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Promotional Consideration is a weekly feature about the Nintendo DS advertisements you usually flip past, change the channel on, or just tune out.
As we posted two weeks ago, Nintendo UK has commissioned Patrick Stewart for its latest round of commercials for casuals. The company's previous celebrity-starred ads, featuring Nicole Kidman and Chris Tarrant as spokespersons, propelled Brain Training sales in Europe to heights the US releases still haven't matched.
We tracked down the Starfleet Captain's new Brain Training advertisement and put it up for your viewing pleasure. We haven't left it at just that, though. Plot a course past the post break, warp 9!
Many of us cart our DS systems around with us all over the place, planning to play a bit between classes, or in the waiting room, or just whenever an opportune moment occurs. But where do you consider an inappropriate DS-playing location? For a surprisingly large number of you, the bathroom is not such a location. But a Halloween party? Inappropriate!
Where might you decide naah, maybe now is not the time? In a restaurant? A movie theater? In class? During a job interview? Climbing a mountain? In the cockpit of the Space Shuttle? While exchanging wedding vows?
Having already added an assortment of horror movies and martial arts flicks to its archive, The Moon Books Project has elected to host several of Akira Kurosawa's films for fans to download and watch on their Nintendo DS. For the homebrew uninitiated, the site also has information on what hardware and software you'll need to play the movies on your handheld.
Titles like Sanshiro Sugata, They Who Step on the Tiger's Tail, Rashomon, Stray Dog, and Ikiru, all films from the first ten years of the Japanese director's filmography, have been posted. While Kurosawa's samurai classics -- Seven Samurai, Yojimbo, Ran, etc. -- are noticeably missing, you really can't argue with free movies! We just hope that the English subtitles aren't too hard to read on such a small screen. Swing past the break for trailers of two of the available films.
We may have to wait a long time before Rune Factory 2 gets released outside of Japan, but that doesn't mean we can't be excited. Not only is Japan getting the game in January (those lucky bastards), but certain limited editions will come with this soundtrack disc and art book. We hope these goodies come our way when the game comes out here, although we highly doubt it.
Judging from the cover of the art book, the style of the game is very similar to the first Rune Factory. Pictured are the main character (whose name is Kyle) and some girl with crazy eyes. We also like the contemplative looking dragon in the background. The soundtrack, meanwhile, includes arranged versions of four songs from the game. Pretty neat bonus, we think. Anyone else as jealous as we are?
True to the form of Square Enix, we still haven't seen much gameplay for Final Fantasy IV. But, that doesn't mean we can't enjoy morevideos showing off the prettiness. The company just added three of them to the game's official site, each one detailing a different character.
We put the one featuring Kain up top, but check after the break to see the videos with Cecil and Rosa.
*Note: The videos were enlarged from the ones on the official site, which is why they are low resolution.
We just can't wait to play the thing and learn about all the over-the-top quirks of the new cast. Who cares if, once we're basically caught up with the Japanese release schedule, we'll have to wait like two years for the next game? We prefer our gratification instant.
When we expect a game to be good, it damn well better be good. We just assume, for example, that a Zelda game is going to be fun before we even play it. Sometimes, however, the best gaming experiences are with a game that doesn't have much hype surrounding it. Then, we pop that beauty into our handhelds and it blows our minds.
Have you had experiences like that with any DS games this year? If so, let us know what they were. Perhaps there are other folks out there hoping to discover hidden gems. We know we certainly are.
Just as with our beloved DS Lite, DS Fanboy Lite is like the original, but smaller. Sleeker. Only not necessarily better. Herein you can see some of the best we've had to offer in the last week, encapsulated for your reading ease.
Some fresh screens have been dished out to us from Ignition Entertainment, providing a look at some of the changes in gameplay Bubble Bobblewill receive. Bubble Bobble: Double ShotDS, the official title for the game, looks to include several different types of bubbles, each with their own unique twist.
Star Bubbles appear around the various bubbles and allow the screen to be cleared of all other bubbles. Elemental Bubbles carry water-based, fire-based and thunder-based effects, allowing enemies to be dispatched more effectively. Finally, Extend Bubbles allow you to gain extra lives by capturing them.
GameBrink offered up some footage of the DS TV tuner, and we couldn't resist putting it in our video spotlight this week. Just realize: we do not have any for preorder, so please don't crash our servers or kill us or hurt us or anything, for the love of all that is holy. With that out of the way ... this does look pretty neat. Too bad it will probably never, ever come across the ocean.
Homebrew rules. We know it, you know it, and apparently Orcs & Elves developer John Carmack also knows it. He recently told IGN, "It is a shame that homebrew development can't be officially sanctioned and supported, because it would be a wonderful platform for a modern generation of programmers to be able to get a real feel for low level design work."
Okay, so maybe our reasons for loving homebrew are slightly more selfish than his, but we're all on the same page here, amirite? Too bad Nintendo won't ever feel the same way, due to the high potential for piracy.
Carmack also mentioned that the DS was the most fun platform that he has worked on to date. Speak no more, Mr. Carmack -- you had us at hello.
Hey, awesome! A Marble Madness level generator for the DS! ... Oh, wait, no, it's just Populous DS. That's okay too, we suppose. It's just ... it looks a lot like Marble Madness, and we like Marble Madness in general better than strategy-type sim games where you build OH HEY look at that guy! He's pretty impressive!
Does anyone else find it interesting that Japanese publications get the scoops on this game? It's a remake of a very Western game from a very Western developer, published by EA! But so far, the only release date the game has is the Japanese date of December 31st. It could be that a Japanese EA team is porting it -- or maybe EA wants to give us plenty of time with EA Playground before announcing another big game.
Not content with appearing on everything from headphones to lunch boxes to aeroplanes to lil' kites, Pikachu has now joined the likes of Christina Aguilera and Sean 'Diddy' Combs in fronting a perfume line. This Pokémon perfume is manufactured by Air Val International, and is made entirely from water and the finely ground bones of captured Pokémon surprisingly affordable -- Shop.com has it on offer at a tempting $15.
Anybody out there actually picked this up? Because if so, we need to know what Pokémon smell of.
Looks like Target isn't the only one turning down titles lately -- Toys 'R' Us is getting into the game as well by not carrying either Manhunt 2 ... or Dementium! We're terribly disappointed in the retailer, but we could understand the motivation -- after all, if any store was ever aimed at children, it's TRU, and Dementium is a mature title.
However, it's not that simple. Word around the campfire is that the TRU folks made the decision not because of the game's rating, but because they didn't think it would be very popular and they didn't want to waste the space. Now, we're not sure what the gaming section is like at your local Toys 'R' Us, but we've seen some pretty questionable shovelware gracing the shelves down here. Is it an excuse to avoid any controversy, or is the retail giant planning to focus future shelf space only on release they feel are more likely to sell?
Regardless of the reason, while we can again understand a retailer aimed at children skipping mature titles (if they were consistent about it, that is), but randomly deciding what will and will not be popular is pretty lame. We remember another little game that got such treatment at first ....
According to a Capcom press release, Apollo Justice: Ace Attorneywill be released in the U.S. in early 2008. This fourth entry in the Ace Attorneyseries features a new protagonist, new characters, and more touch-screen integration than the previous three, since it's the first one to be made from the ground up with the DS in mind. But, of course, if you've read DS Fanboy for any number of seconds, you have no doubt absorbed all kinds of information about the Ace Attorney series.
The timing seems a little strange. The previous three Ace Attorneys were released in the fall, about one year apart. Why would they move it up to whatever unspecified period they're referring to as "early 2008?" With Harvey Birdman on the Wii out in January, that's a lot of rapid-fire lawyer-game releases. We guess they just couldn't HOLD IT any longer oh man, we're sorry.
Some fresh screens have been dished out to us from Ignition Entertainment, providing a look at some of the changes in gameplay 
