Nintendo DS

Well, it has reached the time of year when we harvest the crop of retrospectives, the best-of and worst-of lists that one can accuse of gratuitous iconoclasm, corporate servitude, or trolling as suits your fancy. I continue my habit of not naming a "Game of the Year", nor even a "Game (that I played) of the Year" because it's a hollow designation, and (rightfully) nobody cares. That said, since it is customary to roll out some kind of year-end wrap-up, here is one.

Mario needs to be more careful with those stars. We could have wound up with a new series of games like Super Koopa 64, Super Koopa Kart, Dr. Koopa or Koopa Party.

Another year, another breakdown of the year's best games—according to me. Looking back, 2010 was an odd twelve months. Catching many players and critics by surprise, a large number of the most hotly-anticipated titles ended up being unexpectedly disappointing, leaving the top honors wide open for a number of lesser-known, smaller-budget projects. Unfortunately, while many of these smaller games displayed promise and creativity, most of them were flawed or uneven enough to give pause. The result? A year where (in my view, anyway) there really was no single runway pick for the year's best.

Needs an Upgrade

HIGH Breakneck parkour and neon everywhere.

LOW Battles with too many enemies are a jittery, frustrating mess.

WTF was the story about?

Good Things Come in Small Packages

HIGH Finding a rare piece of equipment in one of the game's numerous optional dungeons.

LOW Grinding for hours on end so you can afford to buy new gear.

WTF Why is it so damn hard to unlock most of the advanced jobs? We're not masochists, Level-5...

This particular video really hits its mark. Part tribute to Super Mario Bros., part tribute to Grand Theft Auto and completely awesome. As an homage it captures some popular Nintendo catch phrases and mixes them in with altered non-Nintendo catch phrases. My favorite part of the video though is that frequent sad sack and third wheel, Luigi, is particularly badass. Though clearly the second in command in The Brothers Mario, he's not the pathetic, attention-seeking sibling we see in other fan videos.

Since NPD stopped sharing its domestic sales figures with the press (and therefore the general public), it's very difficult to pinpoint numbers and interpret larger trends. Over at NeoGAF, fellow armchair analysts have taken the time to sift through press releases and have posted what available information that's been released regarding November's sales numbers. I'm going to borrow from that data to forge a bit of analysis.

As we talk about almost every year at this time, the 2010 Video Game Awards are in the books… and I didn't watch it. After having watched the show for the last two years, and with my karaoke job coinciding with the event, I was fine trying to follow the event via Twitter. I didn't miss much.

Strong Enough for a Man, Made for a Woman

HIGH Witnessing customer after customer go gaga over my ensembles.

LOW Realizing that their taste was dictated almost exclusively by brand.

WTF There are two men in the whole game: One is the store owner/love interest, the other is his butler.

If you are a guy and you ever find a girl that will willingly play an old emulated version of Earthbound with you—while wearing a cocktail dress, no less—you had better marry her, or the rest of us will find you and kill you.

For those impatient types and those that can't watch someone play Earthbound for half an hour, you can skip to the 20:00 minute mark to get to the actual proposal.