On September 26^th, 1996, the Nintendo 64 released in North America, and with it came one of the finest games ever made: Super Mario 64. The amazing graphics, perfect controls, and wicked level design revolutionized gaming as we know it. Mario 64 left us all saying “What can Mario do next to top THAT?” It’s been a long eleven years for Nintendo fans since then. We’ve seen our company fall from grace and rise back to the top. We’ve seen them try tons of new ideas, some of them failing, others being wild successes. Mario took place in sporting events, racing, partying, and a sunshine vacation which left us wanting more. Now, finally, in 2007, with Nintendo’s Wii console only a year old, Nintendo has brought us what we’ve all been wishing for. What can Mario do to top Mario 64? Super Mario Galaxy.

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365 days of Wii, one of the most successful consoles ever. It’s selling like crazy, everyone is after it, and it is an absolute nightmare to find - so are there any good games out? I mean they’re all PS2 ports, there are swarms of mini-game compilations (not necessarily good ones), and so many cheap cash-ins that we feel bad saying how many. There have got to be some games worth playing! Don’t worry - there definitely are! We at nWaffle are going to list for you our Top 10 games of the past year. These are the games that didn’t make you question why you bought the Wii, but instead completely justified your choice. These are the stand-out titles that everyone who owns the system must check out. Let the countdown begin!

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This is an awesome DS Lite. You can pick it up for the holiday season along with Phantom Hourglass for only $10 more than the regular price. If you don’t have either of those, pick it up now, because this is definitely an awesome looking DS. There’s also a pink Nintendogs one coming out, but honestly, who would buy that when this one is available?

Just last week, we posted that Super Mario Galaxy managed to achieve one amazing feat as being the best-reviewed game of all time, trumping the 1998-contender, The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. Well, it seems the N64 title has reclaimed its medal as the top game as Galaxy reviews keep spilling in. With more reviews, Super Mario Galaxy has dropped .2 percent on the rating-scale, throwing Zelda back on top.

I just find it amazing that a game from 1998 has managed to keep this title for so long, and continues to hold on to it. This war is bound to continue as Galaxy continues to be reviewed by press everywhere. Boy, this is really exciting! …God, I’m a dork.

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Editor’s note: What’s funny about this is that as of a few weeks ago, Ocarina of Time had a rating of 97.5%, rather than the current 97.6%, meaning some reviewer is… well… 9 years late to the party.

“Oh yeah… I was planning on reviewing Ocarina at some point, but I have just been so swamped. NHL 99 was incredibly engrossing!”

The latest issue of RPG Magazine is reporting that Square-Enix is in the midst of creating a sequel to the much beloved Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars specifically for the Nintendo DS. This time around though there will be some characters from the Final Fantasy universe playing a part in the game. I imagine this is as close as we’re going to get to the “Mushroom Kingdom Hearts” game that was printed as an April Fools joke in EGM.

A sequel to Super Mario RPG has been very long awaited ever since it originally came out on the Super NES. We’ve waited patiently for a re-release, and it’s actually suprising that they haven’t released it yet for Virtual Console, instead releasing its spiritual successor Paper Mario earlier this year. Perhaps this rumour is true and Nintendo is holding off on a VC release until an official announcement comes from Square-Enix? Time will tell.

Source (Translated into English through the magic of Google for those of you who don’t speak French)

Also on that page are two other rumours. One is regarding a possible Ogre Battle game for the Wii, and the other regarding a Golden Sun sequel, also for the Wii.

The steady stream of lackluster Smash Bros. Brawl updates continues. I try to stop myself from complaining about it too much. Sakurai still has another 3 months of these to go, and I suppose they can’t all be megat0ns…

This week’s update? Colour changes!

Just as in previous Smash Bros. titles, you’ll be able to choose a different colour set for each character. It’s useful if you’re playing with 3 other people who also have Link as their favourite character. Suprisingly, some of these are really cool, hence my decision to actually post this update. The colour changes are actually done quite well, and artistically, rather than the horrifyingly ugly alternate colours in previous games.

Click here to check out how some of the other characters look!

Thought I’d stop in from all my Galaxy playing to give you guys a quick news bit. Namco’s announced a new RPG called Fragile for Wii. It’s being developed by Tri-Crescendo, who collaborated with Monolith on Baten Kaitos. Baten Kaitos was pretty fun.

The team describes it was a third-person exploration RPG set in a post apocalyptic era. You explore run-down ruins with your flashlight and encounter monsters… I’m sure there’s a lot more going on than that, but that’s all they’re giving us so far. Hopefully we’ll hear more about it in the near future!

‘Tis been a slow past couple of days for news and post-worthy miscellanea. The forum has been rather lonely, but that is to be expected. I’d imagine I wouldn’t be too far off if I were to say that we’re all using our free time to play Galaxy. I know that’s true for all the staff at least.

What I’m getting at here is to let you know that I’m still here. Kevin and Shaan are around somewhere as well, but we haven’t forgotten about you. We’re all just… you know… playing games instead of writing about them.

…and also I wanted an excuse to post that picture, since it made me think of Portal.

Galaxy is such an awesome game.

I really hate bad cosplay. I really like good cosplay. This is the latter.

Jenni from PixelNinja.se has made such an amazing Samus costume that it’s worthy of posting here. Take a look at the other photos and you’ll see more of what I mean. The quality of the costume and the photographs are incredible.

Marry me plz.

One year ago today, Kevin, Chris, and I camped ourselves outside of our local Best Buy, along with sleeping bags, food, and all sorts of objects to keep us entertained. I remember being the last one to arrive and meet up with our group of about eight people as I ran immediately from a Three Days Grace concert to my house to pick up piles of blankets and food to keep myself warm and stuffed. Throughout the entire cold, November evening/night/morning, we all would occasionally shout out in insane excitement, sometimes waking up the 200+ people who camped themselves out… over half of whom would be terribly disappointed to find out they would be going home empty-handed. It was a cold night, it was hard to keep awake at points, and we all were starting to starve with empty Cheetos bags scattered around us. It was worth it, though. The doors finally opened, two hours late, but they opened, and 30 minutes and $400 later, I rode home in Kevin’s car armed with a Nintendo Wii, a Wii Points Card, a Classic Controller, and a copy of The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. Life was good.

Now, one year later, the Wii has managed to continue to sell out everywhere, people are still being pulled in by the phenomenon known as Wii Sports, and there are plenty of games to be excited for. Wii sales have managed to reach approximately 13.87 million units, equaling about 42.3% of the next-gen console sales, beating the Xbox 360 by 2.1%. It’s truly amazing. We’ve had great times on the system with Metroid Prime 3: Corruption, The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, Resident Evil 4, and the recently released Super Mario Galaxy. We’ve also hit horrible slumps with Red Steel, Pokemon Battle Revolution, and Medal of Honor: Vanguard. Despite these bad memories, we can’t help but be excited for the future - both distant, and even just with what is coming this holiday. We can’t wait to get our hands on Medal of Honor: Heroes 2 (Editor’s note: I already have it. - Chris) and Soul Calibur Legends. We can’t wait to see more of Disaster: Day of Crisis, Monster Hunter 3, Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: The Crystal Bearers, Mario Kart Wii, and Red Steel 2, but none of these titles can equal our excitement with the mother-of-all-games coming - Super Smash Bros. Brawl. February 10th has never felt so far away.

Nintendo has managed to prove that everyone can once again play games. From dogs playing Wii Tennis, to seniors enjoying the blast out of Wii Bowling, Nintendo’s console has truly become something else entirely. Youtube is flooded with videos of the system in action, interviews and impressions of the system are everywhere, and it’s all over the news. Not many pop-culture icons have become this widely-known. People everywhere are making Mii’s, logging onto the Everybody Votes Channel, and downloading Virtual Console titles. So many classics have been revived by that service, and we’ve been treated to games this side of the world never had the grace of playing, like Sin and Punishment.

When it was first revealed, the Wii made a lot of people question if Nintendo was doing the right thing. It’s clear that they were. Gaming has never been this mainstream. Now, all the developers and publishers who remained skeptical are now jumping on-board for developing games for the console. Third-parties everywhere can’t wait to hop on this train. Some developers who like focusing on high-def sort of games have made their choice to not do anything for now, but nearly none of them can deny how significant the Wii has become.

I could go on with how much has changed in a year, but I don’t think I need to. You already know. You just have to look around. Now, we can’t wait for the future. From great games like Brawl which are sure to take the world by storm, to great services coming to the console like WiiWare, and the ability to download DS demos, the console continues to make itself more and more appealing.

With that, though, we hope the console does improve further. We can’t read games off of SD cards, we have no hard-drive, there is no headset, and there are a lot of lackluster efforts on the console from quick cash-ins or PS2 ports. Still, the system’s successes have surpassed its failures. Let’s just hope the quality continues to go higher from Nintendo and third-parties.

Overall, it’s been a great year. It’s been a crazy year, but it’s been a fun year. We’ve learned to game in a new way, and we hope to continue to do so. Nintendo did something great here, and in only one year. Here’s to many more!

Wii would like to play for years to come!