Earlier this week, the first WiiWare titles were released. Six entirely new games are now available for download via the Wii Shop Channel. Even though there was a decent assortment, one title bubbled up to the top of gamers’ must-have list — namely, “LostWinds.”

It’s a beautiful looking game that made unique use of the Wii’s motion controls; “LostWinds” proved that the WiiWare service has a lot of potential. See for yourself by taking a look at the first 120 seconds of the game.

Rockstar’s Dan Houser said f— it.

Nintendo said it doesn’t exist.

And whatever it is, EA said that “The Sims” isn’t it.

So what is “casual gaming”?

According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, the definition of “casual” is something “occurring without regularity,” “occasional,” “employed for irregular periods, “met with on occasion and known only superficially” and “lacking a high degree of interest or devotion” or “done without serious intent or commitment.”

However, in gaming, the term “casual” is used to refer to a genre of games. But what really defines a “casual game”? Is it the core audience that plays it? Is it the kind of gameplay a title offers? Or a game’s wide-spread appeal?

When Nancy Smith, Global President of “The Sims” at EA, was asked about the label “casual,” she said, “I don’t think of [”The Sims”] as casual. We were one of the first games that started to attract a broad audience. We were one of the first games that bought in women.”

Meanwhile, Nintendo Europe’s senior marketing director Laurent Fischer told CVG he thinks the idea of the casual gamer is a myth entirely: “For me, you are a gamer or non-gamer… I think most of you know that you can spend ten or twenty hours on an internet flash game and have not realised. The guy who plays these games regularly - he’s a core gamer.”

As for the word “casual,” he said, “I don’t like this word casual so much. Because people consider that casual needs to be something easy. If you’re good at any game you can play at a high difficulty level. There is no casual gaming. There is just a different way to play.”

Clearly, casual games are booming. Why are publishers suddenly uncomfortable with the “c” word? What do you think defines a “casual gamer” or a “casual game”? Should the term “casual” be embraced or tossed out?

Koji Igarashi came to America a few weeks too early. He won’t have a chance to take in a screening of “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull” for some time.

The father of modern “Castlevania” came to Konami’s media event in San Francisco last night with a whip in hand to announce the latest Nintendo DS platformer, “Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia.” The same whip was at the table where I interviewed him.

With the latest “Indiana Jones” adventure arriving in theaters next week, I asked Igarashi if he was a fan — he said very much so. Responding with a loud “Ooooooh!” and raised eyebrows, he followed that with a look of disappointment. He’s flying back to Japan later this week, so he’ll have to wait for the Japanese release.

Sorry, Iga! Look for more with Iga — including an update on whether he’s figured out a way to make “Castlevania” finally work on the Wii — next week.

This fall, there will be three options for gamers interested in joining a virtual band: “Rock Band,” “Guitar Hero IV” and Konami’s newly announced “Rock Revolution.”

Konami revealed “Rock Revolution” last night at a media event in San Francisco. It was their first announcement of the night, and it was met with surprised (and confused) looks from the audience.

“Rock Band” is already out, “Guitar Hero” is the established name — is there room for another set of peripherals? I decided to step up to the game’s drums — which features six drum buttons — and find out if I’ll be cluttering up my living room even more this fall…

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In-game radio DJ The Evil Genius Green Lantern from Liberty City’s Beat 102.7 is releasing his own mixtape-esqe album including music from and inspired by “Grand Theft Auto IV.”

With 16 songs total, eight from the game and eight exclusive to the disc, “Liberty City Invasion” will be hitting the streets (read: all major digital retailers) May 20, and will feature tracks from artists like Busta Rhymes, Wyclef, Fat Joe and Fabolous. However, if you prefer more underground artists, you’ll get to pick from Uncle Murder, Johnny Polygon, and Qadir.

It makes you wonder if maybe the eight extra tracks will show up in a future expansion, but apparently one of the games soundtrack supervisors was a bit tight-lipped about that potential when Stephen Totilo interviewed him for MTV News a few weeks ago. Hit the jump for the full press release.

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In what was a horrible turn of events for me yesterday, a trip to the Nintendo World Store resulted in an unfortunate amount of disappointment.

Some people procrastinate, and I’m one of them. I figured the Nintendo Store would be the safest place for me to still be able to pre-order “Wii Fit,” since it is already sold out at GameStop, Amazon, and Wal-Mart among other stores.

However, the Nintendo World Store seemed to be the last beacon of hope. Upon my request to place a pre-order, I was told that Tuesday was the last day they were taking pre-orders. In other words, the Nintendo World Store is sold out of “Wii Fit” almost a week prior to the game’s release.

Looks like I’m going to have to do some extra legwork on Monday if I want to go home with the game.

Based on what my co-workers said yesterday, I’m pretty sure this game is going to be huge.

Yes, you can do that to enemies in the game.

“Madworld” is a Wii exclusive coming from Platinum Games and Sega in early 2009.

For more information, check out our coverage of the newly announced development partnership. And for an interview with the game’s creator check back Friday or early next week.

Throughout this year I’ve been hearing from Japanese game developers who are concerned that their country’s gaming reputation, once the leading force in game development, has been surpassed by the work of game creators in America and Europe.

Last night in San Francisco, a handful of top-shelf Japanese developers working under the label Platinum Games announced that they have teamed up with Sega to put Japanese game development back on top.

They hope to do it with:

• A bloody black-and-white early 2009 Wii game called “Madworld,” that comes from a lead creator on “Resident Evil 4“
• A 2009 DS sci-fi spaceship-managing role-playing game called “Infinite Line” from a philosophical designer who helped make “Steel Battalion“
• A guns-on-her-hands-and-feet, witches-vs.-angels Xbox 360/PS3 2009 game called “Bayonetta” from the creator of “Devil May Cry“
• And a mystery game from Capcom pioneer Shinji Mikami.

They’re calling it a comeback for Japanese gaming, and they’re not afraid to tell me what they think has gone very wrong with the development scene in their company.

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Since the last entry, I…

*Missed writing yesterday’s entry because I was shuttling back and forth from a Sega event to a Ubisoft event to another Sega event. I played the “Sonic Chonicles” DS game at Sega, watched some relatively secret other games get played in front of me (the existence of most of the games had leaked), and played six more games at Ubisoft. I can talk publicly about the Sega stuff tomorrow; the Ubisoft stuff is off-limits until the end of the month. 

Next: Another meager update, though maybe I’ll get some gaming in on my flight from San Francisco to Los Angeles. I hope! I miss my game time on the NYC subway. C-train, I never thought I’d get nostalgic for you (though I enjoyed your cameo as a crashed train in “Ninja Gaiden II.”)

When I had dinner with Microsoft’s Shane Kim and Kudo Tsunoda on Monday, we talked about more than just “Gears of War 2.”

Kim is the head of Microsoft Game Studios and therefore a guy worth peppering with any gaming questions I could think of related to the Xbox 360’s Microsoft-published efforts.

Here’s some of what I asked him between bites of fish:

When will Microsoft make a game that requires and takes advantage of the Xbox 360’s hard-drive?

“You’re not likely to see a first party title that does that,” Kim said. I suggested that Microsoft had to have reached a point by now when the company could assume a large number of Xbox 360 owners have the drive. And surely the upcoming “Grand Theft Auto IV” downloadable content will require it. But still, Kim said he believed the games from MGS should be playable on all Xbox 360s and that it’s a software maker’s challenge to get the games to work without a hard drive.

Why was Microsoft just hiring new senior people for the Peter Jackson “Halo” project more than two years after it was announced?

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