A slow period in the industry yields only one new offering.

Once a week I've provided a Stock Report to give you a sense of which games are streaming into the MTV News offices in New York and how companies are trying to grab our attention. The games arrive at my desk throughout the day, throughout the week, hand-delivered by our men in the mailroom. What I receive and am tallying below are the final store-ready copies of games. If I got it, your local gaming store probably got it this week too. I just don't think the game stores get the swag. That's fair. I don't get the giant cardboard stand-ups of Pikachu and Bayou Billy.

The Stock Report:

Number of games at MTV HQ: 302
Last three games to arrive: "Pokémon Diamond" (Nintendo DS); "Pokémon Pearl" (Nintendo DS); "Halo 2" (PC)
Last system to arrive: PS3
Last swag to arrive: A 10.5-ounce bag of Kraft Jet-Puffed marshmallows ("a fat free food") and a plastic marshmallow-shooting toy gun, a somewhat ill-timed pair of promotional items sent early this week to hype the upcoming Xbox 360 game "Monster Madness." This box of swag did not include the game.

Notes on the game we received this week:

"Halo 2" (PC)
» It happened sooner than expected. It is just week three of the new, expanded Multiplayer Stock Report, and only one new game sits in the mailbox of the MTV News offices. There's a drought going on.
» The season of big games is nearly over. Like pre-spring daffodils, the annual August arrival of "Madden" teases the beginning of big-game season. Septembers bring the first full crop of titles, followed by three months of major games for the holidays, then some slightly late big games that slip to January. A fallow patch plagues most Februarys followed by a commonly ripe March that sees big games released to help cap off many of the big companies' fiscal years (Nintendo and Sony for example). Then things slow down from April to July — hence the lack of new games in the office this week.
» But isn't "Halo 2" a 2004 game? On the Xbox it was. But it also goes in this week's Stock Report because only now is Microsoft releasing the game for computers that run the company's new Windows Vista operating system. This version's official release date is May 8.
» No small detail: The game comes with a map editor, a likely floodgate-opener for fan-made maps.
» Like many games sent to MTV News, "Halo 2" was packaged with a reviewer's guide. Some companies (hi, EA!) send a stack of stapled pages clearly marked for personal use only. Others don't attach that label. These review guides sometimes include walk-throughs of a game's opening levels, occasionally of the whole thing. They include tips, hints and bullet points that would just fit perfectly if pasted in a video game review. They also include notes, like a list of known bugs likely to be stamped out by the time the game ships. The new "Halo 2" guide doesn't include a walk-through. It does include five "Keys to Enjoying 'Halo 2' for Windows Vista. Among them is an explanation of how a single-player campaign works: "Generally speaking, an easier level will have less artificial intelligence (AI) and more difficult levels will have more AI." Yes, readers, we still live in a world where people being sent "Halo 2" for review might need to be told such things. Another key recommends that reviewers play a few online games over Xbox Live and do so without fear of embarrassment: "Don't be shy to speak up and ask for help or advice. Most people are more than happy to provide advice on game types and objectives."
» In case you've ever wondered why game reviews on multiple Web sites often include the same screen shots, it could have to do with statements like this, from the reviewer's guide: "Please DO NOT capture in-game screen shots. We will send screens to accompany your review."
» "Halo 2" may be big news in early May, but expect that month's bigger Master Chief madness to involve "Halo 3," which will start a three-week public beta test on May 16. The game's full Xbox 360 release will come later this year.

In this massively multiplayer online game, players have to earn their peg legs.

Since Monday's Virginia Tech shootings, my zest for playing video games and writing about them has been zapped. I fiddled with "Pokémon Pearl" a little more during my subway rides to and from work. I went to NYU to watch a student deliver a video game thesis project. But until Thursday (April 19), I'd stayed away from anything really involved.

Thursday morning, I started focusing on games again. A pair of game designers from Flying Lab Software stopped by the MTV offices to talk about their upcoming massively multiplayer online game, "Pirates of the Burning Sea." We met on the 20th floor in a conference room looking out to the Hudson River and New Jersey. Frankly, it was a relief to talk about things like peg legs.

The developers were showing me how players could customize their pirate's beard and hat. I wanted to know about peg legs. Players will get them or hooks to replace hands only by completing tough missions. "This is the only MMO where you have to earn your own disfigurements," Flying Lab CEO Russell Williams said.

Somehow we got through an hour-long demo without discussing eye patches, plank-walking or scurvy. Maybe I was still off my game, or maybe it was other distractions like a malfunctioning graphics card that made the laptop brought by the Flying Lab guys display the game at something less than its best.

Williams and team picked pirates as their subject matter about five years ago after dismissing some science-fiction ideas. "Everybody thought we were idiots," Williams said. "But elves and dwarves were pretty much saturated." These days, Johnny Depp has brought pirates back in vogue, and Flying Lab's timing suddenly seems impeccable.

They've set their MMO in the Caribbean, circa 1720. Players will be able to choose among four sides: English, British, Spanish or unaffiliated pirates. At one point, I asked if there had been any surprises from the players during the game's current one-year beta test. "My biggest surprise is how many people like to play as the French," Williams said. Whichever side they play, gamers will get their own boat to command out to sea and into broadside cannon battles against other players' ships. Conquering the enemy at sea can be done with a sinking or a boarding, the latter approach supporting multiple boardings of a single ship from a swarming fleet of vessels. Read the direction of the wind with a simple dial interface, use four keys on the computer keyboard to move the ship toward the other ship. Hit the space bar to let loose the cannonballs. Sail closer to come aboard. Woe to those who board in still-dangerous waters, though, because a boarding ship is an easy mark for someone else's cannons.

Better players will enable the purchase of better ships. During the beta, players have volunteered to make their own ships, submitting 90,000-polygon warships developed with Maya 3-D design tools to Flying Lab. Player-made ships are making it into the finished game. There's also a system for fighting with swords and pistols on land. There are towns to visit, supernatural oddities to explore, goods to trade and lovers to court. Which parts of the pirate checklist are missing? They're leaving sea monsters out until an expansion pack. And they're not letting other players join in to serve as a crew, a feature that has been shown in previews of Flying Lab's MMO rival, Disney Online's upcoming 2007 "Pirates of the Caribbean Online." Williams said his team felt that players would prefer to have their own ship.

The Caribbean of Flying Lab's "Pirates" is up for grabs by the four factions. Towns and harbors will be susceptible to economic unrest that then provokes — in what the developers estimate is about three days' time — full-scale combat. Players will be encouraged to vie against others until a winning faction for an unsettled port is determined. Total victory of the game's more than 80 ports in the Caribbean by a single faction will force a restart of the entire map. The developers are toying with the pacing of the seawide struggle. They're currently backing a six-week cycle between necessary reboots of all the ports.

The flickering, malfunctioning laptop we were forced to use for the demo prevented me from appreciating the beauty of the game, but the developers told me they're trying for something significantly more advanced-looking than current industry standards, which, of course, means "World of Warcraft." They're excited about more detailed faces and more nuanced animations.

The game had been slated for June. Now they're looking at September or October. Delays are a natural part of the process and not an altogether bad thing for MMOs that need to run well when the first rush of people interested in them jump online at the same time. Those interested in joining the beta can find out more information about it here.

I've never met a game developer who didn't light up at the mention of pirates. But aside from Sid Meier's old computer favorite "Pirates!" and the quirky "Puzzle Pirates," I've never heard of an acclaimed pirate game. Not having played Meier's game or the "Puzzle" one, my only pirate point of reference is a pirate level that appears late in the genre-mixing "Sly 3." I liked boarding rival pirate ships in that game as a thieving raccoon. But I couldn't have a peg leg or a hook hand in that game. I'm ready for a game that gives me that chance.

I collect Nintendo games. Yes, I spend large chunks of my income on old-gen 8-bit graphic games that came out 20+ years ago, just so I can play them once and then they sit on a shelf with the 300+ other games I have. Call me nostalgic. Most of my games come from eBay, or other auction-type websites, and usually cost me no more than $5 a game. Some days I catch a rare game for a few dollars more and I?ll pick that up. Some days I?ll see super-rare games and dream about buying them. Once in a lifetime I see an auction like this, and wish I had an extra $21,000 lying around.

You see, the seller here had no idea what they had in their possession. The last cartridge listed in the lot is the golden cartridge for the Nintendo World Championships in 1990 which is the holy grail of NES collecting. There are only 26 of these games in existence, and I?m pretty sure number 26 just fell into the hands of a collector. It is a sad, sad day for poor NES completists out there.

'The wall is just my contribution,' 'Second Life' regular says.

The virtual world of "Second Life" isn't a video game, but I didn't feel much like playing games on Tuesday (April 17).

Our newsroom was busy covering the tragedy at Virginia Tech (see "Cho Seung-Hui, Virginia Tech Gunman, Described As 'Loner' "), and I wasn't in the mood to play or write about my latest console adventures.

I heard about a virtual memorial to the students and teachers killed at Virginia Tech (see "Virtual Memorial, MySpace Pages Help VT Mourners Cope Online"), so I decided to visit that. Logging in Tuesday morning (at this location), I found a small stand of flowers, candles and a stone heart on a pedestal. A crying statue in black was set off to one side with a note attached from "Second Life" resident Darrien Lightworker (not his real name, of course). The note read: "I never wanted to be remembered for such a memorial, so do not praise me for it; but, I couldn't just leave flowers. My heart and soul cries out for those that have lost loved ones, and I, like many others, still ask 'Why?' "

I've seen mourning in "Second Life" before at re-creations of the World Trade Center and in front of memorial candles. The virtual world lets residents build anything they can fancy from stretchable, combinable 3-D shapes. Adding the right textures can create the illusion of life, repaint the earth or even give substance to a wall of mourning. As I stood there as my "Second Life" avatar at 5:30 p.m. ET, I saw a man in a maroon Virginia Tech T-shirt lowering a gray stone panel behind the memorial. Then he duplicated it, eventually creating a semicircle. I asked him who he was and what he was up to.

In "Second Life," his name is Milosun Czervik. On the VT campus he's Ross Perkins, a research associate at the School of Education. "The wall is just my contribution," he typed in IM to me. "The texture on it is 'Hokie Stone,' which is the stone that covers nearly all buildings on our campus."

He's a "Second Life" regular. He runs the Information and Communications Technology center designed to provide educators teaching tools for the virtual world. But this week he'd only been in "Second Life" for a few minutes, having arrived less than a half-hour before I did.

"I heard that there was a candlelight vigil in one part of 'SL' earlier today," he said, "but I was with friends here [in Virginia] watching the ceremony and then just walking around outside."

Physically he hadn't been that close to the shootings. He said he was in his office across the campus' Drillfield from Norris House where most of Cho Seung-Hui's rampage occurred. "We are numb, really. As more names are released, it will get even harder as we learn about the wonderful people we lost."

Perkins was conflicted about building anything in "Second Life." "I thought about doing a memorial yesterday, but I had mixed feelings about it," he said. "Wasn't sure if I should — if it would be perceived as trite — and really, I didn't feel like being in 'SL' much."

As I stood and watched, Perkins built his memorial wall. It took him less than a minute. He said he was adding a coding script that would enable people to leave messages. I asked him if he knew how many people had visited the memorial. No one had set up a people-counter, so in a flash, he added one. It immediately tallied the five of us standing there. People were coming and going.

He posed for a picture for me and then hung around for a little bit longer. "Please do emphasize that finding this here is very touching to me," he wrote as I bid him goodbye. "The solidarity is great."

Video games usually defy reality in one way or another. However, there has always been one genre of games that does its best to give you an accurate representation of the real world: Sports games. Thanks to this week?s Virtual Console release of the second best boxing game ever, Punch-Out!! Featuring Mr. Dream (the best is Mike Tyson?s Punch-Out!!) we can see how it stacks up to reality, and examine some of the more nefarious questions that it raises...

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Our gamer feels like a Pokémon rookie, but he's willing to put in the time to learn more.

I don't remember ever getting frightened while playing a "Resident Evil" video game. I never jumped during "Eternal Darkness." But a game has finally scared me. It's a game coming to stores next week: "Pokémon Pearl."

To be precise, it's not the game that scared me but the instruction manual. Some 60 pages thick, it's nearly as packed as the guides for some strategy games. I flipped through it Sunday night after logging two hours in "Pearl." I'd been confused by some things in the game. Little did I know that the manual would confuse me more. Forget my questions about whether flying Pokémon have an advantage over bug Pokémon. The manual indicates that I'll eventually have to worry about entering my Pokémon in dance competitions and acting competitions. I'm also going to have to make Poffins, whatever those are. I can also send air mail.

I'm confused. I know "Pokémon" about as well as I know French, which is really little more than what would get me by at a restaurant that served croissants or fried Pikachu. I don't know it well enough to know if Kricketot is a good match for Shinx. Should I use growl or bite?

Last week I thought I was being clever when I told a friend that the Pokémon games change less often than the design of the $20 bill. Screen shots of each pair of games in the nearly decade-old series failed to look all that different from those of earlier ones. But my brief time with "Pearl" — and my peek at that manual — showed me that Nintendo and series developer Game Freak have been lopping on new features every time out.

That puts a person like me in a bit of a daze. This is my history with the franchise: Having missed the initial Game Boy versions of the series, I first played a GBA edition, 2003's "Pokémon Sapphire." I played that game for about four hours, enough time to understand the potency of that "Gotta Catch 'Em All" slogan. The adventure of the game sets you loose as a trainer in a country full of cute monsters to bump into, recruit to your side and then use to defeat and recruit other monsters. Each conquest makes the next one possible. It's like Game Freak lets you eat the carrot dangled out in front of you, just so that it gives you enough energy to eat a bigger one. Somehow you don't get full. But just before I got myself lost gorging on "Sapphire" I put it aside. Later I would do the same thing with "World of Warcraft." The experiences were just too addictive, too seductive, to not take over my free time. I chose instead to avoid them. Plus I didn't have anyone to link a GBA to and battle my "Pokémon" with, which is part of the point of these games.

In 2006, I tried "Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Blue Rescue Team," the first "Pokémon" game that let players control the Pokémon directly. The game sent my Pokémon group into randomly generated dungeons, but as soon as I discovered that my Pokémon allies weren't as smart as I wanted them to be and kept abandoning me, I abandoned the game. Late last year, I started playing "Pokémon Ranger," one of the few games in the series not released in a color-coded pair. This game was on the Nintendo DS and had the player capture Pokémon by rapidly drawing circles around them. As limited as that sounds, it was fun. Then I lost the cartridge. So much for catching them all.

Now I'm playing "Pokémon Pearl," hoping to finally enjoy this series as much as its fans do and hoping my free time can stand it. My first challenge was just to decide between "Pearl" and its counterpart, "Pokémon Diamond." The paired games in the series are always similar, with just a handful of monsters appearing exclusively in one game or the other. That's how they encourage compulsive players to play against friends — or to buy two copies of the game. I chose "Pearl" because the Pokémon on the cover looked cooler, sort of like a winged T-Rex.

My first impression of the game was that it wasn't pushing the DS too hard. The graphics are simple. The music is even simpler. From an overhead perspective, the tops of buildings and trees scroll by in limited 3-D. The characters have limited animations in battle. Backgrounds in the fight scenes are still shots — not even of scenery, but just bands of color. At first glance, that's about as advanced as it gets.

Characters in the game encourage you to talk to every person on the screen. It's these little folks that begin to hint how the DS is really getting pushed. In Jublifie City, one of the first major urban areas, I was directed to three clowns, who then led me to a guy who turned the lower screen of my DS from a static place-holder graphic to the Pokétch. A new term that is surely buried in the manual, it stands for Pokémon Watch. What it gave me was a clock on my lower screen, a big digital one that made it clear coming to work this morning that while I was playing "Pokémon Pearl" on the subway, I was late. The Pokétch can be switched to a pedometer, which indicates my trainer has taken 1,087 steps since I turned it on.

Another character told me that I will soon be able to use the DS' Wi-Fi to get online and trade Pokémon. Another character said I will be able to go online to battle characters.

But these are early days for me and my Pokémon. I'm still trying to figure out how to make my Magikarp do anything more threatening than splashing water in front of enemies. I've got some playing to do. I've gotta understand it all.

Plus: 'Enchanted Arms,' 'Blazing Angels.'

Once a week, I've provided a Stock Report to give you a sense of which games are streaming into the MTV News offices in New York and how companies are trying to grab our attention. The games arrive at my desk throughout the week, hand-delivered by our men in the mailroom. What I receive and am tallying below are the final store-ready copies of games. If I got it, your local gaming store probably got it this week too. I just don't think the game stores get the swag. That's fair. I don't get the giant cardboard stand-ups of Mario and Cloud.

The Stock Report:

»  Number of games at MTV News HQ: 301
»  Last three games to arrive: "Enchanted Arms" (PS3), "Pokémon Diamond" (Nintendo DS), "Pokémon Pearl" (Nintendo DS)
»  Last system to arrive: PS3
»  Last swag to arrive: Three "Pokémon" discs/ drink coasters spotlighting characters Piplup, Chimchar and Turtwig; two Nintendo DS styluses topped with "Pokémon" figurines, all packed with the "Pokémon" games; and a DS wireless headset in a smelly orange cardboard briefcase to get us excited about ... "Pokémon," of course.

Notes on games received this week:

"Blazing Angels" (Wii; *SISW - see below)
»  World War II flight game originally released on Xbox 360 in March
»  Second flight game on Wii, following Konami and Hudson's "Wing Island," one of the worst-reviewed games on the system
»  Experience of using the Wii remote to fly a plane first demoed to MTV News in December 2005, when system was still known as the Revolution (see "First Look: Nintendo Revolution Controller Feels Smooth As Puppet Strings")
»  Flight genre formerly a Nintendo mainstay when "Pilotwings" series launched with both Super Nintendo and Nintendo 64. Flight-centric developer Factor 5, which formerly developed Nintendo's "Star Wars Rogue Leader" games, now working on summer dragon-flight game "Lair" for PS3
»  Ubisoft an early Wii supporter and first company — Nintendo included — to reveal a game for the system to the public. That game, "Red Steel," was a sales success but launched reviewer criticism of Ubisoft promoting quantity of Wii titles over quality. Well-received Ubisoft Wii title "Rayman Raving Rabbids" is counter-argument

"Sims 2 Celebration Stuff" (PC)
»  Expansion pack to "Sims 2"
»  Offers wedding gowns, glowing candles, barbecue sets, birthday cakes, balloons, kids' formal wear, bells, flowers and other items to gussy up "Sims 2" parties
»  Seemingly innocent box of "Stuff" rated T for crude humor, sexual themes and violence

"Enchanted Arms" (PS3; *SISW)
»  Fantasy role-playing game from Ubisoft
»  Released in August 2006 for Xbox 360. That version's MetaCritic score: 69 of 100
»  Box copy follows RPG tradition and attempts to entice with big numbers: "Over 125 controllable creatures." "Over 50 hours of gameplay." (But could "Pac-Man" have claimed "one controllable creature" and "over 50 hours of gameplay"?)
»  Includes "simulated gambling," appeal and reward of which is unknown, despite its inclusion in many games

"Pokémon Diamond" (Nintendo DS; *SISW)
»  Half of latest paired release of money-printing "Pokémon" games
»  Back of box lists compatibility with six other "Pokémon" games; incompatibility with "Pokémon" games from three other Nintendo systems (Game Boy, N64, GameCube)
»  Predominant box color is blue; "Pokémon" character on cover — Dialga — looks like skinny, spiky brontosaurus ... this one's for boys?

"Pokémon Pearl" (Nintendo DS)
»  Half of latest paired release of money-printing "Pokémon" games
»  Back of box lists compatibility with six other "Pokémon" games; incompatibility with "Pokémon" games from three other Nintendo systems (Game Boy, N64, GameCube)
»  Predominant box color is pink; "Pokémon" character on cover — Palkia — looks like a winged T-Rex ... this one's for girls?
»  "Pearl" chosen as Multiplayer test version of the game ... impressions coming Monday

*SISW = still in shrink-wrap (we'll get to them later!)

Our gamer takes 'Sound Voyager' out for a lap.

There are some things you're just not supposed to run with: scissors, bulls and the Game Boy Advance.

But check that last one. I recently discovered a video game that could be played solely by sound. For a person like me, who tries to ensure every waking moment can be a potential game-playing moment, this was a fantastic discovery. It meant I'd found a game I might be able to play during one of my few routines that usually doesn't permit gaming: jogging.

The game is "Sound Voyager," an offbeat little Game Boy Advance title released by Nintendo last year in Japan. The game's graphics are devolved down to the Atari 2600 era: All they show is a field of blinking lights. To play the game, you plug headphones into the GBA and enter the Sound Catcher mode. When the game starts, you hear a faint, looping sound in the distance. It might be the tap of some notes of a beat, maybe a looping jingle, maybe some repeating high-tech sound. You only hear one sound at first. As it repeats, it gets louder. It sounds like it is approaching. The sound will be off to the left or right. To play the game, you use the GBA shoulder buttons to shift yourself toward the sound, left or right. If you intercept the sound before it passes, it gets locked at a single volume and a new sound approaches from afar. This keeps happening until you've built a song. In another mode you're not building a song but dodging oncoming traffic, by sound of course.

There are few visual cues in the game. The idea is to play while not looking. Or with your eyes closed. Or, I was certain, while running. So on a recent weekend I took it for a four-mile run in Brooklyn, New York's Prospect Park.

I tested "Sound Voyager" before I ever took it running. I'd played it on my couch at home and felt like some gaming pioneer, exploring what might possibly be the first equivalent of a sort of video game radio. I offered it to friends. Some loved it. Some loathed it. Some said it reminded them of getting called to the nurse's office in grade school for a hearing test.

At around 11:30 on a crisp Saturday morning, I got dressed for my run and trotted out to the park, harmonica-size Game Boy Micro in hand. Because the Micro is so small, it can be played one-handed with pinky and forefinger tapping the right buttons as if they were part of a guitar fret. It's not like I had to hold the thing out in front of me while running like I was texting someone on a two-way. The "Sound Voyager" music is all essentially techno, which is pretty useful music for a run.

So I played as I ran. It wasn't too hard. I couldn't hear some of the riffs coming at me. I missed a few of them. But just when I started thinking that my mobility might be interfering with my gaming skills, I'd make an intercept and play on.

By the time I built my song, I had passed, on my left, a field where people fly kites. I had passed, on my right, a band shell where Maceo Parker and Yo La Tengo played last summer. I had probably passed some hot dog vendors and people pushing strollers. I was to the right of some baseball fields when the song was complete, but I hadn't noticed passing any of that stuff. The game had taken my attention elsewhere. When I occasionally run to music, the sounds buzzing in my ears serve as a distraction or a meditation, but in either case I still see stuff. It turns out that when you're playing a video game and running, the outside world sort of goes away. Just ask any girlfriend who is trying to tell her boyfriend something while he's playing the PS2, I guess.

A third of the way into my run, the game switched to Sound Drive, the mode that had me dodging the sounds of oncoming cars. I was running on pavement, so this was a bit unnerving. As each sound passed me in the game, my eyes involuntarily darted toward each invisible near-miss. If someone watched my face, they might think I was watching ghosts dash past. I started to get confused as to what I was hearing in the game and what was real. The footsteps behind me, for example, were real. A runner passed me. The sound of a breaking windshield was not real. I had crashed.

There are lots of philosophies about working out, but I'm not sure any recommend experiencing failure while you're in the middle of doing something. Thankfully, the legs don't always listen to the rest of the body. My stride never broke.

At the bottom of a hill, I saw people riding horses on a dirt path just to the left of my running road. I passed the park's lake, and the person who passed me built on his lead. The next Sound Drive kicked it. Curiously, it was based on the sounds of horses — running at me. Did "Sound Voyager" somehow know where I was?

By the time I finished Sound Drive 2, I was four levels into the game and more than halfway through my run. I hadn't been singled out as a lunatic gamer just yet. I thought about that as a man skateboarded toward me with a plastic bag of groceries in each hand. I've been passed by people on unicycles, and my girlfriend once saw a dreadlocked man running with a dreadlocked dog. So who's going to question the guy running with a Game Boy?

As further proof that "Sound Voyager" truly did possess psychic ability, my approach to the final, brutal incline of my run was matched with a particularly energetic tune. The game was giving me a power song to push me on my way. Unfortunately, that power song ended too soon. I was too good at the game at that point and built the song too quickly. The game was shuffling on to the next mode, going to silence just as I was tiring and needing a boost.

And I heard a karate yell and chop. I glanced down. I was on Sound Drive 3, and psychic little "Sound Voyager" was playing a lap-ending joke: No more cars. No more horses. It was sending runners at me — runners who karate-chopped me if I didn't get out of the way. I dodged them in the game. I dodged them in real life. I reached the top. Run over, game mission complete.

I cooled off on the walk home. My first Gaming While Jogging experiment was a success. Shall we make way for a new fitness trend? Maybe not. "Sound Voyager" is not set for a U.S. release.

He?s been around for over 20 years.

He?s been around in a bunch of different forms; remade, skeletal, a baby, a really crappy character in a movie, even Giga.

He?s golfed, played soccer, kart-raced, even been invited to the party.

He?s even got kids!

Isn?t it really about time that the King of the Koopas gets his own game?!?!?

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Our gamer ponders if having fun is really important in games.

It may sound like a subject for a brainy day, but when you cover video games for a living you wind up having a lot of conversations about the meaning of "fun." Who talks about stuff like this?

On Monday I sat in on a video game theory class at New York University, and a student talked about her desire to make an emotionally powerful game. Would it be fun? She wasn't sure that fun was a requirement.

The next day, I got into an argument with a fellow game reporter about a scathing review of "God of War II" on the new review site ActionButton.net. The review had generated some fire in the site's comments section, at one point burning through the question of whether the game was too fun for its players' good — a sort of video game cotton candy rather than a video game steak. Sound ludicrous? People were arguing.

A couple of weeks ago, I met with David Simmonds, an executive who works on the massively multiplayer online game "Entropia Universe." He told me about "Entropia" and explained that every object in the sci-fi game has real financial value. A gun costs a certain amount. A pair of boots costs something else. Every time an item is used, the value goes down, making it tougher to resell. This kind of thing doesn't happen in "World of Warcraft," which is enjoyed by millions rather than the thousands who play "Entropia." I wondered if Simmonds' world was as much fun. Who wants to worry that every time they use their sword it loses its worth and will cost real money to restore? He said, naturally, that the "Entropia" way is great. "What people want in life is emotion," he told me. "I want to stand on top of a building and look down and go, 'Whoa.' It's why people parachute out of planes. If you go into any game and shoot a gun a million times each month, so what? In "Entropia Universe," everything you do can affect you financially." Certainly that adds a rush, knowing that one shot you fired today had a dollar riding on it, or that an errant volley cost you cash. Does added risk bring added fun?

Would you play a game that wasn't fun? Could that game even be any good? Musicians make blues songs and sad ballads. Pablo Picasso spent a phase of his career painting somber work — his Blue Period. Other forms of entertainment have taken that break from entertaining. But games? I've asked developers about this, and most tell me that games need to be fun and, at that, not get players down. The only taker on making a downer game so far has been critically acclaimed indie developer Introversion.

"There aren't that many games that give you a feeling of melancholy," Introversion producer Thomas Arundel told MTV News in September (see "Developer Hopes Nuclear-War Game 'Defcon' Leaves Its Mark "). He thought "Defcon" struck that somber chord nicely, thanks to a soft, sad soundtrack and its ice-cold depiction of thermonuclear war. He said the idea of sad games energized his colleagues.

I spent a good portion of the three-hour NYU class trying to think of a game — or even a game moment — that I liked even though it wasn't fun or happy. Near the end, I got one ... I think. The Nintendo DS rhythm games "Elite Beat Agents" and "Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan" mostly required players to tap and strum the system's stylus to the beat of peppy music, all in the service of improving the lives of the game's frustrated characters. But one mission in each of the games was set to a sad song and had me tapping and strumming just to help a character cope with the loss of a loved one. You're not helping a guy win the love of a cheerleader or guiding a dog back to its owner. You're helping a little girl deal with spending Christmas without her dad. I wouldn't have described it as fun, however I recommend the moment.

What's fun? You could hold long classes on that question and write books about it, and people do. Sometimes you just know what's fun. For example, I understand that "Halo 3" will include an unfortunately named mode of transport called the "man cannon" that will launch players across a map. And then, in a recent video clip showing this feature, the game's makers at Bungie Studios said opposing players could shoot their cannon jumping friends out of the sky. They said it's great fun. I believe them.

But the question buzzing around me these days seems to be less "What is fun?" than "How important is fun?" If I have time to think about this, I may need more games to play. More fun games?