Welcome to the inaugural installment of a new Bitmob weekend roundup column, Hit or Miss, where I'll take an opinionated look at stories from the past week that either pissed me off or made my day.

Hit or Miss is simple: Stories that I like get the honor of a fancy little Space Invaders "hit" icon, and stories that I hate get the eternal shame of getting smacked with a "miss" icon, which is just as fancy as the "hit" icon. So I'm not exactly sure why a "miss" is a shame. I am, by the way, uniquely qualified to make such opinionated decisions, in that I am alive, and I also have an Internet connection.

(So in other words, I'm basically trying to rip off Stephen Colbert's "Tip of the Hat, Wag of the Finger" bit, without it looking like I completely ripped off Stephen Colbert's "Tip of the Hat, Wag of the Finger" bit. In my defense, we're all basically ripping off TV Guide's "Cheers and Jeers" section, anyway.)

Let's begin!

Miss: Splinter Cell: Conviction, Red Steel 2 Pushed Back to 2010

You know how gamers always complain about the glut of games released in the holiday season? And we're like, "Hey, gamemakers -- spread this stuff out! We can't afford to buy 80 fricken games in two months!" And then when a developer does push some of their games back, we get super pissed-off for having to wait that much longer to play their games? And then the gamemakers are like, "Dude, what the hell? You just told us you didn't want our games in the holiday season! Why can't we win with you people?!"

Yeah, well, tough, gamemakers. We're irrational, fickle, and impossible to please, so suck it, Ubisoft: We want our damn games right now. And when you give them to us, we'll still call you jerks for forcing us to buy your damn games right now. I'm pretty sure the only way out of this catch-22 is to either give games away for free or make every game so bad that we wouldn't want to buy them.

Hit: Complete Guitar Hero 5 Setlist Is Finally Unveiled

Speaking of not being able to win with anyone, there's little a developer can do that's more fraught with danger than releasing the track list for a music game. People have wildly divergent tastes; some are inevitably going to hate whatever songs you've selected, and the rate at which these companies are burning through the world's stock of bearable music with annual sequels and DLC isn't making it any easier.

Which is why I say we should give Activision credit for even managing to come up with 85 more songs for Guitar Hero 5 that we all haven't already 5-starred in a different music game. And on a more personal note, I give this list my full support for no better reason than that it includes the Beastie Boys' "Gratitude." This at last provides the world with a guitar-centric music game that has the one Beastie Boys song that most belongs in a guitar-centric music game.

On the other hand, the track list also includes 3 Doors Down's "Kryptonite," so f*** you, Activision.

Hit: Leaked Epic Mickey Concept Art

After months of rumors, we finally got a glimpse of the vision that famed game creator Warren Spector has in store for his Mickey Mouse video game. And judging by scenes of Saving Private Ryan-style beach invasions, Mecha Mickey nightmare bots, and a shambling, ravenous Zombie Goofy, clearly what he's going for is sheer madness.

See, Spector knows the great secret behind all enduring children's entertainment: The stuff we remember best is whatever scared the s*** out of us when we were kids. If you don't believe me, I'll point you in the direction of Where the Wild Things Are, which -- like breasts occasionally appearing in PG movies up until the early '80s -- is the sort of thing that they had to create laws for to make sure psycho children's-book writers could never assault young and helpless minds like that again. Hell, even Disney's most revered classics are those that still play just as well today if you watch them while high on psychedelics. I give you the battle with the monstrous dragon at the end of Cinderella, Alice in Wonderland and that creepy-ass Cheshire Cat, or Fantasia and the scene where Donald Duck is devoured alive by a shambling, ravenous Zombie Goofy (I'm pretty sure that's what happened, but I haven't seen it in a while).

What shocks me is that Disney's actually letting Spector do this. I haven't seen such brazenly reckless use of popular and bankable mascot characters since every goddamn Sonic game after Sonic Adventure.

Which, at last, brings us to....

Miss: Sega Promises Sonic Quality Will Be 'Fixed over Time'

The weird thing about this story is that although Sega of America's VP of Marketing Sean Ratcliffe never quite puts it into words, it's essentially an admission that the past decade of Sonic games have sucked. And that's cool, because they have sucked. But the part of the story that irks me is the way Ratcliffe tries to defend that track record:

"Interestingly, I think Sonic Unleashed was very well received by the kids," Ratcliffe says. "There was some talk about the werehog aspect, the slower pacing, and more combat-oriented gameplay, but when we go out and test this stuff and sit down with the consumers, kids actually like that."

OK, but here's the thing about kids: They like garbage. I don't mean that in the metaphorical sense of calling every recent Sonic game garbage. I mean that literally. Sit a kid down in a pile of garbage and there's a good chance they'll figure out a way to have fun. That's what kids do. So it's your job, Sega, to be responsible media gatekeepers and keep kids out of heaping piles of putrid garbage. And I mean that in the metaphorical sense here, because for cripes sake, what the hell were you thinking when you turned Sonic the Hedgehog into a fricken werewolf?

Besides, if you're serious about improving the quality of Sonic games, there's a really easy way to do it: Turn Sonic into a shambling, ravenous zombie. All the cool game companies are doing it, and I promise you that there isn't an old-school Sonic fan alive that wouldn't enjoy seeing the good ol' blue dude with 'tude feasting on Tails' delicious larynx (you'll even get bonus points with nerds for referencing that classic scene in Fantasia!)