If you’ve got Stars in your Club Nintendo account, go and log in to the Nintendo website and have a check, because any older than 24 months are going to expire today, like some sort of loyalty scheme supernova.

Your best bet is to exchange them for Wii Points, on a different Nintendo website. But a warning if, like me, you’ve not used it before: it’s a right pain in the arse.

The system is stupid: even if your Wii Shop Channel and Club Nintendo accounts are linked, you still have to type in a 16 digit code on the Wii Shop Channel after getting your points from the website. Oh, and Wii Points from that website are of limited availability.

A tip though: it looks like they’re being added today at about 21 minutes past the hour – they were earlier, anyway. Yes, I have been keeping a close eye on it. A load of Wii Points Card 100s were added at 1121, and gone by 1135. It was Wii Points Card 300s at 1221, and they went even quicker. Then it was back to the 100s for 1321.

Also, you can only get one Wii Points Card per day. I’ve grabbed a couple of 300s and a 100 since Friday, but I’m still going to have 200 Stars expire. If we use the Wii Points Card 2000 RRP of £14.99, that’s about 37p I’m down.

I could get some shitty wallpaper from the Stars Catalogue, but I think I’ll probably just not bother. After all, I got a free Boots meal deal at lunchtime, so I’m still well up on the day.

Five years after its US release, European Wii owners finally get to play Super Smash Bros. Brawl. A word of warning, though – people have been experiencing the same problem that occurred with the US version. It’s all to do with fact that it’s the first game to come on a dual-layered Wii disk – if there is any dust on the laser inside the Wii then it’ll struggle to read it. The solution? Send your Wii off to Nintendo to be cleaned. Or you could try sticking a cotton bud in there I suppose. Hopefully that won’t break it.

The Guitar Hero milking continues with Guitar Hero Aerosmith on all four major formats, and it would probably be best to buy Battlefield: Bad Company now if you’re interested. Wait too long and everybody playing online will be amazing at it and make you look like a fool. I’ve found that out the hard way by recently picking up Shadowrun on Xbox 360 cheaply.

The Bourne Conspiracy has been getting some good reviews (apart from EDGE, who gave it a 4) while THQ’s Big Beach Sports on Wii can be found for ridiculously cheap on the internet (£12.99 at Play). Cricket is one of the sports included and you can connect a DS and use it to customise your characters. Reviews haven’t been too shabby.

Two of interest on DS this week – Ninja Gaiden: Dragon Sword (DS – see?) and Final Fantasy Tactics A2. Certain online retailers (like Play again) are offering a neat Dragon Sword stylus with Ninja Gaiden.

Activision supply this week’s movie tie-in – Kung Fu Panda. Apparently it’s not that bad. There’s also Wacky Races on both Wii and DS. Oddly, the Wii version is viewed from a side-on perspective. It’s probably a bit rubbish.

Shirley Shirley bo-birley
Banana-fana fo-firley
Fe-fi mo-mirley
Shirley!

That’s The Name Game by Shirley Ellis, and this week I have been nothing short of enraptured by the names of games in the gaming news.

There have been those that have made me want to rip my own face off. Activision’s Dancing with the Stars: Get Your Dance On! sounds like literally the worst thing ever: a celebrity dancing reality show tie-in. Jesus wept. My Dress-Up from Oxygen Games helps fuel my despair in the Nintendo DS’s line-up, and The Sims 2 IKEA Home Stuff is just astonishing, even for EA.

But there has been good, too. Major Minor’s Majestic March can’t be a bad thing, and when it’s from Majesco and involves “multimedia musician Masaya Matsuura” (out of PaRappa the Rapper), there’s enough alliteration to bring joy to the entire universe.

The name Guinness World Records: The Videogame confuses me more than anything. The press release backing up the title doesn’t help matters when it says that you will be able to, “grow the longest fingernails ever seen; to walk a tightrope across the Grand Canyon; or even eat a jumbo jet”. What?

And finally, surely every British person is surrounded by a warm glow when there’s news of MMORPG Asda Story. If only it was what we think it is.

Wondering why Rick Moranis won’t be supplying his high-pitched vocal talent for the upcoming Ghostbusters game? Sierra’s Ben Borth has the answer:

“He made so much money off of Honey I Shrunk The Kids that he retired. He just doesn’t want to work anymore.”

Just so you know, like.

Spore Creature Creator is the first PC game to pique my interest in a long time, even though it isn’t actually a game per se. The legend Jeff Minter – of Tempest 2000 and Space Giraffe fame – has been having fun with his copy recently, posting his bovine beauties on his blog.

It looks like the humble DS is going to be the only console receiving a conversion of Will Wright’s Spore, which is a bit of a shame. But knowing EA it’ll end up on everything eventually.

Plenty of goings on in the chart this week, with one very big surprise in particular – Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII on PSP going in at #10. Seeing that even God of War: Chains of Olympus failed to make a decent impact, it’s really quite unexpected. Alone in the Dark arrives at #3, while Lego Indiana re-takes the top of the chart pushing Metal Gear Solid 4 to #2.

The next new entry is Top Spin 3 at #12, then Cooking Guide: Can’t Decide What to Eat? at #19. The Incredible Hulk makes an appearance at a poor #36 in its second week of release, which is something Sega probably aren’t too impressed about. Their rubbish Ironman tie-in, meanwhile, has moved up a few places from #24 to #21, although that’s likely to be down to stores cutting the price to £15 already.

Sports Island – which went in at a surprisingly high #8 last week – has fallen to #17 while Wii Fit has also dropped from #10 to #27. Still no chart love for Soul Bubbles on DS, despite crud such as Animal Paradise, Imagine: Happy Cooking and Princess on Ice riding high in the DS chart. Bah!

England qualified for Euro 2008, easing past the group stage with two days to go, thanks to top drawer performances from Phil Neville and superb leadership by me, on the left wing.

Obviously in real life this didn’t happen. In real life England spluttered towards the inevitable outcome of failure, due to awful management and not playing me on the left wing. But this is what games are for. To redress the balance, to change things back to the way they where supposed to be, to create a fantasy that’s better than reality. So England qualified, and I played on the left wing, set up the winning goal in the final against Holland, Phil Neville lifted the trophy, and Frank Lampard didn’t get a game.

Everybody has had their say on GTA IV, so to see a review on these hallowed pages now would be more than a little pointless. However, not many words have been said about Cub3d – the playable puzzle arcade game found within some of Liberty City’s ‘adult establishments’. So we’ll review that instead.

GTA: San Andreas had a range of playable arcade games but they were completely forgettable. Well not completely, as I do remember that they at least existed, but can I remember what they were about? Nope. I do remember though that Bully had a swish little futuristic racer that was better than some of the budget racers that the likes of Midas pump out. Likewise, with a few more options and maybe a two-player mode Cub3d (shrewdly subtitled ‘The puzzle game you’ve played before’) wouldn’t make a bad Xbox Live Arcade release. It would be more welcome than that awful Rocky and Bullwinkle game anyway.

A cross between Columns and Lumines sums up Cub3d perfectly. Blocks tumble down the screen in pairs of two; match four of the same colour and they’ll go pop. Match large amounts of the same colour and you’ll receive a power-up, including the ability to wipe out an entire line. Now here’s the hook – the blocks twist as they fall, so you need to do a bit of planning ahead to work out what position they’ll be in when they connect to the rest. This goes a long way to making it an ample time waster, and with one achievement based around Cub3d (beat the high score, which is actually quite a challenge) you might be playing it for longer than expected.

It’s a shame that the arcade near China Town is just for show – a room full of playable games of this calibre would have been awesome. Not that GTA IV needs to be any more awesome…

It’s the 100th issue of the Official PlayStation 2 Magazine this month, but in a bizarre twist of fate they start the magazine by announcing that it’s going to be the final issue.

Poor sales are likely to blame – the magazine has become a bugger to find over the last few months and a lack of new demos can hardly help. The original PlayStation Magazine (OPM) managed to survive until issue 110, if memory serves. They still owe me a PSone peripheral pack for getting ‘Star Letter’ in the final issue.

The future of the PlayStation 2 is looking surprisingly rosy for an eight year old machine though – Lego Batman, Sonic Unleashed, Tomb Raider Underworld, Ghostbusters, Ferrari Challenge, Yakuza 2, Star Wars: Force Unleashed, Mercenaries 2 and the annual Harry Potter, Crash and Spyro updates are all due out before the end of the year. That’s not a bad little assortment, is it?

It looks like Alone in the Dark has turned out to be more than a glorified tech-demo, albeit only just. The average review score at the moment is 71 percent so it’s unlikely to be remembered as one of the best games of the year. The PlayStation 3 version has been pushed back a bit, but it’s out this week on Xbox 360, Wii, PC and also PlayStation 2. The Wii and PlayStation 2 versions have been developed by the people behind Obscure II. Which was alright.

Chances are that Core Crisis: Final Fantasy VII on PSP will actually manage to get into the top 40 chart. It’s the biggest game on the system since God of War a few months back. Codemasters’ jolly fun Overlord: Rising Hell gets a belated release on PlayStation 3, while The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian is this week’s movie tie-in.

New International Track and Field on DS is meant to be pretty decent. It has been developed by Sumo – the guys who did the console conversions of Outrun 2 and Virtua Tennis – and stars a range of Konami characters including Solid Snake and Pyramid Head from Silent Hill. Then over on PC there’s the radically cheap SPORE: Creature Creator. Games Radar certainly had fun with their copy.

Next Week: Battlefield: Bad Company, Beijing 2008 and Guitar Hero Aerosmith.

Ubisoft have sneaked out Metropolismania 2 on PlayStation 2, the first instalment of which was released way back in 2002. Going by various sources on the internet, this sequel was quietly placed onto shelves last month. Possibly by spies under the cover of total darkness.

I picked up my copy from Morrisons for a modest £5.99. But be warned: the price reflects the quality somewhat. The first game quickly turned into a chore as you had to keep talking to your citizens to get them to persuade their friends to move into town. Six years on and nothing has changed, apart from the visuals which are now cel-shaded.

There are better ways to waste £5.99, particularly in a supermarket that sells both beer and cake. And Jammy Dodgers.

There must have been a lot of lucky dads on the receiving end of a shiny new DS on Father’s Day. That’s the only explanation possible for Dr Kawashima’s Brain Training and 42-All Time Classics shooting back up the top 40 chart. Solid Snake stealthily takes the top spot, pushing Lego Indiana Jones to #2, while Sid Meier’s Civilization Revolution goes in at #9.

Wii Fit is back in at #10, Sports Island has moved up from #14 to #8, but Mario Kart Wii and Ninja Gaiden II have both fallen from #6 and #7 to #15 and #16 respectively.

Moving down the chart a bit, Don King Presents: Prizefighter (which is apparently borderline average) punches into the chart at #25. Rock Band seems to be on its way out already dropping fifteen places to #35, while Haze has also fallen from #15 to #27.

The Incredible Hulk game fails to enter the top 40 but goes in at #12 in the Xbox 360 chart. Okami on Wii makes another poor showing at #17 in the Wii chart (so much for a second chance!) but it has still done better than the delightful Soul Bubbles on DS which has failed to chart full stop. It’s not even in the DS top 50. Then again, I did struggle to find a copy at the weekend…