Bargain Bin Diving!A few days ago I was tipped that Wal-Mart's website was a hot place to shop for games and gaming gear, but I didn't believe it until a few days ago. I visited the site to check out their Games under $20 section, and also got a look at their even cheaper PC Games. Within a few minutes of browsing the site, I decided to purchase two games: Black Mirror and Broken Sword: Sleeping Dragon, both published by the Adventure Company (the premier publisher of graphical adventure games here in the US). I paid $20 for the game and $3.50 or so for shipping. And the package arrived the next day.

Super Mario Bros: Has Mario evolved in leaps and bounds?Game Daily is running a nice 6-page feature on the history of Nintendo's uber-famous Mario character. The article takes us through the various iterations of Mario, from the humble platforming days to sports, driving, and role-playing. However, I was a bit surprised that the author didn't mention the original Mario Bros game. True, it wasn't nearly as well-developed as Super Mario Bros. for the NES, but the original game did have some nice platforming action (I especially liked the two-step process required to blast the turtles) and established many of the gameplay elements of the later games. I had lots of fun with it on my Commodore 64.

Wii: This ain't no GameCube.Well, things are certainly starting to look bright for Nintendo's Wii. GameDaily Biz is reporting that Nintendo's recently promoted president, Reggie Fils-Aime, is promising that Nintendo has learned from its mistakes with the GameCube and will be pursuing a much different strategy for the Wii. Primarily, that means establishing better relations with developers: "We have been sharing information and development tools with publishers since very early on in the process." Seems like a smart move to me, but I'm not sure that bad developer relations was the primary cause of GameCube's disappointing sales. What do you think?