The LoadDown - 11/23/2009

Lots of family-friendly fare on the download this week for the Wii and XBox 360...

WiiWare -- 4 games this week.  First, more retro-rhythm BIT.TRIP fun as BIT.TRIP VOID hits.  Natsume continues a venerable series on WiiWare with Harvest Moon: My Little Shop, which recalls the original style with the addition of your own farmer's market.  Little Tournament Over Yonder is a cute real-time strategy game.  And Learning with the PooYoos: Episode 1 provides fun, interactive early brain training games for ages 3-6. 

Virtual Console -- Two titles this week.  At long last, an SNES classic arrives -- it's the original Super Mario Kart.  The Nintendo 64 version has been available for a long while, so it's high time its predecessor became available.  And A Boy and His Blob: Trouble on Blobolonia brings David Crane's original NES classic to the Virtual Console, in conjunction with the recent Wii reimagining from Majesco Entertainment.

DSiWare -- 7 titles this week, only one of which is a game in the traditional sense.  Castle of Magic is a cute, simple action RPG that makes innovative use of the DSi camera -- to turn into various forms, the player must hold a real-world object of the appropriate color up to the camera.  myNotebook: Blue is a simple notetaking/scratchpad application.  And there are five more Electroplankton interactive music/audio toys -- Electroplankton Luminarrow, Electroplankton Sun-Animalcule, Electroplantkon Lumiloop, Electroplankton Marine-Crystals, and Electroplankton Varvoice.

XBLA --  Two games last week, both casual in nature.  Diner Dash brings the long-popular PC game to the XBox 360, challenging players to keep customers seated, orders taken, tables cleared and patrons satisfied; it feels like an update of 80's arcade game Tapper and is fun in small doses.  Gyromancer is a rotate-the-gems-to-match-sets puzzle game with RPG elements, similar to the original Puzzle Quest; it has a strong pedigree, developed by Square-Enix and distributed by PopCap.