Like Danny and a lot of folks, I was stunned to hear that Electronic Arts was making Celebrity Sports Showdown. I mean, really, how can a game like this exist? Why would it exist? What would possess Fergie and Nelly Furtado, pictured above, to lend their likeness to a game like this?

I swear they must have gotten a sweet deal. EA must have tossed around a lot of money. But after playing the title at the EA Studio Showcase. I can see the reason for the celebrities though I remain skeptical of the game.

Sports Showdown is a Wii party title in the best sense of the word. It pits rocks vs. jocks (and some other EA alumni) in 12 events that are easy to play with simple motions. The style is simple and fun, but it’s nothing revolutionary for the genre.

More on why celebrities are a good choice for party games on the jump

There’s only one possible reaction to EA’s Celebrity Sports Showdown: What? I mean, seriously, what?

Ok, so here’s the premise. There’s a bunch of celebrities and some athletes, and they’re playing a bunch of games. So basically it’s like Wii Sports except instead of your Mii it’s Nelly Furtado.

Doesn’t sound weird enough yet? Here’s the list of people included:

• Fergie
• Avril Lavigne
• LeAnn Rimes
• Keith Urban
• Nelly Furtado
• Paul Pierce
• Mia Hamm
• Kristi Yamaguchi
• Reggie Bush
• Sugar Ray Leonard

That’s right! Now you can find out who would win at curling, Reggie Bush or Avril Lavigne! Because that’s really been weighing on my mind.

I almost want this just because it’s so irredeemably weird.

Full press release with list of included games past this link.

So you own a couple Wiimotes, bought nunchucks for them, grabbed a couple classic controllers, some WiiWheels, a Balance Board or two, a Wii Zapper and are saving up for the recently announced camera and Motion Plus. Congratulations! That $250 console cost you more than a PS3.

Will the Wii peripherals ever end? Thankfully, mercifully, Nintendo President Satoru Iwata tells the Wall Street Journal that they’re finally going to start slowing down.

Most of the ideas for accessories that we had initially come up with are out now. We might think up some more, and we might make them if we do, but we don’t have any plans to release a whole lot more.

But wait, that’s not all! He also hints that the Motion Plus will be cheap.

We haven’t announced the price yet, but the cost of making the Wii Motion Plus is not that much, so I think we can make it very affordable.

Notice he doesn’t mention who it will be affordable for.

Hopefully now that we won’t be spending money on attachments to the controller a halfway decent third party game will come out to pick up the disposable income slack.

I have a co-worker who’s looking for a Nintendo Wii. More than two years after Nintendo released its console, some folks still can’t find one. She has stories about folks waiting in line two hours before the Toys R Us opens on Sunday just to purchase the system. It sounds like a trial to get one.

If you’re like my co-worker and you’re having trouble finding a Wii, you may want to try Comcast. As part of its latest promotion, the cable company is offering a free Nintendo Wii to customers who subscribe to its Triple Play package.

I called them up, and yes, this is available in the Bay Area. The offer lasts until Aug. 17 or until the supply is gone. Here’s the fine print.

*Triple Play package availability and offers vary by market. Total number of Wii systems is limited.

The Telegraph recently ran a very complimentary article up about Shigeru Miyamoto. In addition to calling him “a modern-day Walt Disney” and saying he “has revived not just Nintendo’s fortunes, but videogames as a whole,” they throw in this quote:

“Making these ‘traditional’ games is what I am best at. Because games of that nature take upwards of two or three years to make, we always have to keep the teams working on those projects going. At any given time, the team could be five to ten people, or it could be 50-plus. People are always switching in and out of those teams.

“They are all working on more Mario, Zelda and Pikmin projects,” he said. “And they all work in close proximity to me, so I can keep a good eye on them.”

And that’s all we know. Here’s hoping they’re more Mario Galaxy than Mario Sunshine.

By all accounts, Rayman Raving Rabbids TV Party has the first minigame you can play your butt. No this is not a joke. But that’s what seems to happen when Ubisoft Paris gets its hands on Nintendo products.

They find interesting ways to use them. Remember the first Raving Rabbidds game? That was hit, and in the latest edition, TV Party, the team showed me three minigames they’ve been working on.

In Beestie Boarding, players sit down on the Wii Balance Board and shift their weight left and right to maneuever in Beestie Boarding. Think of it as snowboarding atop a wildebeest going around 30 mph.

If players manage to shimmy their behinds off a ramp, the game goes into a tricks mode where they have to wave a remote and nunchuk in different directions to perform flips and ollies. It’s a pretty silly game, but that’s a strength to the series.

The other Balance Board game in TV Party is a little more conventional. In Sky Surfing, players are shot out of a cannon and travel through space on an ironing board. In the air, they have to lean left and right, trying to guide the board through rings in the air.

Being in space, Sky Surfing adds a third dimension to the minigame, and by leaning forward, players can send their board down and by leaning back, they can go skyward.

New set of minigames for Rayman Raving Rabbids 3 on the jump

I have a secret affection for the Lost in Blue franchise. There’s something appealing and classic about being stranded on a desert island.

Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe set the standard for this type of adventure tale in 1719. Later, William Golding’s The Lord of the Flies made the island a microcosm or thought experiment on the nature of man.

Lost in Blue: Shipwrecked isn’t as deep nor does it have the same ambition, but it is an entertaining diversion and a modest improvement of the series.

As Aidan, the son of a wealthy businessman, players get shipwrecked (as the name implies) and find themselves on a desert island. (Why do all Lost in Blues have to start this way?)

This time around, Aidan isn’t instantly alone. He actually has a pet, a lemur-looking creature that helps him reach higher areas. The creature will also comes in handy in a few minigames.

But from what I played, the controls and gameplay are better than the Nintendo DS version. Somehow shaking a tree for coconuts and digging through the sand for clams works better with the Wii’s motion controls.

More on your fellow castaways and exploration

Koji Igarashi, the man behind the current Castlevania series, doesn’t like it when fans call his latest title a fighting game. He prefers that Castlevania Judgment be referred to as an action title.

To me, this is a matter of semantics because from the look and the feel of the game, it does play like a spawn of Street Fighter II. Is there a life bar? You bet there is. Do you attack an opponent in a one-on-one contest? Definitely.

Castlevania Judgment is so much a fighting game that you couldn’t help but notice it at the character selection screen where only four characters were available — Simon Belmont, Dracula, Alucard and Maria Renard — out of a cast of 14.

Each character has a subweapon that they pick prior to the match. They’re the traditional Castlevania fare that includes holy water and crosses. Before each map, there’s a little intro before players both start at the same time.

From what I’ve played, the world is open and the fighters are detailed. (They’re done by famed manga artist Takeshi Obata, the man partly responsible for the Blue Dragon manga.)The characters move around using the analog stick on the nunchuk. There’s a block button. They can dodge with a shake of the nunchuk.

Players attack with a quick waggle and a stronger punch is activated by holding the B button. The A button activates the item, but players need to break open parts of the destructable environment and collect hearts to use them.

More on how waggle mashing is the new button mashing on the jump

I’m usually a big fan of retro gaming. I’m a believer in not messing with a good thing.

SimCity Creator may be the exception.

It is SimCity. That alone scores it points, SimCity is never all bad. But this tosses aside most of the advancements through more recent versions and reverts back to the original SimCity formula, not just in gameplay but also in large part in graphics. It feels dated, like something that’s been done better.

While I acknowledge that they’re trying to return the series to its original simplicity sometimes that’s not always best. Gamers are more sophisticated and expect more complexity.

I’ll withhold a final verdict until I get a chance to spend time with the full, final version, but for now it seems like another SimCity Societies and loses more ground to CitiesXL.

WiiMusic is not your typical music game.

There are no complex button combinations, no need for lightning quick fingers. In fact there’s no score at all. The point isn’t to master the game or to win, it’s simply to have fun. To get together with some friends and play music, to try to get in sync with them and make the product sound good.

It’s a lot more fun than it sounds, at least at first. And there’s so many instruments (reportedly over 50) with many of them requiring different motions that it will take a while to get good at everything included. I’m concerned about the replay value, however, as more than a novelty. When you’ve never done it before and you’ve got a group of people trying to play it’s fun, but what happens when everyone knows what they’re doing? It’s almost too simple. With so few ways to make a mistake eventually it might turn into tedium.

Fortunately WiiMusic has an ace up its sleeve: the drum simulator.

When I say drum simulator, I don’t mean like in Rock Band. First off this is a totally virtual, with the exception of your Wiimote and nunchuck as sticks and Balance Board as pedals, right half for the bass drum and left half for the cymbal. Second, it’s not a game, it’s a drum set. There’s no goal. It’s a cheaper and smaller alternative to a real drum set. It will even include drum lessons which will reportedly, after finishing them and practicing, let you sit down and play an actual physical drum set as well.

With no competition or hard goal I’m not sure if it will catch on as well as WiiSports or WiiFit but I’ve learned never to underestimate Nintendo. We’ll find out how much staying power when it’s released later this year.