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.

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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If you’re not busy at pre-E3 festivities, you’re probably playing a lot of WiiWare.

Which means some other games are getting the shaft — even some Wii games. While I’m thinking about trying “We Ski” (whose cover art I loved by the way), my colleague Jason Cipriano doesn’t even want to go down that slippery slope (sorry):

JasonCipriano: I’m too big a fan of “SSX” (prior to the last two releases) to offer up my downhill love anywhere else
TraceyJohn: there are racing modes in “WeSki”
JasonCipriano: yeah, there are
JasonCipriano: But they don’t appear to be even remotely close to “SSX” and all its glory
TraceyJohn: Would you like an “SSX” with the board?
JasonCipriano: If they are making “Skate” with the board, “SSX” seems like a natural next step.
JasonCipriano: I’d have to play it first, but I fear it could very easily suffer from the same problem as the Wheel
JasonCipriano: where it doesn’t offer the same level of precision that I’m used to.
JasonCipriano: So we’ve digressed to the point where we are talking about not playing games that may or may not exist.

Read on to see what else will get ignored this week with all the WiiWare madness… Read more…

Whether you would enjoy “Skate It” on the Wii depends on how you feel about Wii games that can be played using what I can best describe as motion-mashing.

It’s like button-mashing, but involves swinging the Wii remote.

Shake the controller any which way while playing “Skate It” for the Wii and good things happen.

“Skate It” adapts the controls of EA’s 2007 game “Skate” fo the Wii’s motion sensitive remote. Players hold the remote in front of them, imagining that it’s a skateboard. Tilting it down or up tilts the boarder forward or back, rotating slightly left or right causes the board to turn, flicking the remote up causes an ollie (a jump), and various combos of tilting, flicking and rotating trigger basic tricks. Two buttons are used for grabs and acceleration.

I expected the controls to be challenging when I tried it Monday night at an EA event at the Supper Club in San Francisco. Visions of EA’s “SSX Blur” and it’s demand that I draw complex patterns precisely in mid-air flashed into my mind.

But “Skate It” is not that tough.

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Nintendo forced me to make a few hard decisions yesterday.

I had to decide what games would make the cut on my Wii.

See, I’m a frequent Virtual Console buyer with an almost full system memory, and with the introduction of the new WiiWare service, I had to figure out just how I could download just two of the newly released titles. Surprisingly, it took almost an hour.

First I had to get onto the Wii Shop and see how many free blocks of memory I needed tin order to download “LostWinds” and “Defend Your Castle.” They’re 259 and 121 respectively, totaling 380 free memory blocks. My Wii only had 27 free since last week’s “Nintendo Channel” download, which I had to make space for by removing the “Check Mii Out Channel” (clearing up 123 blocks).

My options were slim since I really wanted to avoid removing any of my VC games, but I also had to make room for these new WiiWare games.

So some tough decisions had to be made, and I learned some interesting things about my Wii along the way…

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I didn’t go to bed until almost 3:30 A.M. last night, even though I have a busy week ahead of me (not to mention my boss, Stephen Totilo, will be in my neighborhood).

The late night session wasn’t because of “Grand Theft Auto IV,” but Steven Spielberg.

There aren’t many games that can convince me to keep playing past midnight. I usually run out of steam as one day rolls into the next, and when I’m done playing games, I’ll pop in a movie instead.

Not with “Boom Blox,” though. “Boom Blox” keeps asking me to put the Wii back on. Why? Let me explain…

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Nintendo of America launched their WiiWare service this morning, with six games coming along for the ride — “Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: My Life As a King,” “Pop,” “Defend Your Castle,” “LostWinds,” “V.I.P. Casino: Blackjack” and “TV Show King.”

I already have “LostWinds” downloading.

How about you?

Nintendo’s launch doesn’t include my second most wanted WiiWare game — the spectacularly stylized “World of Goo” — but “LostWinds” and “Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: My Life as a King” aren’t bad for headliners.

Then again, I only really anticipate picking up “LostWinds,” unless word-of-mouth tells me otherwise. Tell us about your WiiWare buying (and playing) experiences in the comments.

I was told that Nintendo would be delivering “Wii Fit” to my office yesterday. They did. And the above video shows what happened.Should I be embarrassed?

(Video not viewable for anyone logging in from the U.K. or Canada)

Long promised and finally delivered, the Nintendo Channel was made available for North American Wii owners some time after I went to bed last night.

I downloaded it this morning and tried it out.

As expected, the channel features promotional videos and a deep index of Wii and DS games to better inform purchasing decisions. It can also zap demos of DS games to my handheld.

But it can do other stuff I did not expect, and it shows that Nintendo may be craftier about online networking than many people gave them credit for:

The channel lets you buy games and anger GameStop at the same time: You’d think some other company than Nintendo would be the first to let consumers buy a new disc-based game via their console without taking their hands off a controller. Nope. It’s Nintendo.

I loaded a promotional video for “Wii Fit and clicked an option to buy the game. The Wii Internet Channel loaded and offered me a selection of stores to choose from: Sears, Wal-Mart, Circuit City, Toys R Us, Target, Amazon, Best Buy and K-Mart.

Who wants to be the person to tell GameStop that they didn’t make the list?

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