With another year comes the renewed fervor caused by the Electronic Entertainment Expo. With surprises and disappointments often associated with the industry show, the Check Your Hud staff decided to make a few predictions about what they want, think, wish for the show to feature, as well as a longshot just for kicks.

While I have taken issue with certain titles and their “liberal” use of licensed music, it remains for many franchises as a necessary part of the industry….but does it have to? With the release of MadWorld on the Wii earlier…

We’ve already heard about devastated teens and tweens being told they’re overweight by the Wii Fit, and seen Nintendo’s solution with a strip of carboard saying these results are ineffective for people under 20. But what about the impact it can have on adults? As this issue has been brought up time and time again acknowledging the fragile self esteem of children, we’ve neglected its affect on everyone else. In a time when more people are swallowing anti-depressants and climbing into the obese bracket, one must consider the relationship between positive self image, happiness, and physical health. The Wii Fit has presented us with a useful tool to aid our journey to physical fitness, at the cost of our mental health.

We’re a little late this week, but luckily not pregnant with a baby podcast. Mike, Eric and Jenni fight off a zombie infestation while determining the best strategies against aliens and avoid random battles. (Actually they just talk about Resident Evil 5, Halo Wars and Persona 4 a.) For an added bonus, listen to the cast stumble awkwardly over issues of racism in Resident Evil 5.

Everyone is present and accounted for, although, both Mike and Jenni are sick with a bad case of what Mike describes as “Whooping Death”. The show must go on despite the illness, and this week’s show was a good one. Topics discussed include 50 Cent: Blood on the Sand, Star Ocean 4, Activision’s earnings, Xbox Live and it’s policies regarding sexual orientation info in your profile, and the Japanese court ruling that the R4 is illegal.

While I set about a looking at the list of newly announced/release schedule for Nintendo’s pair of jugernaut consoles consisting of the first half of the year, a few titles stand out while the rest seem quite underwhelming. I appreciate Nintendo for making a leaps of faith with a certain title, however I feel as if this shows just how much internal dev at Nintendo is on autopilot and/or saving their big releases for the fall.

This week, Eric and Jenni go it alone while Mike tries to recover from a bad case of whooping cough. Topics include Street Fighter IV, some of the upcoming games for the PS3, and EA’s opinion on the recession.

Jenni is MIA for this week’s episode, so you can only imagine what shenanigans Mike and Eric get themselves into! Topics include Halo: ODST, Gamestop’s used game sales, Kaz Hirai’s attitude toward the competition, and Obama’s Wii

You may have missed the most recent tiff between Microsoft and Sony. It was relatively low-key as far as these corporate slap-fights go. To quickly summarize the silliness, Sony came out and said that Microsoft and Nintendo’s consoles aren’t as cool as the PS3 because the PS3 comes with everything you need out of the box. Microsoft took offense to this and told Sony to shove it, not everyone needs Wi-Fi and having a variety of SKUs makes them cooler than Sony could ever hope to be.