CBS Home Entertainment sent GeekDad a clip to show us how nice the new video will look. How does the remastered HD look? Pretty good, in my opinion.

The full series won’t be ready until later this year. But in the meantime, CBS is releasing a three-episode sampler on January 31. The disc will include the feature-length pilot, Encounter at Farpoint, as well as two fan favorites: The Inner Light from Season 5, and Sins of the Father from Season 3. The single disc will go for $21.99.

Having read Jonathan Liu’s post on the Cars 2 AppMATes toy car controller for the Cars 2 iPad game, I’ve been itching to try my kids out on it. Having spent a weekend watching them play with it, I was impressed at how this simple toy car controller changed the way they interacted with the iPad completely.

I expected it to be a lot of fun and for them all to want to get involved, but I hadn’t realized how good a fit this would be for the youngest gamers in our family (my 4 year old son in particular). Bigger fingers were less suited to controlling the diminutive cars because you have to hold the cars by the passenger and driver windows to steer them — my big stubby fingers were a bit too inaccurate at times.

AppMATes Cars 2 Encourages Collaborative Play

My youngest son actually got on better than his older siblings. While they had a problem now and again getting the AppMATes cars to register on the iPad, a combination of his little fingers and instinct to move the car around more seemed to do the trick for him. He was chuffed that we had to ask him to get it started from time to time; usually it’s the other way around.

AppMATes (half price on Amazon at around $15/car) hook into how he instinctively wanted to play by enabling him to control the Cars 2 iPad game by simply whizzing the car along the surface of the device. It works well. I could tell even after watching them for a few minutes they were lost in an imaginative world where their sound effects and extension of the actual game was as real and engaging as anything the designers may have intended. (Although, I suspect the game is designed to be loose enough to encompass this sort of open ended driving world play.)

To play the game (which is free) you need to purchase the AppMATes cars. Download Cars 2 AppMATes (iTunes) on your iPad and start the game, lay it flat on a table, place the AppMATes car in the center and place it in front of your child.

Without any direction or interference they will be able to explore Radiator Springs, go on missions, races and collect hub caps. You can use a virtual “paper model” as an alternative to the toy cars, but this really misses out on a big part of the fun.

AppMATes Cars 2 Vehicle Switching

While not perfect, controlling the game with a real Matchbox sized car removes the complicated language of buttons and sticks, and replaces it with interactions that my kids use everyday in their imaginative play. The game tracks the movement of the car on the surface of the iPad and draws the world around it. Move forward slightly and it accelerates, sweep left or right and you can turn.

The clever thing is that rather than try and replicate a traditional racing game, Cars 2 AppMATes lets the player jump, spin, slide and twist the car without it causing a problem. This makes the game feel much looser than a stick or wheel controlled experience, but that is no bad thing as it accommodates really young players.

Beyond the basic novelty there are some very nice touches. You can view your toy car in a drive through mirror to see what power-ups and upgrades you have — this further blurs the boundary further between the toy and the game. When it’s nighttime your car projects headlight beams onto the road in front of it, and the lights on the toy car also light up. You can switch your car to a different model and the game responds instantly, just like Skylanders: Spyro’s Adventures.

Read my full review of Cars 2 AppMATes for iPad to find out more about how they got on.

AppMATes are on sale on Amazon from $19 to $40.

Screenshots from To-Fu and To-Fu 2

To-Fu and To-Fu 2 – free, with in-app unlocks

To-Fu: The Trials of Chi is a funny little game in which you play a block of tofu. A ninja tofu. You stretch him out in a particular direction, let go, and fling him across the room, collecting chi and eventually going for the lucky cat fortune cookie. You stick to most walls, rebound off metal walls, and slide down glass walls. There are tons of obstacles, like spikes, moving platforms, doors and switches, and giant spinning blades. For each puzzle, you have three goals: make it to the cookie, collect all the chi, and pass the level within a certain number of steps.

The apps are free, with ads along the bottom. When I first downloaded it, I got the entire game for free, but at some point they made the additional levels a $.99 upgrade. There are tons of puzzles, and To-Fu 2 introduces new types of blocks and a super-charge power for you. It’s a fun combination of puzzle and dexterity, and has kept me busy for a while.

Trees of Doom has a couple outfits and "skins" to play with.

Ninjatown: Trees of Doom! – $.99 iPhone, $1.99 iPad

Ninjatown: Trees Of Doom! is a make-it-as-far-as-you-can game, but instead of running horizontally, you’re a ninja climbing up between two trees, bouncing between the trunks, flinging yourself up from branches, and bouncing off mushrooms. The game uses the ninja from Shawnimals, and everything is incredibly adorable, from the little round ninja to the Wee Devils to the weird mustache thing that gives you a boost when you catch it. Classic lets you climb as far as you can, and Timed makes you hurry to get to the next checkpoint before time runs out.

You can collect new outfits from time to time for your ninja to wear, and you can play on a regular level, a sketchy level, or winter. In addition, the sun sets when you get high enough and you climb at night — the graphics are really great there. One really nice touch that I appreciated: once you hit 1,000 meters, a little smoke bomb appears at the start of the level. Grab that, and you instantly jump to 1,000 meters, getting into the action without having to play all the beginning parts first. Do you get one at 2,000 meters? I don’t know, I haven’t made it that far yet. Even though it’s no longer free, it’s a lot of fun.

Jaws – save the swimmers!

Jaws – $1.99 iPhone, $2.99 iPad

Jaws takes the draw-a-path game and adds the familiar duh-DUM sound track; instead of directing boats to docks or planes to runways, you’re getting stranded swimmers to shore or picking them up in boats. Oh, but don’t forget about the giant shark that comes around every so often to munch on anyone left in the water! You start each level with some swimmers floating about, and additional people will drift in from the edges. In some levels you just get the people to the beach. In others, you have to direct boats to pick them up.

Of course, you have to do this with the threat of Jaws looming. There’s a danger meter at the bottom — when the fin reaches the right, the shark makes an appearance, swimming toward one of the swimmers. If you don’t get them out of the way quickly enough, you’re treated to a gruesome attack. Lose too many swimmers and you lose the level. Occasionally you’ll have access to a gunboat, which doesn’t kill Jaws but makes him abandon his attack until his next pass. There are only 10 levels in the campaign (plus a Survival mode) so there’s not a ton of variety, but it’s a nicely done app if you don’t mind a bit of gore and screaming. The last level actually does have you killing off Jaws, using the famous bullet-to-the-tank, but the gameplay there seems more tacked on and not as great as the bulk of the game.

And now, for the other side of the story…

Jaws Revenge – free (w/ ads and in-app currency purchases)

Now, if you’re more the sort who wants to cheer for the shark, then you’ll want to get Jaws Revenge. This one is still free, though it’s not as great as the Jaws game. It actually has similar mechanics to Mighty Fin (reviewed here) — you press to dive, let go to jump. The deeper you dive, the higher you jump. But instead of collecting bubbles, here you’re eating fish, birds, swimmers, boats, hang gliders, jet skis … even military helicopters. This is all accompanied by a lot of screaming and blood, and it’s a bit more graphic than the original (though the animation of the people is pretty rough). You can upgrade Jaws with currency that you earn by completing objectives, or you can also pay real money to add in-app currency, but I’m not really sure why you would.

The latest offering from Moonbot Studios is a gorgeous homage to Fritz Lang’s Metropolis bundled up in a children’s story about a world where the alphabet has not yet been invented, and everything is communicated through numbers.

Moonbot has gone directly to their film-making roots with this production of The Numberlys. It opens with amazing landscape tracking shots of the Numberly city, a visual and audio spectacular that provides an animated industrialism and uniformity of which Lang would approve. The narrative is cute and whimsical and delivered in an upbeat generic European accent. In the opening of the app, the narrative appears as written text which is read by the narrator in-between these epic scenes of an industrial city, workers marching through dense city landscapes, working in factories, creating numbers – cogs turning, hammers hammering, conveyor belts moving numbers along the production line. The setting is clear:

Nobody had a name. They had a number. There were no Ralphs or Pamelas. Just 27. Or 6011. Everyone liked numbers. They had nice shapes. And kept things orderly. And everything added up… so life was sort of… Numberly.

The opening of the app is gripping and quite dark (which makes sense given the inspiration), so it is unlikely to really capture the attention of pre-schoolers (I say this because as you’ll read later I have a hunch they are partly considered a key audience). It is in a black and white, slightly sepia tone and harks back to the type of animation that is aiming to appeal to both adults and children – though here it probably will be of greater interest to children of elementary school age and older.

As the story progresses, you may begin to wonder why Moonbot had chosen to present this story as an app rather than a short film. The narrative is great and it feels very much like a short. There are touches of interactivity where the audience is required to touch a red light to make the conveyor belt continue, or feed the workers during their break; however this type of interactivity doesn’t add much value to the app overall. In some ways just feels like it interrupts the flow of the story.

Moonbot’s very successful The Fabulous Flying Books of Mr Morris Lessmore worked in this way because it was presented to feel more like a book with text and images on individual pages, some animation but taking on more book form. Interestingly, and appropriately, Morris Lessmore was also was produced as a short film. But, given that The Numberlys is more filmic in quality, leaning on traditions of early cinema to tell the story, and the navigation and interactivity seems to halt the compelling storyline. This is also true when characters start to talk with each other and we are required to touch a light bulb to get the next sentence. We don’t even have a choice of two or more touch points, just one – so it feels rather pointless. This is disappointing given the high standard across the rest of the app. I’ll admit I might be being a little harsh, but as we move into 2012 we can start to have increased expectations about interactive elements in apps for ourselves and our kids.

The reason for presenting The Numberlys as an app becomes clear in the second half, which turns from pure story to a narrative game. The games are focused on a collection of five delightfully crafted characters who set about attempting to make their world more interesting. Seeking something more than numbers, they go about inventing the alphabet. And, suddenly the Numberlys get all Letterly and we engage in a series of interactive games that help the characters to build and shape every letter of the alphabet from A to Z. The games are cleverly designed in terms of visuals, but are not particularly groundbreaking in regards to game dynamics, and after a while the games start to repeat themselves. We don’t get 26 individual games for each letter of the alphabet.

After this section, we come to a narrative conclusion, which is most satisfying as it again captures the whimsy and wit that Moonbot Studios does so well.

Moonbot Studios is amazing. They have the ability to tell stories that are as good as the best of them. The concept and execution of this storyline is damn good and I take my hat of to the creativity of the concept. The animation and their visuals alone make this app worth the purchase and I understand why they chose to go in the direction of creating the app in the way they have with the ABC element. But as an adult reader of this app it was disappointing and as a child development researcher I think this app misses the mark in a way that many apps aimed at children do.

Let me explain.

The Numberlys is effectively an ABC app bookended by an amazing narrative opening and closing inspired by the work of Fritz Lang. The issue for me was that the ABC section of the app was way too long, it is a narrative black hole. We know that after we play the D game, then there will be E game and I found myself wondering: “Do I really have to do this all the way to Z?” The ABC games are great for younger children: they have appropriate prompts and the audio celebrations of the characters and the little animation sequences between the games would appeal to pre-schoolers who are usually your target market for ABC apps. The games may be a little complex if children get to that section of the app (I’d have to do some testing to be sure). But, I’m not convinced that three and four year olds will appreciate the story enough to get to the section that seems to be designed especially for them. They will be clicking the home button and heading elsewhere because the witty narrative and brilliant animation won’t impress them. And on the other hand, a six year old who may engage with the opening narrative won’t particularly find the game dynamics or learning their ABCs that enticing.

I love this app. I love the concept. I love the inspiration. I love the look, the feel, the humor and the charter development. But, like so many apps this is a case of user interface and design not matching the content of any one particular audience. I’m stuck wondering exactly who the audience is for The Numberlys. It feels like this is a great story and fantastic concept that needed an early childhood adviser or educationalist to say, “This probably won’t work for children.” And, if that had happened, maybe the ABC section could be shortened or changed. We could have gotten more narrative and another arc to the storyline, I’m not sure, but I know that this great story doesn’t quite work in terms of its structure because it has an ABC app stuck in the middle of a delightful story.

What Moonbot Studios and other developers can learn from this app is that interactivity is more than touching things on a screen; it is more than inserting a game in the middle of a narrative and the story alone won’t carry an app with mediocre interactive elements. As we move forward, the expectations of children and adults are going to increase and it is my hunch that they will pay for the improved quality we are seeing in apps compared to two years ago. I’d love to see Moonbot Studios join forces with Snow Castle Interactive whose app Hogworld: Gnart’s Adventure gives us a taste of true interactivity in this new film-book-game mashup genera that is iPad apps for kids.

You need to check out The Numberlys. It wins on so many levels; it just falls short in defining exactly who it is meant for and who it will appeal to. Sections of it will appeal to different audiences. So, maybe parents can watch the opening, give it to their preschoolers to finishing the ABC section and settle in and watch the conclusion together. That would work.

And, Moonbot will no doubt continue to create apps and tell fine stories that push the boundaries. I look forward to all of them. This one, however, only gets three quarters of the way there.

Cost: $5.99 (and well worth it) on iTunes.

Wired: Gorgeous story. Gorgeous Visuals. Lovely homage.

Tired: Who is the audience for this app?

Note: GeekDad received a build copy of this app for review purposes.

Image: Courtesy of Chris Fenton

Back in August of 2010 the NYC Resistor blog had a post about Chris Fenton’s a 1/10h scale Cray 1-A Supercomputer. Chris built the scale model to great detail, including wraparound pleather seating, a popular design feature of the ’70s.

The problem Chris faced was where to get genuine software to run on his creation. According to a post on the NY Resistor blog, that problem is one step closer to being solved: Chris was able to get his hands on a copy of a Cray Operating System backup disk. Chris is asking for help reverse-engineering the disk and has provided the recovered code to anyone who wants to help him get this up and running.

So if any GeekDad readers have reverse-engineering skills and a desire to see a cool project taken to the next level, they should head over to Chris’s blog and get the lowdown on the project and the code.

I arrived a little late today to CES (fog in Atlanta? Seriously?!) but I was able to hustle through the North Hall and part of the Central Hall for Day 1. Let me just say this — I’ve never seen so many accessory vendors for such a small number of devices. I’m talking about iPhone and iPad cases, accessories, peripherals, and other items, all dedicated to two of Apple’s best sellers. And there are just as many vendors selling Android phone and, I believe, BlackBerry phone accessories as well.

But this is GeekDad, so I spent what time was left today hunting down those exhibitors that I hope might interest a larger percentage of our readers. Below, in no particular order, are some items that caught my interest. I’ve requested items for review, but some of the items are not yet released, so stay tuned and I’ll do my best to get more in-depth reviews when items become available.

Geopalz Pedometer

This was a very interesting product for me — a pedometer (in a variety of colors and designs) that kids wear on their shoes that monitor their exercise and physical activities. Parents setup an account on the geopalz.com website and select rewards with their kids; rewards can be books, music albums, and other items that kids will want. Parents then set points for the rewards that can only be earned through physical activity like running, walking, and simply playing outdoors. The small pedometer can provide either a numerical value for mileage or a code (for parents who are worried their kids might fudge the numbers) that can be entered into the website and redeemed for points. There’s a lot more to the site than what I’ve described here, including the ability to set up classes, teams, and families to work together and compete for points. I’ll need to spend a bit more time with the site than what was demonstrated to me today, but I have a test pedometer to give Decker when I get home and I’ll be writing up a more thorough review soon.

You can find more information on this at geopalz.com.

BulletTrain Keyboard Platform

This is a beautiful little device — it’s a shell that allows you to insert an Apple keyboard and Magic Trackpad (sold separately) that creates a pseudo laptop/desktop pad. It then connects via Bluetooth to either an iPad, Apple Mini, or any other computer/device that is connected to your television. It basically turns your TV into a smart TV, allowing you to access the Internet and use apps and programs installed on the connecting device. It comes in a variety of colors as well as some skins, and they told me you can also have your own graphics added to the completed platform. They also demonstrated keyboard overlays that relate to different apps — the image here shows the overlay for Apple’s video editing software Final Cut Pro. The platform is very light weight, and the keyboard and trackpad felt solid and locked in.

More info on the BulletTrain Keyboard Platform can be found at bullettrain.com.

Trikke

When I saw the Trikke, my eyes lit up like a little kid. I’ve been looking for an electric vehicle for tooling around the neighborhood and I think I’ve found it. The Trikke is a collapsible battery-powered trike that is simply amazing to look at. Max speed is about 17mph, I believe, and it charges completely in about 5 hours to provide somewhere between 10 and 20 miles of travel. You can’t tell from the photo, but the thing leans… when you lean to the left, the handlebars that you hold on to bend to the left and allow you to corner fairly sharp. The three-wheel layout looks stable in the videos, too. They do have multiple models that are going to be released, but the base model is apparently available now.

You can get more info at trikke.com.

Mimobot

They offer way more than Star Wars characters, but let’s face it… those are the ones that caught my eye and are likely to catch yours. They’ve got most of the major characters in both USB flash drives as well as a new model called the miniMimo that allows you to insert a micro SD card of your choice (up to 32GB in size, I believe, but the standard USB drives come in 64GB size). My favorite was the Han Solo USB drive that also comes with a Carbonite carrying case. Boba Fett, Yoda, C3P0… they’re all there. And apparently Mimoco has a deal with LucasFilms to provide extra content such as videos and behind-the-scenes stuff that’s pre-installed on the drives. I was told that the mini drives (using the micro SD card) will be expanded to include the same characters found in the larger USB models.

More details at mimoco.com.

Image: Steve Thomas

The talented Steve Thomas has a shirt for sale on TeeFury, today only, for $10. If you’re a fan of Doctor Who, especially if you are looking for something to complement your copious amount of TARDIS clothing, this shirt is a great option. It highlights Steve’s classic retro poster style especially well.

So, buy the shirt today on TeeFury! Check out Steve’s other stunning artwork and posters on his website. You can also buy much of his work on Zazzle.

On the road with iOnRoad (photo by Brad Moon)

For some reason, I’ve always spent a lot of time driving. There was that decade where my in-laws lived 650 miles away, making for many long weekends spent on narrow, Northern Ontario highways. Then 13 years or so enjoying a 250-mile round trip commute for work, five to ten times a month. The past few years it’s been an ongoing series of long distance drives, punctuated with frequent camping trips towing a trailer. Having three kids — and sometimes two dogs — in the vehicle these days just adds to the distraction. Whether it’s running errands in our own city, navigating downtown Toronto in rush hour, trying to tow a trailer through construction in Montreal or cruising down I-75 for a few days, I’ve learned to appreciate every edge I can get when it comes to driving safety. When I was asked to have a look at iOnRoad, an Android collision warning app, my first thought was that this was going to be a gimmick at best and a driving distraction at worst. After spending months playing with the app, I’ve come to a different conclusion.

I like the idea behind iOnRoad. Collision avoidance systems have been offered in higher end cars for a few years now, but they tend to be priced as premium level options and haven’t yet filtered down to most entry level vehicles. But many people are already carrying around smartphones in their pockets, portable devices equipped with high resolution cameras, GPS and lots of processing power. Why not build an app that utilizes these components, turning that smartphone into a self-contained collision avoidance system? And that’s what iOnRoad does. The app (currently available as a free download for Android), provides a windshield or dashboard mounted system that scans the road ahead of your vehicle, monitors traffic in your lane and warns of potential collision events. The warning comes via audible alert, or through color code (green for safe, yellow for caution and red when in a high risk situation). The app can be front and center, with an attractive, heads up display; or you can run it in the background.

Setting up the software is straightforward. Download the app and then configure a few settings that control distance warning thresholds, whether you want to see the gap between your vehicle and the vehicle ahead displayed in seconds or a distance measurement, speed displayed in kilometers or miles per hour and a few others. Next, you mount your smartphone to your dashboard or windshield, horizontally, with the camera facing the road and the display facing the driver. The app will display bubble levels if the device is tilted too much, making it easy to optimally place it. Then drive. I found there’s a short lag while the smartphone acquires a GPS signal, but within thirty seconds or so, a green lane is painted in front of your car, your current speed is displayed and you’ll see labels overlaid over any vehicle in front of yours, color coded with current risk level. It may not be quite as sophisticated as a radar-based collision avoidance system, but it’s free and you can carry it from car to car.

Now for the big question: How well does iOnRoad work? The answer is a bit tricky, at least based on my own experience. When everything is functioning as expected, it does an impressive job. I’ve had the opportunity to throw a little bit of everything at the app — night driving, highway, city, rain-slicked roads and even ice. When everything clicks, it works as advertised. When a vehicle in front suddenly slows and the distance closes, you receive a warning that could make a real difference if your attention has lapsed momentarily, or you are distracted by two kids in the back seat arguing over who cheated at punch buggy.

The problem lies not so much in the app itself, but in its reliance on hardware and communications links that can vary in quality and/or capability. The first test phone the team sent was a decent enough handset as far as Android devices go (an LG, but I don’t recall the specific model), but it had an issue with the level sensors seemingly going haywire every few minutes and demanding repeated adjustment. It also suffered from poor GPS reception, and when the GPS went offline, iOnRoad was down for the count. A Samsung Galaxy S II that replaced the first handset was rock solid in terms of both GPS performance and positioning. But for some reason the distance calculations seemed to be off a bit when using this model. This is still beta software, so there are bound to be glitches, but I suspect varying hardware is going to be iOnRoad’s biggest challenge going forward and user experience may vary based on their smartphone. Currently, there are nine devices on the official support list. On the plus side, though, with the app currently being offered for free, you have nothing to lose by downloading it and giving it a try. In fact, iOnRoad has a useful online demo you can try out by downloading the app, then aiming your smartphone at a traffic video.

I’m an iOS guy myself, so I’m out of luck for now on this one (technically, I have a Nook Color that I occasionally run Honeycomb on, but it has no GPS or camera, so that’s not going to work so well). However, when the iOnRoad team brings out their version for the iPhone — which is supposed to be sometime this winter — you can bet I’m going to download it. With far fewer models to account for, it could be that the iOS version might be less prone to hardware quirks than the Android version. It isn’t going to replace the systems offered by Mercedes or Volvo, but if it runs solidly on your device, iOnRoad is a great addition to your car’s safety arsenal.

While the GeekDad team hides away in bunkers and basements planning their grand appearance at this year’s Maker Faire, on the other side of the Pacific Ocean (also known as “the future” due to timezone differences) a small group of intrepid Aussie makers and tinkerers are bringing the movement to the antipodes.

Australia’s very first Maker Faire is being held at Swinburne University in Melbourne on January 14. Tickets are available online.

As with all Mini Maker Faires, this day-long event will stay true to the traditions and culture of Make:

(Maker Faire Melbourne will be) celebrating do-it-yourself creativity and tinkering, but will be smaller in scale and – although predominantly showcasing the wonders of the local Melbourne Maker community – will include exhibitors from around Australia and beyond.

Of course, I’ll be there with my GeekDad t-shirt on, looking after my Lego Poetry table. So, feel free to pop by and say hello. But, there are going to be a great bunch of Australian Makers there. Check them out as they are featured on the Melbourne Maker Faire blog.

I know it sounds like hyperbole, but for my family Go Vacation has been as engaging and time-consuming as Skyrim seems to have been for our more hard-core gaming friends.

This may sound a little surprising, but I think the comparison holds true. It actually surprised me as well; I didn’t initially know that Go Vacation was anything more than a mini-game collection on the Wii.

After a little play I realized why it all looked so familiar: It’s the sequel to one of my favorite Wii games, We Ski. This game (and its followup We Ski and Snowboard) offered motion-controlled skiing challenges that slowly opened out into a free world adventure where you explore a massive alpine landscape, meet people, complete quests and improve your skiing skills.

Go Vacation‘s split-screen mode.

Better that all that, though, you could play them in four-player split-screen mode, and each progressed your character simultaneously. Even in split-screen mode the game looked fantastic and made great use of our family Miis, which always goes down well with the kids.

Before I get onto talking about how Go Vacation takes this seed and breathes new life into it, it’s worth knowing that you can try out the We Ski experience for peanuts, as it has been out for a while. There are also some great snowboard accessories for the Balance Board for added realism. Here are your options:

• We Ski ($10 on Amazon) – Wii Remote/Nunchuk with Balance Board support.
• We Ski and Snowboard ($20 on Amazon) – Wii Remote/Nunchuk with Balance Board support.
• Go Vacation ($34 on Amazon) – Wii Remote/Nunchuk with MotionPlus and Balance Board support.
• Beginners’ snowboard accessory available ($69 on Amazon).
• Advanced Snowboard accessory available ($79 on Amazon).

Go Vacation combat.

Go Vacation takes this idea and expands it into four different worlds with 50 different sports activities to learn, people to meet, treasures to find and errands to run. Sure, there’s no fighting and the character development isn’t detailed, but for families this really is a Skyrim-quality adventure.

Each location — City, Beach, Ski and Mountain) — has its own motion-controlled mode of transport and range of missions, sports activities, collectibles and mysteries to solve. Each starts off by directing you to complete a series of mini-game based challenges before letting you loose. These include Jet Ski, ATV, Surfing and Skiing activities similar to Family Ski, but also more sport-centric based games like Volleyball, Tennis and Skating.

Go Vacation treasure.

The best of these mini-games was the tennis. Although this doesn’t offer the exquisite one-to-one control of Wii Sports Resort‘s table tennis mode, it does do a solid job or providing a version of Wii tennis where you can control drop shots and lobs and player movement at the same time as a swing mechanic.

The attention to detail and good design decisions of the tennis game result in the best Wii tennis experience since Wii Sports and Grand Slam Tennis (I’m still smarting from the lack of a Wii Grand Slam Tennis 2 in favor of Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 versions). This is typical of all 50 activities that do a good job of being great fun and capturing the spirit of the real world activities in a way that similar Wii title Sports Island never quite managed.

Go Vacation interior.

All this means that Go Vacation joins Endless Ocean (Wii), Pac n’ Roll (DS), Leedmees (360) and Wipeout HD (PS3) as my go-to family gaming suggestions.

Don’t miss out on a real treat, and a great reason to dust off your Miis — and perhaps that diminutive white console that lies buried beneath your TV.

It’s the kind of game that makes me wish I gave video games scores out of 10. If I did I would only have handed out a few 10s on the Wii, and Go Vacation would get one of them now for sure.