Welcome to the last TWID notes for the first quarter of 2008. Let’s start out by doing a quick retrospective of downloads for the past three months shall we?

If there is a word to describe the downloads for the period post Christmas, it would have to be lackluster. The Wii Virtual Console and GameTap have been downright disappointments. We were getting three games a week on VC and in the first three months, we’ve seen it trickle down to one game at times. If there’s one more R-Type game released for the VC I will scream. Yes, there have been a few good games to pick up (1080 Snowboarding, Kirby 64) but overall we’ve seen some real crap. I have to apologize to you about buying Operation Wolf for the NES. I so loved the arcade game that I wanted to really like the NES version…but after continuing to play it without the Wii Zapper, it does in fact suck. Sorry, my bad. Sega announced just this week that we’ll see Master System games on the service for 400 points ($4) each, so that’s nice, except they are already on GameTap…speaking of….

GameTap…where do I begin…I expected so much more the past three months..where are the Atari 5200 games, and more arcade classics? Instead, we seem to get every game ever released by Meridian, who I had never heard of. Myst Uru shuts down as well…gah! The new interface is nice and we finally got Conflict Denied Ops last week…so I’m still holding out hope..still for $60 a year you could do worse (like say, purchase Sega Superstar Tennis)…

The 360 and PS3 continue to turn out content – but quantity and not quality seem to be the benchmark. Game add ons are great – especially the new Rock Band music, but where are the albums? How much more content does one need for Ace Combat 6? Why can’t demos be released on days other than Thursday on PSN so the downloads don’t slow to a crawl on Thursday nights? At least we are getting some content, so I guess not all is bad.

Now that we’re through a quick recap, let’s get to the new stuff. Virtual Console has two new games – if you didn’t realize this, two is the new three on Wii. Both games go in the “why bother” category. First there is Powerball, and no it’s not a lottery simulator but a “sports game.” It’s not good. Next is a SquareEnix game that’s not Final Fantasy. Called “King’s Knight” it too is a horrible game. Save your money this week for the release of EarthBound next week. (Just kidding, we’re more likely to get a new Sega Master System game that no one wants to play for 400 Points).

Moving right along, GameTap puts three new games out. One is Baseball Mogul 2007, which is a good but it’s two years old and let’s just say baseball games don’t age as gracefully as say, Atari 2600 games. Seriously, are you dying to play Madden 2002 right now? I didn’t think so. The price is right if you want an introduction to text based baseball simulations though (and then you can spend $25 for Mogul 2009 which was just released).

The other two games are – gasp – from Meridian. I will try not to scream. We have Hot Dog King which is a fast food simulation game and Daemonica which is an action game from a few years back that you probably never played before. No worries, as you didn’t miss anything.

Over on the Xbox 360, let’s go in with the old: there’s a new title update for the live arcade game called Switchball, which makes it more stable. When the game originally came out, I enjoyed it but there were some graphical frame rate glitches that seem to be fixed with this update. There’s also a new Xbox Original game called Dreamfall, which is a sequel to a well received PC adventure game “The Longest Journey.” Personally adventure games aren’t my cup of tea, so it’s difficult for me to tell you whether or not it’s worth the $15.

As I mentioned before, you can never have enough downloadable content for Ace Combat 6, so Namco has added eight new items to the game – at a cost of only $26.25. You’ll get some new planes and a new co-op mission, so if you’re into the game, you might want to check it out. I’m still trying to get through the original game in my Halloween plane, so I’m going to wait.

For those that love the footy, a demo of EA’s Euro 2008 has been released. This is based on the soccer tournament in Europe of the same name, so don’t look for MLS teams here. I’m guessing this is one of Peter Moore’s favorite games…