The North American e-shop I mean. I know the rest of you have had this game for a while now. Why is Nintendo of America so slow on this stuff? I hear Nintendo of Europe already has Wario Land 3, and North America won't get II for another two weeks. What's the deal? Bah.

Anyway, Wario Land II is hitting the e-shop later this month. A personal favorite, if you forgot to jet over and read my favorites list (because everyone has such an interesting favorites list). The Wario Land series was always excellent, yet it always seemed to fly under the radar for no apparent reason despite the Game Boy's enduring popularity. Wario Land II was the game that introduced Wario's invincibility powers and also the ability to change his powers depending on how enemy attacks effected him. Now in spite of my love for this game, I have to say that the presence of these moments in the game is exaggerated just a tiny bit. Most enemy attacks just knock Wario backwards a little bit and cost him a few precious coins. The enemies that alter Wario's status are rare and almost appear as events. Still, their status effects do usually end up being used in clever ways, and the levels are all memorable and well-designed.

Wario Land II (and its immediate sequel) might best be described as a fairly simple platformer that did away with the concept of "death" and added some unique platforming puzzles to the mix in order to make up for what some might see as a lack of challenge. When you can just restart things anyway, does death in a video game really matter anyway? Apparently not, because this is an extremely fun title. The worst criticism you might level at it is that the game requires you to check literally every surface of every stage in order to find all of its secrets. Levels don't normally assume that you're psychic, but there are a few hidden locations that might frustrate you to find. Other than that though, this is an excellent game and probably should've been on the e-shop a long time ago.