Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to the 2015 edition of the Geeks of Doom Holiday Geek Gift Guide: Video Games!

Below you’ll find a collection of gaming-related goodies that would make great gifts to give (or get for yourself if you were given a gift card!) this holiday season, highlighted by a bunch of the year’s best game releases. Whether you’re shopping for someone who wants to explore the post-apocalyptic wasteland of Boston; someone who wants to see what it’s like to go to battle in a galaxy far, far away; or someone who just wants to create their own Super Mario levels, you’ll find options below!

The much-anticipated Super Mario Maker game has now officially been released on Nintendo’s Wii U, and it offers players the chance to create their own levels.

When making regular Mario games, they have to remain accessible to even casual players or not nearly as many people would want to play. With Mario Maker most rules go out the window, so naturally some absolutely diabolical creations were going to appear. But one of the genius things about the game is that you can’t just mash together a bunch of nonsense no one can complete and upload it as a level; instead the creator must beat their level to prove it functions in order to successfully upload it for others to attempt.

The game has only been out a couple of weeks, but already some purely evil levels have been uploaded. One such level, dubbed the “hardest Super Mario Maker level ever made,” has been uploaded, and it took the creator just 9 hours to beat it and get it uploaded. You can see their successful run in the video below.

Back at E3 2014, Nintendo showed off a new game in the Legend of Zelda franchise that promised the biggest open world map the series has ever seen.

The Game Awards 2014 held their inaugural ceremony last night in Las Vegas (replacing the VGX awards after a disastrous showing last year), and plenty of new previews of upcoming games were shown amongst the various awards being handed out (in the form of the lovely new trophy, designed by none other than WETA). The awards closed out with our first look at the above mentioned new Zelda‘s gameplay, and giving fans an idea of just how big its map is.

In addition to the gameplay you can see in the video below, it was also announced that the new Star Fox will be released sometime next year before the new Zelda, and Majora’s Mask for Nintendo 3DS will be released before that.

Nintendo held a special Nintendo Direct broadcast event today, in which they discussed the future of many of their games.

One big announcement that came out of the broadcast is that the classic shooter Duck Hunt will be coming to the Wii U Virtual Console, which is part of the Nintendo eShop where Wii U players can go to purchase and download digital games. The news was announced along with word that the Duck Hunt dog (you know, the one that laughs hysterically at your failure) and one of the ducks will be joining Super Smash Bros.

You can see a video of the announcement below.

Another upcoming game coming for the Wii U is a new title in The Legend of Zelda series arriving sometime in 2015.

While it’s not much, a brief preview of the new game was shown at Nintendo’s digital E3 2014 event. Basically the video gives you an idea of just how big the open-world map you’ll get to explore as Link will be. It’s not Skyrim or anything, but as far as Wii U games go it’s a natural progression Zelda fans have likely craved for a long time now.

You can check out the Legend of Zelda Wii U teaser video below.

This week, The Drill Down crew looks back at the year in tech and the web for the year 2013. We’ll discuss our favorite tech events of the past year, and what we can expect in 2014.

Before that, however, we discuss a recent discovery that the NSA sought to spy on gamers, eight top tech companies ban together to reform surveillance laws, and is Apple‘s iBeacon just a marketing gimmick or are there bigger plans in store?

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This week, at Apple‘s WorldWide Developer Conference, Apple rolls out new updates for Macbooks, OSX, iOS 7, and a new Mac Pro! Also at E3, we find out more about the XBox One, the PS4, and all the great games you’ll be playing on them. Plus Google buys Waze, and cloud storage with real clouds!

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This week, Google buys a quantum computer, Yahoo buys instant cool with Tumblr and spruces up tired old Flickr, Aereo & Arrested Development disrupt Big Media, and Microsoft launches the next-generation of XBox. Plus, our review of Star Trek: Into Darkness!

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This week we begin the slide into the Holidays with Black Friday & Cyber Monday, Microsoft & Apple drop key team members, Apple patents the page turn, Nintendo launches the Wii U, and real (and hoax) Facebook changes make users nervous.

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This week’s show, the JesusPhone version 5 descends to humanity, and sales both break records AND disappoint, depending on who you ask. Plus, iOS 6 Maps…Did Apple jump the gun before they were ready? and did they have a choice?

But first, the headlines…Nintendo announces launch dates and pricing for the Wii U, Google rejects request to pull controversial Mohammad film clip, Google lets you search for the six degrees of Kevin Bacon, Steve Ballmer hints at Microsoft Surface pricing, Twitter undergoes major overhaul.

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