintendo’s offerings range from…

Explaining the appeal of the WarioWare series is like trying to describe a fever dream: It doesn’t make sense unless experienced. Nevertheless, here goes: Mario’s bizarro-universe twin, the greedy Wario, has invented over 200 absurd micro-games in a scheme to get rich and corner the videogame market. Quantity is job…

Despite Link’s green tunic and Peter Pan hat, he remains Nintendo’s most respected badass. In the long-awaited Twilight Princess for the Wii, the elf hero begins yet another quest to save the world with his trademark bombs and boomerangs. Minor déjà vu aside, Twilight Princess becomes nothing short of an…

Nintendo has achieved the impossible: My 50-year-old, non-gaming father wants a Wii for Christmas. Either I’ve been whisked to Bizarro World, or The House That Mario Built is on to something big. With the release of its oddly monikered next-gen system, Nintendo may just have revolutionized the way America will…

Guitar Hero gave party games a much-needed kick in the ass. No one expected this rhythm game — sold with a miniature plastic guitar — to play to sellout crowds. But it became the most addictive game of the year and one of the most attractive to nongamers. The reason…

Few phenomena are as hugely popular and bitterly mocked as the Dance Dance Revolution series. That’s probably because humanity falls into two camps: fleet-footed whiz kids and rhythm-impaired klutzes. This reviewer falls into the latter category, despite having seen Riverdance an unhealthy number of times. For a game that’s mainly…

You’ve seen Bob Ross — the afro-sporting TV artist who painted “happy trees”? Well, if he had redesigned Legend of Zelda, it would look a lot like Okami. That may sound like an unlikely premise, but this is no ordinary game. In Okami, to save the world from an ancient…

What could be more fun than monkeys trapped in plastic hamster balls? That’s the strange philosophy of Super Monkey Ball, a puzzle series that debuted in 2001. Much as with Marble Madness, the goal here is to cross the finish line without falling off a floating platform. Except that this…

For most people, the words “role-playing game” conjure images of sweaty Dungeons & Dragons-obsessed weirdos, wearing cloaks and screaming “Lightning bolt!” at each other. But even non-RPG players gave the genre a try when Final Fantasy VII debuted back in 1997. The beautiful graphics and heart-tugging story made it an…

Native American heroes are a rare commodity in videogames. Turok: Dinosaur Hunter, released a decade ago, is the most prominent example. Now Turok finally has company. The best way to describe Prey is “Doom meets Cherokee mysticism.” And while most critics are fawning over this first-person action/horror title, don’t believe…

If the creepy, self-flagellating albino monk in The Da Vinci Code really wanted to suffer, he’d drop his flesh-shredding cat-o’-nine-tails, pick up a controller, and play The Da Vinci Code videogame. It’s that bad. Now it can be told: The Da Vinci Code game is one of the crappiest, crap-lousy…

If you’ve gazed at a record player and imagined you could scratch as well as the next guy, you’re not alone. Guitars, drums, bass — all these instruments appear to require real skill or at least blisters. But who can’t drop a needle? The problem is, cutting beats and transplanting…

With scrappy warblers like Kellie Pickler and Bucky Covington trying to out-twang each other on American Idol, country music is hotter than a corn dog at a county fair. One reason is that almost anybody can sing it. Even mopes who argue that NASCAR isn’t a real sport have been…

Maybe it’s because we’re hung up on our past more than ever — riding a wave of giddy, nonstop nostalgia and absorbing anything that will help recapture the bliss of the good ol’ days — but Capcom’s Mega Man X Collection feels more fun than ever. The follow-up to last…

Movie-based videogames have a well-deserved reputation for sucking. Ever since Atari’s E.T. — a game so ill-conceived that thousands of unsold cartridges were dumped en masse in the desert, creating the crappiest buried treasure of all time — Hollywood tie-ins have bombed big-time. Peter Jackson’s King Kong: The Official Game…

With a Blade TV show in the works from Spike TV and powder-faced My Chemical Romance fans carrying the goth torch at Hot Topic, this would seem the perfect time to resurrect the Castlevania franchise. Castlevania debuted 20 years ago on the Nintendo Entertainment System and was an instant classic,…

If Hollywood wants to learn from the videogame industry — which outgrossed the box office last year — it should pay careful attention to Shadow of the Colossus, a game with the epic scale of a summer blockbuster but the emotional heart of an indie flick. Shadow is brought to…

We’ve all been kicked in the junk by Marvel superheroes before. Watching Elektra was like two hours of nut-pummeling by a relentless, sac-hating donkey. But superhero films — even bad ones — gross bazillions of dollars. So it’s no surprise that Marvel is cashing in with a slew of licensed…