What's New on the Wii/DSi Shop Channel for May 18, 2009

It's time for a celebration on the Virtual Console, as the download service gets its 300th game in North America. Which game will get that honor? Of course, I'm not going to tell you right off the bat, but it is from one of Nintendo's most well-known and loved franchises. We've also got a DSiWare game and two WiiWare titles this week, and they're all especially good news for fans of puzzle and strategy games.

This week's game are as follows:

On DSiWare, we have Art Style: PiCTOBiTS (Nintendo, 1-4 players, 500 DSi Points). The latest in the Art Style series has players combining falling blocks with small square blocks to create square shapes and complete a picture up on the top screen. It's like an odd form of Tetris and it looks pretty solid for a 500 point download. Plus, the Art Style games have all been good so far, so this is definitely a recommended buy.

On WiiWare there two titles, Crystal Defenders R2 (Square Enix, 1 player, 800 Wii Points) and Silver Star Chess (Agetec, Inc., 1-2 players, 500 Points). Crystal Defenders R2 is the second set of challenges for Square Enix's WiiWare tower defense title. The last one was pretty warmly received, so if you're a Final Fantasy fan and/or love tower defense, this might be a good title to look into. Silver Star Chess is a different kind of strategy game, and one that might not appeal to everybody out there, but for chess fans, 500 points isn't a lot to ask for this game.

On the Virtual Console this week is the service's 300th title, the often underrated The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask (1 player, 1,000 Wii Points). As the only Zelda game for consoles in the last 20 years that hasn't used the same basic plot of Link fighting Ganon to save Zelda and Hyrule from imminent destruction, Majora's Mask stands out as one of my favorite games in the series. The added time and mask mechanics also helped make this game feel like a new experience while maintaining many of the same elements that have made the Zelda series oh so popular for so many years. If you've never played Majora's Mask, you should download it, as it even puts Ocarina of Time to shame. Well, at least in my book.

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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