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Simple DS Vol. 29: THE Sports Daishuugo may turn out to be the low-rent waste of a budget price that other Simple series games tend to be. But, at least in screenshots, it still looks pretty nice!
It's not just that the game obviously apes Wii Sports's style. It seems that our enjoyment of Nintendo's Wii pack-in has made us more receptive of sports games in general, and cutesy ones in particular. Our eyes are opened to the possibility of baseball maybe being kind of fun.
The screenshot pictured shows that THE Sports Daishuugo doesn't take the simplistic approach that Wii Sports does; without motion controls, the game opts instead for directional-pad control of finer aspects of gameplay. In this screen, for example, d-pad directions choose different styles of pitching.
Our excitement levels for (deep breath) Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Ring of Fates are steadily rising -- not only did our ears prick up earlier this year at the Famitsu score of 35/40, but this morning we got a release date for PAL territories (spring 2008, the same as the US release) and pretty screens (bizarrely in two different sizes).
Most of all however, we're looking forward to wirelessly questing with chums on our handhelds. For many, getting four players together for a co-op game of Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles on the GameCube was an almighty headache, if only because the Cube itself was just so damn sparse. Fortunately, DS ownership is somewhat more common, which should make assembling parties of warriors in Ring of Fates -- dubbed "the most accessible Final Fantasy ever" in this morning's press release -- a piece of cake.
Gallery: Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Ring of Fates
Hot on the heels of yesterday's Orcs & Elves boxart comes a sheer avalanche of new screens for id's first-person RPG -- 28 of the things, to be exact, which we immensely enjoyed downloading and then uploading again. Cough.
Anyhow, the game is looking suitably dark, gloomy and dingy, as any good old-fashioned, pointy-eared slice of dungeon-crawling worth its salt should.
Look forward to slaying the orange chap to the right next month, and feast your eyes on the screens below in the meantime.
Our favorite environmental RTS is on display once again, this time with some English-language screens. Looks like the localization is coming along swimmingly, and it's only matter of time before we'll be ordering squirrels en masse across the forest.
Eco Creatures: Save the Forest doesn't yet have a U.S. date, but you can be sure we'll be keeping our eyes peeled for the debut of Dorian on this side of the ocean. In the meantime, check out the new screens in the gallery below.
The latest update for Konami's first Namco Bandai's second DS entry in their long-running Tales RPG franchise, Tales of Innocence, centers around the customization elements within the game. While machine translation isn't as accurate as we would like, we gathered that players will be able to craft weapons and have the ability of what appears to be compensation abilities, sort of skills that would allow the player to beef up the areas where they need it most.
We could be wrong on this (again, machine translation), but it seems that players will find an experience true to the Tales name, as well as something fresh and new in the RPG genre on the handheld.
Update: Ugh, I've got a case of the Mondays. Sorry for the error.
We've had our eye on Orcs & Elves for some time now, as we're dying to see how id's mobile phone game that received much acclaim would fare on the DS, perhaps receiving fame. See what we did there? We like to call ourselves wordsmiths.
Anywho, all of our off-topic quipping aside, what do you all think of the boxart? We like all of the creepy smoke, but think that EA logo couldn't be more out of place. What say you all?
In case you missed out on Dragon Warrior IV the first time around, or if you did play it but can't distinguish any Dragon Quest characters from one another unless they're Slimes, Famitsu has posted an introduction to the characters found in the DS remake of Dragon Quest IV. These are just some of the people who show up over the course of the game-- in particular, these folks show up starting in Chapter 2.
Not counting the "Hero," who is, of course, a big blank, we have: Clift, a priest of the Santheim Kingdom who performs recovery magic; Alena, princess of the Santheim Kingdom with a desire for adventure-- and, of course, a natural talent for fighting; and Brai, a magician who serves as Alena's tutor, teaching her the art of having hair like Larry Fine.
In the course of introducing these characters, Famitsu naturally posted a bunch of screens of the game. And it must be "Japanese RPG Remakes With 3D that Actually Looks Kind Of Okay Day", because the 3D actually looks kind of okay! Seriously, the more we see of Dragon Quest IV's look, the more we like it.
The Age of Remakes continues, as more old stuff is resurrected for the newly re-energized Japanese game market. Screens for the new Ys remakes for the DS have been released, and they look pretty nice! Somewhat controversially, the environments have been remade in 3D; while the change certainly doesn't make the game look any nicer than the recent PC releases, we think it looks okay.
We're hoping for an American release of these games (at a significantly reduced price), because a handheld release would finally provide us with the impetus to spend some time with Ys I and II. Alternately, we could play the Turbografx-16 CD-Rom version on the Virtual Console in the near future (we're sure), but we'd enjoy the portable option.
Check out our galleries of the games and see if you're up for some vintage action-RPG games!
Konami's Houkago Shounen (After-school Boy) is targeted directly at gamers' sense of nostalgia. The adventure game, set in 1975, casts the player as a young elementary student one month before he moves away, doing the best he can to have as much fun and spend as much time as possible with friends before saying goodbye.
The game features a town to explore, with childhood haunts like parks and candy shops, as well as a school (obviously) and a shrine. Time with friends is passed playing minigames-- the examples given by Famitsu include an eraser racing game and menko.
The subject matter and easygoing tone of the game draw immediate comparisons to Sony's Boku no Natsuyasumi (My Summer Vacation) games. Also similar to the Bokunatsu series: the low possibility of a localized version.
In a shocking turn of events, DSI Games continues to work on a Betty Boopgame despite the fact that linear time continues to move away from the 1930's. If time moved backwards, or perhaps in a cycle, such that we would some day approach the first half of the 20th century, we'd totally understand, but no. Betty Boop is continually losing relevance as we speak.
As expected, Betty Boop: Double Shift features Betty dashing through a diner. For what it's worth, it includes ... a bunch of other cartoon characters we vaguely recognize but can't identify. But it's not all Diner Dash. There's an extraordinarily simple rhythm minigame as well!
Keep in mind that DSI is also publishing Barnyard Blast, which more than balances out one or two projects like this.
D3 Publisher's Simple DS Vol. 29: THE Sports Daishuugo (The Big Sports Assembly) is exactly like Wii Sports. Except it doesn't look as good, has different sports, doesn't have any kind of motion controls, is probably lacking in polish to the point of glitchiness, and nobody's ever heard of it. But outside of those and probably some other things, the two are the same.
THE Sports Daishuugo contains five main games: baseball, golf, volleyball, tennis, and futsal, as well as minigame variations on all of those. Like any decent casual sports game, it allows for multiplayer-- four-player single-card play.
We're actually surprised by how bad this doesn't look. The characters are cute and the graphics are non-awful. We wonder if this cute sports game will take off in Japan, where Wii Sportssells tons as a standalone product.
Pro Evolution Soccer games may not always get pulses racing in the US, but the series does enjoy hit status here in Europe. Given the limitations of the DS, last year's PES 6 provided a surprisingly serviceable soccer game, despite being stripped of much of the detail and gameplay intricacies that appeared in the home console versions.
Indeed, it sold well enough for Konami to give things another shot on the handheld, and CVG now has some of the first screens of Pro Evolution Soccer 2008 DS. Like last year, the whole thing is blocky as hell, but hey, at least it looks a little more intuitive than the holy mess that is the Wii version.
Feint past the break for another couple of screens, or head to CVG for the full set.
We're willing to work with a blurry magazine scan to get a few more screens of the Fist of the North Starinteractive manga game. Some of the screens are identical to those we saw before, but new ones appear as well. Since this uses (obviously) manga graphics and screen-tapping mechanics, it reminds us a bit of a non-musical take on Ouendan, which relied on manga-style scenes on the top screen to tell the story. Therefore, in our heads, manga + touching on-screen icons = fun. And then this Fist of the North Star thing swaps out music and ridiculous situations for over-the-top violence.
We can also just make out the January 31st release date and the 6040 yen price. ($53-- ouch) Check out the full scan after the break!
The boxart for Dragon Quest IV(it's a remake don't you know) has made its way onto the internets, but as you can see above, it is the Japanese boxart. We have a feeling, however, that the general layout won't change as it hits other territories outside of Japan. And, should you want some new screens to gawk at, there are plenty of those to check out, as well.
So, who's on the train headed for Excitementville with us?
We think IQ Breederis our new obsession. We can't help but approve of the insane premise behind the game-- blending Nintendogs and Brain Ageto create an unfathomably weird training game in which you perform brain training exercises to increase the IQ of a virtual pet. The new screens at Famitsu show some of the games that you and your "friend" can play together in the interest of boosting its fake IQ. And as for those pets, you can choose a dog, a cat, a pig, or one of four types of turtles!
The games range from math problems to rhythm games, as well as classic distractions like mazes. One of the math games involves solving equations to win a race, like in the Atari 2600 game Math Gran Prix. Our favorite game, however, is the cat-picture jigsaw puzzle, because it looks like developer MegaHouse actually went to the trouble of making a 3D model of the same cat that appears in the sample puzzle. We hate puzzles, but we love cat pictures!
Simple DS Vol. 29: THE Sports Daishuugo may turn out to be the low-rent waste of a budget price that other Simple series games tend to be. But, at least in screenshots, it still looks pretty nice!
