Mario Kart Wii will include 16 new courses and 16 classic courses from previous Mario Kart games. For the first time ever, players have the option of racing with either karts or motorbikes. Players can also hit the road as their personalized Mii™ caricatures in addition to the handful of classic Nintendo characters found in the game. True to the series, the game features tons of racing, plenty of power-ups and oodles of objects for players to use to slow down other drivers. And 10 battle arenas will keep players busy between trips around the circuit.

The easy-to-use Wii Wheel will also be sold as a separate accessory, giving every driver in the household a chance to get behind his or her own wheel. And if veteran Mario Kart fans are afraid of getting smoked by rookie drivers using the Wii Wheel, they can rest assured that Nintendo has them covered. Mario Kart Wii supports four different control options: Wii Remote with or without the Wii Wheel, Wii Remote and Nunchuk controller combo, Classic Controller and even the Nintendo GameCube controller. So there’s bound to be a configuration that fits everyone’s style.

Mario Kart Wii launches with a new channel added to the Wii Menu to enhance game play: The Mario Kart Wii Channel. This new channel builds on the huge online community of Wii owners and lets players compete in tournaments, check worldwide rankings, see when their friends are playing and download ghost data.

Remember that Wii features parental controls that let adults manage the content their children can access.

For more information about this and other Wii features, visit Wii.com. For more information about Mario Kart Wii, visit MarioKart.com.

The first version of this game exists as Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved (most notably it’s appearance on the Xbox 360). Galaxies is a Nintendo specific version (namely for the Wii and DS). In Galaxies you are given a number of stages to survive, with varying shapes, baddies, and complexities. You are also given a companion NPC ship which can provide you with attack, defense, and collection abilities (for Genoms, used to unlock other stages). Your companion levels up the more you use it, and proves necessary in more advanced challenges. The wiimote and nunchuck can be used as controls, as well as the Wii Classic Controller; unfortunately the GameCube controller cannot be used with Galaxies. The game can also connect to the internet and download leaderboards for each stage so you can compare your skills to the world. There is no online multiplayer for the game, but cooperative gameplay exists. And as an added bonus, Galaxies includes Retro Evolved on the disk. While a storyline or sequential experience does not exist for Geometry Wars, the arcade style pick-up and play nature brings out addictiveness that I haven’t felt in many recent Wii games. Find a copy and you won’t be able to put down your controller!

1up, “Previews: Endless Ocean”

If you ever wanted to explore your own oceanic aquarium, here’s your chance. Forever Blue (that’s the Japanese name — it’s coming to the U.S. as Endless Ocean this October) gives you, a licensed diver and tour guide, a ship to sail in, a suit to dive with, and a whole sea full of fish and creatures to explore. While this game has the trappings (suit, diving weights, compass, air and depth monitor) of a diving simulation, it’s more about discovering underwater locations and learning about the animal inhabitants of the Manaurai Sea than watching your meters and fiddling with valves.

Though you have a ship, the Gabbiano, acting as a “home base” if you will, you spend most of your time under the water, poking and rubbing fish. Yes, poking and rubbing. The Wii Remote makes an easy endeavor of molesting the fish (in a nice way — the sparkles that swirl around mean they love it, right?): point to the fish of interest, press the A button to go into the camera tracking mode, zoom in with +, press A again to poke it, or hold A and wave the remote to rub it. Voila, you’ve “discovered” your first fish. Through your inquisitorial gestures, you uncover the name of your subject, along with the first of three informational tidbits. (For more, you’ll have to re-examine it on a different day.)

After you gain the first piece of info, the animal’s picture is added to your record book in the cabin of the Gabbiano. This book has 40 pages of fish, mammals, and reptiles for you to fill out, some of which can only be found (most notably, the birds) on the deck of your ship or in the sky when you surface near the beach. Trying to find and learn about all the different manner of creatures in the Manaurai Sea is part of Forever Blue’s subtly addictive nature, especially for players with a touch of collector’s mania mixed with a love of marine biology.

Once you can dive deep enough to find the large whales, you can even grab onto their backs (by pressing A and B simultaneously) and glide through the water together. Discovering new species while moving slowly through the underwater scenery, accompanied by the new agey sounds of Hayley Westenra (or your own MP3 selection from an SD card), is surprisingly relaxing and attention grabbing in a moth-to-flame kind of way — not the “exciting” sort of fun people come to expect from games, but engrossing nonetheless. (Careful, though, or you’ll unknowingly find yourself letting the hours slip by as you swim in the calming waters.) The only thing that keeps you from completely reclining in your chair while you play is that you control the diver by pointing at the screen and holding down B to swim. You can use the - button to auto-swim, but you still have to point at the screen for direction, which can get tiresome.

Occasionally, you’ll come across special underwater locations, marked with a dolphin icon on the map. Frequent guided tour requests ask you via your email to take clients to specific locations and show them a particular fish — this is how you progress through the game. The emails also serve as a guidance tool, directing you to new locations, though you’re perfectly welcome to spend as much time as you like exploring the depths wherever you wish (within a certain radius of where you anchored your ship) and at your own pace.

The graphics don’t have a Planet Earth quality of realism, but it’s not distractingly unrealistic either. The style of animation actually lends itself quite well to the atmosphere of the game — the sea has varying levels of clarity and is generally filled with floating particles that cloud the water anyway, so the lack of a high draw distance doesn’t really go against reality in this case. The swimming animations (of you and the fish) are convincingly implemented. You really do feel like you’re under water, especially when you move around in the first-person view.

The rounded cartoon hand and finger you use to poke and rub the animals is distracting though, and pulls you a bit out of the experience, but that’s a small complaint. Besides, you’re already suspending your disbelief by just playing the game to begin with — who really thinks fish like to be stroked? When you consider the multitude of things to do — for a game with such a seemingly simple concept — like discovering species, training dolphins, exploring new locations, completing guided tours, and filling your own underwater aquarium, you start to get an idea of how time consuming Forever Blue can potentially be. Add in the ability to invite your friends into your ocean through Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection and you’ve got a veritable black hole for your free time. Well, if you like to poke fish, that is.