e wrap up our coverage of Nintendo’s media summit with a look at the company’s bread and butter: retail games. While WiiWare might be a little more glamorous right now, with its focus on smaller and riskier games, physical releases are why people have been buying the Wii and DS up until that point.

With that in mind, it’s clear that consumers are going to have much to look forward to in 2008. Nintendo is putting together a huge marketing effort to support Wii Fit, Boom Blox carries the Stephen Spielberg imprint and the Wii is the only place you’ll be able to fight Darth Vader against Darth Maul in a duel. Even though it might not have the raw horsepower of other consoles (“We think it looks good for a Wii game,” was a popular statement we heard from several developers), it’s hard to discount Nintendo’s strategy of offering a wide variety of games for players of all skill levels. We got our hands on the playable demos at Nintendo’s event and have the highlights to prove it.

Boom Blox

By far, Boom Blox was the biggest surprise of the show. While we know how satisfying it is to knock stuff over in real life, we weren’t quite so sure that this need would translate well over to the gaming space. As it turns out, it does beautifully. If this Hollywood thing doesn’t pan out this Spielberg kid might want to consider going into game development full time.

The hands-on demo consisted of a four-player match, with each player competing for the highest score. Each level consisted of a tower built out of Jenga-like blocks—each marked with varying point values. When it was their turn, players examined the tower, plotted their move and launched into action. Everything was controlled with the Wii’s remote—holding B and pointing at the screen rotated the camera around, granting players the chance to examine the tower for the best possible angle. Once a vulnerable spot was chosen, holding down the A button locked the targeting cursor into position. After winding up and making a pitching motion at the screen (and releasing A), a virtual ball is released into the world. If your aim is true, your actions will knock down blocks, adding their point value to your tally. Play continues until all blocks are gone, with victory going to the high scorer.

It’s a simple conceit, executed with near perfection. It was one of those games that nearly everyone seemed to get within seconds. Even people who obviously don’t play games were able to participate immediately and pose a threat to other gamers after a few turns. Like Wii Sports, its appeal lies in its simplicity. Since the game is based on physics, people already have a good understanding on what will happen if they hit specific blocks at the right angle. Even the few powerups in the demo (bombs, disappearing blocks and chemical blocks) were simple enough to understand and use effectively.

Basically, Boom Blox is about as casual as it gets, but it also provided some of the best times we had over our two days at the event. What’s truly exciting to think about is that the demo consisted of one of the multiplayer mode’s 11 game types—and that’s not even taking into consideration its single-player adventure mode or robust construction tools.

Crosswords DS

While it wasn’t as sexy as a lot of the other games on display, Crosswords DS does give fans of word puzzles thousands of games to keep them occupied. Better still, they’re not just limited to crosswords, either.

Players can use the DS stylus to input their answers, one letter at a time, on the screen. Handwriting recognition was accurate, though we wished that we could just use an onscreen keyboard at times. Puzzles are split by difficulty levels, and the game will offer clues if you get stuck.

Other games include anagrams and wordsearches. Anagrams give players a handful of letters and challenge them to make as many words as possible, so long as they’re three or more letters. After dragging letters to spaces at the top of the screen, players submit their words by pressing a button. If it’s legit, it’s added to the updated list. If not, you’ll hear a buzz. Wordsearches are just like the things you see at supermarket checkout lanes or in retirement homes. A number of target words are hidden among garbage letters in a large grid. Players use the stylus to draw lines over those target words as quickly as possible.

If you’re a word nerd, Crosswords DS looks like one of the better DS values out there. And if you couldn't get enough of the English classes in Bully, the anagrams alone are probably worth the price of admission.