Ninja Gaiden 2
Team Ninja | Xbox 360 | Brutal Ninja Action
One of my absolute favorite games of last gen was Ninja Gaiden. There was just something amazing about the absolutely brutal and unrelenting difficulty mixed with a freakin' ninja doing really awesome ninja things. The best thing about the difficulty was that if you understood the game and didn't get cocky, you could handle it. But if you decided to just run into ninjas all willy-nilly without a care in the world, then you were screwed.

I've heard that Ninja Gaiden 2 isn't near as hard as the first one, but it seems like history is bound to repeat itself. From Parish's Retro Roundup review of Ninja Gaiden 2 for NES: "That's like saying cancer of the liver is slightly less fatal than cancer of the pancreas".

Summon Night Twin Age
Atlus USA| Nintendo DS | Action RPG
The Summon Night series first made its way over to the States in the form of Summon Night: Swordcraft Story 1 & 2, garnering fairly good reviews -- mid-80s/B range -- but you know how Atlus releases are. Anyway, it seems like they've gotten rid of random battles, which is good, because I'm personally getting tired of them. And it's always about me. Me me me me me.

Lego Indiana Jones
Traveler's Tales | Everything Ever | Fun kiddy action
So Traveler's Tales, you've just made three successful titles combining two of the world's greatest franchises, LEGOs and Star Wars. What are you going to do now? What's that? You're going to take another LucasArts franchise and do the exact same thing? What a terrific idea! Just promise me you'll include the line "No time for love, Dr. Jones!".

What? You don't have dialog in your games? Awwww. Failure. :(

The Bourne Conspiracy
Sierra | Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 | Cinematic Action
Do you like the Bourne movies? How about Quick Time Events? How about A LOT of Quick Time Events? If you answered yes to all of these questions, then have I got the perfect game for you!

Kung Fu Panda
Activision | Everything | Fat Panda Learns Martial Arts
"Fat Panda Learns Martial Arts" sounds like it could be one of the best YouTube videos ever. As a full-length movie and multimedia extravaganza, we're less optimistic. For now, we'll settle for this video instead.

As for the game aspect of said multimedia extravaganza, I expect this game to sell assloads regardless of the quality.

XBLA: Aces of the Galaxy
Sierra Online | Xbox 360 | Spaceships fighting in spaaaace
A space shooter on rails for two players. Think StarFox or Panzer Dragoon, more or less. Aaaaaand there's not much information about this one. Guess you'll have to wait for the demo!

XBLA: RooGoo
SouthPeak Interactive | Xbox 360 | Arcade puzzle
Guide meteor chunks through variously shaped holes in several layers of floating discs to save your planet. Yeah, really. I wish they'd stop trying to formulate rationales for puzzle games. I didn't need a plot when I was a preschooler putting differently-shaped pegs in their corresponding holes and I damn well don't need one now.

XBLA: Warlords
Atari | Xbox 360 | Arcade ball-bouncing thing
"Four-player competitive Breakout" sounds interesting as a premise, but it's surprisingly lame in the form of Warlords. I guess maybe this game was popular in the '80s, but I hated it when I played it in some Atari compilation, and I doubt I'll like this version more even though it has the typically slick XBLA neon update of the old-style graphics. [Editor's note: This writer is insane and has been taken out back and beaten. Warlords is awesome, and this should be pretty good, too, even without a paddle controller.]

XBLA: Buku Sudoku
Microsoft | Xbox 360 | Number puzzle
Banana fana fudoku. Mi my mo mutsu. I can't stand any kind of Sudoku. But if filling out numbers on a grid is your thing, then this is your lucky week!

WiiWare: Protothea
Ubisoft| Wii | Space shooter
Finally, a vertical-scrolling shooter on the Wii that wasn't on the TG-16 first! Happy day!

WiiWare: Toki Tori
Two Tribes | Wii | Platform puzzler
Parish has used his message board bully pulpit to threaten violence against anyone who doesn't buy this game, so that's a good reason right there. But as a bonus it also looks pretty fun! You're a chicken trying to save a bunch of eggs with the help of a limited set of tools. It was out on the Game Boy Color back when; this version looks a lot prettier.

Wii VC: Ninja Combat
SNK | Neo Geo via Wii | Er, ninja combat
Side-scrolling 2.5-D brawler. Probably really cool when the Neo Geo was in arcades, but damn if I can think of a reason to spend $9 on it now...especially since it'll probably show up on SNK Arcade Classics Vol. 2 with 15 other games for $15 total. Yes, that will make that version 1/10 the cost of this one. So hold out.

PSN: Fatal Intertia
Koei | PS3 | Racing, but in the future
From Xbox 360 release to PS3 download; such is the trajectory of Fatal Inertia. It's a futuristic racer along the lines of F-Zero, WipEout or Quantum Redshift. Looks pretty snazzy, actually, and apparently this version sucks less than the original.