Well, this week sure is interesting for the Wii and DSi Shop Channels. Instead of four games, we have two applications and two games, an interesting little set-up. Is this the start of a flood of apps for the DSi? Who knows, but they might need to be more useful than the ones we're getting this week.

This week's game are as follows:

On DSiWare, it's application madness! Well, not really, but both releases this week are Animal Crossing-themed applications: Animal Crossing Calculator and Animal Crossing Clock (Nintendo, 1 player, 200 Nintendo Points for each). They are basically what you'd expect, and if the Internet responses I've seen so far are any indication, this really isn't going to go over well. At least the interfaces for each app look nice, though.

On WiiWare, Penguin & Friends - Hey! That's My Fish (Gammick Entertainment, 1-4 players, 800 Wii Points) turns a board game into a video game title. While I am not normally the biggest fan of these kinds of things (see: Jenga World Tour), but since it's based off a pretty fun little board game, I'm a little more hopeful that this will turn out right. The basic premise is to try and move your penguins around to get to ice floes with more fish on them to score more points without getting trapped. It actually has a lot more strategy than first appears, and at 800 points, might be a solid download for anyone looking for a fun virtual board game.

Lastly, on the Virtual Console, it's the Commodore 64's Tower Toppler (1 player, 500 Wii Points). A difficult yet interesting platformer from developer Hewson in 1987, the basic premise of this game is that there are giant towers appearing on the planet Nebulus and it's your goal to take them out. You do so by ascending each tower to the top to trigger a detonating device, all the meanwhile avoiding a plethora of enemies and navigating obstacles along the way.

Tower Toppler debuts on the North American Virtual Console. It, along with Penguin & Friends - Hey! That's My Fish, is available for download off the Wii Shop Channel, while Animal Crossing Calculator and Animal Crossing Clock are available for download off the DSi Shop Channel.

Check back next week for the latest round of releases for the Wii and DSi. Until then, happy gaming!

Article Author: Brian Szabelski

Brian Szabelski is the Assistant Gaming Editor at Blogcritics.org as well as Associate Editor at Tomopop. He also maintains his own blog on IGN, "The Minus World".

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