Over the next week, we get not one, but two baseball games coming out. There are tons of differences between the game we could look at for you to decide which one is best, but I just want to see how biased each game is toward specific teams! So here are the official rankings in both games of how good each team is. I was of course shocked to see the Atlanta Braves weren’t #1 in everything.

MLB 2K10 Team Rankings

1. Boston Red Sox
2. New York Yankees
3. Philadelphia Phillies
4. Los Angeles Angels
5. Los Angeles Dodgers
6. Texas Rangers
7. St. Louis Cardinals
8. Tampa Bay Rays
9. Minnesota Twins
10. San Francisco Giants
11. Colorado Rockies
12. Milwaukee Brewers
13. Chicago Cubs
14. Atlanta Braves
15. Arizona Diamondbacks
16. Chicago White Sox
17. Baltimore Orioles
18. Seattle Mariners
19. New York Mets
20. Kansas City Royals
21. Oakland Athletics
22. Florida Marlins
23. Washington Nationals
24. Cincinnati Reds
25. Detroit Tigers
26. Houston Astros
27. Toronto Blue Jays
28. Cleveland Indians
29. Pittsburgh Pirates
30. San Diego Padres

MLB 10: The Show Team Rankings

1. Yankees
2. Red Sox
3. Phillies
4. Dodgers
5. Rays
6. Braves
7. Angels
8. Rockies
9. Cubs
10. Rangers
11. Diamondbacks
12. Twins
13. White Sox
14. Giants
15. Blue Jays
16. Cardinals
17. Mets
18. Brewers
19. Reds
20. Orioles
21. Mariners
22. Astros
23. Athletics
24. Tigers
25. Padres
26. Marlins
27. Royals
28. Nationals
29. Pirates
30. Indians

Sonic & SEGA All-Stars Racing is the biggest kids’ release of the next week, and because maybe the coolest thing about kart racing games is all the characters, here’s a full list for you:

1. Sonic the Hedgehog – No surprises there.
2. Miles “Tails” Prower – Side note: It took me years and years to get the joke on why his name is Miles Prower. Do you get it?
3. Knuckles – Again, not too surprising.
4. Doctor Eggman – His real name is Dr. Ivo Robotnik. I guess “Eggman” was just a bad nickname he got in school.
5. Amy Rose – She was introduced in my favorite Sonic game ever, Sonic CD, for the SEGA CD. As a kid I had a combination Laserdisc/SEGA CD player, and I swear those are both real things.
6. Shadow the Hedgehog – I realize he’s the anti-Sonic and everything, but it still seems odd that a hedgehog can have a gun, like Shadow does.
7. Big the Cat – Another Sonic side character, and he looks about as much like a cat as Sonic looks like a real hedgehog. I mean, look at him.
8. AiAi – He puts the “Monkey” in “Super Monkey Ball.” Otherwise, the game would just be “Super Ball,” which actually might be trademarked already.
9. Amigo – From “Samba de Amigo.” For those keeping score, that’ s Monkeys 2 – 3 Hedgehogs.
10. Ryo Hazuki – The main character from the Dreamcast cult hit, “Shenmue.” Yeah, don’t worry if you’ve never heard of it.
11. Beat – From “Jet Set Radio,” another cult hit for the Dreamcast.
12. Alex Kidd – Oh boy, this is even more obscure. He was SEGA’s main man until Sonic took the stage, and hasn’t been in his own new game since well before you were born.
13. Billy Hatcher – From “Billy Hatcher and the Giant Egg” for the Gamecube. He, uh, wears a chicken suit. Hm.
14. Zobio and Zobiko – A zombie couple. Too early for Halloween and too late for Valentine’s Day.
15. Ulala – From “Space Channel 5,” another Dreamcast game you’ve probably never played, but should. I miss the Dreamcast now.
16. Jacky Bryant and Akira Yuki – From the “Virtua Fighter” series.
17. B.D. Joe - From “Crazy Taxi,” which hopefully you’ve seen in an arcade or something. Do arcades still exist?
18. Robo and Modo – Now here’s one I hadn’t even heard of. They’re from “Bonanza Bros.,” which apparently came out in 1990. Ooooookay.
19. Opa-Opa – A living spaceship. Cool.
20. Chuih, ChuBei, ChuPea, and ChuBach – All from “ChuChu Rocket!,” another awesome game for the Dreamcast.
21. Banjo and Kazooie – Xbox 360 version only. Sorry, Nintendo fans like me who played the original “Banjo-Kazooie” on the N64.
22. Avatar – Not like James Cameron’s Avatar or the animation show Avatar, but your New Xbox Experience one. Obviously, also Xbox 360 only.
23. Mii – For the Wii.

This week, Super Monkey Ball Step & Roll was released, the first in the Super Monkey Ball series to support the Wii Balance Board. Pretty sweet, but those of you who bought Wii Fit are still probably wondering: Just how many games support my balance board anyway? Well, here is every single one of them that’s cool for kids, with a helpful awesomeness rating out of 10 for each game to help you choose one.

• Academy of Champions: Soccer – 6/10 Awesomeness Rating
• All Star Cheer Squad – 7/10
• Dance Dance Revolution Hottest Party 3 – 7/10
• G1 Jockey 2008 – 3/10
• EA Sports Active (and Active: More Workouts) – 9/10 if you’re into exercise!
• Equilibrio – 5/10
• Gold’s Gym Cardio Workout – 7/10 again, just for exercise
• Imagine Fashion Party – 8/10
• James Cameron’s Avatar: the Game – 5/10 surprisingly terrible
• Jillian Michael’s Fitness Ultimatum 2009 & 2010 – 8/10 exercise only
• Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Winter Games – 9/10
• My Fitness Coach 2 – 7/10 only exercise
• NewU – 7/10 only exercise
• Overturn – 7/10
• Punch-Out!! – 9/10 and yes, there are two exclamation points in the title…
• Rayman Raving Rabbids TV Party – 10/10 perhaps the most awesome
• Rock ‘n’ Roll Climber – 6/10
• Shaun White Snowboarding (Road Trip and World Stage) – 9/10
• Skate City Heroes – 7/10
• Skate It – 9/10
• Snowboard Riot – 6/10
• Tetris Party – 9/10 I’m sad that I’ve never been invited to a Tetris party…
• The Incredible Maze – 4/10
• Walk it Out – 6/10
• We Ski – 8/10
• We Ski & Snowboard – 8/10
• Wii Fit – 10/10 but surely, you’ve played it, right?
• Wii Fit Plus – 10/10
• Wii Music – 7/10
• Winter Sports 2: The Next Challenge – 8/10
• Yoga – 6/10 Well, it is just yoga…

This week’s game releases include Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief, and on the very same day, another game (one that’s not so kid-friendly) will be released based on Dante’s Divine Comedy. I decided that this should be a growing trend, games based on awesome literature, so here are some games I’d like to see that fit that mold:

• The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – There is a classic, hilarious 1984 text adventure based on this classic, hilarious 1979 book. But text adventures are a little hard to get into ever since games got, you know, graphics, so we need a new Hitchhiker’s Guide game. Besides maybe the Ratchet & Clank series, not enough games are funny nowadays.
• Pride and Prejudice and Zombies – This mixture of a famous Jane Austen novel and, well, zombies is getting a movie made of it pretty soon. So it’s the perfect time for a video game beat-em-up adaptation to go along with it!
• The Three Musketeers – This book’s due for a comeback. Lots of good combat actions between muskets and rapiers, and a good story to back it up.

Level-5 is the developer of our latest featured game, White Knight Chronicles. They’re an often overlooked RPG dev, with some amazing games for Sony systems in particular over the years. Here’s a quick rundown of them, and why you should pick them up if you see them for $5 in a bargain bin somewhere.

• Dark Cloud (2000) – PS2. Actually very similar to White Knight Chronicles in that it’s a regular RPG with city-building elements. A real under-recognized gem.
• Dark Chronicle (2002) – PS2. Sometimes it’s called Dark Cloud 2. It has the same city-building stuff combined with RPG stuff, and then adds in this odd photography system. It has awesome, stylish graphics.
• Dragon Quest VIII (2004) – PS2. Again, great cel-shaded graphics. Japanese magazine Famitsu called it the fourth best game of all time at one point.
• Rogue Galaxy (2005) – PS2. It’s pretty unfair to say it’s a sci-fi version of Dark Cloud 2, but I don’t have a lot of room to talk about it here, so I’m just going to say it’s like a sci-fi version of Dark Cloud 2.
• Jeanne d’Arc (2006) – PSP. A tactical turn-based RPG instead of an action one like the others, plus it’s (loosely) based on the story of Joan of Arc. One of my favorite PSP games.
• The Professor Layton series (2007-today) – DS. Not an RPG, but rather a game of puzzles set around a storyline, with some adventure-y elements. Definitely a must-have for DS owners, unless you’re really ticked off by brain teasers.

In this week’s game releases post, the KORG DS-10+ Synthesizer came out, a synthesizer and music-making program for the DS. It turns out that about every gaming platform has one of these pure music-making games on it at one point or another, so I’m going to pick out some of the other consoles (though the current gen of home consoles doesn’t have too many yet).

• PSP: “Beaterator” – Very similar to the KORG DS-10, but it’s presented by famous hip-hop producer Timbaland, and contains tons and tons of sound loops to work with. These sound loops give you more sounds to work with to make your music, but also make it a little tougher to get your music started, just because you have so many options.
• Xbox: “Xbox Music Mixer” – Didn’t quite match up to be a music-making game, exactly, but it did have the ability to strip voices out of music you put in it, allowing for instant karaoke mixes, which is pretty awesome. There were tons of other small features that let you play around with your music as well, but this game’s tough to find now.
• PS2: “MTV Music Generator 3″ – There were actually a ton of music-making games for the PS2, but this was the latest of them, coming out in 2004.  Tons and tons of stuff to play around with, but the game didn’t help you figure it out very much.

This week’s gaming news post covered Vancouver 2010, the primary game of this year’s Winter Olympics. But there are other games for the Winter Olympics out there, both from the past and present. Let’s go through them.

• When they say Vancouver 2010 is the official game of this year’s Winter Olympics, there is actually one more: Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Winter Games. If you’re playing the Wii, this is the only official game you get for these games, and if you have just a Wii, chances are you’d rather play as Mario, Sonic, and pals than generic folks anyway. I like Yoshi way better than “German Athlete #3.”
• You can go back to previous years of official games. My recommendation: Nagano Winter Olympics ’98 for the Nintendo 64. It was made by Konami, and somehow had more events than they include nowadays. You could play curling!
• Then there’s one of the few unofficial games ever released, 1986′s “Winter Games.” It was released on a ton of different consoles back then, and is about to be ported over to the Wii Virtual Console in the near future. There are some who say this game has the worst controls of any ever made. It’s, uh… Not that good.

For this week’s game releases post, we talked about the new Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles, Eat! Fat! Fight!, and Fast Food Panic. Eat! Fat! Fight! is a sumo wrestling game on Wiiware, and I thought that there had to be more sumo wrestling games out there. Well, there is an independent game called Sumotori Dreams on the PC, and it’s pretty awesome, especially if you have a friend to play against. There’s a demo, and then the full game is $4.50 beyond that. It won’t allow you the pleasure of training your own wrestler like Eat! Fat! Fight!, but it’s definitely worth downloading the demo.

For this week’s game releases, we got Guitar Hero Van Halen, Hotel Dash, and AiRace. Here’s the full tracklist for Guitar Hero Van Halen, so you can better decide if this one’s worth your money.

Another week of only three games coming out, but still some neat stuff. Pixeljunk Shooter is getting some insanely good reviews. The first thing I think when I see the game, though, is that it’s not exactly a “shooter” at all. It involves shooting, but that’s totally not the point.

It turns out there was a contest to decide the name of the game, back when it was a prototype and was only being called “Pixeljunk 1-4.” People got a look at this video, and got to decide what they thought it should be called. The leading name by votes on their website was “Pixeljunk Elements,” by a long long way. But the developers were afraid that the name wasn’t action-y enough, and that people might think the game was about the weather. Other leading contender names were “Pixeljunk Caves,” “Pixeljunk Depths,” “Pixeljunk Atlantis,” “Pixeljunk S.O.S.!,” and “Pixeljunk Blaster.”

The developers were planning on calling it “Pixeljunk Depths,” but they said that the name was too hard to say. So anyway, they picked “Pixeljunk Shooter,” which received only 8 votes, and said that that name won the contest, which ticked a lot of folks off, and me too a little bit. It’s not that much of a shooter, it’s more about the water/lava puzzles.

Regardless, great game, definitely worth trying for $10 on the Playstation Network.