The Nintendo corporation is on a mission to make sure no one lets their Wii or DS collect dust this year. The company has dominated hardware sales over the last two holiday seasons, often leaving retailers perpetually sold out of their coveted Wii console.

This year Nintendo invited The Lantern to look at its holiday lineup in its Experience Nintendo tour. It looks like the Wii is still the king of social gaming, but does Nintendo offer anything redeeming for people who want more?

New Super Mario Brothers
Release: Nov. 15. Retail Price: $49.99
People with fond memories of playing “Super Mario World” with their friends or siblings, trading off after every level, will have something to put them back in front of the TV with their Nintendo. “New Super Mario Bros.” bundles a party-game experience into classic “Mario” gameplay, with a whole new set of platform-jumping adventures up to four people can share.

When test audiences sat down to play together, they “instantly loved it,” Nintendo representative Janie Cowart said.

Mario, Luigi and two Toad helpers can make their way through each level together shooting fireballs, flying high with a propeller suit, or slipping around icy terrain in penguin suits. Players can help or hurt each other, grabbing and throwing pals off ledges or letting them bounce off their heads to reach high-up coins. It’s “Super Mario,” but with three friends jumping around the screen at once, it’s a whole new (and much crazier) experience.

Wii Fit Plus
Released: Oct. 4. Retail Price: $99.99 (balance-board bundle) $19.99 (disc)

The new “Wii Fit” release is more than just another excuse for suburbanites to work out in front of their TVs. It’s also a great chance for people to make fools of themselves in front of their friends.

One game features a Mii avatar dressed up like a chicken. To score points, a player stands on the Wii Balance Board and flaps his arms to get the Mii flapping. By leaning forward and back, players control the flight of their pseudo-chicken and try to land accurately on target pads to rack up points.

In another segment, grabbing hold of the Wii remote and leaning back and forth controls a virtual Segway on a beach.

Improvements have been made for the workout portion of the game, allowing for a “seamless flow of exercises,” but it is still “a very social title,” Cowart said.

Nintendo DSi
Released: Aug. 5. Retail Price: $169.99

The latest upgrade of Nintendo’s portable gaming device brings a few new things to the party to try to spice up the nearly 5-year-old system.
The size of the handheld is about the same as the DS Lite, but the shiny, slippery texture of that system has been replaced by a rougher shell less prone to smudges.

For people prone to doodling when bored, there’s plenty of distraction to be found in the built-in Flipnote Studio program, which lets users turn the touch-screen into a small-scale animation studio. Rough traces of your last drawing allow for intuitive flipbook animations, and people looking to go all out can add in sound with the microphone. It’s ridiculous and silly, but a heck of a lot of fun for the artistically inclined or extremely bored.

The two cameras built into the system also offer a bit of distraction reminiscent of the low-quality GBA camera of old.

“It’s not just a camera. It’s fun,” Cowart said, as she demonstrated by stamping fake tears down a picture of her colleague’s face with one quick tap.

But the fun can run dry pretty quickly. In the end, the DSi won’t be inspiring a new generation of photographers or animators, but simply distracting people between DS games.

Wii Sports Resort
Released: July 26. Retail Price: $49.99

“Wii Sports,” originally bundled with the Wii, entranced everyone with its immersion in virtual sports activities. “Wii Sports Resort,” bundled with the Wii Motion Plus peripheral, offers even more realistic immersion with activities like archery, canoeing, wakeboarding and fencing.

The swordplay is one of the most satisfying uses for the Wii remote yet, letting people take out their aggression on Nintendo’s dummy Miis. It’s a lot of fun to watch yourself tearing through a group of armed assailants, knocking out seven of them with one broad swing of your blunt sword.

There’s some challenge to be had as you unlock later levels and further challenges, but the social aspect of the game is still the strongest, giving people a great, non-alcoholic excuse to look like an idiot.

The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks
Release: Dec. 7. Retail Price: $35.99

For the first time in his history, Toon Link from the “Legend of Zelda” series is abandoning the high seas and becoming a landlubber. Instead of charting his own course as he did in “The Phantom Hourglass,” he’s taking the train. Instead of sitting around and doing sudoku on his long train rides, he has to fend off raiders and avoid explosive enemy trains by changing rails and firing the attached cannon. The zoomed in train mode looks a lot better than Link’s boat ever did, showing off the DS’s capabilities better than “Phantom Hourglass,” but it does feel a lot more restrictive than drawing a path for his boat on the open seas.

The other addition to the game is the inclusion of a Phantom helper. The hulking statue can be used to traverse lava and walk through fire, for starters, and even helps Link out in battle. Unfortunately, drawing a path for him gets tricky, and the puzzles feel a little more finicky thanks to the supposedly helpful creature.

Still, those looking for more portable “Zelda” action cannot be disappointed in the game. It looks and feels like a solid adventure to make Nintendo designer Shigeru Miyamoto proud.