Welcome to the post E3 lazy hazy crazy days of summer. Now that most companies have blown their collective wads on the show that was E3, they were kind enough to give me a break. Instead of seventy plus downloads, the number is much more manageable this week – just a shade under twenty downloads. Have you downloaded all the E3 videos yet? Aren’t you glad you dropped $180 on that extra big hard drive for your 360? Yeah, me neither.

Wii Shop Channel

Anyway, fresh off the big show, Nintendo was first out of the gate with their traditional Monday releases. Three games (as is the norm) were released on the Virtual Console and buying them all would set you back a mere $21. Of course, the irony of this is that do you remember those days when you had to buy each game for $50? I do, but that is because my hair is going gray. I digress; what I was trying to say was if you wait long enough any game you want will be cheap enough to purchase. Of course, those of us that have a videogame vice know that waiting to purchase a game will never, ever happen. Personally, I’m beginning to think that crack may be a cheaper habit than purchasing videogames.

Whoops, off topic there again. Moving back on topic, the three games that came out for the Wii VC this week are Silent Debuggers, an old TurboGrafx 16 1991 “classic,” which few remember and with good reason. The second title is Balloon Fight which looks plays and feels like a twenty-one year old game. The only good thing is that I remember the box of this game back when the NES has a “series” for their games – the “Sports” series, the “annoying Robot series” and of course the “Balloon” series. Okay, maybe there wasn’t a balloon series, but you know what I’m saying here. Apparently there was a huge pent up demand for balloon games after Circus Atari and Kickman. Again, joking here, and if you really want to blow five bucks, I’m accepting donations. Nintendo already has plenty of money. The final game for the VC (side note: I am kind of cringing when I call it the VC. I need a better name here. I keep thinking Viet Cong which isn’t the symbolism I’m going for – so email me a better name) is the one you want to pick up, which is the Nintendo 64 classic (I mean it this time), Paper Mario. Unfortunately it’s also the most expensive at $10, but since we all know that gamers love everything Mario and you probably already bought Super Paper Mario, you might as well see how it all began, right?

Xbox Live Marketplace

Next we move to the Xbox 360, which got over the departure of Peter Moore going to EA Sports (hmm, no more lame denials about the Red Ring of Death, tattoos or bad playing of Rock Band, how will we live) by releasing two games on Live Arcade – one old and one new. The old is Yie Ar Kung Fu, which was a great arcade karate game at the time of release but just isn’t as much fun as I remember. The new is Bomberman Live, which is new—kind of. I mean its Bomberman, but you play it online, like the Dreamcast version. Okay, so maybe it’s not really that new, but it’s a whole new game for the 360 and only $10 and there are plenty of Bomberman freaks out there --- and you need 200 more achievement points, don’t you?

PlayStation Store

Moving over to the PlayStation 3, a new 30MB patch for MLB 07 The Show has been released which fixes the dreaded Oakland night game bug. Of course I had no idea there was an Oakland night game bug until I downloaded the patch, which tells you how often I ran into it. They also claim to have fixed the “internet traffic delay” issue…I guess we’ll see.

Oh, what’s that? You want actual games on the PS Store? Okay then, we have that -- Konami has released the original PlayStation One version of Castlevania Symphony of The Night. This would be great for the videogame community…if it wasn’t just released for Xbox Live Arcade some months ago at the same price but with HD graphics and achievements. On the plus side, it is also playable on the PSP but at 355MB for the game, you better have a big memory stick! If you don’t have a 360 or crave portable Castlevania for your PSP, go crazy and grab it. There are also nine new trailers available, including the Gran Turismo 5 Prologue videos.

Finally, if you haven’t bought Calling All Cars yet, there’s a 20% off sale going on – the game is now only $7.99. We’re not sure if this is a permanent decrease or a limited time offer so act now! Supplies are limited. Funny aside on the PS Store – I would like to thank reader Glen for the tip on the sale, because I couldn’t find the game in my PS Store. I found out the reason why it wasn’t in my store is because I had already purchased the title, which is a nice idea so I don’t feel bad that the price is reduced. I still found out and Sony can send me my $2.00 refund any day now.