We aren't sure whether we should trust any of this -- Kotaku's summary of a pulled videogaming247 post whose source is a mystery -- but it's about Platinum Games, so it's quite irresistible. According to the rumor, Platinum Games (the company made from the former Clover Studio) is working on three games to be published by Sega: two for the Wii, and one for DS.
The hypothetical DS title is a sci-fi RPG called Infinite Line, in which you play a starship captain of a crew you can customize. The Wii games sound like your basic Devil May Cry variations. We'll reserve judgment until we're sure any of this is real, but we're a bit disappointed that none of the rumored games are the least bit God Hand-like. We'll just have to make a crew of Genes.
Every Saturday, we document sales charts from the UK and other European countries, and every week, there's one game that appears in the UK top ten without fail: Dr. Kawashima'sBrain Training. The sheer longevity of Brain Training's stay in the charts is genuinely exceptional, with this week marking the game's 100th consecutive week in the British charts.
Since its June 2006 release, us Brits have seen the likes of Chris Tarrant (in happier times), Nicole Kidman and Patrick Stewart shilling Nintendo's mind-honing software, but we're curious: has it worked? Well, decide for yourselves.
Spencer over at Siliconera has stumbled onto something interesting. A trademark by Square Enix for "Last Hope," he deduced that the long line of Dragon Quest remakes has been depleted, so what else could this possibly be for? Well, he's wondering if it's not Nanashi no Game and we're hoping he's right.
Of course, this could all just be completely and utterly wrong, so we won't place any kind of verdict (not that we're qualified to, anyway), but know that we're hoping this game gets a release here in the States. How about you all? What do you think?
Nintendo is an odd company. While we won't argue the merits of doing something like this, we will argue that Nintendo could've used some new games. Confused? So are we, so let's break it down.
Basically, Nintendo is conducting an hour-long "beginner's class" with Animal Crossing: Wild World and Nintendogs, in the hopes that they can show people how great their really old games are. In all seriousness, we imagine the classes will mostly revolve around introducing the device to skeptical folks, as well as the ease of using the stylus on the touch-screen. It all takes place at ACMI, Screen Pit Room, Federation Square, Flinders Street Melbourne, so if you're anywhere near there this Thursday between 6:00pm – 7:00pm, show up and take some pictures.
If you're in the habit of carrying your DS in a pocket or in a bag, you've probably considered some sort of slim case or armor, if you don't have one already. Sure, the DS is pretty sturdy overall, but do you want to risk those hinges or shoulder buttons? Better safe than sorry, right? If, like us, you're interested in protecting your handheld, you might want to check out the above armor, the Monaco aluminum case.
We spent a couple of days banging the slim-fitting case around and testing its functionality, and have mostly good news to report.
New screens of SNK's awkward adventure sequel Doki Doki Majo Shinpan Duo have revealed three new characters: another angel who will compel Akuji to annoy and prod girls in his ongoing witch hunt, and ... another girl, no doubt to be annoyed and prodded. Also some guy!
The bespectacled angel Senome comes from the same angel world as Lulu and the demonic-looking Kuro, and keeps up on the latest angel-world news via "Angelnet." Which sounds rather like SNK is portraying her as an angel Internet nerd. Cute!
Seiji is a school friend of Akuji's who is, for some reason, unpopular. Also he may be a girl, because we can't tell sometimes.
The (obvious) girl, Himeki, is a self-styled reporter who carries a camera around to document everything she sees. She becomes interested in the reports of supernatural activity on campus, though something tells us she will soon wish she had not investigated it.
Nippon Ichi announced that it had five DS games in the pipeline back in February, at least threeofwhich have been revealed since.
Amongst those five was an unnamed "management sim," and NIS has now revealed The Combini DS: Otona no Keiei Ryoku Training (The Combini DS: Adult's Management Power Training), a game that focuses on the smooth running of a convenience store.
Although the game's title hints at a piece of training software for store management wannabes, there are also town-building elements present here, with the success of your store influencing the growth and wellbeing of your town. You'll also have to deal with rival stores competing for your business, and maybe get a chance to bully your minimum wage employees about. There'll be no paid overtime or crafty cigarette breaks in the stockroom in our virtual store!
Head to the checkout past the post break for more screens.
It's a good week to be a DS owner, no matter where you are in the world. For once, every major region has at least one interesting title hitting shelves this week, and while Australia's line-up isn't necessarily the most exciting, it's at least varied. If you are a) desperate for a new game and b) a citizen of some place with DS games, it's probably okay to be you.
The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian
Drone Tactics
Myst
What's out in the rest of the world's major markets? Take a little trip past the break to find out.
Will the line-up of DS demos available on the Wii's Nintendo Channel change every week? We're not sure, but it's starting to look like it; at least, some of the demos available have been rotated out in favor of fresh meat. If you were looking for something that was previously available, it might just be gone. Lesson? Download quickly rather than putting it off, because the demo you want may just disappear!
Peek past the break for the current list of available demos -- you may be surprised at what you'll find!
Posted May 12th 2008 11:00AM by Eric Caoili
Filed under: News
For those of you who don't follow indie music, no, we're not throwing plagiarism accusations at Atari's Crystal Castles arcade game, nor are we denouncing She-Ra's headquarters of the same name. Crystal Castles is a Toronto-based, two-man group generating a lot of buzz on the strength of its "new sound" and favorable reviews from tastemakers like Pitchfork.
Though the band claims to have no connection with chiptune artists, their songs don't venture far from the micromusic genre. As fans of the chiptunescene, we were irritated to see Crystal Castles snub the community in a recent Exclaim! interview: "It was only to create annoying sounds. That keyboard was made back in 2004 and then we learned about this whole 8-bit scene, which we don't really have anything to do with. It's a completely different world."
Attentive ears, however, have noticed that the group has a very direct connection with several chiptune artists, such as Lo-Bat and Covox, two artists whom Crystal Castles has sampled without credit or compensation, disregarding the Creative Common License the original songs were released under. Crystal Castles' response? They're denying it. Listening to the juxtaposed tracks in the video above, the similarities seem obvious ...
Our yogathon is winding down, but there are a few important things yet to cover, such as ... can Let's Yoga compete with a yoga DVD? Exercise DVDs are a huge market -- could a game possibly one-up that industry? We went through a step-by-step comparison of the features of Konami's trainer and a beginner yoga DVD available at a big box retailer.
Yoga for Beginners with Patricia Walden comes with a thick booklet detailing all the included poses, as well as guidelines for creating your own workout. In order to use the DVD with them, you'll have to do a lot of fast-forwarding and rewinding; for all intents and purposes, the DVD only includes one lesson. You've already seen what Let's Yoga can do, if you've been following our yogathon, but we've got a chart comparing some of the features of the two after the break.
Posted May 12th 2008 9:30AM by JC Fletcher
Filed under: News
EA has announced that their PS3/Xbox 360 skateboard series Skate (or skate. if you want it to look all pretentious) is branching out onto popular systems (the Wii and DS). Skate It, developed by Skate's Black Box along with Exient, translates the motions of jumping and doing your basic skateboard stuff to stylus gestures drawn over a picture of a skateboard. Producer Scott Blackwood said of the new control scheme " ... it's a totally new way of controlling your skater yet somehow very familiar... it feels right."
Will a new control scheme be adequate competition against Activision's mysterious new DS skateboard game technology? It's an interesting time for DS skateboarding games. Check out the link for a few (nice-looking!) screens of Skate It in action on the DS.
We do love music games here at DS Fanboy -- we happily tested a Hannah Montana game because of the promise of a multiple-instrument rhythm game (a premise, at the very least, on which it delivered). So there's a small, but embarrassing, undercurrent of actual curiosity underneath our open contempt for Imagine: Rock Star. There is, after all, the very slight possibility that Ubisoft has happened upon some enjoyable gameplay mechanics for their instrument simulation.
Luckily for us, that is not what appears to have happened. Bass is just a matter of touching the right icon at the right time, from four static icons. It's pretty much bog-standard. And that means we won't be compelled to put up with the dress-up bits and the inane music.
It looks like (surprise!) just like every other generation of Pokémon games, Diamond and Pearl are going to be joined by a third almost-identical game. Will you be up for another round in Platinum, or was one (or two) of the same game enough for one console generation?
We'd also like to go into your gaming history. Have you always bought all three variations of each Pokémon game? If not, what made you pick the one (or ones) you did? Do you regret buying multiples of the same game?
Cash cow -- Nintendo chooses you! As they so strongly hinted, it appears from this scan that CoroCoro Comic magazine has revealed the next Pokémon game from Nintendo, called Pocket Monsters Platina (Pokémon Platinum).
We can't read the scan (because it is both tiny and Japanese), but TheTanooki's summary of the article describes it as the next game in the Diamond/Pearl series, with Giratina on the cover. It features an online version of the weird Underground feature from Diamond and Pearl, an Emerald-like "Battle Island," and some new forms for critters like Giratina and Shaymin.
According to TheTanooki, Platinum will be out in September in Japan. All of this is classifiable as "rumor" right now, but that scan looks pretty real.
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New screens of SNK's awkward adventure sequel Doki Doki Majo Shinpan Duo have revealed three new characters: another angel who will compel Akuji to annoy and prod girls in his ongoing witch hunt, and ... another girl, no doubt to be annoyed and prodded. Also some guy!
Nippon Ichi announced that it had five DS games in the pipeline back in February, at least three of which have been revealed since.
It's a good week to be a DS owner, no matter where you are in the world. For once, every major region has at least one interesting title hitting shelves this week, and while Australia's line-up isn't necessarily the most exciting, it's at least varied. If you are a) desperate for a new game and b) a citizen of some place with DS games, it's probably okay to be you.
Will the line-up of DS demos available on the Wii's Nintendo Channel change every week? We're not sure, but it's starting to look like it; at least, some of the demos available have been rotated out in favor of fresh meat. If you were looking for something that was previously available, it might just be gone. Lesson? Download quickly rather than putting it off, because the demo you want may just disappear!
We do love music games here at DS Fanboy -- we happily tested a Hannah Montana game because of the promise of a multiple-instrument rhythm game (a premise, at the very least, on which it delivered). So there's a small, but embarrassing, undercurrent of actual curiosity underneath our open contempt for Imagine: Rock Star. There is, after all, the very slight possibility that Ubisoft has happened upon some enjoyable gameplay mechanics for their instrument simulation.
It looks like (surprise!) just like every other generation of Pokémon games, Diamond and Pearl are going to be joined by a third almost-identical game. Will you be up for another round in Platinum, or was one (or two) of the same game enough for one console generation?
Cash cow -- Nintendo chooses you! As they so strongly hinted, it appears from this scan that CoroCoro Comic magazine has revealed the next Pokémon game from Nintendo, called Pocket Monsters Platina (Pokémon Platinum).
