Will it live up to the hype?

This week finally sees the release of much-hyped title Icarian: Kindred Spirits. It's accompanied by a not-so-great second WiiWare game, and a solitary DSiWare release. That's right - Virtual Console misses out again!

Icarian: Kindred Spirits has been hotly anticipated for quite a while. From the screens and videos released prior to its release it seemed like one of the best-looking WiiWare games yet, with the gameplay not looking too shabby either. If you're not eager to jump the gun just yet you can find out if it's the great title it seems to be in our review soon enough. In the meantime, why not skim over our Icarian interview once more?

The retail game Let's Tap is out in Europe today. And you know what that means - Its WiiWare "counterpart" Let's Catch is also available. Let's Tap looks like great fun if you've got friends to play with, but Let's Catch is incredibly simple and won't hold your attention for too long - That's what our review says, anyway. If you really think playing catch is good enough to warrant 1000 Wii Points, go right ahead, but don't say we didn't warn you!

DSiWare gets a single new release, and it's one we're probably all familiar with already - A Little Bit of... Dr. Kawashima's Brain Training: Maths Edition takes maths-related exercises from both the first and second Brain Training games on DS, and adds a few new ones which make use of some clever new features. It also includes the Virus Buster game from Brain Training 2, which is pretty much Dr. Mario with a smaller playing field and touch controls. If you haven't played a Brain Training game yet this is pretty much a steal for 800 DSi Points, but if you have, you've got to wonder if spending money on another one is really worth it. As it's already been out in North America for a while, you can read our review if you need to know some more.

What we all feared is pretty much confirmed this week - Nintendo of Europe has started to alternate Virtual Console games only! That means there's WiiWare games every week, but Virtual Console games only once every two weeks - The horror!