Let's welcome in Media Create's record of the past week's game sales in Japan. This is where you'll get big numbers and not-so-big numbers, mixed in with the crucial numbers one through ten -- a mathematician's wet dream. Firstly, here's this week's chart, with combined total sales of titles inside those pouting parentheses:

1. Virtua Fighter 5 - 48,346 units sold last week (new entry / Sega, PS3)
   
2. Wii Sports - 45,897 (1,004,555 units sold to date / Nintendo, Wii)
   
3. Wii Play - 36,090 (879,432 / Nintendo, Wii)
   
4. More Brain Training - 32,800 (3,963,712 / Nintendo, DS)
   
5. New Super Mario Bros. - 29,026 (4,118,078 / Nintendo DS)
   
6. Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas - 27,519 (304,113 / Capcom, PS2)
   
7. Wario: Master of Disguise - 26,815 (185,695 / Nintendo, DS)
   
8. Harvest Moon: The Island I Grew Up On - 26,804 (106,212 / Marvelous, DS)
   
9. Luminous Arc - 25,676 (new entry / Marvelous, DS)
   
10. J-League Pro Soccer 5 - 24,468 (131,541 / Sega, PS2)

And here are some lessons we can learn from the big figures:

• Virtua Fighter 5 is the WINNER
• Sega is Sony's most valuable ally in Japan right now
  
• Capcom's San Andreas marketing has paid off
• DS-like "slow sellers" are also possible on Wii
• There's still a place in the Japanese market for little players, which is just Marvelous

Bully (PS2)
Bully is my current favorite and has renewed my faith in Rockstar as a forward-moving publisher. The familiar game mechanics don't feel stale in this decidedly more innocent universe. Bully relies more on mischief than shock value, a relief, as are the smaller scale and lower difficulty level (really, the missions are simply less frustrating than some of the tedious tasks that abound in the GTA series). Bully isn't deserving of 'Game of the Year' honors, but Rockstar Vancouver's effort is one of the most refreshing and outright fun titles of 2006. [See also: "Dissecting Rockstar's formula"]

Gears of War (Xbox 360)

What the hell just happened? Did we honestly pick Gears of War as the best game of 2006? No, that can't be. The plan was to throw juvenile tantrums and to violently thrash against the machine! To blind the world with an elitist badge and proclaim an innate resistance against games that are both popular and heavily marketed! It's a shooter, for Allard's sake. You shoot things. With guns.

The senseless violence is but one reason to look away from the screen in disgust. The other, as you may have concluded already, is the appalling state of the game's graphics. They make Pong look like an M.C. Escher painting being displayed in a room pumped full of hallucinogenic gas. If you can even discern your pixelated soldier from the flat environment, you'll note how you get repeatedly punished for running blindly into a hail of bullets and neglecting to take "cover." Not only is this completely unrealistic and contrary to modern warfare, it's a needless refinement to a bizarre, self-preservation concept in the genre. See, it's not even a very good shooter.

The complete lack of immersion and excitement carries over into the game's terrible online cooperative mode. Some idiot on your friends list can rudely jump into your game at any point and then proceed to get in your way at every available turn. Multiplayer deathmatch isn't any better, forcing you to work with 3 other buffoons (who can't even circle-strafe or jump) if you hope to succeed.

Add a forgettable MIDI soundtrack, poor pacing and a complete failure to emulate an action film to your considerations, and you become perfectly equipped to answer the pertinent question. Game of the year? Obviously not.

The runners-up are presented (in order) after the break.

Nintendo's most recent press release exhibits the interesting quality of simultaneously telling us something we already knew and something we didn't. The first part should be fairly obvious if you boast any familiarity with portly Italian plumbers: New Super Mario Bros. for the DS is a huge success in North America -- certainly nothing worthy of a collective gasp. Selling over 500,000 copies since its May release, the shell-smashing, block-bashing retro platforming trip has practically given Nintendo permission to nonchalantly reach into your pocket, feel around for a few seconds and make off with your wallet.

What we weren't aware of, however, is that Nintendo really should have been sticking their hand into your front shirt pocket. That's where your calculator is. Nintendo claims that after "just 35 days on store shelves," the game has had a sell-through rate of "more than 20 every minute since the game went on sale May 15."

O RLY?

Be sure to mock us if our primitive thought processes are incorrect, but let's consider for a moment that there are 24 hours in a day and 60 minutes in an hour. That's 1,440 minutes a day, and so the 35 days that New Super Mario Bros. has been on sale (even though its been longer than that now) equates to 50,400 minutes. Divide 500,000 by that number and we get ... just under 10 copies sold per minute. Had Nintendo actually sold 20 copies per minute, they would have already hit over a million, and we're pretty sure that would warrant a press release all on its own. Dr. Kawashima is going to be so disappointed.

Infendo's Rollin had a thing or two to say about New Super Mario Bros. in this morning's post: "It's not a new game, and moreover it's not a DS game. Judging by the info and screens we have up to this point, this looks like an ankle-deep, shallow relic of Mario's past..." Ouch!

Before Rollin is tossed to the wolves, let's consider this: maybe he's right. Okay, rephrase that: maybe he's on to something. Why are gamers so excited about New Mario? What does a 20-year-old concept bring to the table? Is it relevant to the DS? Worthy of a full-priced release? What if instead, it was an unlockable mini-game featured in a Revolution Mario title? Or better, an inexpensive download via Nintendo's Virtual Console service?

The original Super Mario Bros. is a game I cherish, but often times I feel — as Rollin seems to imply — that Nintendo profits off of my nostalgia. Is that a bad thing? From a business standpoint, of course not. But if we're going to criticize other companies for churning out sequels and rehashes, we'd best lift the 'untouchable' veil from in front of Nintendo's name and let them have it too. New Super Mario Bros. will be fun, but let's not kid ourselves, it's not gonna shake up the state of gaming in 2006.

OnNintendo.com has posted 12 titillating images of the highly anticipated New Super Mario Bros. Included in the bunch, are some shots of several of the game's multiplayer mini-games — you may recognize them from Super Mario 64 DS. This time around, you'll be able to enjoy them with friends.

Also spotted, is a glimpse of one of the koopalings. Last month, we heard word that Bowser's demented offspring would stage a comeback in New Super Mario Bros., and this image seems to be the confirmation we were looking for. New Super Mario Bros. is currently scheduled for release on May 15 (North America) — June 30 in Europe.

The official website for the upcoming DS title, New Super Mario Bros., has been updated again. No more delays this time, instead Nintendo has managed to drop the brothers Mario on us a week earlier!

Seeing as how the DS Lite is "due in May" in North America, we used simple logic, some grade school arithmetic, our intimate knowledge of the Gregorian calendar, and more than a little speculation, to arrive at the possibility that the DS Lite might accompany NSMB May 15th, just days after E3! Oh shiny DS Lite / Mario combo attack, you make us weak in the knees.

[Thanks, Princess Zelda]

According to the official website, the North American release of New Super Mario Bros. has been pushed back to May 21 (Sunday). The title will likely show up in stores early that week, quite possibly, alongside the new DS Lite. Indeed, 1UP speculates that the game was delayed in order to accompany the launch of the DS Lite in North America. It wouldn't be the first time Nintendo deployed the plumbers to help move new (or updated) system units — and if true, it won't be the last.

According to a recent Nintendo Power interview with Takashi Tezuka, New Super Mario Bros. for the DS will feature the return of the beloved koopalings. This welcome addition should significantly boost the game's boss element. Tezuka also confirmed that Bowser and Toad would make appearances. As for the green dinosaur, since the game is a throwback to the NES Super Mario Bros., "Yoshi doesn't really fit," says Tezuka.

Tezuka also noted that the game will be set in the Mushroom Kingdom and that there will be no boss battles in 2-player mode, no WiFi connectivity, and no microphone functionality. Finally, when questioned about the possibility of a console-bound Mario side scroller, Tezuka replied, "The probability is not zero, but no further comment at this point." Then he just laughed.

[Thanks, Ahms]