Late last week, Nintendo released its latest round of sales figures. While touting the continued dominance of the Nintendo DS as the most successful video game handheld to date (all four iterations have moved a total of more than 125 million units), they took time to underscore a fairly significant milestone. The Nintendo Wii has officially eclipsed the original Nintendo Entertainment System by selling 67 million units, as opposed to 61 million for the NES, arguably resurrecting video gaming as a legitimate entertainment form since Nintendo first rolled their Trojan Horse up to our doorsteps in the mid-1980s.

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Previously on Lost…

Season 2

With a Surprise in Every Box – Episode 2.1 Man of Science, Man of Faith

One thing the Lost creators know how to do is open a season properly. Where the first season stumbled a bit at the finish (sure they popped the hatch but what the hell is in it?), Lost didn’t waste time when Season 2 started up. In a move that would become a signature moment for the series at the onset of each new year, they dropped us in strange environs with a character we’ve never seen before – throwing off our bearings as we seek to re-establish contact with the show after a long summer siesta.

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Yes, I know this is a gaming site, but darn it – this slab of real estate is my personal Blog and I’ll write if I want to. As a Dad to two young kids, I find that by the end of each day, I prefer to settle down with a video game to soothe the stresses away. I’d much rather indulge in this hobby than mindlessly channel surf.

That being said, there have been a handful of television programs that have grabbed my peepers and instantly become appointment viewing. Lost is just the latest and while it certainly has its detractors, I think it’s a fun mish-mash of high adventure, sci-fi, character drama and conspiracy thriller. It’s entertainment and it knows it – and I love pouring over the various mysteries.

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Just the other night, I watched the fifth-season finale of “Lost,” in anticipation of next week’s final-season premiere. As I re-watched pivotal scenes pregnant with all kinds of possibilities inherent to the true nature of the island, I came to a quick realization. I have a good idea what’s going down now, but my theories are completely contrary to what I thought was doing way back when.

Using this as a springboard, I then turned my powers of prognostication to the gaming frontier in hopes that some fears I currently harbor will eventually be countered. That said, where “Lost” is an entertainment obsession that is free to rewrite its own rules as the story dictates, my real-world concerns are less malleable. Especially when tackling a rock-solid monolith like Microsoft and some recent, troubling developments in their online space.

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Last week I sat down to survey the landscape of games due to arrive in 2010 and made my selections for the ones that I would step over women, children and grandmothers to play. These are the games worth quitting your day job, shutting out the real world and skipping bills and sustenance to spend just five more minutes enjoying. At least, that’s the fond hope we harbor.

After all, we all make these lists early in the year, and while some games match their hype, there are so many that fall woefully short.

So, for this piece I decided to temper my expectations and pick a game that I long to play this year, but I have a sneaking suspicion is just going to royally disappoint me.

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Publisher: Valcon Games
Developer: Eiconic Games
Genre: Puzzle
Release date: Available now

Just a few days ago, as I was perusing the massive backlog of games that I have downloaded from the Xbox Live Marketplace, I was struck by a thought. The XBL Arcade has really blossomed dramatically from its humble beginnings on the original Xbox. Gone are the days when you simply popped in for a spell to give yourself a nostalgic kick with a round or two of Ms. Pac-Man. The Marketplace, and other digital distribution streams, has become a great arena for smaller-market developers to shill their wares and offer players new twists on a variety of gameplay concepts, giving us a reason to look forward to each Wednesday, when Microsoft unveils the latest attractions. While the puzzle genre is well represented, there’s always room for a new twist, which is what developer Eiconic Games offers in their latest release, Polar Panic.

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Publisher: CDV Software Entertainment
Developer: Larian Studios
Genre: RPG
Release date: Available now

Japanese developers once set the rules for console role-playing games, but the video-game industry has seen a seismic shift towards Western-developed titles during the past decade, shaped in no small part by the massive success of games such as Oblivion, Mass Effect and the recently released Dragon Age: Origins. This has set the bar high for other developers looking to garner experience points with gamers eager to turn over a few hundred hours of their lives to the latest fantasy. It’s a gambit that Larian, developer of the formerly PC-centric Divinity series, finds itself confronting with the Xbox 360 release of Divinity II: Ego Draconis.

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Sometime early last year, I cobbled together a list of my most anticipated games of the year. And as we’re often prone to do, as the year wound on, and new and exciting enchantments were revealed, that list changed numerous times. E3 will do that to you.

So, despite the fact that I fully intend to provide you with my picks for the top handful of games that I’ve just got to play in 2010, please don’t hold me to it. Something is bound to give at some point. Either that, or a whole helping heaping of them could simply be jettisoned to 2011 – which is what we saw last Fall when seemingly every publisher used Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 as a reason to turn turtle, as if this were an industry where gamers only pledge allegiance to one title. I’m sure a few FPS boogied out of that release window to avoid sales comparisons with the juggernaut but how does that excuse some of the third person action games? Do I detect the cloaked need for additional development time? Oh well, if the end product ends up justifying the means, then by all means, run and hide. I’ll just have to add you to next year’s list.

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As I write this, mere days removed from Christmas, I look ahead to the bounty of games that Santa packed in that sack while looking back upon the year that was. And this year provided especially fertile ground for my personal picking, as it was the year in which I augmented my Wii60 household with one more shiny bauble; the PS3 finally descended to a price point that I could manage without listing yet another kidney on eBay. With Sony’s new slim sweetness nestled in my home entertainment center, the Holy Trinity was complete, allowing me to genuflect before the God of War for granting me the opportunity to finally guide Drake towards his fortune while scoping out a Littlebigplanet of my own.

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Publisher: Oxygen Games
Developer: GameInvest
Genre: Sim
Release Date: Available now

Handheld systems have long been the perfect remedy for whiling away a long wait – whether it be in those Black Friday lines as we chase down the last copy of New Super Mario Bros., or at our local health clinic as we look to procure that life-saving substance that will ward off this season’s media emboldened Big Bad – the H1N1 virus. What better way to kill the hours spent suffering through an interminable hospital wait than by guiding ourselves through a virtual medical drama – the salve that the game designers at GameInvest have concocted in their latest release, Hysteria Hospital: Emergency Ward.

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Publisher: Activision
Developer: Now Production
Genre: Fighting/Brawler
Release date: Available now

As a 37-year old dude, I pride myself on my ability to stay hip to what the kids are playing these days. While some of that may come from the fact that I’m a parent, I also stay up-to-date on all the latest fads simply out of pure interest and curiosity. No matter how old I get, that boy in me who first geeked out over collectible Star Wars cards knows that “Force” will never die. That said, I admit that when my son first threw down a Bakugan on a Gate Card, he had his old man stumped. Would this new collectible critter craze be the one straw that broke this camel’s back? Alas, I’ve rolled with the best of them, racking up scads of G-Power cards so when Activision decided to take the Bakugan Battle Brawlers into the digital realm, I was ready to enter the ring.

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Having seen the snow fly once this season, I harbor one painful truth; this football season is flying by way too swiftly. Once the white stuff starts to pile up, it’s just a matter of moments before the Super Bowl shuffle starts and then we’re knee-deep in the February mire. Alas, I’m likely getting ahead of myself as there is still plenty more football to be enjoyed between now and early ’10 and despite the fact that my beloved New England Patriots had to sit out this past week on a bye, there was some hot gridiron action going on as EA and Gamestop partnered up for the “Battle of the Gridiron” Tournament grand finale in Phoenix Arizona.

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Publisher: THQ
Developer: Blue Tongue Entertainment
Genre: Action
Release date: Available now

Superheroes are big business these days. With most summer multiplexes reading like a Who’s Who in the Marvel Universe, it’s no surprise that the console market has seen a steadily increasing line of licensed properties looking to take their tights and flights to the digital domain. And while the developers can simply slap Woverine’s mug on a box and anxiously await their coffers to fill, there’s a genuine desire to mint a new generation of fervent fanboys. That’s where THQ and Blue Tongue come in, with their latest release Marvel Superhero Squad taking aim at the pre-tween set as they leave their Baby Einstein behind and graduate to big boy fare.

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Publisher: Frontier
Developer: Frontier
Genre: Puzzle-Platformer
Release date: Available now

Roughly halfway through this current generation of consoles, I can safely say that I have mined more entertainment and unique gameplay experiences from the bite-sized morsels available on the various digital distribution streams (such as WiiWare, XBLA and PSN) than I have from the mega-budget retail releases. Looking back over the last few years, my end-of-year Top Ten lists have skewed heavily towards the independent developers, with games such as Braid and World of Goo standing taller than their supposed big brothers. There just seems to be an air of creativity at the grass roots level that diminishes the higher you climb in the stratosphere, and while I’ll happily tackle the next GTA or Halo clone, my juices really start flowing when I’m adventuring through another finely crafted puzzle game. This digital revolution kicked off around the time the WiiWare service launched, featuring its greatest showcase title, LostWinds. Developer Frontier has toiled tirelessly for the last two and half years to finally offer fans their long awaited follow-up, Winter of the Melodias.

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Publisher: Tecmo
Developer: Seamless Entertainment
Genre: Sports
Release date: Available now

When EA infamously locked up exclusive rights to the NFL, thereby firing a shot directly to the midsection of all competitors, they effectively blocked everyone from producing a game of professional football with any chance of retail survival. Without the teams and player likenesses that come with those coveted licenses, there really is no point as the industry is long past the days of Ten Yard Fight where we’d simply marvel at the ability to play the sport on our TV screens. These days we want to get into the game and ink the big contracts. That said, if there is one company out there with a trump card, it’s Tecmo, whose classic Tecmo Bowl lives long and strong in gamers’ memories, having heralded them through the Golden Age of the NES. While the dream of a next-gen Tecmo Bowl remains a fond wish, Tecmo has once again thrown on the pads with their latest release, Family Fun Football, and all eyes are upon it to see if it provides enough of a nostalgic kick to warrant grabbing another brand of pigskin.

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