This is a direct response to the article on Why Mario Should Retire, and why that article is ridiculous, way off point and incredibly premature.

First off, what place does MSN have in the say on whether or not the Nintendo icon should retire? I don’t care what you say or if this disclaimer is at the end of the article:

“Patrick Goss is employed on a freelance basis by Microsoft. The views in this column are those of the author and not of MSN or Microsoft.”

Any commentary from Microsoft on Nintendo is like Fox News commenting on Obama. If 1up.com or ign.com were to write this article I would take it more seriously, probably not agree, but would see the article as objective and a real talking point, but I can’t get past the fact that this article is coming from msn.com.

Reason #1 - Mario is like wine; it matures over time

The mario games are timeless. In the last week I have had a classic gaming urge reinvigorated. What game did I go to first? Super Mario Brothers on the NES. The game is 20+ years old and it is just as fun as it was when I first made the run through World 1-1. About a year ago when Super Mario DS came out, I about pooped my pants when I saw the first preview video. They took the ultimate classic gaming platform and made it feel new. I loved every minute of that game, and would be in line to buy the second installment on it’s launch date. And with Mario Galaxy, I was blown away. Although I found it incredibly easy to beat, I unlocked everything, I played it like a junkie. If Super Mario Brothers on NES is as fun as it is to play now after 20 years, how are games like Super Mario DS and Mario Galaxy going to paly in 20 years? I would bet my money on effing fantastic.

Reason #2 - Mario has been a pop icon for 20+ years and is showing no signs of stopping

As a kid Mario was the ultimate. I still have a plush doll and a weird Super Mario Brothers 3 suction bounce toy. I remember Nintendo as if it was the most popular band on the planet and Mario was the lead singer and keytar player. Now, fast forward to present day, all the kids like me that dreamed of having all the cool stuff that their parents would never buy for all the sudden have jobs and purchase power. There are vinyl toys, tshirts, candy and the Super Mario TV series has just found new life on the Blockbuster new release wall, and these young at heart young adults are eating them up. Companies wouldn’t be producing this stuff if they weren’t making money doing it. Retire Mario now, please, give me an effing break.

Reason #3 - Mario is a chameleon…or a tanuki

Mario is the king of reinvention. The largness of Super Mario Brothers 3 and the transformative characters were genius. Wait!? Mario can fly…and he’s racoon…that is so GRAWESOME! Then Super Mario World came around and we got welcomed to the epic graphical world map and treated to watching Mario bitch slap Yoshi into eating shells and doing his dirty work (don’t deny it, you’ve jumped off Yoshi to reach the edge of cliff, and let him plumet to his death). I don’t even really have to say anything more than the title of Super Mario 64. To this day Mario 64 is considered one of the most revolutionary platformers. Nintendo seamlessly transferred the Mario world into a 3D environment. Mario Sunshine wasn’t what everyone was expecting but it was outside the box. Then we have Mario Galaxy. Even though the difficulty level wasn’t super high, the fun factor and newness of this game was so off the charts that I didn’t care. Now this isn’t intended to start a who is better than who flame war, but honestly do you see Halo or GTA ever reinventing themselves that radically over this long of a period of time, no effing way.

Reason #4 - Mario’s Cameos are AWESOME and aren’t new

I love seeing Mario in other games. I remember thinking man, I bet a fighting game with all the Mario characters would be awesome, then Smash Brothers came out, and it was awesome. And if you are going to argure that he is going to get warn out as a character because of cameos then he should have been warn out a long time ago as a referee in games as far back as Punch Out and Tennis, or as the golfer in Golf.

He has been a cameo since the 1980s, if it was going to get old it would be old by now, it’s still not. To say that a Mario cameo is going to get is like saying an effing Bill Murray cameo would get old.

In conclusion, I think Gaming Goss is a douche and should be banned from ever talking about mario again.

We have a post and video talking about a possible Medal of Honor Heroes 2 invincibility hack. And one of our readers is wanting to setup a test to try and see if it is possible to make this glitch or hack reproduce. So, help him out!

From Caleb911 :

hi i am testing out this “Invincibility hack\glitch” and i would like some help from The WiiTards and anybody who comes.

My Wii Persona: Caleb911

SERVER:GlitchTest
PASSWORD: 911
MAP: Port
Type: Death Match
Players: 32

it will be recorded and i write down all who helps.
anyone who comes will be helpful

Part of the reason I love the Wii (aside from Super Smash Brothers Brawl and Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess) is the way you control games by moving the motion sensor controller. Suddenly Nintendo has leveled the playing field and made video games that everyone can play without memorizing which color button reloads and which one pistol whips. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but simplicity goes a long way when you’re a video game company that wants to sell your product to as many people as possible.

Now, Nintendo has gone and improved the controller with the Wii Motion Plus add-on. which more accurately senses how the arm moves in using the Wiimote. All it takes is plugging a little square device into the bottom of the remote and now your movements register with more precision than before.

The device is set to debut with a new game called Wii Sports Resort, in which players (or, rather, their Miis) go to the beach and have fun… with more precision than ever before!

If the idea of playing frisbee with your dog at the beach doesn’t float your boat, the Wii Motion Plus will certainly help out your Sith-murdering ability with the upcoming Star Wars the Clone Wars: Lightsaber Duels game that was a no-brainer from the day the Wii was unveiled.

What do you all think? Are you excited for Wii Motion Plus or would you rather see Nintendo get going on a Wii Hardrive?

I knew there would be a problem with the Wii’s hard drive when I saw the limited amount of space on the Wii Menu. Each time you download a game for your Wii, it takes up one of the menu’s squares. If you downloaded a lot of games for your Virtual Console, your hard drive would fill up and you’d be forced to delete games to free up space for new ones. And remember: these are games you paid for.

Not to make the Wii sound inferior, but here’s a rundown of this generations’ memory:

X-Box 360: 20 GB to 120 GB

PS3: 20 GB to 80 GB

Wii: 512 MB plus 2 GB of memory on the SD card.

With the Virtual Console and WiiWare games increasing in both number and size, 512 MB of hard drive space is unacceptable. For perspective: the flash drive in my pocket is 256 MB. While my flash drive doesn’t play Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, it also didn’t cost $300.

Thankfully, Nintendo president himself Satoru Iwata himself has admitted to this oversight and claims that it will be rectified. In the same breath, Iwata mentions that those complaining about the lack of memory are a minority of the really hardcore gamers. It sounds like a thinly-veiled attempt to save face, but at least he promises to something about it.

The obvious solution is to provider current Wii owners with an add-on hard drive to expand the system’s memory. For future iterations of the Wii, they should take the same route that the competition has taken and offer the Wii in various hard drive sizes depending on the gamer’s needs.

It worked for the iPod.

A buddy of mine just sent this to me, you need to watch this!

We posted some Fatal Frame 4 images a little while ago, and just recently some game play footage has been posted. We thought we would share the love. We are seriously excited/scared about this game. I personally scared the crap out of myself playing Fatal Frame 2 on PS2 back in the day (by myself, lights out, really loud volume). Any way, here is the video: