The LoadDown - 06/14/2010

A very active week on the line...

WiiWare -- Three titles this week.  A big PopCap name in casual gaming arrives with Bejeweled 2.  Arcade Sports features Air Hockey, Bowling, Pool and Snooker.  Yard Sale Hidden Treasures: Sunnyville is a hidden-object game on a subject near and dear to retro gamers' hearts.

Wii Virtual Console -- The VC is back in action this week with Natsume's Shadow of the Ninja for the 8-bit NES, featuring 13 levels of intense ninja action created (if memory serves) by former Konami employees.

DSiWare -- A whopping five titles this week.  A Kappa's Trail tasks the player with helping a kappa (a Japanese river spirit, not a frat boy) to make his way to the human world.  Telegraph Crosswords brings crossword puzzles from the Telegraph newspaper to the DSi.  Flips: Silent but Deadly is another interactive eBook for young readers.  Music on: Electronic Keyboard turns the DSi into a simple synthesizer, though the touch screen's single-point-of-contact technology seems limiting.  And Hudson's truly hardcore 16 Shot! SHOOTING WATCH challenges players to match or beat the legendary Master Takahashi's rapid fire button-pressing skills, with graphs and statistics.

XBox Live Arcade -- Two games last week -- Earthworm Jim HD brings the classic 16-bit platformer to XBLA with redrawn graphics that maintain the original style.  NeoGeo Battle Coliseum brings multiple SNK fighting-game franchises together, with some new characters and plenty of action.

Game Room -- Steady releases continue, with Game Pack 004 unlocking Intellivision Baseball, Atari's Circus Atari for the 2600, Activision's 2600 games River Raid II and Sky Jinks, and Konami's arcade game Video Hustler, an odd choice given that the company already has another coin-op pool contest (Rack 'Em Up) on the platform.

PS3 on PSN -- Two games last week - Joe Danger, an E-rated comical stunt racing game with a track editor, and multiplatform action/puzzler Voodoo Dice.