The second game in this wonderfully retro rhythm-shooter series is due to arrive on WiiWare this summer, and we’ve got hands-on impressions.

Released this past March, Bit.Trip Beat was a game that seemed tailor-made for the WiiWare service. Its intentionally lo-fi sound and stylized pixel graphics didn’t stretch the Wii’s hardware, and the unique, rhythm-shooter style of gameplay made clever (if subtle) use of the system’s motion controls. But there’s no denying that Bit.Trip Beat was hard–really, really hard. Thankfully, the brief duration and suitably low price point made sure that its vindictive difficulty level didn’t wear out its welcome. Now Bit.Trip Core is right around the corner, another charming but thoroughly difficult shooter in this newfound series that will test the limits of your love for old-school gameplay.

If all this sounds a little confusing, check out this gameplay video.

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We take a peek at Food Network’s virtual kitchen in Namco’s upcoming cooking game.

With the amount of cooking games that have been hitting Nintendo’s Wii and DS lately, messing around in the kitchen has become a genre of its own. It was only a matter of time before the Food Network partnered up with a developer–in this case, Red Fly–to create a well-stocked virtual kitchen so that you may experiment to your heart’s content. At yesterday’s Namco Bandai Gamers’ Day, we got to drool a little over a quick demo on how to make steak and potatoes–with asparagus, but let’s focus on the important part of the demo:meat.

Yum, steak.

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One part Pac-Man, one part Katamari, it’s Namco’s latest adventure game for the Wii.

In the upcoming Nintendo Wii game The Munchables, amorphous blobs with gaping mouths run around a bright and colorful world, chomping and eating anything that gets in their way. If that sounds a bit like Pac-Man to you, perhaps it should come as no surprise. The game, being developed by Namco Bandai (the house of Pac-Man, if you will), takes more than a bit of inspiration from the seminal arcade classic; yet calling it a straight Pac-Man clone would be missing the mark completely, because The Munchables also owes some of its trippy inspiration to the Katamari Damacy series (another Namco property), among other games. Yesterday, at Namco’s spring press event, we had a chance to play The Munchables for ourselves to see how the game’s multiple influences collide.

Check out this look at the different modes in The Munchables.

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We don the wizard hat and wave the magical wand as we explore the curious world of Magician’s Quest.

The magical open-ended game originally called Little Magicians in Japan is now coming to North America. Magician’s Quest: Mysterious Times feels very much like Animal Crossing, in which you take up residence in a colorful and wacky town, go fishing, catch bugs, and water plants. The difference here is that you can also learn to cast spells. We didn’t run into the equivalent of Tom Nook in our playtime at Konami’s Gamer Night event last week, but we did like the cutesy exterior and the no-goals approach in this whimsical game.

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Yu-Gi-Oh! gets its annual world championship update, and we check out the new role-playing game.

As long as the card game is still popular, Konami will continue to release Yu-Gi-Oh! World Championship games each year so that players from all over the world can duel against one another, thanks to the Wi-Fi capabilities of the Nintendo DS. We were able to get a brief look at the game during Konami’s press event last week in San Francisco. The 2009 version boasts an all-new role-playing game based on the animated 5D’s series, which launched on the 4Kids network last September. Characters from the new series will make an appearance in the game, where you play as a young man who has lost his memories.

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