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Good news for the five gamers out there who still haven’t picked up a Wii. Gamestop’s VP of marketing Bob McKenzie claims that everyone’s favorite secondhand game retailer finally has enough Wiis in stock to keep up with demand. While this is no doubt good news for the hordes of casual gamers still being swept up by the Wii juggernaut, for hardcore gamers this sudden abundance of stock after only three years on the market isn’t likely to dull the pain of camping out in front of every electronics retailer within 100 miles for several weekends in a row for a crack at the new Mario Kart.

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Calling this post Virtual Console Releases is a bit of a misnomer this week since we’re just getting one retro game from the big N: Castlevania III: Dracula’s Curse.  We’ve had to wait two months longer than our European friends, who got the game last Halloween, but that’s nothing compared to the two-year wait they originally had to endure for the game back in the early 90s.

Dracula’s Curse was the last Castlevania game to be released for the Famicom/NES system, and as such it really shows its age.  The game abandons the adventure gaming elements of Castlevania II: Simon’s Quest and returns to the strict platforming of the original Castlevania game.  Several new characters who would later be woven into a backstory almost as convoluted as the most ambition Sonic/Tails/Knuckles slash fanfiction are introduced as well as a non-linear story that gives the player a certain degree of control over their journey through the game’s fifteen stages.

Castlevania III: Dracula’s Curse is an interesting footnote in the development of the series, but at its heart the game is still just another NES rendition of a series that wouldn’t reach perfection until Symphony of the Night in 1997.  If you’re a die-hard Castlevania fan then this is a no-brainer.  Otherwise you can safely give the dated graphics and gameplay on display in this once-great game a pass.

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I’ve had my eye on the copy of Ogre Battle: The March of the Black Queen at the local used game store for over half a decade.  The series, and the SNES game that launched it in particular, is almost universally regarded as one of the best tactical strategy roleplaying games ever created.  Those reviews are like a siren song for a man who will spend hundreds of hours leveling and crafting the perfect party in any strategy RPG he comes across.  Unfortunately the rather steep pricetag, well over $100 for an SNES cart, has always been enough to break the spell.

Today brings both good news and bad news for gamers who never got a chance to play this classic when it came out and who couldn’t bring themselves to spend the ridiculous amounts of money required for the SNES cart.  The good news is that the ESRB has officially rated Ogre Battle: The March of the Black Queen for release on the Virtual Console, meaning that it will finally get a cheap re-release.  The bad news is that Nintendo’s Virtual Console is where Square sends franchises to die.

Perhaps there will be enough of a show of support for Ogre Battle that Square might reconsider and decide to re-make one of their more quirky and interesting old titles rather than blessing us with Final Fantasy remakes and re-releases ad-nauseum, but don’t hold out too much hope.

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Heading down to my mother’s house for Christmas Eve to see the tree and have a few eggnogs, our conversation happened to turn to video games. This wasn’t my doing, of course. She had made a remark about how while doing her Christmas shopping she had seen just a massive pile of guitar peripherals on the floor, marked down from $50 to $20 for the holiday.

From there, she mentioned something that took me by surprise. “So, those Wii Fit things are something, huh? I think I might pick one of those up for myself.”

I know that Nintendo sold over 2 million Wiis in November, and I know that more have been sold in total than Canada has people. But I never stopped to think about how genius Nintendo really is. This generation isn’t a competition between Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo — it’s a competition between Sony and Microsoft, and Nintendo is catering to a completely different audience. If there is some overflow into the mainstream gamer culture, well — more money for Nintendo.

So Nintendo has an entire generation where they are relatively free of competition, and I may very well be going head to head against my mother in Wii Bowling or Skate It.

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