Whatever happened to the shoulder button click in the GameCube controller? When's the last time a new game was released that actually uses it?

Three and a half years ago (or about half a year before the GameCube's North American release) I wrote The Click!. It was almost entirely speculation on the topic of what developers might do with the newly introduced click function in the GameCube controller's shoulder buttons. At E3 2001 just one demonstrated game truly used the click, and since then that number has barely increased. I know of only six games (not counting sequels) that use the click today. Rogue Squadron II, Luigi's Mansion, Eternal Darkness, Super Mario Sunshine, Star Fox Adventures and Metroid Prime. Although I haven't played every GameCube game out there, I'm sure that my tally is not far off the mark, because I have played most GameCube-exclusive games. This lack of usage is something of a concern considering the added functionality of the Nintendo DS and the promise of the Nintendo Revolution.

Are the Frag Dolls, a new clan of hot, Ubisoft-sponsored girl gamers, helping the girl gamer image, or are they just PR stunt play-things?

Discuss it in Talkback!

Ever heard of the Frag Dolls? They’re a relatively new clan of seven, hot girl gamers set up and funded by the publisher, developer, distributor Ubisoft. If you stick to Nintendo news, you may have missed them; it seems they play exclusively on Xbox. But GameCube fans beware: these girls are raising issues bigger than console loyalty.

Since the Frag Dolls started up this past September, there’s been a lot of talk about whether or not they’re “real.” Take a look at the image gallery on their website, www.fragdolls.com, and you can see pretty quickly why people might get suspicious. These girls don’t look like gamers, they look like models. And the Frag Dolls cartoon renderings don’t help the situation. They make things seem too well setup (without even going into what they do for the Dolls’ supposed “hardcore” image). Sure, the girls have blogs, and they play under their sexy pseudynoms on XBL. They even post their gaming schedules, so you can meet up with them online for some healthy competition. But who’s to say Valkyrie, the blond-haired vixen, is really holding the controller? The communicator headset ensures a girl has to be playing, but maybe it’s just Mary Sue, the unattractive girl gamer from Ubisoft accounting.

It’s time to let Nintendo of America do what it needs to do to win back market share.

When Minoru Arakawa and a few associates founded Nintendo of America in the early 1980s, it was envisioned as a distribution channel for the parent company’s arcade games. Two decades later, Nintendo Co. Ltd. in Japan still treats NOA like a distribution channel. It was smart business for a while; after all, hard-nosed Japanese business tactics helped Nintendo become the top gaming company on both sides of the Atlantic in the late eighties and early nineties. However, as Sony and eventually Microsoft moved into the market by wooing developers and pushing their games towards new audiences, Nintendo saw its business in America shrink, even as the gaming industry grew rapidly.

Should girl gamers and female characters stick together in party games?

When it comes to party games, should girls gamers play with female characters? It may not be the most important girl gamer decision you face all day, but it’s one of those little choices you can make on the road to earning gaming respect.

Let’s consider the facts. Girl gamers are a rare commodity. It's true, our numbers are growing, but we're still far outweighed by a world of male gamers. A lot of boys think girls just don't play videogames. And that's not true. We want to; deep down, we all do. But the system is against us. Games are designed for and marketed to guys, who have years of thumb-agility practice under their belts. We're just catching up.