With all of the buzz surrounding the Xbox 360's controller-free motion gaming of Kinect and the Playstation 3's motion-sensing Move, it might be easy to forget that Nintendo has been doing motion gaming for quite some time.

They're still doing it, of course, and quite well.

There were at E3 a whole new crop of motion games unveiled and showed off for the Wii. I was surprised to discover how fun Mario Sports Mix, due out next year, was.

The game includes basketball, volleyball, dodge ball and hockey.

I spent a few minutes with a Nintendo rep playing volleyball and really enjoyed my time with the game.

All of the games let you play cooperatively with up to three people or competitively with up to four. But we played through a match of cooperative volleyball together with the rep controlling Mario and me in control of Donkey Kong.

The game's controls are fairly simple. To serve you swing the remote up into the air to toss the ball into the air, and then back down again to smack the ball over the net. Once the game gets going, you use the thumbstick on the nunchuck to move your character around. A glowing spot on the ground shows you where the volleyball is headed. You have to move your character into the glowing splash of color and then swing up to bump the ball.

The game automatically aims the shots and you seem to have to bump the ball twice before delivering a spike by swinging down with the remote.

Of course the game play has a Nintendo twist: While playing you can pick up items like Koopa Shells and coins to use during play. The attack items can be triggered during the match to knock down, blow up or confuse the other team, while the coins collected during a service multiply the score you receive if you win a point. So if you collect three coins during a volley and then win, you get three points not one.

You also have super moves, which can be charged up with volleys. Mario's was a power spike, while Daisy's covered our entire court in flowers, making it impossible to see where her hit was going.

The game also features a number of different settings, all based on famous Nintendo game locations, and all interactive. Which is a nice touch.

While I didn't have time to try the other sports, I'm told the play is all very similar.

It's nothing intensely deep, but it is fun and most certainly the sort of game that could be a big hit at family gatherings or with crowds of friends.

It's been fifteen years since Pixar Animation Studios ushered in the age of the CGI movie with Toy Story, a candid look at the secret lives of toys. Are we too old for one last trip inside the toy box?

Toy Story introduced us to a world of living toys that only desire to be loved and played with by their owners. Like children often do, Pixar used the toys to tell a broader story. The first film dealt with themes of jealousy and friendship, as new toy Buzz Lightyear muscles in on old-fashioned cowboy Woody's turf. The second film is a tongue-in-cheek look at the collectible toy market, hinting that one day Buzz and Woody's owner Andy would outgrow his toys and move on.

And now he is.

Andy is heading to college, and the toys that were once his beloved sadly prepare to be relegated to his dusty attic. As usual, things don't go as planned, and the toys find themselves on an epic adventure that will take them to the Sunnyside Daycare Center and beyond. Will it really be their last adventure?

Loved
Growing Up Davis: Has it really been 15 years? Andy Davis has grown from imaginative youngster to mature young man, ready to take his first steps into college life, leaving his last bastion of childhood behind in a dusty old toy box. His sister, a baby in the first film and toddler in the second, is now your typical preteen girl. Perhaps the most jarring transformation is Andy's dog, Buster. Full of energy and excitement in Toy Story 2, the faithful hound is now old, grey, and exhausted. It's a natural progression, but one that fills the viewer with a sense of melancholy, which helps us identify with the plight of the forgotten toys.

The Opening Sequence: The movie opens with one of Andy's last adventures with is toy pals. The Potato Heads have robbed a train, and Woody arrives in the nick of time to stop them. They best him, but Buzz Lightyear and Jessie come to the rescue. Things escalate from there. There's a giant mech pig. There's a slinky dog force field. Then comes monkey armageddon. It's a glorious spectacle that serves as stark contrast to the current plight of Andy's toys, which now have to resort to cheap tricks to get him to even look their way.

Old Friends: Like the joy of opening an old cardboard box in the attic and finding it full of childhood memories, Woody, Buzz, and the gang triumphantly return to the big screen as if they never left. The original cast returns, brining characters like Mr. and Mrs. Potato Head, Hamm the piggy bank, and Rex to life in hilarious fashion, while Blake Clark does a fine job of stepping into the late Jim Varney's shoes as the voice of Slinky Dog . My personal favorites, the Squeeze Toy Aliens, steal the show, finally coming to grips with their obsession over 'The Claw."

New Friends: As much fun as it is to reunite with old friends, the joy of getting new toys cannot be ignored. From Whoopi Goldberg's turn as the sinister plastic glitter octopus Stretch to Timothy Dalton's thespian porcupine Mr. Pricklepants, the new cast is every bit as entertaining as the old. Michael Keaton in particular shines as the Ken doll, who vehemently claims to be "not a girl's toy," while Studio Ghibli's Totoro steals hearts without ever speaking a word.

Sunnyside Up: Toy Story 3 is part prison escape movie. The Sunnyside Daycare Center might seem like toy paradise, but it harbors a dark secret. Fluffy, pink, and smelling like strawberries, Lots-O'-Huggin' Bear (voiced by Ned Beatty) seems like a pleasant enough host, but in reality is a strict prison warden, forcing toys new to the center to do time in a room filled with savage toddlers that aren't "age appropriate." Lots-O' is quite a tragic character, once you know his back story. It's almost enough to justify his sinister actions, but not quite, making him quite possibly the best villain of the trilogy.

And In The End: The ending of Toy Story 3 will have tears rolling down the cheeks of anyone who has ever had a favorite toy. It's just so bittersweet. It had me remembering the toys of my past. Not the ones sitting on my shelves or hanging on my walls, but the ones that I played with until they were too worn to go on, or were passed on to younger family members and over time forgotten. Dammit, I need a hug.

Hated
Randy Newman: Some people love Randy Newman. They find his music charming and quirky; his voice warm and cuddly. Others find his music unintentionally goofy and think his voice sounds like someone singing while trying to keep from throwing up at the same time. I am firmly in the latter camp. See for yourself! Try to simulate how your throat constricts when you're about to lose your lunch. Now sing. Oh my god it's Randy Newman! I enjoy disliking his music so much that this is nearly a positive.

In an age where most children's movie sequels go directly to video, Pixar has managed to produce not one but two theater-worthy follow-ups to Toy Story. The series has grown and matured along with its viewers, while remaining entertaining enough to keep younger children laughing while the older children among us savor the bittersweet memories of play sessions long past. Toy Story 3 is a fitting ending to the trilogy, showing us that while we may outgrow our old friends, the urge to play never truly dies.

Toy Story 3 was created by Pixar Animation Studios and distributed by Walt Disney Pictures. Directed by Lee Unkrich and written by Michael Arndt. Released on June 18, 2010. Attended a special screening of the movie held for video game press at E3 2010.

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First revealed prior to E3, Frozenbyte's Trine 2 had its first trailer released earlier this week. Here it is, and if you were hoping it would look like Trine only nicer, you're on the right track.

While my favorite Kinect game of the show was most certainly Dance Center, the game that had me jumping up and down on an imaginary river raft was my number two choice.

Kinect Adventures has gamers playing along side a friend, or competing with one, to work their way through a series of "adventures" set in outer space, on mountains, under water and along roaring rapids. In my time with the game that meant smacking bouncing balls, rafting down a river in a big rubber raft and moving along an elevated course, dodging obstacles and trying to score points.

The first segment I played had me hitting rubber balls into a wall for points. This was almost identical to the game Microsoft showed last year to unveil the Project Natal technology.

The next segment I played took place on a river raft. Dean Takahashi and I stood side-by-side in front of a television, two avatars representing us stood directly in front of us on a raft. The characters moved whenever we did, fidgeting, shifting their virtual weight from foot to foot and, most often, waving their arms wildly and jumping up and down when we did.

To play the game we had to lean left and right, in unison, to guide the raft along a raging river, choosing the path with he most points to collect, and jumping together to bounce the raft up out of the river onto higher-scoring elevated paths. Jumps timed one after the other, with say Dean jumping first and myself jumping a few seconds later, made the raft essentially double jump.

After leaning and jumping our way down the river the segment wrapped up with our score and a few highlight photos showing us looking silly while playing the game, like shots of Dean or I in mid jump or leaning to the side.

The other segment we tried had Dean and I competing against one another. In this one, the screen was split and we had to make or way down a moving pathway, dodging barriers by moving to one side or the other, jumping and ducking. We could also speed up our moving platform by jumping. While making our way through this obstacle course, we could score points by swiping at floating blocks. These blocks were sometimes just a wall of points and sometimes in the shape of our bodies in different positions, like with our arms out and tilted to the side or with one leg lifted.

It sounds fairly simple and I suppose it is, but it's also quite a bit of fun.

Some people got "Nintendo thumb." Others complained of "Wii elbow." Should we next worry about "3DS Headache"?

The novel glasses-free 3D display of the Nintendo 3DS has "no health issues," Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime told Kotaku this week, though he added a caveat regarding the youngest of Nintendo consumers.

"We are working with the experts in the field," he said. "We've done extensive testing. We have a legacy of bringing only the best and finest products to the marketplace.

Fils-Aime was addressing concerns that the system's eye-popping tech might cause headaches or other unpleasantness if viewed for an extended period of time. The 3DS' top screen uses undisclosed technology and optical tricks to make a user looking directly at the screen feel as if the graphics of the game they are playing have added depth, the difference between looking at a movie that shows fish and a fishtank.

The one population of players he would like to keep from using the optional 3D display of the 3DS are children under seven.

"We will recommend that very young children not look at 3D images," he said. "That's because, [in] young children, the muscles for the eyes are not fully formed... This is the same messaging that the industry is putting out with 3D movies, so it is a standard protocol. We have the same type of messaging for the [1990s Nintendo virtual reality machine] Virtual Boy, as an example."

Fils-Aime said that "young children" cut-off edge would be around seven. Kids are certainly a relevant portion of Nintendo's audience, eager consumers of games like Pokemon and Nintendogs, the latter of which will see a sequel called Nintendogs + Cats on the 3DS. A slider on the 3DS allows a user to decrease and eventually shut off the machine's 3D display, flattening the game graphics to the more conventional flat look.

Kotaku writers including myself tried the 3DS at E3. I played and played and viewed several enjoyable games and videos in 3D. While I noticed that a direct viewing angle was needed to appreciate the 3D effect, I did not experience any optical or physical discomfort. Others on the team said that one or another of the games did make them feel queasy if viewed from the wrong angle. Actively messing with the slider that controls the intensity of the system's 3D effect by swiftly switching it up and down many times did leave one of our team members with a two-day eye ache. Moving it gently left another one of us with no such ailment. Most people I spoke to who had tried the system did not complain of discomfort, but none of us has played the 3DS for more than a few minutes.

Fils-Aime also talked to Kotaku about other elements of the 3DS. He confirmed that the system will be out before the end of March 2011. The 3DS form factor that was shown at E3 should not be considered final, he said, though the company plans to manufacture the extendable stylus shown with the 3DS. He said the company was still determining whether games for the machine would be region-locked, so as to only play, like most console games, in systems sold in certain regions of the world. He noted that downloadable games for the DSi were the first games for Nintendo's DS line to be region-locked.

The Nintendo of America president declined to name a price for the system, but on the subject of battery life, he offered, "Has there ever been a Nintendo handheld without a good battery life?" Asked if that meant people could expect a comparable level of battery life as they get with their DSes, he said they could.

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The last time I saw Joy Ride was at last year's E3 showing when the Xbox 360 title was a fun little free game due out for Xbox Live to help usher in the online service's avatars.

The mysteriously-absent game suddenly reappeared at this year's E3, now designed to help usher in the Xbox 360's controller-free, motion-sensing Kinect... for a price and with one major flaw.

Played without a physical controller Kinect Joy Ride does lose some of its nuance. You can no longer mash one button to accelerate and another to brake. Instead, you play the cartoon-ish car racing game in cruise control, racking up boost power by performing tricks and drifts.

While you lose two buttons and that thumbstick control so commonly found in console racers, you gain the ability to drive a car by holding your hands in the air, as if gripping a steering wheel and just steering.

The controls, when Kinect have you locked in, work like a dream. I was able to effortlessly slip my cartoon cruiser through other cars just by turning an imaginary steering wheel in the air in front of me. It did help, I found, to sort of lean into the turn, making my car steer a little sharper.

To drift around corners you have to throw your hip out to the side. Sure it sounds, and maybe looks a bit silly, but it is kind of fun.

Stunts are performed by moving your body around when your car goes airborn, leaning to the right or left, bowing forward or back or turning completely around in place.

Once you've built up enough power, you can kick in a turbo boost by shoving both hands forward as if pushing that invisible wheel away from you quickly.

It was a fun experience and only suffered from a slight bit of delayed response.

Joy Ride also has a mode that has you steering your car back and forth in a giant concrete half-pipe, essentially turning your car into a skateboard as you do stunts and power higher and higher off the lip of that pipe.

While the early build of the game was fun to play, it wasn't without issues.

While playing the game at a recent Microsoft event, a person walked up to the table on which the television was sitting to pick up a glass. They never walked in front of the tv, staying instead to the side where I didn't even notice them. But for some reason the Kinect camera apparently spotted them and started tracking their body, forcing my car to the left and making it impossible for me to steer.

I managed to drag my car along the side of the race track to the end, but the camera never corrected.

Developers Big Park said they were still tweaking the interface, but that's a worrying problem.

From what we hear, Yakuza 4 will make the journey to the West in a far more complete state than its predecessor. And I loved its predecessor, so this all sounds super.

Sadly, there are no official videos of the Nintendo 3DS in its full three-dimensional glory. Instead, we'll have to watch fake ones!

The game may be fake, but the 3D effect is real, so grab a pair of glasses and pretend it's actually Mario Kart. Actually, don't. Freddie Kart Super Circuit looks way better.

Thank you, Freddie Wong. Not only did I not know what 3DS games would look like, but I didn't know YouTube had a 3D button, either.

The Nintendo 3DS in 3D! [Freddie Wong]

Buried inside Sony's press packs for this year's E3 is this black & red PSP-3000, which will form part of a bundle to coincide with the release of God of War: Ghost of Sparta.

I think it would be better as a bundle to coincide with the A-Team. Or old Air Jordans.