With the break in TV shows, Kim and I have been playing the New Super Mario Bros. game on Wii.  We’ve probably only played two or three hours total, after all of our recent travels, but it’s definitely a fun game. So far I’m pretty impressed with the difficulty of the game-play. Even with all of the new power-ups and moves, the new enemies and bosses are pretty difficult to beat. Fortunately it seems as if players get unlimited continues, at least it seems that way as we approach ten continues.  We haven’t made it past the second world so far, even after spending all of last-night there.  It was pretty frustrating, but I hope we will give it a try again soon.

I finally bought The Beatles: Rock Band over the weekend.  After only playing it for a couple of hours so far, I must say that it is just as great as I originally thought it would be.  I’ve only unlocked about a dozen of the songs so far, but have already played most of them more than once.  The songs actually seem to be harder than other songs from past Rock Band games, perhaps it’s the lack of chords and quick switches between notes.  All I need now is to finally purchase another guitar controller, and possibly some additional microphones.  For the first time in Rock Band history, this game allows for background vocals and harmonies.  I think it would be pretty cool to sing along while rocking out the guitar or drums.  I don’t think this game will be leaving the Wii for awhile.

There’s a new bar in town!  The Rackhouse Pub opened about twenty days ago, adjacent to the Stranahan’s distillery. We decided to check it out last night, along with a bunch of other folks, as part of a monthly Denver Tweetup. Essentially a Tweetup is an announced location for users of Twitter to gather for socializing and such. True, it sounds pretty nerdy, but you have to remember that I’ve met many of my good friends online before ever meeting in person. Times are a-changin’.

Anyway, I was really impressed with the Rackhouse. They have a great selection of Colorado beers, all for a great price. It may have just been a special last night, but beers were just three and four dollars a piece, and this is for great beers, like Breckenridge, Odells, and New Belgium, just to name a few. We were also pleasantly surprised by the food. The white bean chicken chili that Kim ordered was excellent, as was the whiskey chicken sandwich I had. And though we didn’t try the pizza, all of those looked great as well.

We also stuck around to take part in our first ever Geeks Who Drink trivia night. I have to admit that I was a bit intimidated by the idea of bar trivia, as it can often be really difficult. However, we managed to make it all the way up to first place at one point in the game, and that was with very little cheating. In the end we finished way back in eleventh, but it was still a good time, and perhaps something we should try again. After all, I am a geek and I do like to drink.

I guess it was widely known that there was going to be a Beatles version of the Rock Band game, but I didn’t know it until today. Being a big fan of the Beatles music, I couldn’t be happier to hear this news. According to this new website, it will be released later this summer on 09-09-09. And they are supposedly going to have new instrument controllers modeled after those played by John, Paul, George and Ringo. All of this comes after I recently realized the Rock Band Music Store was finally available on the Wii and I’ve been doing my best to catch up on downloading the available tracks. It won’t be long before I have the entire hard drive full.

I just found this cool web based game called The Space Game. It reminds me of playing Dune 2000 with my brother back in high school. It took me some time to get passed mission 6 and I am just about to start on mission 9. Hopefully it helps kill any time that remains in your Friday workday.

It was definitely a Wii Christmas for us. My brother got us a Wii Fit, which was delivered last week and we’ve already started using. I love all of the balance games, which I really think should help strengthen my ankle even more. Also, shortly before we left Denver for Cincinnati, Kim gave me Rock Band special edition including the game, one guitar, a set of drums, and the vocal mic. We busted that out of the box for a few quick songs before leaving town. Kim’s family also got the same thing, and I definitely played my fair share of the game with our new band, The Three Wisemen. My family also got us some more Wii games, including Rock Band 2 and a Shaun White snowboarding game to play on the Wii Fit board. I haven’t played those yet, but you can be sure it won’t be long before I do.

I’ve added another game to my recent Wii addiction, Mario Kart. I picked it up from Sears over the weekend using one of our wedding gift certificates, plus we got another steering wheel. And that pretty much sums up our Saturday night, Kim and I played for hours and hours. It was fun to get online and race against people from around the world, and we had a good time just racing against/with each other. I don’t think this game will be leaving the system anytime soon. It’s highly addictive. If anyone out there also has the game, let’s trade code numbers so we can play online.

Thanks to my brother, I’ve been playing our new Wii nearly every night. He gave us one of my favorites of the wedding gifts, though there are some others that I may write about at a later date. I must say that boxing can be quite a workout! The rest of the Wii Sports package is really entertaining though, as I’m sure many of you already know. We also have Wii Play, which included a second controller. Despite costing just a little more than a controller alone, the games in this package are equally entertaining. I’m a pretty good fisherman, winning the platinum medal already. And I’m getting much better at laser hockey, which I thought was really tough at first. I’ve got a stockpile of Sears gift certificates, so I’m hoping I can add even more games. Any opinions?

I had my first experience with the game Rock Band over the weekend, and I am addicted. If I had a copy of the game at home I don’t think I’d do anything else, so maybe it’s a good thing that I don’t. My brother hosted a leap day party featuring the game and encouraged everyone to dress in their favorite rock attire. He had a killer Bret Michaels (of Poison fame) costume, complete with eyeliner. Fortunately my mom was there with her camera to capture pictures of the night and a couple from a disco party the next night.

I’m not a big gamer at all, especially when compared to some of the people I work with who will play World of Warcraft for hours at a time. But I’ve discovered an insanely addictive online game that is very simple graphically but so much fun to play called Desktop Tower Defense. I’m trying not to play it until work is over and it is very hard to do. I’m warning you, only click this link if you can spare quite a bit of your time because I’m betting that you will get sucked in too. If you do decided to play, let me know your scores. I’ve played the medium level and average around 2,000 points, I think.