Likely capitalizing on this year's box office release for Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, developer and publisher Success has announced a new adventure title that features a very familiar-looking archaeologist.
Sporting a dusty brown fedora hat, Jonathan Westwood stars as an escape route specialist in Johnny's Epic Escape Campaign (Jonny no Dasshutsu Taisaku Ikusa). Though he isn't armed with a whip and he doesn't have a short Asian sidekick named Short Round, Jonathan will be escaping from four different scenarios that sound a lot like Indiana Jones movie titles:
Akumu no Gamble Night (Nightmare Gambling Night)
Nessa no Nuikyuu (Labyrinth of Hot Sand)
Nuifu kara no Sasoi (Invitation from Hades)
Wasurerareta Kaizokusen (The Forgotten Pirate Ship)
Johnny's Epic Escape Campaign hits stores in Japan this August 26th, the same day Kingdom of the Crystal Skull opens in Japanese theaters. Swing into our gallery below for screenshots from the game!
With those new DS Lite colors arriving in Europe this weekend, we were wondering how many of you planned on picking up a new handheld? Like our own Chris, are you in love with that red beauty? More of an Ice Blue kind of gamer? Wait ... don't tell us! You want that puke green one?
Let your voice be heard! Tell us which you plan on picking up in our poll below.
Posted Jun 13th 2008 2:45PM by Phil Larsen
Filed under: News
Don't tell us the delay for Commando Steel Disaster was caused by a bunch of web developers anxious to show off their fancy animations before the game was released. The official website for this hot run-and-gun title has gone live, and is an admittedly cool little package featuring screenshots, concept art and the original trailer.
That trailer is good and all, but this is a war those badass little sprites are fighting. Get some fitting tunes and the blood will really rise! Commando Steel Disaster is set for an release on August 19 in North America, so there's plenty of time to get in some Metal Slug action before then. It's pretty much the same thing.
Thwock goes the tennis ball, and the crowd goes wild! Tennis fans should be automatically impressed with the graphical quality displayed in Top Spin 3 for the DS, if only because some pour souls actually tried their hand at Tennis Masters.
Five new screens are ready for action in the gallery, and they certainly hold true to our original positive impression. Here's a tip - open the gallery, put a hat and sunglasses on, then pay some chump five bucks to hold up your monitor while running back in forth in front of you. It's just like being there! The upside of buying Top Spin 3 when it comes out? You'll have no more money left to waste on paying people to do stupid things.
With that said, we don't know how this weekend will unfold for us, from a game-playing perspective. So, what will we play? Wait, who cares! We're just some jerks who blog. Let's find out from more important people what they'll be enjoying this weekend.
"Safe and steady" was the theme of May's NPD figures, with no console either enjoying a majestic surge or suffering a crushing collapse -- the DS simply registered a decent if unspectacular 9% rise in hardware sales. As it turns out, that bump was timely, because it meant the console reached 20 million units sold in North America, a landmark that has now been passed in allmajorregions.
Of course, we could snicker at how the PSP only clinched 29% of the handheld market, and so we will.
We're crying for Namco Bandai's Tears of 99 right now, as the game debuted in the twenty-third spot this week. We guess Japanese gamers just didn't feel like being bummed out, and therefore avoided buying this original title. Sad, indeed.
LEGO Batman may be made of cold, hard bricks, but for him, it's kind of fitting. Batman isn't really the most personable of heroes, after all; suited up, he lacks the charm of an Indiana Jones and the whiny tone of the early Luke Skywalker, but that only makes his entrance into the LEGO game hall of fame that much more sensible. The tiny superhero is bringing his toys to our favorite toy handheld this August, and with him come such witticisms as:
"You want a piece of him, get in line."
Or, y'know, just get really angry and knock him over, or maybe smash him with a fist. That'll learn you, tiny Batman!
If our constant championing of the genre has you ready and willing to try out a roguelike as soon as a cheap one comes along, then here's that discount dungeon crawl you've been waiting for!
In what looks to be a permanent price drop, retailers such as Amazon and GameStop have marked down their copies of Mystery Dungeon: Shiren the Wanderer to $19.99, in-store and and online. Now you don't have to feel guilty about spending money on such a throwback game (with throwback graphics to match).
If you won't buy it for the fun of the game, buy it so that Sega will bring its sequel to the states!
It's okay if you weren't that into Final Fantasy III. As Final Fantasy games go, it's down near the bottom of the list for many people, and even though grinding-on-the-go can be easier than doing the same in your living room, FFIII required a lot of effort.
Final Fantasy IV, however, should totally be pinging your radar in a big way. It's got it all: drama, tension, great characters, epic battles, and it was the first of the triumvirate of awesome (FFIV, FFV, FFVI) that really put the franchise on the map, and next month's remake looks to be doing the classic ultimate justice. The payoff is so much bigger, and in this version, it's beautiful, too. Not convinced? Not only do we have more than forty brand new, English-language images for you in our gallery, we've got new videos hidden away after the break as well. So mount up, get comfortable, and start watching. Next month is going to be a fabulous time for RPG fans.
IGN has posted impressions of SouthPeak's new puzzle adventure game, Brave: Shaman's Challenge, answering the question of exactly what kind of puzzle game it is. Basically, it's a variant of Columns and about a million other falling-block puzzle games: groups of two pieces fall, and the player rotates and slides the groups around to create lines of four or more pieces of the same color, which disappear when lined up.
As far as the adventure aspect of this puzzle adventure, IGN's Daemon Hatfield calls Brave "a linear adventure without all the RPG elements of Puzzle Quest." Combine that with awkward-sounding stylus controls and the game gets less and less interesting. But not so uninteresting that you don't want to watch the two videos posted after the break, right?
When we saw the marked-down Gundam Cross Drive DS Lite yesterday -- which, by the way, we hope you did, or the picture above won't even come close to making sense -- we briefly considered dropping the $160 for it. But in the end we decided that, even though $160 was cheap for that item, it's still pretty expensive for a thing we didn't need and didn't expect to pay for.
Do you have a ceiling for impulse buys? Does it vary by mood? Or is there a certain amount that you don't mind spending on unplanned game stuff? At what point do you have to start thinking about it?
JoWood has announced a deal with German publisher Tivola, in which JoWood will publish the company's titles in "North America, South America, Spain, Portugal and India." Tivola's DS lineup is an assortment of the kind of children's games that get mocked relentlessly, with one exception: the surprisingly awesome-lookingMusic Monstars, which the company is releasing on August 21.
There's no specific announcement about Music Monstars -- in fact, JoWood's press release emphasizes "well-known licenses" and "significant educational content." Music Monstars might count as educational, but it's not really an identifiable license! Still, if JoWood plans to localize any of Tivoli's games, we would be really happy if they chose the really cool one.
This just in: the fifth game in Tose's Densetsu no Stafy series will continue the tradition of making bloggers "awwww" themselves silly with its ludicrous levels of cuteness.
New scans from Famitsu confirm that, just like its immediate predecessor, Densetsu no Stafy: Taiketsu! Daiiru Kaizoku-dan won't be light on the saccharine imagery, and also that Stafy has a new friend for his latest adventure: Rampa (?) the space bunny. According to the magazine, Rampa will be able to transform Stafy into other creatures, including a seal and a dragon, which will in turn help our squishy, five-pointed hero progress through the game.
One of those under-the-radar titles that we can't stop thinking about is Soul Bubbles, which is why we've been giving it a lot of coverage. Not only does this LocoRoco-meets-LostWinds title look whimsical and wonderful, but the gameplay seems to offer simple, clean fun. At the same time, though, there's clearly a lot of depth behind this software.
Yet, there's no better way to learn about a game than hearing things straight from the developers' mouths, so we recommend giving this video a look. In their fabulous French accents, the devs dish on the premise and gameplay of the upcoming title. For instance, we already knew about the Tiger Mask ability, but the Mekensleep crew shows the other masks in action, too.
You'll also get to see some of the different levels throughout the game, all of which have their own fanciful themes, as well as the enemies and inhabitants of each world. Oh, and did we mention that the look of Soul Bubbles is absolutely gorgeous? If it plays just half as good as it looks, we're definitely in for a treat.
Likely capitalizing on this year's box office release for Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, developer and publisher Success has announced a new adventure title that features a very familiar-looking archaeologist.
Thwock goes the tennis ball, and the crowd goes wild! Tennis fans should be automatically impressed with the graphical quality displayed in 
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If our constant championing of the genre has you ready and willing to try out a 
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IGN has posted impressions of 
JoWood has announced a deal with German publisher Tivola, in which JoWood will publish the company's titles in "North America, South America, Spain, Portugal and India." Tivola's DS lineup is an assortment of the kind of children's games that get mocked relentlessly, with one exception: the surprisingly 
