 With Christmas only days away now, the yearly frenzy for buying the ‘must have’ games is almost over.
Parents should be gleefully sitting in their living rooms wrapping gifts, while kids, regardless of age, should be looking forward to collecting their bounty on Christmas day. But what advice can be given to the present buying stragglers of 2008? Game enthusiasts who are in the loop know there are only two games that will make the grade this Christmas - Professor Layton and the Curious Village and Wii Fit. The question now is whether you can get your hands on them. Wii Fit, despite being released almost a year ago, is still incredibly hard to come by. The game is fitness orientated and involves performing a variety of exercises on the balance board provided with the game. Aimed to promote the fun, fun, fun side of exercising, it incorporates muscle, yoga and balance exercises to improve a player’s ‘Wii Fit age’. The reason behind Professor Layton’s success is slightly more enigmatic. Its pitch on the Nintendo website demands puzzle-solving skills, and promises “to tax your lateral thinking to the limit”. The biggest puzzle might actually be finding both games in Kingston. With Woolworths, regrettably, out of the picture, it has fallen to two companies, GAME Store Ltd and HMV, to provide shoppers with the games of desire. Despite having three stores to choose from, GAME seems to have fallen short of expectation this year. Deputy Manager of the Bentall Centre GAME, David Morse, said: “Wii Fit shouldn’t be too hard to get hold of, though I haven’t seen Professor Layton in a while.” Did the store actually have the games? The answer is no, with David putting down the shortage to “standard Nintendo shenanigans.” HMV is also located inside the Bentall Centre, conveniently, only two doors down from GAME. Sales assistants like Gareth, will kindly inform you of their stock level, when it was received and how it flew out of the door so fast, each game might as well have had wings attached to their cases. There too, Wii Fit, was out of stock. But, what luck! Professor Layton was in!, A colleague of Gareth calls triumphantly “I received two copies today!” Each year, gaming corporations, Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo, go head to head to produce the top game for Christmas. For the past two years Nintendo has been coming out top, despite opting for a slightly more family orientated feel with their consoles and games. Last year, Wii and DS consoles were scarce and this year Nintendo have swept the ‘I want it’ list by producing the top two games. But Nintendo declined to comment about the apparent shortage of games in the UK.
So, what advice can be given to anyone still wanting one of these ‘must have’ games this Christmas? Well you have one of two options really. You can peruse the internet: Amazon have got Professor Layton for £69.99 and Wii Fit £97.49, both of which are extortionately overpriced as the former’s RRP is £29.99 and the latter’s is £69.99, or haunt the stores in Kingston that may stock them.
As they are fairly close together, you would probably have more luck finding either simply by mincing between stores. Suffice to say, there is no point of paying a ridiculous amount for a game that will eventually be thrown into a corner, so maybe it would be best to wait until the New Year.
Check out the UK top 40 games here
Picture credit: Jeff Blackler/Rex Features
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