Mercury Meltdown Revolution (MMR) is a great little game for Wii that's available at a budget price. Think of it as a cross between Marble Madness and Monkey Ball. While garbage like Boogie and licensed dreck sell like hotcakes, games like MMR go unnoticed and unappreciated. You can help remedy that by snagging yourself a copy of MMR for the low price of $19.99 from Buy.com.

If you use Google Checkout as a first-time customer, you get $10 off. So with that discount, my copy of MMR came to just under $15 shipped - plus it arrived only 2 days later. You can't beat a deal like that, so check it out.

So on Friday, I read an article here at Gamespot detailing Sony's latest PS3 ad campaign. There's nothing remarkable about it, though it is a pretty cool commercial (see commercial here). I posted this seemingly innocuous comment to the story:

"I just saw this commercial on TV the other day. Cool ad, but the next console I buy will probably be a 360. It's got more "must-have" games at the moment than the PS3, particularly with Mass Effect set to be released any day now. I'll get a PS3 when they're cheaper and there are more killer apps out there for it.

Anyway, why is this ad campaign worthy of a news article? I see nothing noteworthy about it. This article reads a whole lot like free advertising for Sony."

However, some overzealous Sony fanboy apparently took exception to my post, and it was marked as a troll and deleted. Seems a bit harsh, doesn't it? Nothing I said in my post was untrue, and if Gamespot is going to start running advertising masked as legit articles...oh wait, they already do that (e.g. the video card "reviews" that pop up every so often).

Any Wii owners want to swap friend codes? My code is 4033 0064 1607 2333.

If you add me, let me know so I can add you as well.

Gamestop has the GBA Micro on sale for $50. Nice deal if you never picked one up. The battery life is a bit short (3 hours or so) and the screen is on the small size, but the sharpness/brightness of the screen is awesome and you can't beat the extreme portability. And the GBA has a massive catalog of great games. It ain't a dead platform yet....

http://www.gamestop.com/productmerch.asp?groupid=721

You might be wondering, "Why would I buy a GBA Micro when I already own a DS/GBASP?" Well, you'd buy one if you were a gadget/Nintendo junkie like me...or if you simply wanted a portable gaming device that's so small it can fit in your shirt pocket. Plus, I hate playing GBA games on my DS. Somehow it just doesn't feel right. I always bust out the GBASP with the new brighter screen when I want to play some GBA. The only downside to the Micro? It won't play legacy Game Boy games like the GBASP will.

I'm not sure why the Micro was such a flop for Nintendo, but it's obvious that it wasn't nearly as successful as they would have hoped. The main reason may be that the big N oversaturated their own market. There just wasn't enough demand for yet another version of the GBA, especially when the DS would play GBA games as well. Also, I think they marketed it badly - they stuck the thing in a really juvenile looking package and made it look like a toy in the US. If they were trying to appeal to the iPod crowd, they needed to stick it in a slick looking little box - which is exactly what they did in Japan (I imported a solid black Micro from Japan). Why they chose to go a different route in the US, I'm not sure.

It's a bummer the Micro never took off, though. I was looking forward to a lot of support for the thing in the way of new faceplates, but that never happened. It was obvious the Micro was a flop just a few months after release, when Nintendo refused to announce or comment on any new faceplates or other accessories. Oh well. Anyone know if any third-party companies ever released some cool faceplates? I passed on the FFIV box set that came with a Micro faceplate...kinda regretting that now.

Here's a link to an awesome CG movie that can be described only as "WWII meets giant robots". Check it out.

http://www.dailymotion.com/us/featured/video/x1qw98_codeguardian

It was created by a guy named Marco Spitoni. He's very well-known in 3D animation circles, mostly due to a short Star Wars fan film he did years ago called Join the Empire, which was a propaganda film of sorts for the Empire. It looks a little dated these days but it's still an awesome flick. You can download Join the Empire from his website, located here:

http://www.cee-gee.net/

Check this out....

http://www.gametrailers.com/umwatcher.php?id=57998

Awesome movie, even if the author did use Samus' clunky old suit from Super Smash Bros. Melee. Seeing Samus in her zero suit though, lightsaber-gun and all, should help tide you over til Smash Bros. Brawl comes out. Nice twist at the end as well.