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As Major Nelson announced last week, today Gene Simmons made a special appearance at Times Square's Virgin Mega Store, which happens to be right across the street from our offices. We waded through the crowds to get a glimpse of the KISS guitar hero with the um, Guitar Hero 360 controller. Also at the event were the nation's top five Guitar Hero gamers who jammed onstage in front of many bewildered tourists. The highest scorer, which in this case was J.W. McNay, got to play "Strutter" with Simmons (Simmons played on his own ax... literally shaped like an ax). The kid also got a custom-made 360 controller signed by Simmons. Except for the fact that I was in the same building as a member of KISS, it was pretty odd and uneventful. And Major Nelson was nowhere to be seen... For more of pics, make the jump.

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Should 'Guitar Hero II' and other games advertising certain playable songs give you immediate access to them?

If you pay for a game, should you then have to work for it? Should a game like "Guitar Hero II" that advertises certain playable songs give you immediate access to those songs? Or should the $90 the Xbox 360 version of the game costs give you a handful of them along with the right to try to unlock the ability to play dozens more?

"Unlocking is for kiddies," GameStooge.com blogger Jonah Falcon wrote last week. He didn't mean that in a nice way. He made that claim in a comment attached to his blog post on the topic, in which he charged that the "Guitar Hero II" box should have noted that Guns N' Roses' "Sweet Child 'O Mine," Spinal Tap's "Tonight I'm Gonna Rock You Tonight" and other songs listed on the box could only be played by unlocking them — which involves playing other songs. He called it "deceptive advertising." (Editor's note: "Guitar Hero II" on the Xbox 360 was developed by Harmonix, which is owned by MTV.)

It's a tricky issue. If games gave us everything at once, we'd complain. If they kept us from getting what we really wanted, we'd complain as well. I'm mixed on this one.

First, I've come to accept that some game content will always be locked from me. I'm just not good enough a gamer to conquer every obstacle coded into the discs I buy or am sent by game companies. I'll never see the final two sets of racetracks in "F-Zero GX." I'll never see the last challenge stages of "God of War." Did I deserve to because I paid for the first or because I spent so much time on the second? The content I'm missing isn't central to either game. There are enough tracks for me to race in "F-Zero," and my failure in "God of War" bonus modes didn't keep me from completing the game's substantial single-player adventures.

Second, when you accept that buying games involves buying stuff you'll never get to, the question then becomes, how much can you accept not reaching? I'm no pro at fighting games (see "Multiplayer: Putting Up A Fight"), so I was pleased to discover that last year's "Mortal Kombat: Unchained" for the PSP bucks genre conventions and begins with every fighter unlocked. I'm not good enough at fighting games to have gotten to all those fighters any other way. I was frustrated when the dazzling GameCube shoot-'em-up "Ikaruga" was too hard for me to make much progress in, but I was thrilled to discover that, for every extra hour I played, the game granted me a few more free lives the next time through. I did mind that I was bad enough at "Mario Kart DS" that I couldn't unlock some of the game's later course. I was grateful that a family friend borrowed the game and opened them for me.

Third, it's tempting to look for new solutions as controversial as they may be. For a few extra dollars, Electronic Arts allows owners of "Tiger Woods PGA Tour 07" to unlock all courses and characters in the game. The old-fashioned way of doing that is to play the game a lot. The really old-fashioned way would have been to find a cheat code on a free Web site or in a magazine, but that's a solution EA has the power to turn off. Would you pay to pick the locks barricading the content you want to access? People buy virtual gold for online worlds like "World of Warcraft" instead of playing for it, sometimes because they just don't have or want to spend the time to get it any other way (see "Documentary Reaps Truth About Game's Controversial 'Gold Farming' "). These measures might suit the effort needed to get a top item in "WoW," but should playing in some golf courses require an extra investment of time and money?

Falcon said he would have been happy if the "Guitar Hero II" box included a disclaimer explaining what it took to get to each of the game's advertised songs. He'd prefer even more another solution: not locking so many songs. Let the gaming content go free, he's saying. Should we be able to play the best rock songs out of the box? Is that a money-bought right? Or a privilege to be earned?

Our gamer says DS' Huff-n-Puff Controls have to go.

I sat down next to my girlfriend on the subway this morning and told her what I might have to do during the ride. She asked, incredulously, if I was serious. I told her to feel free to switch her seat. I might have to blow some air at my Nintendo DS.

I was gorging myself on "Wario: Master of Disguise" on Sunday, trying to finish the thing, when I choked on the discovery that I'd have to wheeze at the game to complete it. That's the only way to make Wario flap his wings once he makes a late-game transformation into a little devil. To beat the game, you must breathe on it.

I like innovation. I welcomed the DS' novelties from the day the machine was released. Two screens to play games on instead of one? Great. Advances in touch-screen gaming? Splendid. A built-in microphone for voice controls? Sounds good. Using that same mic for mini-games powered by heavy breathing? Today, I cast my vote, and cast it breathily, with a forcefully exhaled "no."

It is possible you have yet to experience what, in the spirit of control-scheme nicknames like "Total Team Control" and "EA GameFace," I now call Huff-n-Puff Controls. You could have played the Huff-n-Puff platform of choice — the DS — since the system came out and never been asked to submit your Nintendo handheld to a breeze of CO₂. But they have been around since the start. Sega's launch-window DS game, "Feel the Magic XX/XY," allowed players to blow at the DS mic to extinguish a row of video game candles. Then Nintendo's "WarioWare: Touched" offered a suite of breath-based mini-games: blow bubbles, blow bubble gum, steam up windows with some hot breath ... and more! (See the portion of the game's guide labeled "Mike 3.07" for the rest.)

Sega's "Feel the Magic" sequel, "Rub Rabbits," introduced a four-player wireless Huff-n-Puff balloon toss. That would have worked had the three DS owners I rounded up not been so uncomfortable breathing into their systems within a few feet of one another. The first "Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney" on the DS gave me the option of yelling "Objection!" into the machine's mic or just pressing a button. But it gave me no choice when it came time to dust for fingerprints. As I wrote in Multiplayer on Dec 7 (see "Multiplayer: Gaming Underground — Literally"), I had to Huff-n-Puff to crack the case.

I've enjoyed a lot of game-control innovations. I liked rumble the first time "Star Fox 64" shook my controller. I liked tilt when I first used it in "Kirby: Tilt n Tumble" on the Game Boy Color. I gave the voice-controlled PS2 game "Lifeline" a shot, had fun with the EyeToy camera on the same system and would love to see more of the apparent offspring of the two, the PS3 camera-and-mic-enabled "Eyedentify," last seen in a trailer at E3 2005. I even thought the solar-powered Game Boy Advance series "Boktai" was a worthy experiment, if only it had been possible to get bright sun rays to shine on the sensor without washing out the GBA's screen.

Rumble is nice for giving the player an extra note of feedback. Tilt control is intuitive for many people who can't comprehend steering a car, flying a dragon or rolling little round Kirby with a joystick. Voice and camera control suffer only for being as good as we can easily envision they someday will be.

Huff-n-Puff gaming is different. As best I can tell, it doesn't make gaming easier. It doesn't offer a meaningful new way to control actions that up until now were just fudged with buttons and joysticks. It has yet to open any doors that didn't have a goat behind them. Short of a breathalyzer mini-game in a "Grand Theft Auto," I don't see the point. What I see is embarrassment at having to hyperventilate over my DS while riding the subway. I see a mess of germs in having to hold the system inches from my mouth as I wheeze — hopefully dryly — on it. I see not being able to see, as in: I've had to hold this DS so close to breathe on it that I can't really appreciate the game's graphics anymore.

If I have to inflate a balloon in a video game, I'll settle for pressing a button. I don't usually call for an end to innovation, but today I've found where I draw my line. I should save my breath for something else.

Plus: 'Super Paper Mario,' 'Tetris Evolution,' 'Konami Classics Series: Arcade Hits,' 'Command & Conquer 3.'

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 Lara Croft and Master Chief.

The Stock Report:
Number of games at MTV News HQ: 297
Last three games to arrive: "Medal of Honor Vanguard" (Wii and PS2), "Konami Classics Series: Arcade Hits" (DS), "UEFA Champions League 2006-2007: Official Video Game" (PSP and Xbox 360)
Last system to arrive: PS3
Last swag to arrive: white cardboard 3-D glasses for "Super Paper Mario," even though the game can't be played while they're worn (that's what "Sly 3: Honor Among Thieves" on PS2 was for)

Notes on games received this week:

"Super Paper Mario" (Wii)
· inspired Wednesday's Multiplayer (see "Multiplayer: The Best Eye Candy Nintendo Has To Offer")

"Pogo Island" (DS; x 2; *SISW - see below)
· our first double-mailing in 2007
· a collection of shorter games
· demoed by EA in February at the MTV News offices in New York
· first EA DS title not stripped down from an EA console series

"Tetris Evolution" (Xbox 360; *SISW)
· carries seal labeling it an "Authentic Tetris Game"

"Medal of Honor Vanguard" (Wii and PS2; *SISW)
· first game released simultaneously for Sony's blockbuster old system and Nintendo's hot new one, a pairing publishers appear eager to exploit
· next such PS2/Wii combo "Manhunt 2" coming in summer
· "MoHV" slogan is "You don't play. You volunteer."

"Konami Classics Series: Arcade Hits" (DS; *SISW)
· game's 15 "classics" include "Contra," "Track and Field" and "Horror Maze" (?)
· box states "no quarters necessary"

"UEFA Champions League 2006-2007: Official Video Game" (PSP and Xbox 360; *SISW)
· soccer game, a Multiplayer knowledge blind spot

"Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars" (PC; *SISW)
· partial inspiration for MP entry last week (see "Multiplayer: Can Gaming Become A Spectator's Sport?")
· box indicates MTV News' copy is limited edition, number 66,274 of 100,000

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

Old games don't seem as fun as our correspondent remembers them — but there's hope.

Were the old days as good as I remember them? Was my 10th birthday party really that fun? Was my first girlfriend as pretty as I recall? And just how entertaining — really — was "Star Fox 64"?

I don't trust my long-term video game memory. I haven't since I replayed the original 1987 "Metroid" in 2004, as an unlockable bonus in the Game Boy Advance game "Metroid: Zero Mission." The old game was too hard, required too many restarts, and, well, why did I think it was fun to start a game with a laser beam that could only shoot halfway across the screen? The 2004 version of me preferred the remake.

On Wednesday, MTV News reporter James Montgomery complained to me about a similarly shattered memory. He had downloaded the late-'80s football classic "Tecmo Bowl" on his Nintendo Wii. " 'Tecmo Bowl,' " he declared. "Not as fun as it was when I was 12 years old."

I was thinking about this Wednesday night when I logged onto the Wii's old-games virtual shop and browsed the lineup. Should I download "The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time" and see how it really compares to "The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess"? (I remember "Ocarina" being better.) Or should I actually play both in the same calendar year to really find out?

The title I finally took a chance on Wednesday night was "Star Fox 64." I first bought the game in summer 1997 when its release offered welcome relief from the drought of games plaguing the N64 since its release late the previous year. The Nintendo game, like the SNES "Star Fox" original, starred a bunch of talking animals who flew space fighters. Players flew Star Fox and his buddies Slippy, Falco and Peppy over cities and through asteroid fields, zapping the evil forces of Andross every speed boost of the way.

I remember "Star Fox 64" fondly for a number of reasons. The N64 was my third straight Nintendo system. I didn't own a PlayStation, but some of that system's standout qualities snuck into my gaming experience via "Star Fox." Unusual for a Nintendo game but typical for many of PlayStation's biggest hits, the game's characters actually spoke aloud. The Nintendo game also had cut scenes, which is something my Sony-owning friends told me their system was great at running. The game also stood out because it came with the Rumble Pak, an add-on to the Nintendo 64 that added force-feedback for any explosions and collisions in the game. Rumble became a standard feature of most game controllers made since then.

"Star Fox 64" had a few other oddities. I'm pretty sure the Katina level, which sent Fox's squad against hundreds of alien fighters and a big mother ship, was an homage to the movie "Independence Day," which came out the previous summer. The Katina level is the first and last time I've ever seen a scene in a Nintendo game that bore any connection to a Hollywood movie.

"Star Fox 64" was also notable because of its brevity. I could play from beginning to end in less time than it took to watch a movie, and without being able to save mid-adventure, that seemed to be the point. A branching mission structure allowed the experience to differ from one play-through to the next, so there was more content than you could ever experience in a single session.

Nevertheless, this was the first widely advertised video game that I can recall feeling short. Until then, it seemed like any major new game was longer and grander than the ones before it. The major games released at the end of the SNES and Genesis era tended to last a while. "Super Mario 64" was a bigger game than any of them. Then came "Star Fox 64." That game signaled to me that the designers at Nintendo, at least, might be interested in making shorter games. "Ocarina of Time" aside, that's just what they started doing for the next several years.

Those are the reasons "Star Fox" stood out to me. Plus there was the fact that it was a lot of fun, except I'm not sure that that's actually a "fact." I've played one level of "Star Fox 64" on the Wii so far. I remember the old moves. I know where the enemy ships are going to appear. All the voiceover lines sound familiar even though it's been more than five years since I last heard them. I'll play on and hope my memories hold up, hope that I didn't just pay 1,000 Wii points ($10) to have a fond memory crushed.

There's hope in the old games and old memories yet. James IM'd me Thursday (April 5), perhaps to clarify his "Tecmo Bowl" stance and perhaps to lift my spirits. Yes, that football game was bad, but there was some good news. "Note: The corollary does not apply to [1991's] 'Tecmo Super Bowl,' " he wrote, "which is the greatest game ever made." He played it just last year. It held up.

You had better be ready to rock, because these cool Guitar Hero II auctions will not last very long at all.

A host of celebrities have customized Guitar Hero II controllers, and are now putting them up for auction. Artists include My Chemical Romance, Tenacious D, Buckcherry, Nickelback, Tony Hawk, and Kelly Slater, and all the proceeds from this auction are going directly to the Musicares charity.

What more needs to be said? This rocks, they painted, you go bid now.

King of Kong answers the question no one in his right mind would be interested enough to ask: Who's better at Donkey Kong, Billy Mitchell or Steve Wiebe?

Now, for the unititiated, Billy Mitchell is like the Superman of video games. He holds high-score records in games such as Pac-Man and Centipede and was once named "Gamer of the Century." Wiebe is the guy who broke Mitchell's high score in Donkey Kong, which created a very real rivalry between the two.

Enter director Seth Gordon, who filmed Mitchell and Wiebe's struggle and turned it into the documentary King of Kong. Kong will make its debut at New York's Tribeca Film Festival in late April and will see general release on August 17th.

How do 'Super Paper Mario' graphics rank among company's best-looking titles?

The first thing I noticed about the new Wii title "Super Paper Mario" is usually one of the last things I ever notice in a Nintendo game: the graphics.

Never mind that "SPM" is the first major single-player Wii adventure made by Nintendo since the "Zelda" that launched with the system five months ago. Never mind that the game plays like the first three "Super Mario Bros." games, with an added twist that lets players rotate the levels so they can be seen from within (compare watching a train pass by to standing in the train and looking down the length of the car). Never mind that the writing is sharp. And never mind a clever Wii gimmick that turns the system remote into a flashlight that illuminates different parts of the screen.

What jumped out to me like a hopping Super Mario was how the game looked. Like previous "Paper Mario" games, it presents Mario's world as if printed in a pop-up book. Mario and Luigi resemble flat pieces of paper, and the plumbers appear so skinny when they turn from right to left that they can't be seen for a moment. Houses, trees and green pipes look as if they were constructed with scissors and glue, connecting tabs A to tabs B.

"Super Paper Mario" takes that look and revises it. Previous "Mario" volumes appeared as if folded and painted by a sweet children's book maker. The new game looks like it was assembled by a well-meaning robot. How else to explain the mushroom and fire-flower math problems that float through the bright blue sky? How else to explain the moments when magic bridges and giant versions of Mario are drawn into the game in smooth, thin lines, as if Photoshop had developed a mind of its own, decided to try to cheer players up, and drew stuff with the speed of a flower budding in time-lapse photography? Plenty of video games are fun to play. This one is fun to look at.

Nintendo isn't known as a graphics company. It's a company that puts gameplay — and profit margins — first by often releasing hardware less powerful than the competition: a DS instead of a PSP; a Wii instead of a PS3. Nintendo's sales haven't suffered, but neither has the company developed a reputation for pushing graphics. That claim has gone to companies like former Nintendo studio Rare, "Gears of War" maker Epic, "Lair" developer Factor 5, Sony's "Gran Turismo" team, "Final Fantasy" company Square, Team Ninja of "Ninja Gaiden" fame and "Doom" developers Id.

"Super Paper Mario" may prove how valuable smart art design is over processor-pushing graphics, but it's a decidedly rare showpiece for a company not big on promoting visuals. That got me thinking that maybe I had missed something. Maybe Nintendo employed better graphics people than I thought. Maybe there have been visual innovators all along at the company? My world was turned upside down, and to right it I decided to do what always needs to be done to put things in perspective: I created a list. This is my first pass at the five best-looking Nintendo games I have ever played:

• "Yoshi's Island": Mario and Yoshi's world scribbled in crayon
• "The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker": An ocean adventure slickly rendered as a hand-drawn cartoon
• "Metroid Prime": A realistically rendered, alien-infested planet covered with striking, distinct architecture
• "The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess": A beautiful landscape that's home to a cast of charismatic, quasi-realistic characters
• "Donkey Kong": A stark, simple, classically designed pile of girders

There are five convincing exhibits to prove the case that Nintendo can push graphics if people at the company so choose. But who am I to be judge? I e-mailed a pair of Nintendo-centric writers.

Kevin Cassidy, who posts as Raw Meat Cowboy at GoNintendo.com, scanned my list and offered his own. He ranked them, with his most preferred up top:

• "The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker"
• "Pikmin"
• "Yoshi's Island"
• "Paper Mario"
• "Star Fox"

Kevin is right about "Pikmin." It was an eye-catcher on GameCube. About his fifth choice, he wrote: "I had to give a nod to 'Star Fox.' At the time, it was amazing, and for some reason I am still impressed today."

Matthew Green, the Wii editor at the Advanced Media Network, also replied. He offered his own unranked remix:

• "The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker": "For being so 'simple,' graphically I swear that the characters' expressions tell just as much of the story as the text boxes do."
• "Yoshi's Island": "The 'Yoshi' games keep going back to that old 'storybook-brought-to-life' plot, but this is the only game in the series where I actually buy it."
• "Super Smash Bros. Melee": "Everything just looks right about this game."
• "Super Mario Bros.": "There must be something special about a game's art style if fans and artists are re-creating it in various projects 20 years later."
• "The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess": "Undoubtedly the best, most realistic visuals to come out of Nintendo's development house."

What does this exercise tell us? The consistent quality in the games listed above is that there is no consistent quality. The art styles vary from game to game, almost always going for cute and happy, but rendering it with a full inventory of tools. Absent from the lists are many of the games Nintendo fans consider to be the company's all-time greats, like "Super Mario 64," the first "Zelda" and anything made for a Nintendo portable.

That "Super Paper Mario" could go into history as one of the best-looking Nintendo games doesn't guarantee its spot as an overall company great. That it encourages a reconsideration of the company's strengths may be achievement enough. The game goes on sale next week.

Our gamer is starting to warm up to the idea of in-game ads — as long as he gets free stuff.

I've reported both sides of the video game advertising issue. I've interviewed the ad people who want to put more billboards in games and the players who have mixed reactions to it. I've talked to true believers and skeptics, but I've encountered little in-game advertising myself. For a while, I could only guess my own reaction to tripping across a Coca-Cola promo in the middle of "World of Warcraft" or "EverQuest." My guess was that I wouldn't like it.

And then I heard game designer Dave Perry's wild theory, which boils down to this: Would I let Coke buy me a virtual sword? It's an offer I'm not sure I could refuse.

Perry is a longtime game designer and longtime provider of wild ideas. He's backing a game contest in which players vie for the top design job à la "American Idol." He supports the idea of games in which players get double the experience points when they allow advertisements into their game. Just last month, he told me at Game Developers Conference that a free video game revolution might be coming (see "Multiplayer: Dave Perry On 'Idol' Gaming, Dawn Of Free-Game Era"). He's a dreamer.

In the March issue of the British gaming magazine Edge, Perry suggested a new style of video game advertising. His concept, he promised, would make everyone happy. He calls his idea "just-in-time advertising" and asked his interviewer to picture it in play in a massively multiplayer fantasy-based game that has a particularly desirable selection of swords: "I'm sitting in the item store looking at the sword, going, 'That sword rocks, but it's 10 bucks — I'm not going to spend 10 bucks on it.' Then you play the game for another month and come back and go, 'God, I wish I had that sword, and there's no way to get it.' But what if the game then popped up a little box that said, 'Coca-Cola's just offered to buy the sword for you. Will you accept?' "

As soon as I read that, I thought I knew my answer. Of course I wouldn't accept a virtual sword from Coke. I let friends buy me things, members of my family buy me things. Just about everyone else wants something in exchange. Isn't that how the world works? Coca-Cola is no charity. They wouldn't offer me a sword if they didn't expect me to do something in return. And I can guess what that something is: buy Coke products. Plus, this ploy would be as transparent and hollow as an empty soda bottle. The offer itself is the ad. Even hearing them out means I'm letting an ad invade my gaming world, whether I accept the offer or not. Where's the choice in that?

Predicting this kind of response, Perry said there wouldn't be a Coke logo on the sword. There wouldn't be a way for your friends in the MMO to know you got the sword not through hard work but from a massive soft-drink conglomerate. This would be a gentle sell. He was so high on the idea, he told Edge, that he didn't even take a formal poll to test it. He's done polls on other in-game-ad ideas, but this one sounded so good to him he didn't think he needed to. That got me even more skeptical.

Then I thought about it and put myself in his scenario. I'd want the sword. I'd have been wanting that sword for a month. And I'd have considered a worse alternative than letting a soda company buy me a sword, and that is paying my own money for the fake thing or grinding through bad guys for 10 monotonous hours of gameplay to earn the fake gold to get it. To get around this, all I'd have to do was let Coke make the offer? And then — get this — I could actually not buy Coke products. That would be the — note the next word — game of it. Coke would be playing me. But I'd play Coke. I hope someone else would buy a can of Coke or two so Coke kept on offering free swords. Otherwise, I'd be set. Coke would be my hookup.

I doubt I could completely avoid paying Coke back. The next time I looked at a cooler in a convenience store, I'd probably view the Pepsi cans as a bunch of no-help do-nothings and the Coke cans as the product of my MMO Samaritans. I think I could pay that price.

As he told me last month, Perry's drive these days is to enable gamers to play games for free. He wants American MMOs, like the ones he's working on at Acclaim, to follow the successful model in Asia that lets players start a game for nothing and only pay up for any key item they'd like to add to their character's arsenal and inventory. This extra Coke twist could alleviate even those item costs.

I'm not saying I wouldn't accept Coke's offer for the sword, but I'm at a bit of a loss: In a free-to-play situation, why should I say no?

It's always sort of odd when you combine wrestlers with game writers.

As part of its almost week-long Wrestlemania festivities, THQ lets a select few game journalists interview a handful of WWE wrestlers as part of the WWE Superstar Challenge. Before the wrestlers compete to see who's the best at the video game Smackdown vs. Raw, they're shuttled from room to room so people from Nintendo Power, EGM, GamePro, etc., can ask them such hard-hitting questions as, which Nintendo character do you most relate to? And also, what do you think of the improvements made to next-generation wrestling games? We are all sure, each of us, to win maybe five Pulitzers apiece.

But it's good fun, and we even get a tiny bit of insight into the men and women who make up the WWE's roster. Ken "Mr. Kennedy" Kennedy wants to make an X-rated video game. Batista who up until Wrestlemania was the world's champion said, "I think a lot of fans live vicariously through us. You can't go into work to beat on your boss. We can."