mario

Mario Kart Wii with Wii Wheel
$49.99
I played this game at my friends house, and it was fun for a while. As you play you unlock carts and characters. This game is fun until you unlock everything. Then it just gets boring and loses its craze. Steering with the wii wheel is fairly fun, just not all that enthralling. To compare with all the other mario kart games, I'd say that this one is okay, but I still think it's the worst. Nintendo just keeps recreating its games on it's newer systems, but they just keep getting worse. The originals were the best.

New Super Mario Bros.
$34.99
I must be the only parent on earth who has never played these games. My son grew up on them (he's now 16) and has always beat them. Me? I'm STILL in World 1 level 5 and cannot get through it and have played it all week! I know..I know....it's pathetic.. My hand and eye coordination is truly lacking! I jump when I should dash, I dash when I should jump, I jump farther than I should, or not far enough, jump at the wrong time (timing is very important in this game)...I'm so bad. I've had to get my son to figure out where to go/what to do to move to a different spot when I'm seemingly stranded. He can do it in 2 minutes flat. I think I'm just too old for this game. ;)

The graphics are AMAZING! The giant mushrooms are so much fun and beautiful!....even though I die every time. The spinning tops are a blast! That was one place I was stranded.... on a mushroom and couldn't figure out where to go and my son got me through it in minutes. I'm bad...oh so bad at this game, but if you're a Mario fan, you will probably love it.

I bought my DS Lite to do puzzle games and decided I'd get one Mario game to play. They always "looked" like so much fun. It IS fun, but very frustrating for a novice video game player. I beat Diabolical box in a few days..and 7 Wonders of the World in 2 days.....Mario? I'll NEVER beat this game. I already know that. There's no way I will ever go through the 8 worlds and 8 different levels in each world. I am guessing that each World and their levels get harder and harder....if that's the case, I'm DOOMED!

If you're new to Mario games and know nothing about them, you will be challenged by this...no doubt about it. Just be prepared to be extremely frustrated (I am) and if you're on blood pressure medicine....keep it close by. :) Though I refuse to give up just yet! I am that stubborn. I'll keep on trying and hopefully won't throw my beloved DS Lite against a wall. LOL! (I would never do that ;))

Mario & Luigi Bowser's Inside Story
$34.99
Not much more to say that hasn't already been said. Easily one of, if not the, best games for the DS. Fun, very playable, good story. Worth every penny paid, even at "just came out" prices.

My only gripes are minor: It felt a tad short, though maybe I was just hungry for more. Some people feel that maybe Bower's gone a bit soft, and doesn't hold much clout as a bad guy. Then again, the Mushroom Kingdom isn't exactly a dismal wasteland with heinous villains, so it's really not so bad.

How can you go wrong in a game where you get to command a giant dragon turtle as he fights buildings? You can't. Must-buy.

Super Mario Galaxy
$49.99
In terms of gameplay, graphics, originality, etc, this beats out any of the past Mario games. The graphics blew me away. It really looks like a high-quality cartoon rather than a game. The movement with the Wii remote and nunchuk feels oddly natural even after decades of playing Mario games with the classic video game controller. I also think it's pretty cool how Mario can literally run around small planets in true 3-D mode. I haven't seen another game quite like it.

Unfortunately, the game is simply too long to really rank as fun. The game designers seem to have fallen into the classic trap of believing that gamers actually care about the story. We don't. We want action and to kill bad guys. However, in Mario Galaxy, it is impossible to skip the cutscenes (which are long and many). In terms of the dialogue and cutscenes, this almost feels like a Zelda-style RPG rather than a Mario game. I played for over an hour and only saw a few Goombas and one boss (a giant piranha plant). If I could at least have avoided the cutscenes, I probably could have gotten much further in the game for that time I played. I'm just too busy right now to beat a game that will probably take days, if not weeks, to beat. That's too bad, because Mario Galaxy had the potential to be the best mario game since Mario 64.