Its on Pre-order and should be here Friday :) If dancing is integral to Pirates I’ll be just about ready for it as well.
Destroy All Humans looks interesting, too.
My watched games for the cool and original are:
Demento (Capcom)/ Projected release: April 2004 - A story about a girl and her dog being chased by a frightening creature in a mansion, its more supposed to be unsettling than horror, as the director has a lot of experience doing odd movies and TV shows. In any case, the girl is weak, but not too weak, she can move around furniture, kick things, ram into them and so forth. But its the dog that’s the main attraction, by scolding and praising it, you can mold its behavior, have it search for things, attack things, sit and so forth. Likened to ICO in some ways (its slightly subtle, but its the mostly companion, relying on each other aspects) it looks very nice. Website:http://www.capcom.co.jp/demento/#
Bumpy Trot (Irem)/ Also called: Ponkotsu Romantic Theater Explosion: Bumpy Trot - Its the turn of the century and man has reformed basic automobiles into something called trotbycle, a kind of steampunk all-purpose mecha, used for anything from transportation to industry to battle to farming. A man wakes up on the seashore looking into a worried girl’s eyes and so begins a story of mecha and rhythm action at the setting of slice of life in a big city. You’ll be using the mecha for all those purposes, and you can download a sheet for the PS2 controller that covers the controller that funcitons like a mini-Steel Batallion frame like so: 
. You can also paint, customize, trade parts, fix and draw on your mecha in a factory. For the rhythm part, so far only the piano and harmonica have been revealed as instruments, but you can practice, hold concerts and do street performances. The game is supposed to have a large branching narrative and lots of side things to do beyond this, but they haven’t all been revealed yet. http://www.bumpytrot.com/index.html
Bokura no Kazoku (Sony) / Translation: Our Family - You take charge of a boy or girl from birth and direct their lives. Very, very different from The Sims though, while the game is freeform, you have no goals, its different from other freeform games in that it has a very exact setting and feel. Actually one of the reasons I wanted to mention this one is supposedly one of your options when you’re still a baby and not even one year’s old, is to poo! :D The development team researched one section of Tokyo for 2 years and took 25,000 pictures to recreate the city. You’ll be able to go to school and join clubs and make friends and get good at certain things and work at part time jobs or go to college and get more complex jobs. This developer, who previously made My Summer Vacation 1 and 2 are extremely good at turning the mundane into the utterly absorbing. Website: http://www.playstation.jp/scej/title/bkz/read02.html
That’s it for now. More a little later, but I have to go get checked up now!
Also don’t forget, while they are sequels, Kagero II (part of the Deception series), Zettai Zetsumei Toshi 2 and Everybody Loves Katamari Damacy! are coming too!
-Kitsune