We all know the Wii drought is almost here, Summers are always a time to resort to Nintendo 64 and NES with friends since Nintendo's current console always disappoint when things heat up. Although for once, I think my cash crops are well prepared for the wicked weather - Sony has gone out of its way to bring us an early drought this year, and even after Heavenly Sword, Lair, and arguably a few others, it's still pretty fucked this year. Sony can try as hard as it wants, but even if it can sway these kind of charts in Japan, it will be more of a "it's about damn time" applause then genuine praise. Take a gamer gander at this Japanese sales chart and notice how neither Xbox 360 or even PS3 can crack the top ten. Let me do a little translation magic for you, the number ten game is "Motto Nou o Kitaeru Otona" a.k.a. "Brain Age" a.k.a. Fuck You Sony. "Blue!" "Blue!" "Blue-ray" Fuck, I can't beat that game. Neither can PS3.

And before you think Sony and Microsoft just missed the top ten, the truth is that PS3 and 360 didn't even make the top thirty. I expect this type of disappointment from Microsoft overseas, but you should be ashamed of yourself Sony.

Where else could it come from but Japan? If you thought Breakout was a tedious ball bouncing game to play on Atari or on a handheld, then try painting your face black and using your lips as the ball. Positioned behind a cheesy looking cardboard GameBoy, this TV show minigame challenged a Japanese man to bounce his head around a box and swallow 32 marshmallow blocks. A game that gives you a headache and a stomachache doesn't sound any fun to me, but I don't dare question Japanese TV logic.

What better way to celebrate President's Day than honoring the most prolific player of all time - Mario. It's been forever since we've seen any new Mario videos even though Super Paper Mario and Super Mario Galaxy are on the way to the Wii, so let's take a look back at some of his non video gaming moments of fame. Above is his classic Italian tourist fight in The Simpsons, where Homer regresses into Donkey Kong and throws barrels at Mario as he climbs Bart's tree fort. I made a similar comic a few years ago depicting the move into our college dorms when a fat kid dropped all his suitcases on the fourth floor steps and took out half the freshman as they fell down the stairs. And below is the unforgettable "Jump Mario! Jump!" milk mustache commercial. And after that are a few more video links to take you down Mario memory lane. 

• Grand Theft Mario Robot Chicken skit.
• Super Mario on ice - worse that you'd think.
• in Japan
  
• McDonald's commercial #1
• McDonald's commercial #2
• Nintendo cereal commercial - it's a cereal - WOW!
• Simplest Mario commercial feasible
• Japanese children Mario mob
• - I'm convinced this was the birth of Pikmin
• Original Mario commercial
• Super Mario Kart commercial - It's Wild!
  
• Best Mario commercial ever - Super Smash Bros 64 commercial
  

There was a rumor going around this week month that Square Enix would announce a Final Fantasy VII remake since yesterday was the 10th anniversary of its Japanese release. A while ago Sony even had a brief part of FFVII revamped to show off the PS3 in a tech demo trailer, but many have claimed that it was actually a sneak peak at the real remake that was being worked on secretly. Yesterday came and went, and I've been snooping around on the Japanese Square Enix site since that's the only one being updated recently. I found one update yesterday and a few that just appeared this morning, but none of them pertain to FFVII unfortunately. I can't read Japanese, and Google Beta translator isn't much better either, but here's what I found.

The Final Fantasy Finest Box Set has been pushed back to a release in Japan at the end of March. It will include either Final Fantasy I & II: Dawn of Souls, Final Fantasy III DS, Final Fantasy VI Advance, Final Fantasy V Advance, and Final Fantasy VI Advance, and the OSTs for the games as well as an art book. Or, it might just contain the OSTs for FFIV, FFV, and FFVI, and the art book too. Either way it looks like a good purchase.

Final Fantasy Fables: Chocobo Tales is already out in Japan, with its American release set for April this year. The American Square Enix site has no updates, but the Japanese one has a bunch of interactive media that just popped up on the site. You can create your own chocobo, but after that it gets hard to figure stuff out. More interesting though is that there's new media for Heroes of Mana, and a Friends of Mana site just appeared too. Heroes of Mana has been known for a while and releases in Japan on March 8th, but there's a few new pictures and a bunch of Japanese details. Some of the character screens are old, but four of them look to be brand new.

The Friends of Mana game will launch on December 31st this year as a mobile game in Japan, and there's pages of new details on the game if you can read it. Each character on the map can be clicked on for a few subpages of text and photos. It looks like the best mobile phone game I've ever seen, although I can't stand any of the Mana games' art styles, the colors and designs always bug me. The screenshots that I took are below - I'm not sure how much of it is new, but not much information about the two new Mana games exists. So if you have any translation skills, or have been closely following Square Enix's Japanese actions, then feel free to add what you know.

The Final Fantasy Tactics remake for PSP has an awesome trailer - it starts off with a scene that meshes together 2D and 3D graphics with a grainy, rusty overlay that sets an artistic tone. Then it gives way to something that feels like an extended DVD intro scene to the movie A Series of Unfortunate Events, with dark sinister animations and parts and pieces unfolding across the screen. Definitely a must watch for you artsy ones out there. Great music too, I just wish it was longer.

Update: I was looking around for more videos of this PSP game and found a longer version of this trailer. I replaced the video with the complete trailer, which has an extra 3 minutes of artistic scenes, and even an official introduction to some of the main characters.

The Japanese trailer for Gran Turismo HD is up and it doesn't disappoint - there's no arguing that these graphics are ritzy. As the cars make their turns you'll see some of the best lighting in a game ever, and the courses shown in the video look spectacular as well. You don't get a glimpse of what he game will really be like, just plain and simple awesome graphics, but it doesn't offer anything to complain about. If only they could just blow up one car, just ONE astonishing crash scene! But despite my rolling eyes, the cars roll on in pure elegance and luxury.

Looks like I'll be buying my first Gran Turismo game, but I definitely won't be buying into its hundreds of dollars of microtrannies. And yes I would still rather play Mario Kart games over any impressive graphics racing game.

At this rate DS Lites will be the next weapon used in terrorism and get banned from airports much to our chagrin. It's not Nintendo software, but some genius crafted their own Tokyo subway map navigator program for the DS. Watch the video above to see how he scrolls through different subway routes with ease. Or just learn Japanese and read all about it.