I didn’t know I needed a Banana Case before just now. I mean, how many times have you traveled with your Wiimote and said, “I wish I had some sort of protective fruit shaped cover to put this in.” A lot, right?

The XBox 360 was an impulse buy after I saw it at someone’s house and Madden just looked spectacular in HD. That, along with the network connectivity has made it my favorite out of the bunch. The Wii is more fun with a crowd, but the XBox wins when I just want to blow stuff up.

I tried hooking the XBox up to the network to watch videos from my computer a few times since I’ve had it. Never with much success. The photo and music streaming worked just fine, but that doesn’t really interest me.

This past week I had a lot of videos that I wanted to try and stream so I could watch them on TV. I had my fingers crossed that the NXE update might have worked out some of the issues that held me back previously. I’m not sure if it’s the videos I have are just better suited or if the update really did fix things. The videos look great and fill the widescreen nicely. It also has had no issues resuming from the spot I was previously at.

I have a Mac, so I have to use Connect360 to get the XBox to see my files. It took next to no effort to get working. The trial let’s you share 5 video files to the XBox. It’s only $20. If I find that I’m still using this next week, which is likely, I’m going to purchase it.

Be a star in our reasonably priced car – Try out the Top Gear track.

Wii Fit damage. I knew this was coming as soon as I set mine up. You need a bit of room to be moving about. I especially see issues at first for the unbalanced gamers.

WGN did a turn back the clock game. They covered the game as if it were 1948.

Uni Watch took over uniform duties for the Camden River Sharks. I wish I would have remembered, I would have gone.

Jim Caple on Page 2 ranks the best single sports years for a city. The winner? Philly in 1980-81. That’s right, I just missed the best sports year for any city ever.

Bob Uecker’s Yacht Wrecked By Freighter – A rule I have is anything I find mildly interesting that involves Bob Uecker, I share.

Fahrenheit – The new coaster at Hershey Park drops at 97 degrees. I haven’t been to Hershey in a few years, I think its time to go back.

If you’re dog and Roomba don’t get along, yell at your robot.

Top Five Roadkill Sites in North America – Actually the list is for top sites where turtles are run over. I was surprised that roadkill was tracked. I’m even more surprised they keep track by animal. The #1 site wins with a score of 2070 turtles killed per mile. That seems like a lot.

Gizmodo loves their LEGO posts. Apparently there was some sort of convention.
LEGO Death Star video
Pictures of the LEGO Death Star
LEGO Business ‘Card’
LEGO Airbus A380

Dippin’ Dots lost its patent – This makes me feel better. I was worried there would be an ice cream monopoly in the future.

Trump Marina to become Margaritaville – When I think Margaritaville, I think tropical. When I think tropical, I think Atlantic City.

Storm Chasing Tours – I got the idea in my head that I wanted to go on a tornado chase. This is what I found. They are pricey and appear to fill up quick. Better hurry.

Drunk driver runs into bike race. The picture is unbelieveable.

????????Wale – The Mixtape About Nothing – I thought this was a joke and just listened to see how bad it would be. I wound up listening to the whole thing and it was good. Apparently I just wasn’t aware and Wale is very good and very popular.

Electronics Energy Costs – See how much some common electronics cost to use or just be plugged in.

How Guitar Hero DS Works – I thought it looked ridiculous. With these instructions they are purposely making it appear even more ridiculous.

Wii Fit Parody – Technically this isn’t far from the truth. I still like the Wii Fit.

1989 Upper Deck Griffey Card – I don’t have this one in my collection. Reading this made me look around eBay but I’m out of the loop on baseball card grading.

Top 10 Announcers in Sports Movies

Worst First Pitches of All Time

10 Worst Broadcasters in Sports – Hits all the important ones. Dick Vitale and Chip Carey are way too high on the list.

The Wii hasn’t gotten as much attention. Guitar Hero was gone for a few weeks because I sent it back in to get the fixed version with surround sound. It’s back and I bought a second guitar used at GameStop ($50 instead of $70, not bad).

On Saturday my sister bought DDR for the Wii. That one is going to take some practice to get down. The game supports up to 4 dance pads. Our family room can’t really handle 4 of them but a second pad may be needed. On Sunday Smash Bros Brawl came out. I’d never played the previous versions of the game but this one was getting such great reviews I decided to go for it. I got it home and was all excited to play. I got into the main menu and it went crazy. The selector was jumping all over the place, I couldn’t pick a game mode. I thought maybe my Wiimote was screwed up so I tried a different one, still crazy. I restarted a bunch of times, still crazy. Tired a different game and that was fine. I looked online and there were a bunch of problems since this is the first dual-layer disc. Most of those problems don’t even let the game load so I didn’t think it was that. Also, to fix that problem you have to send your Wii back to Nintendo. I decided to try and get into the game by timing my selections. It took a while but once I got into a fight, there was no problem. Weird. The game supports GameCube controllers so I thought I’d try that and see if it was just Wiimotes. That’s when I saw it. The DDR dance pad was still connected and my sister had folded it up and shoved it behind the TV. So essentially every button was being pressed at the same time causing the game to flip out. As soon as I unplugged the dance pad, no problem. I spent an hour thinking my Wii was busted all because the dance pad was left plugged in.

I did not have last year’s NCAA game. I had NCAA 06 for PS2. Last year I went with Madden when I bought my 360. So I apologize in advance if some of my favorite new features were actually new last year.

The graphics are so smooth. The only times the frame-rate seems to drop is when a on-screen graphic is attempting to be displayed. The on-screen graphics are quite large and bright. They also do a poor job indicating if the stats being displayed are for the game or season. What matters is the actual game action, and that is pretty much perfect.

My favorite new things …

At the end of the games there is the Pontiac Game Changing Performance. The highlight of the most important play of the game is shown. So far I can’t really argue with the selections. Replays of each play are saved until you exit each game. You have the option to save your favorites and even post them online. I haven’t tried to do this yet but it sounds moderately intriguing.

I was browsing through the menus when all of a sudden ESPNRadio SportsCenter update started playing. It was the actual updated ESPNRadio SportsCenter audio. Last year’s Madden had the bottom line, which this game also has, but audio takes it to a whole new level.

I decided to give the mini-games a chance to try and get some Gamer Points. Turns out, they are pretty decent. The biggest flaw is that you can’t play these on Xbox Live. The games are …

Option Dash – Run the option and get points for yardage and moves. You have two minutes to get off as many plays as possible. Not terribly exciting but helped me practice running the option.

Bowling – Start each frame at the 10-yard line. Two chances in each frame with the yardage gained equaling a pin. Scoring at TD on the first play of a frame is a Strike, the second being a Spare. Get it? I am a fan of the concept. At worst its a good way to practice your goal-line offense.

Tug-of-War – My favorite of the group. Start at the 50-yard line. The team with the ball alternates on each play at the spot where the previous play ended. The winning team is the first to score. There are addition options to only allow Option, Run, or Pass plays. This game will likely drive everyone insane with the highs and lows of having a big gain only to give it all back and more to your friend.

I’m a big fan of the game so far. I miss the days of NCAA in college where we would have a bunch of people competing in the same Dynasty league. They really need to have a Dynasty mode online. I think that feature alone could sell 5 360s to my friends.

Music
Some albums I will be checking out, not necessarily buying but a lot of them have free streams this week.
Lifehouse – Who We Are
Straylight Run – The Needles The Space – I listened to this one and its very slow, which is too be expected. I heard the new single, Soon We’ll be Living in the Future, on Sirius and really like it. With Straylight Run I find that there are handful of songs that I love but the rest of the album I don’t care for.
The Junior Varsity – Cinematographic

Games
SimCity DS – If I was in a position to play my DS a lot this would be a perfect game. I have loved every SimCity game.
Resident Evil 4: Wii Edition – I didn’t play this one on GameCube but it got such high praise. This version sounding even better, plus its only $30.

Music
Paramore – Riot! – I enjoyed their last album and gave the stream of the new album a listen. I enjoyed it as well. However, it won’t make the purchase list this week. There is too much on the list for the next few weeks.
Cauterize – Disguises – I’ve always liked their sound. Take a listen on their MySpace.
Instant Karma: The Amnesty International Campaign to Save Darfur – Covers of John Lennon songs. I’m curious to hear the cover by Mick Fleetwood and Jack’s Mannequin.

Games
Big Brain Academy: Wii Degree (Wii) – I haven’t played the DS version, I assume its nearly identical to Brain Age. How will this translate to the Wii?
Tenchu Z (Xbox 360) – Any game description that starts with ‘Become the ultimate ninja assasain’ has my instant attention. I checked Game Rankings and so far two reviews gave it an average of 87%. I need a little more than that but things look good so far.

DVD
Nothing very exciting this week.
Ghost Rider – I had no desire.
Breach – I don’t even remember it coming out.
Office Seasons 1&2 – Not really new, just selling them together. I think I saw you get a free ticket to Evan Almighty with it. If you don’t have these seasons yet then buy them with or without the free ticket.