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Along with its grittier, browner, and more next-gen art style, Advance Wars: Portrait Days of Ruin brings a much darker story to the turn-based strategy series, deviating from Wars World's usually colorful and light-hearted tone.
The apocalyptic plot begins with a storm of meteors devastating the planet, setting off a chain of natural disasters that kill 90% of mankind. Cutscenes show Commanding Officers contending with non-combat issues like starvation and disease, a drastic departure from Jake's inane quotes that peppered Dual Strike.
While we're on the topic of maturing the brand, we wonder if the game will take a chance and tackle themes from current wars and conflicts -- occupying a country in the midst of a civil war, outsourcing private military firms, or suffering losses to unconventional threats (e.g. IEDs, suicide bombers). It's unlikely, but it would be interesting to see executed.
Nintendo also put out over a dozen English screenshots for the game which you can view in the gallery below. The new images betray a great deal of unannounced details, like an improved map editor, new terrain and terrain stats, and a unit leveling system.
Get it? He breathes fire-- and fire makes things hot! Now that Spyro: The Eternal Night on the Game Boy Advance (and on DS too) has us caring about the little purple dragon for the first time since ... ever, we find ourselves vaguely interested in these Wendy's Kids' Meal toys. Plus if we went looking for them, we could go eat deliciously unhealthy fast food and pretend it was Important Work. And we'd get a $5 coupon good for any version of the new Spyro game! This isn't the first excuse we've had to go to Wendy's in the name of Nintendology, either.
You have your choice of a maze game, a spinning Sparx copter, a flapping Spyro, a checkers game, and ... a keychain. Nothing's more fun for kids than organizing keys!
Square Enix's Dragon Questspinoff (and one of about fivehundredDSDragon Quest games) Dragon Quest Monsters: Joker came out in Japan way back in December. It was well-received there, getting the highest compliment a game can get: lots of people's money. We're still waiting for it over here, but our wait, at least, is almost over. Now, for a little while, we can be waiting buddies with PAL gamers, since the game has been announced for a European release.
According to the press release, "all PAL territories" can expect a release of Joker in early 2008. No idea if it'll bring along it's dazzlingly multipurpose preorder gift!
If the tedium of tending to a farm, planting crops and tending to livestock, sounds like a recipe for fun to you, then you no doubt have been a longtime subscriber to the Harvest Moon newsletter. In ordering from its catalog, you've probably gathered quite the collection of games. Good for you.
And you should know that the good times are going to keep rolling, as it has been revealed a new game in the series is coming to the DS during Q1 of next year. Of course this only applies to those of us in the U.S. and not other regions, which are likely to receive the game at a different time.
Hit all of the various links below for your flavor of coverage.
Read - Massive release list from Nintendo Read - Scans for the game from Famitsu Read - Japanese site for Harvest Moon DS Cute
While it's not the gorgeous, golden special edition DS Lite of various rumors, what we have above is still a special edition Lite, and that makes it better than nothing. The emblazoned edition popped up on Nindie.com with no price and a placeholder release date of December 31. Could there be two editions this year, or could this one be specific to Europe? We can't wait to see how this plays out -- but if any game deserves numerous special editions, it's Phantom Hourglass.
Why, hello there, Ryu Hayabusa. It's been a while since we've seen you outside of the same old recycled screens. We were starting to worry, but here you are again, looking very, uh ... ninja-ish. And awesome. Did we mention that? Our favorite ninja hero was featured in the latest (Chinese?) Famitsu and we were treated to a beautiful two-page spread that reminded us why we must get our hands on this title as soon as possible. But it's not just the look -- it's everything, particularly the creative, no-frills approach Team Ninja is taking with the handheld installment. While we dream of action and adventure, trip gaily past the break and check out the scans for yourself.
Posted Oct 12th 2007 9:50AM by Eric Caoili Filed under: News
Ever the fan pleasers, Konami has loaded Contra 4 carts with enough bonus features to make you completely forget about that fiasco with the cancelled preorder set. Bask in the invigorating glow of unlockable content done right:
A 20th Anniversary Virtual Museum (box art, screenshots, and info on every Contra title from all territories)
Two digital comics from Contra artist Atsushi Tsijumoto
An interview with Contra Producer Nobuya Nakazato
Five hidden characters, including a Probotector model
We have a long-documented distrust of robots, especially humanoid ones armed to their android teeth, but we're sure that European gamers are rejoicing over the return of their reskinned heroes. Just don't be surprised when they burn down your homes and subjugate the entire human race the first chance they get.
Taito's new versions of Arkanoid and Space Invaders fill us with happy feelings about being people who play games on the DS. Every time we're reminded of the existence of the little DS paddle controller, we smile. NCSX is now taking preorders on Arkanoid DS, both in bundled and non-bundled form, as well as separate paddle controllers in four different colors. The game is expected to ship on December 6th.
But until then, we can look at screens and learn what we can about the game. For example, levels will come in 7-, 9-, and 11-block-wide variants. "Decoration" options will become available for purchase using points obtained ingame. You'll be able to buy new backgrounds, block shapes, Vaus paddle shapes, and even sound effects.
The "Clear Game" mode is the normal Arkanoid mode in which you break all blocks to clear a level. It will contain 28 zones, each made up of five rounds, for a total of 140 rounds. And that's entirely separate from the "Quest Mode" which has different (as yet unknown) conditions for winning each round! So basically what we are saying is that there are a lot of levels in Arkanoid DS. That guarantees infinite playability for people like us who can't even reliably clear round 3 in NES Arkanoid.
Posted Oct 11th 2007 4:00PM by JC Fletcher Filed under: News
Nintendo released a partial list of their upcoming releases today, and if nothing else, it reinforces the notion that your money is only yours until you can find a convenient time to hand it to Nintendo. Buy food or whatever while you can, because starting ... now, a flood of awesome DS releases is going to tempt you. Between now and some time in the first quarter of next year (with a lovely break in December) the DS will be home to wall-to-wall awesome.
We've cherry-picked only what we think is the most interesting from the list, and it's still too many games. Not only that, this doesn't include anything from Capcom, so go ahead and add Phoenix Wright Ace Attorney: Trials and Tribulations. There's stuff on this list that may be of interest only to niche audiences (i.e. us) like Diary Girl, but we can do that, because we made the list. Besides, a personal organizer on a DS card? That's just neat, no matter what it looks like. Check after the break for our list.
The move has claimed another victim: after fifteen years with Nintendo, Marketing VP Perrin Kaplan is calling it quits. At least, we assume Kaplan's decision is related to the move, considering there has been a great deal of speculation that she would follow in George Harrison's footsteps, but no official reason was stated.
Kaplan will stay on with NoA until the end of the year.
Apparently, Nintendo has been working in secret on the new Advance Wars game, officially dubbed Advance Wars: Days of Ruin. As of right now, the game is only months away, with a release date in place for January 21st. With some fresh footage of the title hitting the nets, we find ourselves quite happy for the release date, because our date of birth is only a few days before (the 18th, if you must know).
It's our turn for the big news today, after Nintendo's US press conference, and Assassin's Creed for the DS is leading the pack. Jade Raymond's action-oriented historical quest has been rumored for the handheld for months, but a huge list of upcoming Nintendo releases confirmed the title's existence. In what form, we cannot yet speculate, but suffice to say that we're hoping for the best rendition Ubisoft can squeeze out of a pair of screens, and not some minigame-fueled spin-off.
Lesson: apparently, we should really, really listen to GameStop-fueled rumors, because they are so often true.
Back during E3, everyone got all excited because they thought some screens for a new Golden Sun game had leaked onto the intertron. Of course, it was fake as we soon learned why someone would play with our emotions in that way. Shame on them.
But, hope returns, as in an interview with Game Informer, Camelot reveals that Nintendo has told them that they want another game in the series. And, like a mob boss running shop on your neighborhood, you best listen to them. Camelot said "We have to do it! Not just that we have to do it, but we want to do it. Nintendo has asked us to please make it. But at the same time we haven't gotten around to making it. We're not really sure why (laughs)...One of the reasons that we haven't made golden sun is because there are so many fans of the game and we don't want to do something half-assed. We want to give it the time it deserves."
While we appreciate the care on their part to create a quality game, one deserving of the Golden Sun name, we think 4 years has been plenty of time to come up with a third installment.
Posted Oct 11th 2007 12:30PM by JC Fletcher Filed under: News
Ignition Entertainment just announced a deal with Marvelous Interactive through which Ignition will be publishing some of their remade arcade classics. The first DS games to benefit from this arrangement are the remade Taito hits Bubble Bobble: Double Shotand New Zealand Story Revolution, which will come out early next year.
We could have sworn that both of these games were already out, but it turns out that a) they've been out in Europe and Japan for quitesometime, which confused us a bit, and b) we were conflating the two titles with Bubble Bobble Revolution, which obviously contains elements of both new games' titles and had a rather ignominious release last year.
Because they've been out across the pond, there's been time for the European press to register their opinions. And, while we shouldn't expect broken cartridges, it doesn't look like there's too much good to expect here either. Spencer Yip namechecked New Zealand Story yesterday as an uninspired and uninspiring remake in our roundtable.
But we admit that we still want to give New Zealand Story Revolution a chance when it comes out. It was such a great NES game! We're remaining optimistic that we'll be able to extract enjoyment from the game.
We posted a lot of DSscreens revealed at or to coincide with yesterday's Nintendo conference, but there's no way we could do an individual post on them all. Three screens of something we've already seen tons of screens of doesn't exactly warrant its own post. Some of the screens listed have been previously released. Some of the games, we just didn't get to. But we can link to a Japanese roundup post that's loaded with screens, and list the games shown within by title!
We promise that as soon as we get more information on this stuff beyond a few screens in a roundup, we'll post it. Until then, check after the break for every game in the roundup, organized in order of appearance on the GAME Watch page.
Along with its grittier, browner, and more next-gen art style, Advance Wars: 
