In case you missed Part 1.

3. Tales of Monkey Island (Wii – Summer) The Secret of Monkey Island remake (Xbox 360 – July)

While these two titles are completely independent, they were announced within a day of each other and are both primed to hit this summer. My cousin Jason said it best. “We’ve had a decade plus of nothing Monkey Island and then suddenly Guybrush Threepwood is back with a vengeance“. Like him, I think my brain is going to explode.

The Monkey Island games hold a spot on that lofty perch that I reserve for my most beloved game play experiences. Mario, Zelda and Metroid sit up there too, but not many more. This is elite company for sure and it’s a testament to the talent employed by LucasArts in the early-to-mid 90s that these titles linger long in memory. I understand why the art form died, (once 3D gaming came along, there wasn’t much call for 2D point-and-click adventures) but it’s a shame that the caliber of storytelling and puzzle construction also seemed to go softly into the night.

For my money, there’s nothing better than tearing your hair out all night over a killer brain teaser only to finally hit that Eureka moment and have the solution click into place. It’s a wonderfully euphoric sensation that the LucasArts games mastered. LucasArts also went one step further than their prime competitor Sierra by making their games open-ended enough that there was no way you could completely fail out. In the Sierra games, a wrong step could lead to death and sometimes, a complete end to the game. If you didn’t have a back-up save, you were done. With the LucasArts games, you might run around stuck for ages but you would never do something that couldn’t be undone. The fact that they carefully populated their crazy worlds with numerous in-jokes, references and colorful characters also meant that you were always entertained as you ran through an entire gamut of trial-and-error solutions.

This summer, Guybrush and the zombie pirate LeChuck, return with a vengeance. First up is the Xbox 360 high-def remake of the original The Secret of Monkey Island. I recall playing this game in all its pixilated glory on some archaic IBM Desktop sometime around 1991 and know for a fact that I never solved the title. This was in the days before Game FAQS, meaning if you hit a brick wall and didn’t have a friend who had surmounted the challenge, you were stuck forever. For the remake, the original game has been improved with a lush hand-drawn look. A click of the button will call up the original code but aside from a good laugh, I’m sticking with the pretty pictures. Also, I’m making it my mission to play this from Start to Finish without consulting a strategy guide or FAQ doc.

Over on the Wii (and PC), the masters at Telltale Games are releasing a brand new episodic series chronicling the Tales of Monkey Island. Telltale is made up of LucasArts refugees who have worked tirelessly over the past few years to resurrect this lost art form. To date, they’ve built episodic adventure games set in the Sam & Max, Strongbad and Wallace & Gromit universes. Their Holy Grail is this newfound alliance with LucasArts – who has given them the blessing to appease a hungry fan base and begin telling some new tales.

The series kicks off in July and I’ve got my Wii Points ready to burn.

2. New Super Mario Brothers Wii (Wii – November 2nd)

As I write this, I find myself in a bit of a funk. It seems to be an annual event that usually nails me in the late innings of winter but for some reason decided to whack me just as the summer air comes blowing in.

On the professional front, I’ve been flat out busy, feverishly working to decouple myself from my responsibilities as my end of days approaches and then on the home front, I have the assortment of familial and home improvement responsibilities to attend to as well as the urgent need to secure gainful reemployment. What I’ve found is that beyond those important tasks, I can’t really focus on anything too complex. Hell, sitting down to write this article brought on a nasty (yet temporary) spell of Writer’s Block. Right now, I desire to “keep it simple stupid.”

Which is why, when some of the gaming press sniffed at New Super Mario Brothers Wii as their big holiday release, I grinned and desperately wanted that game now. Running from Left to Right and jumping on turtle heads seems right up my alley all of a sudden.

And that got me in a nostalgic frame of mind. With everything I’ve got going, trying to dive into a behemoth like Fallout 3 seems like so much work. Gaming is both my hobby and my relaxation. It’s what I do for fun and as a tension release when my day ends, and Nintendo has seemingly always possessed that magic to take simple game concepts and divine core entertainment from them. There is a reason why their titles are indelible and remain fun to play decades after their original release. I can’t even look at the original Resident Evil without feeling my eyes bleed yet I find Super Mario Brothers 3 to be a work of art – and that title is approaching its 20th anniversary.

New Super Mario Brothers Wii solidifies the reason why I own a Wii. Not only was my purchase made to entertain the family and allow us to share that great bonding experience – I also bought a Wii for those times when I need a respite from the run-n-gun hysteria of the 360. Now, I’m a dude, which means that I feel the bloodlust just as strongly as my fellow man, but sometimes you just want to slow things down to their core element and remind yourself why you play these diversions in the first place – to unplug from reality and have fun.