At last count, there are something like six Street Fighter games available for download from the Wii’s Virtual Console section. And for that truly old-school experience, you need a truly old-school controller. The $15 dreamGEAR Arcade Fighter Classic Gamepad for Nintendo Wii looks like it may be able to scratch that itch.

Nintendo president Satoru Iwata is totally not impressed by the iPad, 3D, or HD. In fact, he’s happy running the company in the same conservative way and thinks 3D and HD are fads.

“I have doubts whether people will be wearing glasses to play games at home. How is that going to look to other people?” he said in an AP report.

I’ve been running a 3D PC rig for the past week and I’m glad to say that I’m favorably impressed. Burnout Paradise is gorgeous and Batman looks amazing. However, Nintendo doesn’t do what Nintendo doesn’t want to do, so you’re SOL if you want to see Mario beat up Link in 3D.

Can we agree that Modern Warfare 2 was an average shooter, just one that happened to be backed by a gigantic marketing budget? It wasn’t bad, certainly, but the story was bat-shit crazy—Red Dawn was more plausible—and No Russian was so clearly developed to spark controversy. This is why this Mario story warms my heart so. New Super Mario Bros. Wii is now the fastest-selling game on a single console to reach 10 million units sold worldwide. The previous record holder was Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas.

I’m not sure how we missed these charming little PS3 and Wii sniper rifles (you know, for kids) at CES. However, as Technabob points out, both look like AK-47s, which aren’t very useful as sniper rifles.

Looks like the recession is helping at least one industry. NPD Group reported that the video game industry turned in $5.53 billion dollars in sales for December, topping the results from last year by 4 percent!

Boring as all these statistics are, the bottom line is people spent a whole lot of money on video games last month. The previous record was set in December of 2008, which was the first time that sales went over $5 billion.

Nyko, proprietor of fine gaming peripherals, showcased several new items at CES. For the Wii we have the upgraded Wand+, the Type Pad wireless keypad, the Perfect Shot pistol grip attachment, and the Charge Base Quad charging station. We also have a media hub for the PS3 Slim, and a new personal headset/speaker combo for the Xbox 360.

Let’s not mention the disturbing trend that’s been cropping up lately – namely that gaming studios are taking a tip from Hollywood and seem to be rehashing a lot of old titles instead of coming up with new ones – and instead rejoice about the recent rumor-turned-official announcement: NBA JAM is coming for the Wii.

Weird naming conventions aside (What, no colon? And what’s with the capital B?), Castlevania fans have another installment in the series to conquer. This one’s available as WiiWare for ten bucks.

The product description says it all. “With the Maracas for Wii you can enjoy those Maraca based video games as if you were actually celebrating a big fiesta!” Ah yes, all those Maraca based video games.

A few weeks back, the Internet saw its first proof-of-concept video of an iPhone interacting with a Wii remote over Bluetooth. This was part of the “BTStack” project, which is aiming to add a bunch of Bluetooth protocols to the iPhone that it doesn’t otherwise support. Once in place, however, its the homebrew developer’s job to make use of the new functionality – and make use of it they have. They very much have.

Even with a price cut and the holiday season, Nintendo is scaling back Wii production for some reason. Could it be that the gaming system has finally reached a market saturation point or that the company is prepping for the Wii 2? Probably both.

Japan’s biggest gaming magazine, the Famitsu [JP], has given Nintendo’s newest Mario game New Super Mario Bros. the highest honor in the latest issue. All four editors who tested the game gave 10 points out of 10, resulting in a perfect 40/40 score.

Nintendo started offering a video distribution service for Japanese Wii owners this May, attracting about 800,000 customers by late September in this country. In the same month, Nintendo promised their free channel will be made available to Non-Japanese Wii owners next year, at the same time announcing they’ll start offering paid content (in Japan) very soon. And since the weekend, we have that fee-based streaming video service [JP] over here.

It must be pretty darn easy being an analyst at one of those fancy Wall Street firms. Take this story, that Nintendo may well launch an on-demand video service for the Wii here in North America next year. Japan’s Nikkei reported the same thing nearly two months ago, but it’s only now that someone at Lazard Capital Markets has officially predicted such a store for the North American market.

Next time you’re at Sports Authority applying for a hunting license, you could pick up replacement Wii Remote or even the Wii Fit as the retailer is getting into the gaming business. But seriously, this kind of makes sense and has apparently been in the works for months.

You might not want to wait until the day after Thanksgiving to pick up that Wii. Toys “R” Us is running a deal this coming weekend where you can pick up a Wii system and a Ready for Play Wii Pack for $249.