It’s the first week of fall, the last week of September and the weather is gorgeous in the Northeast for once. Where was this hot weather in August? My pool is closed and I’m losing weight from sweating in this heat.

Now that you have that wonderful visual, let’s change course and talk about this week in downloads, shall we? First off, I need to warn you, this week’s offerings are somewhat lax due to the release of a game that no one knew about – that’s right I’m talking about Dance Dance Revolution Hottest Party. No I’m not, I’m talking about Halo 3. Microsoft announced that first day sales were over $170,000,000 ($170 million), which is higher than the first day of Spider-Man 3. Of course the accountant in me will tell you that at $60 a pop or $129 for Legendary Edition, you can get to $170 million much faster than by charging $10.50 for a movie ticket. Continuing our math lesson, if everyone only bought the “basic” edition (and by the looks of my local store more people bought Legendary), that would mean almost 3 million people bought Halo 3 on the first day, and apparently they all went on Xbox Live at the same time.

This resulted in Xbox Live hell and I think it made a lot of sense not to release a new Live Arcade game this week. On Thursday, Microsoft did put up a demo for Clive Barker’s Jericho and one for NHL2K8. Also at deadline a “title update” for Texas Hold ‘Em and Hexic 2 were promised. A 200 point Bomberman add on pack was put online as well.

Microsoft did put three Arcade titles on sale for the week. At 25% off, it’s not a bad deal if you were looking to pick them up: Frogger and Hardwood Spades are now 300 points each, a savings of $1.25 and the most expensive original game on Live Arcade, Bankshot Billiards 2, which is normally $15 is now only $11.25. The sale ends Tuesday October 2nd, so hurry up and purchase if you’re so inclined. None of these games really excited me the first time around but for pure nostalgia you can’t go wrong with Frogger. Hardwood Spades will let you use your Live Vision camera instead of having it collecting dust, so there you go.

Alrighty then, for those of you that don’t have an Xbox 360, there were other downloads available. Nintendo stayed true to form and released three Virtual Console games. It was just few weeks ago when Streets of Rage 2 popped on the Xbox 360 for the low price of $5. Now on the Nintendo Wii, Streets of Rage 3 is here, but for a few dollars more -- $3 more to be exact. I’ve always enjoyed the Streets Series, but 3 was where it started to get, um, goofier.

I have to say I never really got the “Kirby” franchise, but some people to enjoy it, otherwise why would we continue to get endless Kirby games? This week’s Kirby offering is “Kirby’s Avalanche,” which originally debuted on the SNES. I’m going to pass on this one, but I’m sure someone out there is a fan.

Rounding out the Wii-leases is the unknown Turbo Grafx 16 game, Legend of Hero Tonma. It plays similar to Ghosts n Goblins. Stick with the original and save yourself the WiiPoints.