Coney Island meets Wii Sports in Globalstar's Carnival Games for Wii. The family friendly game collection contains versions of almost every carnival game staple -- spin up a batch of cotton candy and it's almost as fun as the real thing.

Custom-create a character -- a boy, girl, man or woman -- and take them to carnival. Choose one of the several themed areas at the carnival with tongue-in-cheek names like Love Lane and Prize Boulevard. Each area contains four or so games that can be played for prizes like tickets, which can be redeemed later to play bonus games like a love meter, a fortune teller, a claw game and a payloader game. Tickets can also be redeemed for bizarre gear for characters to wear, like a duck mask or a ray gun.

We sampled the dunking booth game that requires players to point the Wii-mote at the target and flick it as a dancing green indicator passes over the bullseye's sweet spot. Fortunately, the indicator moves in a repeated pattern, so we sat back, learned the pattern and flicked at just the right moment to sink our victim into the water below.

For more target practice, we tested our Wii-hand's steadiness with a game of duck hunt, the carnival classic where trigger-happy players shoot tin ducks as they move by on rails, faster with each go-round. Each gun operator gets a limited number of bullets, so we learned the hard way that it's important to shoot fast but with the utmost accuracy.

Other minigames in the line-up include a football toss, day at the races (horse-racing game), a ring toss, a hole-in-one game, hoops (basketball game), a coin toss and a cleverly programmed nerves of steel game in which players must move a metal ring over an electrically charged metal bar without them touching. In real-life, connecting the ring and bar would deliver an electric shock, but instead the Wii-mote emits loud noise that's almost as nerve-wracking.

At last, it seems like we might have a game comparable to Wii Sports, but one exception -- Mii's won't be incorporated in the game. One of the game's developers says Nintendo wouldn't allow it for unknown reasons, so a host of cartoony Mii look-a-likes will run the show instead. Let's hope Nintendo execs change their minds before the game hits stores in August.