Amazon did four special Wii game sales Friday. Super Paper Mario was their deal of the day and sold out pretty fast. Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn followed. Metroid Prime 3: Corruption sold out at $29.99. (Heck, for that price even I might have picked it up.) But the one deal of the day I was home for started at 9:00 p.m. Eastern. Five minutes after it started, I clicked on it:

Sold out in less than five minutes. I bet it didn’t last a minute. Wii fans are ravenous.

I’m going back to Guitar Hero III now, thanks.

Commodore 64 games coming to European VC later this year - Nintendo Wii Fanboy

We’ve known since late 2006 that Nintendo intended to add classic titles from the Commodore 64’s library to its Virtual Console service, but Nintendo of Europe has been hesitant to reveal any concrete details until now.According to NoE, the C64 games are only planned for release in Europe so far, and they will be available to purchase for 500 Wii Points (€5, approximately $7.35) later this year. 500 Wii Points?! That’s as much as an NES release on the Wii Shop Channel!

• And Wal-Mart drives the final stake through HD-DVD’s heart. It’s now officially dead, and we’re all just waiting for the press release from Toshiba to make it official.

• Michael Bay takes the credit. ;-)

• News item my mind is incapable of comprehending: SCO Rises From The Dead. Someone is throwing $100 million at it, and will likely restart the lawsuit machine. It is, after all, the only thing SCO knows how to do — and it fails miserably at it every time. Feh.

• Today’s ‘24′ news: A Special Edition DVD Set of Season 1 is coming.

• Nintendo’s Super Smash Brothers Brawl: The Trailer. This is supposed to be the greatest thing since sliced bread.

• A little late by now, but still funny: Geeky Valentines.

One more mini link dump tomorrow. Then, it’s some actual writing on Sunday. Promise! (It’s already done, so that’s how I know. . .)

• Auto Tune abuse. It’s that computer glitch to fix notes out of tune. The link has samples so you can learn to identify the ugly sound it created.

• The cast of FAMILY TIES reunited this week.

• Big Brother 9 starts next week. Here’s the cast. (Thanks, Conor!)

• 9 Ways STAR WARS Can Inspire You To Save Money. Crazy, but true.

• The Guitar Hero IV Rumor Mill is now open.

Start saving: EA CEO confirms Rock Band - Nintendo Wii Fanboy

If I had enough room to set it up right and enough friends to play regularly, this would be The Next Big Thing at VandS World Headquarters.  Meanwhile, I’m going back to work on Guitar Hero III’s HARD level.

I wanted to give it another day before hitting you all with another Twitter dump. So here are some more interesting links to go around, in the meantime.

SoFoBoMo - It’s Solo Photo Book Month. For photographers, it’s the challenge of creating a photo book in 31 days. The best part is, you get to choose the starting date.

17 Ways You Can Use Twitter. (Ah, so Twitter shows up today, anyway. It’s so much fun.)

Nintendo’s Wii Fit is now scheduled for the second quarter here in the States. Of course, if you’re in Japan then you’re likely already jumping up and down on it. They sold a million units here in December. Enjoy a demo reel, in the meantime.

HD-DVD Whoops.

Pachelbel rolls over in his grave. Breakdance! I expect we’ll see this on So You Think You Can Dance this summer. . .

Image of the week: Commodore SX-64 versus the Mac Air.

Is Steve Jobs still interested in gaming for the Mac?

Coming to the Mac in 2008: ‘Spore’ | CNET News.com

In its early stages, Electronic Arts’ forthcoming and much-anticipated game Spore was code-named Sim Everything, a play on its heritage as the newest game by The Sims creator Will Wright.But now, “sim everything” has another meaning for the company: EA is set to announce Tuesday it will release Spore later this year simultaneously for PCs and Macs.

They’ll be showing it off on the show floor this week.

If you want to replace your mono-sound Guitar Hero III game with the proper stereo sound version, Activision is going to let you. Eventually. Soon. They promise!

Right now, you can go to their website (linked below) to fill out a form for the replacement disc. But there’s a catch, with emphasis mine:

Guitar Hero III Wii Replacement Disc Pre-Registration Website

Once the replacement discs are available, the replacement program will begin. We will send you a disc replacement package which will consist of exchange instructions, a replacement disc claim form, and a postage paid envelope for you to return your current copy of the Wii version of Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock. Once you receive your package, please complete the claim form and return your original game as directed. Once we receive your game, we will mail you the free replacement disc.

There’s no guarantee yet as to how quickly they’ll turn around the replacement disc, but you won’t be able to play the game while the exchange is happening. You have to send in your game disc first. Then pray the USPS gets it to Activision. They hope Activision’s worker drones do their job properly and quickly, and then pray for the USPS again. Best case scenarion, that’s a full week without the game you paid for in your hands.

I think I’ll stick with my mono version. Who knows? By the time they get around to offering the corrected discs, maybe I’ll have played myself out of the game and will want the down time.

How to win a fist fight. Or, at least, how to better your chances of surviving one, if you’re stuck with no other options.

Maybe Ruby on Rails isn’t in so much trouble, after all.

Sony isn’t so dumb, after all: Their BMG DRM-free music is coming to Amazon.

Meanwhile, at CES — Gizmodo brought some TV-B-Gone remotes with them and tested them out on all the TV displays. I know I shouldn’t enjoy that, but I found it hilarious. The link includes a video montage of the TVs going dark. (The people in question have been banned from future CESes, should the convention survive. . . )

Merv Griffin’s headstone is hilarious.

The Top Five Most Embarrassingly Bad Wii Games.

\m/ RAWK!

Rob Enderle is an “analyst” best known for being wrong 100% of the time about everything he writes regarding Apple.  Insanely, he keeps being quoted by lazy journalists in the press, and maintains his job analyzing everything wrong.

His newest whopper doesn’t involve Apple.  Nope, it takes on the Wii.  Here, he suggests how Toshiba might have won the high def DVD war:
How Lack of Competitive Analysis, Nintendo Caused Blu-Ray’s Victory - Rob Enderle

Second, Toshiba should have worked with Nintendo to ensure it could fulfill Wii demand, holding down PS3 sag connected to the Xbox 360 HD-DVD drive to ensure higher attach rates and better ramp that product while enhancing the value of the Xbox 360.

In other words, Blu Ray got to be so powerful because people couldn’t buy a Wii, so they bought a PS3, instead, with its Blu Ray capabilities.

Yeah, my jaw dropped when I read this one, too.  That’s a pretty impressive leap of logic there, defying any reality.

GAMES:

How to win at Rock Paper Scissors.

McDonalds boss blames video games for fat kids. Hunh.

Forget Guitar Hero. All the cool kids want to play Turntable Hero.

Announced at CES this week: The first third-party Guitar Hero III guitar for the Wii.

TECH:

Funniest ThinkGeek prank ever? A new alarm clock that donates money to a cause you hate for every time you hit the snooze bar.

Belkin’s Podcast Studio: It’s not a joke, but I wonder how useful it can be, particularly with the iPod’s poor audio recording quality.

Apple announced a new Mac Pro yesterday. The thing is a behemoth of power and awe-inspiring bullet points. You know it’s huge when the lowest RAM setting offerd by Apple is 2 GB. The most basic configuration is still $2300.

Noah Wyle imitates Steve Jobs at MacWorld NYC 1999. He’s got the mannerisms down. I wish they still had MacWorld in New York City. I could go, then. . .

• You’ve heard plenty about HD-DVD and Blu-Ray. Here’s an interesting blog post on the problems with the HD-DVD player and the overall experience. It’s slow and prone to damage, basically. But I still want to have it on my home theater.
• The RIAA is so desperate now that they’re suing people who rip their CDs into iTunes. (Update: Or maybe not. . . )
• Pro Darts player barely wins a tournament and blames his new Wii, joining a rich tradition of pro athletes hurting themselves on new videogames.
• Dissecting the donut.
• Target finishes with Christmas, immediately starts Easter. Wha–?!?
• When will Amy Winehouse die? Dot com.
• Zed Shaw flames out of Ruby on Rails. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how it should be done.
• Andy Ihnatko talks Twitter! But I really only link to it to show off the screen shots he’s using. heh heh

Just to round out the year:

Above this, you’ll see a link for the Amazon Marketplace. It’s right under the tasteful “Various and Sundry” banner atop every page on this blog.

I just added a bunch of things to the Marketplace and by clicking on that link you’ll be taken straight to them. I never realized there was such a high demand for REBOOT DVDs, for example. There’s also some animated DVDs up there, including some Miyazaki works, a Nintendo GameCube game or two, and some TV-on-DVD.

All funds raised in this effort go towards the purchase of a digital SLR, which will provide lots of raw material for this blog in the months ahead.

Thanks! Back to normal blogging now. . .

• This is pretty cool: A camera lens to create 3D pictures. (Sample pics)
• Animated GIF image of the day.
• Coming soon: new app to view your photos on your TV. (Wait, it’s available now: FlickrFan. It’s Mac only.)
• Resolved: Anonymous comments are cowardly. Didn’t Slashdot teach us that years ago, though?
• I am convinced that I will NEVER be this good at Guitar Hero III.
• I Twittered this the other day, but it bears repeating: Why must I skip past EIGHT SCREENS to get to the main menu when I start up GUITAR HERO III?!?
• Logo trends for the year 2007.