Since Doki Doki Majo Shinpan Duo is risqué in its essence, we're not surprised that the boxart would also be rather ... bold. The blue bar that wraps its way around the cover lets perusers of the box see through the girls' clothes, hence the assaulted looks on their faces.
The girl on the left used quick reflexes to cover herself up, while the girl on the right only had a sliver of indecency exposed. The girl in the middle, though? Not so lucky -- not even because her breasts were displayed for gaming consumers to see, but because she has no nipples. Maybe she's related to the guys in Duel Love? Or, maybe that's how you go about proving she's a witch.
In all seriousness, we don't expect SNK to put nipples on the front of the box. Maybe they should have gone with a different design, though, so that the girls wouldn't look like ... well, freaks. Still, we know most guys aren't too picky when it comes to this kind of thing, and will enjoy the opportunity to stylus-poke the ladies of the game nonetheless. Oh, and the little pointing hand in the bottom right says "touch," lest your forget your task.
Fans of baseball, be excited. The MLB Power Pros franchise isn't going away, as 2K and Konami announce the joint venture of bringing MLB Power Pros 2008 to a DS near you this fall. The game will feature real MLB players, along with the a promising Franchise mode that lets you take over the role of general manager and control your team's destiny.
The game will also feature two story-based game modes, in the Success and MLB Life modes. In Success mode, players take part in the story-based career of rising players in the Double-A Minor League system, where MLB Life lets players simulate the exciting life and experience of being a Major League Baseball player over the course of a 20-year career.
The majority of this week's releases have one goal in mind: increasing your knowledge. Thanks to the release of the Nintendo Channel, you've all undoubtedly checked out the Crosswords DS demo, among others. So, will you be picking it up this weekend?
For those of you not getting your down and across on, what will you be playing this weekend? One of the other new releases? Or, are you playing something older?
During Activision's conference call about their Q4 earnings, Activision dropped a relatively large bomb: in addition to the normal game/controller bundle, Guitar Hero: On Tour will be released as a bundle with both the Guitar Grip and DS Lite hardware. This portable Guitar Hero thing is much bigger than we thought, and this show of confidence on Nintendo's part bears out Todd Greenwald's prediction of big sales.
In addition, Activision's Mike Griffith announced a new DS-exclusive Tony Hawk game to be released this year, that will "utilize new technology not yet seen on the DS." Maybe it'll be wheels, so you can ride your DS for real.
Japanese publishers have game promotion down to a science, nowadays. The routine: announce a game in Famitsu, release a bare official site for the title several days later with artwork and a few shots, update the site sporadically for the next several months until the game's release, launch, and move on.
Marvelous Interactive has kicked off the second stage of its operations, putting an Avalon Code page online just days after debuting the ARPG in this week's issue of Famitsu. You won't find any video or downloadable items there yet, but you can preview a dozen images to check on what developer Matrix Software is preparing for the game's 2008 release.
The screenshots don't look bad -- they're about on par with what we've seen in Namco's Tales titles on the DS and the Final Fantasy III/IV DS remakes, the latter examples being titles Matrix had its hand in. Hit the gallery below to see if Avalon Code's 3D is for you.
The relative ease of the Naga class in Let's Yoga was apparently a cruel joke meant to make yoga seem easy. After three lessons in the next step, the Krishna class, it is clear that yoga is not easy, not at all. The Master's Lesson quickly moved from "This isn't so bad!" to "OMG whaaaat?" in the space of a few sessions. Ever looked at yoga poses and thought some looked hard? You were right.
But after completing over half of the Krishna class, it got a little easier, and I'm willing to concede that maybe the exercises weren't quite as face-rockingly hard as they seemed at first. They were, however, a huge leap forward from the Naga class.
We've gone over why Geometry Wars: Galaxies was worth its full $30 price several times already despite its cheaper Xbox Live Arcade predecessor -- portability, a robust campaign, a cooperative mode, touchscreen support, drones, etc.
Now that the game has seen a universal price drop, bringing its retail price to $19.99, right in that budget-title range, you'll have a tougher time arguing that the added features aren't worth the price. Basically, if you're a fan of multi-directional shooters and if you have twenty bucks just laying around, pick this up!
The website for the Dragon Quest V re-remake (probably to be titled Dragon Quest V: Heavenly Bride in its probable U.S. release) has been updated with character art and a little bit of history about the game. Most importantly for English readers, it's been updated with screens -- tons of them, in one- and two-screen format. You can look at pictures of the party (tiny horse and carriage and all) walking in towns, fields, and dungeons and pretty much get the idea.
Dragon Quest V appears to be cleaning up beautifully, proving that even if developer Artepiazza isn't the most adept at creating Wii RPGs (except by default), they're certainly up to the task of recreating RPGs on the DS.
Start your Friday with a bit of an English refresher -- and some zombie-dispatching! Sega has created a short Flash demo for English of the Dead, recreating the multiple-choice training mode. In this mode, a zombie will run out and threaten you with two rubber mallets. Then, a Japanese sentence (our Flash player doesn't have Japanese language support, hence the gibberish) and a partial English translation will appear. It's up to you to choose the correct English word on the bottom screen, and compel the zombie to jump into a trap door!
You actually have to wait a long time before the zombie will attack you. Presumably this is more challenging if you don't know English.
Imagine you're in charge of a video game publisher. You've been given the opportunity to publish a DS version of Myst.Myst is one of the most popular games of all time, and the DS is one of the most popular systems of all time. Do you decide to pick up the project, or do you pass?
Are your reasons financial or artistic? Do you think Myst is a timeless classic, bound to sell on the most adventure-friendly system in ages, or is it an archaic slideshow? Does that matter business-wise?
IGN has a bunch of new screens up for Line Rider 2: Unbound, including some basic shots of the game's playback editor.
It's clear that the site has also had some hands-on time with the game -- we know this because an IGN bod has scrawled out the letters "IGN" for their rider to coast along. Predictable, yes, but it's more original than the anatomically wonky genitalia that most of you us will draw upon first getting the title. As we saw in recent footage, Line Rider 2 looks like it will be sticking to the original Flash game fairly faithfully, so it's only reasonable to assume that we'll be experimenting with the same childish drawings in the DS version.
Sketch out a line and slide past the break for more shots.
Sometimes, we really wish that we could be flies on the walls of game company offices. Maybe we're just huge nerds (actually, that's a fact), but still, we'd love to hear the reasoning behind some of the business decisions made -- just because we're curious when it comes to those types of things.
Every so often, though, we get a little insight into the industry. Most recently, MTV Multiplayer learned some things about Myst DS from it's license owner, Manny Granillo, regarding why the game was turned down by many of the "top publishers." Granillo doesn't mention which companies refused to publish the title for Nintendo's handheld, but he divulged the reasons they gave.
We're all about the cool arts and crafts people come up with (especially our readers), but this is just too much. King, the company responsible for the ugly DS you see above, will take your handheld and, for a nominal fee, jazz it up with all kinds of different decorations. We're all for classing up our sleek and simple handheld, but these decorations just come off as too busy and tacky.
Of course, such a service is only available to folks in Japan. For once, we're glad that is the case.
It may take a village to raise a child, but it only takes three people to build one of the coolest custom computers we've seen in a long time. DS Fanboy reader (and prizewinner!) Jason Barnes, who posts as Ganthor, wrote in with this story, and we just had to share. Seems his friend Emily picked up a Mini-ITX motherboard and wanted a custom case for it, but didn't want to build it herself. Luckily, Jason did, and he recruited another friend, Jason Letterman, to help him get the project underway.
Once he had permission to build the case, Jason was free to pursue a dream: building a computer in a lunch box. Of course, just any lunch box wouldn't do; it had to be something special that suited Emily's tastes (which are clearly excellent). After taking some measurements and checking out the various Nintendo lunch boxes, he ordered the one shown above.
Following the trademark registration, we now have more strong evidence that Sega will release their drawing-based party game Pictoimage in the U.S. The title is now rated by the ESRB. Despite an apparent "alcohol reference," it was given an E rating.
Now we want to talk to someone at the ESRB about how you would even rate a game like that. What criteria do you consider when deciding how to rate the content of a game whose content is almost entirely user-generated?
We'll put it another way: what's the first thing your friends are likely to draw in response to any prompt while playing a game like this? Is it suitable for an E-rated game?
Share
Fans of baseball, be excited. The 
During 
Japanese publishers have game promotion down to a science, nowadays. The routine: announce a game in Famitsu, release a bare official site for the title several days later with artwork and a few shots, update the site sporadically for the next several months until the game's release, launch, and move on.
We've gone over why 
The website for the 
Imagine you're in charge of a video game publisher. You've been 
IGN has a bunch of new screens up for 
Sometimes, we really wish that we could be flies on the walls of game company offices. Maybe we're just huge nerds (actually, that's a fact), but still, we'd love to hear the reasoning behind some of the business decisions made -- just because we're curious when it comes to those types of things.
Following the 
