Nintendo Wii Fanboy

In 1987 Lucasfilm Games (now better known as Lucasarts) released a little game called Maniac Mansion. And while Maniac Mansion is a great game in its own right, the effects of its creation were considerably more significant -- it kicked off more than a decade of Lucasarts adventure games, launched the SCUMM engine that would form the framework for each adventure, and inadvertently led to the production of some of the best PC games of all time. One of those games was Sam & Max Hit the Road.

Arguably released at the height of the adventure game's popularity in 1993, Sam & Max Hit the Road is possibly the zaniest of Lucasarts's adventure titles. The titular characters were originally created for a comic book by artist/writer Steve Purcell, but they eventually found their way into Lucasarts when Purcell began working on games such as The Secret of Monkey Island. Sam, the leader of the pair, is a canine gumshoe decked out in the traditional film noir suit and tie. Max is a lagomorph, though he's often referred to as a "hyperkinetic rabbity thing" who has a penchant for violence. Together, they are the freelance police, and their original 1993 adventure outing is the perfect opportunity for the Wii to catch a classic.

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Gallery: Born for Wii: Sam & Max Hit the Road

Every week, Born for Wii digs into gaming's sordid past to unearth a new treasure fit for revival on the Nintendo Wii. Be sure to check out last week's entry in the series, Power Stone 2, and for more great titles that deserve your attention, take a look at Virtually Overlooked.

Mario Super Sluggers very much feels like a first-party game, despite being developed by Namco. It's got a plethora of Nintendo characters, wonderful bits of fan service and quite the bit of polish. There aren't that many flaws in the game, and the single biggest is only the lack of a label on the game's case.

In the year 1997, with Sylvester Stallone's Demolition Man still fairly fresh on our minds, developer Shiny took the opportunity to name one of their games after an abbreviated phrase that was mentioned several times in that film. Under the assumption that MDK stood for "Murder, Death, Kill" and the fact that you run around as a guy whose head is a sniper rifle, the Playstation generation couldn't wait to get their hands on it. As it turned out, the game was not the gruesome murder simulator many people expected, but a humorously quirky action title like most of the prior games Shiny was known for. In the sequel, the main character from the first game, Kurt Hectic, would share the duty of saving the earth with Doctor Fluke Hawkins and the four-armed, gun-toting, cigar-chomping robotic dog, Max, the other members of the game's titular trio. It's the crazy sort of stuff that keeps gaming fresh, and with its recently-announced comeback in the making, I can think of no better place for the franchise to make a killing than on the Wii.

"Welcome to the Power Stone World."

Man, we're off to a good start already! When a game is nice enough to welcome you to the experience just for making it to the title screen, and also offers you encouraging remarks like "You are the champion – keep it up!" it's got to be pretty awesome, right? Well, in the case of Power Stone 2, it is.

Released for the Dreamcast in 2000, Capcom's Power Stone 2 was relatively hot on the heels of its predecessor -- the original Power Stone hit the system in 1999. Power Stone 2 takes advantage of the Dreamcast's four controller ports, and like Super Smash Bros., it offers one of the most frenetic and entertaining brawler experiences for a group. Just make sure you don't play with that one friend who doesn't respond so well to losing -- your Power Stone experience may end with a large bruise. But I digress: other than 2006's Power Stone Collection for the PSP, the Power Stone world has been rather dormant. The colorful cast of characters, addicting chaotic battles and goofy nature of the Power Stone world make it a prime target for the next Wii multiplayer phenomenon.

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Being a solitary Mario fanatic is rewarding in its own right, but when the obsession is affirmed by other people, gaming geekery reaches new heights. More cultural icon than game character, Mario has inspired everything from an animated television series to an extremely lengthy scarf. And probably a couple of other things in between, like cakes and stuff. Most recently, though, we've become infatuated with the thriving community over at VGBoxArt.com, a website dedicated to all kinds of game box artwork, both real and imagined.

Barring occasionally subpar Photoshop skills, voluntary contributors to the site's public database have created an interesting collection of box art. Whether it be a reinterpretation of an existing cover or a completely new idea for a game, box art in the Wii category is worth checking out. Of course, the Mario-themed works take precedence in this humble feature, and we've assembled a new gallery showcasing the finer of the bunch. Click on and imagine the Mario games you'll likely never see.

For manyof today's youth, nothing is more thrilling than gathering a group of friends, going into the woods, and hunting each other down with every conceivable type of NERF gun available. Whether playing capture-the-flag, Dart Tag, or NERF Fort, kids love to bust foam caps using their NERF turrets, blasters, crossbows and what have you.

Okay, confession time: most of us here at Nintendo Wii Fanboy are in our 20s, and we can't get enough (e-NERF?) NERF, either. Many adults boast vast collections of NERF guns, claiming that they're all "for the kids" and that they only use them when they're joining young Billy and Bobby on a friendly neighborhood NERF hunt.

According to a thirty-something EA representative manning the NERF N-Strike booth at the EA Summer Showcase here, N-Strike is being marketed to kids between the ages of eight and 12. But the grin plastered onto his face as he hefted the hybrid NERF gun / Wii casing spoke louder than words; the appeal of NERF defies age demographics.

Gang wars and drive-bys are a thing of the past. In the modern world, anyone who's hip knows that disputes of all kinds are settled with dance-offs, grueling exhibitions designed to showcase swank clothing, swanker moves, and swankiest of all, the reward of shouting "You got served!" when you emerge victorious.

Yeah, dance-offs are awesome, but they're not always a vehicle with which to end long-running feuds. Sometimes, dance-offs can be used as friendly competition. If you're a pre-teen girl eager to groove with your girlfriends at the next big sleepover, EA's Boogie SuperStar should cure your craving to dance the night away.

Lock S-Foils in Attack Position. Not only is it a line any self-respecting nerd will recognize instantly, it's also the basis for many a successful video game from days gone by. It all started in 1993 with Lucasarts' X-Wing, which brought Star Wars to PC gamers in a big way. For the first time, they were really in the cockpit, fighting the Empire in glorious (by 1993 standards) 3D. However, it was the 1994 follow-up, TIE Fighter, that refined the flight-sim, Rebel-hunting gameplay to a buttery smooth degree of excellence. Well over a decade later, TIE Fighter still finds itself on many "Best of" lists. On the console side of things, however, it's an entirely different series that drew inspiration from the mighty X-Wing.

Star Wars: Rogue Squadron on the Nintendo 64 took players outside the cockpit (at least, by default) of the beloved X-Wing, but still placed them in control of the craft, offering an experience that was more shooter and less sim than the successful PC games. However, it was the superior Rogue Leader: Rogue Squadron II, released in 2001 with the launch of the GameCube, that brought the spirit of the X-Wing to consoles. Developer Factor 5 and Lucasarts also collaborated on a third entry in the series, Rebel Strike, which lacked the "wow" factor Rogue Leader had in 2001, but did little to harm the good name of the trilogy. Now, nearly five years later, Factor 5 has been off doing other things, when they really should've been working on a new entry in a series that may just have been Born for Wii.

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Gallery: Born for Wii: Rogue Squadron

Every week, Born for Wii digs into gaming's sordid past to unearth a new treasure fit for revival on the Nintendo Wii. Be sure to check out last week's entry in the series, Dark Sector, and for more great titles that deserve your attention, take a look at Virtually Overlooked.