Nintendo of Japan is even more adventurous than Nintendo of America. Meet Slide Adventure: Mag Kid, a wholly new IP, based around a very intriguing DS peripheral. Play-Asia.com had a crazy summer sale where this game - plus the specialized add-on - was only $15.

And now the Colonial Response: a modern version of the NES Zapper, reduced to solid state plastic parts since the Wii Remote already contains more than enough tech to simulate the simplistic light guns of yore. Although the Crossbow Training + Zapper bundle was originally $20 in the fall of 2007, it shot up to $25 after the holidays and has unfairly sat there ever since... except for at Walmart, where it has been normal stock at $20 for months.

CONCEPT: Slide Adventure: Mag Kid has a fantastic peripheral-dependant concept. The ass-end of a laser mouse gets plugged into the GBA slot on your DS, simultaneously providing a way for the DS to track physical motion and raising the entire unit up to a comfortable reading angle.

The entire game takes place from a top-down perspective, following the adventures of refrigerator magnets brought to life. By gliding the DS across a flat surface, you move your magnet character through the floors, desks and countertops of a normal household. Enemy magnets are dispatched by slamming into them, and they can then be absorbed so as to borrow their powers Kirby-style. (In fact, given Nintendo's willingness to float Kirby through bizarre game schemes - see Kirby Pinball, Kirby Tilt-n-Tumble, and Kirby Canvas Curse - I'm surprised they didn't just turn the laser mouse doohickey into a new Kirby game.) 7 points. I'd give it more but the non-compelling character visuals turn this new IP into a dud-on-arrival.

Link's Crossbow Training is a series of tiered shooting gallery challenges, mostly notable for re-using a ton of Twilight Princess graphic assets. Even $25 is a budget price for a Wii game, discounting the tech-less Zapper, and this game does nothing to hide its half-a-game status. It doesn't offer anything new about the Hyrule of Twilight Princess, casting doubt on the need for the Zelda dressing. 5 points.

GAMEPLAY: A great concept, an interesting piece of physicality... but not so great gameplay. The flatness of the world leads to confusing map boundaries and the flatness of the storyline (such as I can glean from context clues in the Japanese cutscenes) is hardly as innovative as the control scheme.

The critical fail is the lack of a true, seamless open world... much of your time in lost in lengthy scenes of the house's occupants unknowingly transporting you around the house. Instead of just sliding from room to room, in effect you have a complicated flowchart of movement, where getting to Dad's desk requires going from the bedroom to the kitchen to the den every single time.

The core idea is grand, but the execution is tedious. The actual motion input is cute and fun, but the game seems determined to slow you down and break your pace. Plenty of minigames and ancillary modes help prop up this score to 6 points.

Compared to light gun legends like the Point Blank series (hey, why isn't that on Wii?!?), Link's Crossbow Training is like a free browser game. Although there is a reasonable variety of level types (pop-up shooting gallery, on-rails shooting, 360-degree rotating shooting, free-roaming shooting), there's no alternate modes or options. It is what it is. You compete for high scores and unlock the levels in a linear progression.

It should be a WiiWare download, quite frankly. I'd play it quite a bit more if I didn't have to rustle up the disk. It's an impulse choice, not a destination game.

Then there's the Zapper itself, which feels like a toy and never seems to properly align. You'll do better without the Zapper casing; just play with your normal Remote + Nunchuk stance. 7 points. That'd likely be a 8 at least if this was an always-available Channel game.

VALUE: $15 is a great price on Mag Kid, an imported, Japan-only game packed with a funky exclusive, collectible peripheral. The original import price had to be in the $60 range. 9 points.

$20 from $25 isn't much, but there's no way I was buying Crossbow Training at $25 after seeing it originally sell for $20. I have principles. The Zapper is largely junk, and the game isn't much more than fodder for parties already burned out on Wii Sports and Wii Play. 5 points.

TIMELINESS: Nintendo likely has no intention of prepping Mag Kid for an American release. So this game will probably become one of those mystical Nintendo legends over here, like Sin & Punishment or Tingle's Rupeeland. Sure, the gameplay is mediocre, but so was Sin & Punishment, and the optical laser tech is very interesting. I imagine the DS homebrew scene would love to reverse engineer some games for it. Slide Adventure: Mag Kid will remain unique for some time. 7 points.

Link's Crossbow Training was barely a value proposition when it launched, Zelda-verse notwithstanding. Shooting gallery games are a dime-a-dozen on Wii, and now that WiiWare happened, you even have your choice for dedicated Channel gaming. Still, the game retains Nintendo's usual polish, even if the final result is a budget release. 5 points.

FINAL: 29 for Mag Kid, 22 for Crossbow Training. The strange and rare overtakes the familiar and simple!