Welcome to a special 30th Anniversary edition of TWID. Well it’s not really the 30th anniversary of TWID, but it is the 30th anniversary of the Blizzard of 1978. I was in first grade in Baltimore at the time, and I remember snow was taller than I was.

Here in New England we refer to that as “Thursday,” because as I type this we are in our 239457th consecutive day of snowy weather. I have spent more quality time with my snow blower than my wife. On the bright side, all this snow reduces the chances to “go outside and do stuff” so instead I have the pleasure of being able to play more games. Yay!

Starting off with the Monday releases on Wii, they’ve doubled the output from last week. The first release is the Sega Genesis title Columns 3. For me, all of my questions were answered with Columns 2, so I’m not sure about the reasons for a sequel. As you might guess I’m not a huge fan.

The other game is the NES favorite Operation Wolf. I dearly loved this game in the arcade, especially the lisp-talking narrator which unfortunately is removed from the NES version. I was really, really hoping that the NES game would use the power of the Wii-mote to be a gun game, but alas, it isn’t and you are relegated to moving the aiming crosshair using the “+” pad. This of course takes a lot of the fun out of the game, but I still found it more enjoyable than some of the other VC games I’ve played. I do find the rating rather funny – citing “tobacco use” – it’s akin to having an Atari 2600 game rated M for nudity. One black pixel is cigarette smoke…or Mr. Hanky…who knows what it is on a console that old.

The Xbox 360 was light on content this week: there were three new tracks for Rock Band – by the way have you noticed that the “package discount” seems to have gone the way of the Dreamcast? The three songs have no real common element to them. First, we have a track by the B-52s. Everyone loves that band…so many songs to choose from, which drives me nuts because they chose “Roam.” Really? This epitomizes the B-52s? Not Channel Z, Deadbeat Club, Rock Lobster, or Quiche Lorraine? In the words of Randy Jackson, Dawg, I’m just not feeling that track, dawg.

The next track is the theme song from Discovery Channel’s “Dirty Jobs,” better known as the other hit by Faith No More: We Care a Lot. Dumb song but nice bass line. Finally a KISS song, Calling Dr. Love, rounds out the offerings.

A title update for the almost two year old live game Crystal Quest was released requiring a leader board reset, so you won’t see me as #485 on the board anymore. Now that it’s reset you can’t even prove I wasn’t #485, so we’ll leave it at that.

Poker Smash, an interesting take on the Columns/Tetris puzzle games of yore, is worth checking out. Think about it: Tetris and poker combined – the object is to clear rows of cards horizontally or vertically by getting good poker hands. It’s very addictive and only 800 Points/$10.