Lost Winds: Winter of the Melodias will be the 100th release for WiiWare, Nintendo says. This is excellent news, especially since the game’s immediate predecessor – the original Lost Winds – was such a blast.

In terms of what to expect from this sequel, we’re promised “fresh, rewarding and explorative gameplay that makes exceptional use of the Wii Remote”. Story-wise the game follows returning hero Toku and Enril the wind spirit as they team up to rescue Toku’s mum, Magdi. This entails enlisting the assistance of friends old and new, and facing down fearsome foes with incredible new powers – such as control over the seasons. With any luck the game will be a bit longer than the previous outing too. Heck, it would be hard to be any shorter! Lost Winds: Winter of the Melodias launches this Friday. No price is announced, but it’s probably safe to reckon on 1000 Wii Points.

If that doesn’t tickle your fancy there’s plenty more launching for WiiWare, DSiWare and Virtual Console on the same day. Happy Holidays Halloween for WiiWare is a 500 Point fun-fest that lets users design and send spook-themed e-cards to one another. Meanwhile there are two for DSiWare – Photo Clock turns your DSi into a digital photo-frame with full alarm clock and slideshow functions, and costs 200 Points. Dragon Quest Wars is rather more enticing. It’s a strategic battler featuring monsters from the insanely popular Dragon Quest series, with offline play for one or online play locally or worldwide via the magic of Wi-Fi. 500 DSi Points for this.

Over on Virtual Console we’re treated to more retro barrel-scrapings. Wonder Boy III: The Dragon’s Trap has the lad fighting a Mecha Dragon and transmogrifying into numerous were-animals. All rendered in glorious Master System pixel-o-vision, of course. We can think of better ways to spend 500 Points. Ditto for Final Fight 2 which is a button-mashing brawler that impressed back in the day but is tragically dated by modern gameplay standards. It’s 800 Points if you’re interested.

So, another curate’s egg of a week for Nintendo downloads – Wind of the Melodias should be unmissable, though. Otherwise we’re wondering what’s happened to all the good stuff from the NEO-GEO and TurboGrafx archives. Not to mention the ongoing and utterly tragic non-appearance of Plok! Don’t even get us started about that...