Sin & Punishment was the best Nintendo 64 game you’ve never played.  This statement should probably ring true, especially since the game never made in stateside before its release on the Wii’s Virtual Console a couple years back.

The game was a 3D on-rails shooter in the vein of Star Fox 64 that featured nothing but on-foot action.  Developed by the hardcore gaming veterans at Treasure, responsible for cult hits like Ikaruga and Gunstar Heroes, Sin & Punishment became a cult-hit ..read more

Despite Comic Con being somewhat limited on game preview selection, we were able to get through a demo of the upcoming Spider-Man Shattered Dimensions on the showroom floor. Spidey games typically are hit or miss types of games: the movie tie-ins have been misses, but independent titles have garnered a bit more success. But the underlying problem with the games has been the combat. Button-mashing, button-mashing, swing, and button-mashing. After getting through the Dimensions demo, it looks like that trend ..read more

One liner: Keyboard + plus a six-string = you may be able to play for real now!

By now, after a few years and 250 versions of Guitar Hero, we’ve become somewhat numb to the music game genre. We’ve strummed the fret enough. We’ve smashed the drum pad millions of times. We’ve even strained our voices. Harmonix, on the other hand, hasn’t grown tired of their genre. Instead, they’ve only become more and more excited and SmashPad got to reap the ..read more

Nintendo fans put their heads down in disappointment last year when Nintendo’s E3 2009 Press Conference simply focused on their casual audience of gamers.  The Legend of Zelda was expected to make a timely appearance, but instead, everyone was met with a poster that featured Link and a ghost facing opposite sides.  It wasn’t until a year later that the cat was let out of the bag.

Nintendo opened their much-anticipated conference with footage of Zelda through the years and ending ..read more

This year’s E3 may be the most important since the 2006 E3 before the launch of the PS3 and Wii since we have a number of hardware announcements that will affect these platforms for the next few years. Sony and Microsoft have new motion control peripherals that are seeking to bring a new audience to the PS3 and Xbox 360. Nintendo and Sony have successors to their current handhelds to announce and/or reveal. Then there are the third ..read more

Super Mario Galaxy 2 is the direct sequel to the Wii’s wildly successful 2007 release.  It’s also the first direct sequel to a Super Mario game since Super Mario World 2 on the Super NES, so the expectations of quality for the game are high.

Being a typical Mario game, Super Mario Galaxy 2 doesn’t offer much in terms of story.  The game has you once again play the role of everyone’s favorite red-suited plumber as he makes his way to ..read more

AtlusAtlus has made the interesting move of opening the latest entry in the Trauma Center series to having multiple protagonists to provide more variety to the game. Trauma Team features a cast of six doctors, each in a different field of medicine that offers a different type of experience that sets them apart from each other. The end result is a refreshing sequel that is more grounded in reality so you can more easily care about the story ..read more

After two Trauma Center games on the Wii that focused just on surgery, it was time for the series to open up to multiple fields of medicine to broaden the scope of the game. Trauma Team features the stories of six new doctors that offer quite a lot of variety and content compared to the campaigns in previous Trauma Center games. We got our hands on the game to see if this is a Wii game to keep an ..read more

Since we are not in San Francisco for the big Nintendo Media Summit event that is going on right now, we will at least try to give you a quick summary of all of the news that is coming out of the event so you can better grasp why your spring and summer just got a lot busier.

Let’s start with third party news, shall we?

Capcom’s Monster Hunter Tri will be coming out for the Wii on April 20 ..read more

The Shiren the Wanderer series has been around for 15 years with quite a few ports of the original Super Famicom version to the Nintendo 64, Game Boy, and DS. The latter release from Sega and Chunsoft gave the series new life so that the developers could work on this latest installment in the roguelike series for the Wii. Atlus has certainly done a better job in bringing over Shiren the Wanderer to our shores in better shape ..read more

Street Fighter IV put fighting games back on the map when it was released on current-gen consoles early last year.  The game allowed for veterans to once again relive the glory days while it was also accessible to newer players.  As soon as that game came out, it seemed that every other fighting franchise released pure quality.  Now Capcom has jumped the gun by unleashing Tatsunoko vs. Capcom: Ultimate All-Stars, a game that nobody thought would leave the Land of ..read more

That’s the product shot of Natal sent to press last June.

This is the prototype that showed up in a Taiwanese manufacturing plants, which The Seattle Times snapped some pics of.

Good Lord! That is one frightening piece of technology. It won’t hit store shelves, but I’m jealous that developers have had their own personal Johnny 5 sitting on their desks for the past few months. I want one! That guy’s an ..read more

The Wii has become one of the most memorable gaming experiences around, and with the new Wii Motion Plus accessory the sky is the limit. This addition to the Wii gaming system has some fantastic game titles to go along with it. The Wii Motion Plus accessory is designed to give the ultimate gaming experience by mimicking your movements and allowing your Wii remote to function at a better level. The quickness level of the Wii Motion ..read more

To be honest, we here at SmashPad are not big fans of the whole Game of the Year concept that every site uses when the end of the year arrives. Rather than getting together to discuss and/or argue about what games should or shouldn’t win the many categories we could come up with so we can find a way to give smaller games a shot at winning something, we decided to just highlight our favorite games of the year by ..read more

Everyone’s favorite plumber, Mario, has been out and about for the greater part of two decades now.  This year alone, Nintendo has fallen back on their mascot three times—each with critical acclaim.  The newest entry in the Mario vs. Donkey Kong series is still considered to be the best game available on DSiWare, Mario & Luigi: Bowser’s Inside Story is perhaps the best game in the Mario & Luigi series, and now Nintendo has once again taken Mario to his ..read more

In the middle of last year, Nerf guns became all the rage again for some reason or another.  Some laser tag outlets offered hours where they became Nerf gun battle locations, and everyone from little kids to even college students got involved with the foamy fun.  It wouldn’t be long before EA got involved with the fun with a game for the Wii by the name of Nerf N-Strike, and much to everyone’s surprise, the game was actually pretty solid, ..read more

Remember those rainy days where you’d stay home and play board games with your family?  … Yeah, neither do we.  But the fact of the matter is board games still hold some sentimental value, even though sales have dropped drastically over the years—mostly due to the fact that they cost at about $30 a pop.  EA Play is taking advantage of this situation by releasing a compilation of games that are actually updates to American favorites, and if you can ..read more