We recognize this manipulation, but it still works. We may have to buy that Snowman stylus. We love the snowman.
Posts with tag Nintendo DS Lite
Animal Crossing styli to help Tom Nook pay for his hot tub
We recognize this manipulation, but it still works. We may have to buy that Snowman stylus. We love the snowman.
DIY DS Lite stylus pen
Frustrated with the DS Lite's stubby stylus, but not enough to empty out your pockets for one of those new-fangled, overpriced utensils we're always featuring?
Faced with that very dilemma, Sal Cangeloso decided to save himself a few bucks with a homemade solution, trimming the stock stylus and packing it with a bit of rubber into his pen's emptied casing (Pilot Hi-Tec-C Coleto). Though it isn't a new idea at all, we were impressed with Sal's handiwork and wanted to share the small project with our readers. It looks better than most of the high-end styli we've seen for sale!
[Thanks, Kris!]
Jammin' Guitar Pick stylus lets us shred our touch screens
We've seen a GameStop.com listing for a product called the "Jammin' Guitar Pick" for a while, but we've been patiently waiting for a picture to show up. Today, one day before the product's release, one has surfaced. It's a very simple idea: a guitar pick with a stylus stuck to it, and it comes in a pack of three for $8. Oddly, the pointier part of the pick doesn't appear to be the part where the stylus is attached.We're just thrilled that someone at Naki thought Jam Sessions was going to be big enough to call for its very own third-party accessory. Too bad the picks are coming out just as word comes out of the game's delay. We're thinking about picking up the accessory now in anticipation, and so we can pretend we're giving one of them sexy solos while we're playing Meteos.
Drawn to Life is demonstrably great
5th Cell has released a demo of the character-drawing utility used in Drawn to Life. We've messed with it for a while, and here are our detailed impressions: wheeeee!
The tool is simple-- freehand, flood fill, and eraser, but it works well, and there is something incredibly satisfying about drawing a character and seeing it animate on the top screen as you're drawing it. It'll be a lot more satisfying to do the drawing with an actual stylus. So far, we feel justified in our anticipation of Drawn.
When you've created a character you're satisfied with (like our completely original protagonist above), you can enter it into a contest, the winner of which gets included in the game! Oh, and also you get a bunch of stuff.
The tool is simple-- freehand, flood fill, and eraser, but it works well, and there is something incredibly satisfying about drawing a character and seeing it animate on the top screen as you're drawing it. It'll be a lot more satisfying to do the drawing with an actual stylus. So far, we feel justified in our anticipation of Drawn.
When you've created a character you're satisfied with (like our completely original protagonist above), you can enter it into a contest, the winner of which gets included in the game! Oh, and also you get a bunch of stuff.
Play! Ouendan! 2! Demo! [update 1]
Those of you who can get to a Japanese download station on As detailed elsewhere on these pages, the new game will feature many of the characters from the original game, as well as a new playable cheer squad. There's also going to be a versus mode, although online play remains unconfirmed.
[Update: Those "M" months are so confusing!]
DS Daily: Survival horror
We were poring over the new Silent Hill 5 "details" today (more like vague statements from Akira Yamaoka about how awesome it's going to be) and all we really know about it is that it's going to be more like Silent Hill 2 (yay) and it's coming to some consoles that aren't the DS (boo). Our first reaction is to be outraged. We love our system and we love Silent Hill and its atmospheric, psychological horror storytelling.
But would we actually love them together? The larger question here extends beyond the boundaries of one foggy town: is the DS an appropriate format for survival horror? We had one outing already in Resident Evil: Deadly Silence, which a very trustworthy source tells us wasn't an entirely successful experiment.
Alternately, if the major discussion topic doesn't interest you, we can just talk about Silent Hill and how great it is.
DS Daily: The discovery of portability
So we were hanging out on the couch playing some Portrait of Ruin online-- you know, the usual situation. Then the phone rang, and without thinking, we got up from the couch, DS still in hand. Looking down at the system, we discovered that it still worked. Who knew? The DS, as it turns out, is a portable system, which means that it can be used anywhere.We must test the abilities of this system to be played outside of the house! For you, dear readers, and, for SCIENCE! But we need to gather some data before we begin our grand experiment. Specifically, we would like to know what games to take with us. Try to imagine a situation where you are traveling while also playing video games. What kind of game would be best suited for this outrageous eventuality?
Treasure Gaust battle mode screens
Treasure Gaust, Bandai Namco's Pokemon-esque monster game that uses magnetic fields to generate monsters, is headed toward a Spring 2007 release in Japan. We've got some new screens that show off the battle mode, which is more Pokemon Stadium than Pokemon Ruby, in that it is presented in full 3D. We like the pseudo-cel shading they've used.
Treasure Gaust's battling appears to be more action-based than Pokemon, as well. Players pick three creatures and battle with an opponent's three creatures in an underwater arena. You can capture defeated enemies to train them as partners. If a monster-collecting game with more action and more mysterious natural forces sounds good to you, then this may be exactly the game you're looking for! At least, it's as close as anyone's ever going to get to that specific description. We hope Banco decides to localize this one, because we're eager to play with the magnetism gimmick.
We love non-games now: Jam Sessions preview
We know Electroplankton sort of covered the musical DS toy thing, but we are so impressed with every aspect of Jam Sessions. It sounds great, it looks fun, the interface, while a little homebrew-looking, is just ... pleasant. Look at that floral background!
We now know a little more about Jam Sessions, like that it will come loaded with 20 licensed songs to play along with, complete with lyrics, and that your playing is limited to strumming rather than picking individual notes-- sorry, no solos. You can also change the sound of your guitar, adding distortion and delay effects. There's still no game attached, just songs you can play along with, or freeform strumming.
This game (well, toy) just goes so far against what usually gets released in the US in so many ways. It looks totally fun and totally relaxing.
Check out a couple of screens after the break.
[Via GoNintendo]
Continue reading We love non-games now: Jam Sessions preview
Find the differences between Quickspot and this new San-X game
Hint: there aren't many. San-X no Chara Sagashi Land (San-X Character Searching Land) offers the exact same kind of gameplay as Quickspot, with San-X trappings. San-X, for those of you who don't follow the Adorable Junk scene, is a sub-label of Hello Kitty creators Sanrio whose characters are ... different enough in some inscrutable way to be separate from the main brand.So, instead of getting to look at two nearly-identical Katamari Damacy images (sigh) and drawing circles around the differences, you'll be scrutinizing Tarepanda the sleepy panda, Kogepan, the anthropomorphic bread who has depression, and others. And for your troubles you get a gallery of mascot images. Of the same characters you were just staring at.
We don't mean to sound down on the game-- we're actually really surprised at what new genres the DS design is encouraging. There may have been 'look at two things at once and spot the differences' games before, but the DS is absolutely perfect for them.
We've included a few precious screens after the break.
Continue reading Find the differences between Quickspot and this new San-X game
New Rockman ZX Advent screens and character art
Capcom released a ton of screens today for the new Megaman ZX sequel, Rockman ZX Advent, and they show exactly what we want to see in our Megaman games: running from left to right and shooting at robots, all delivered in gorgeous hand-drawn 2D. We could look at stuff like this all day. Coincidentally, that's kind of our job.In the first ZX, kids use "Biometals" ("Livemetals" in the Japanese version) to transform into robots similar to X and Zero from the Megaman X series, as well as a fused ZX form. The kids from last time, Vent and Aile, have been replaced by a pair of functionally-identical crimefighting children, called Grey and Ashe.
They operate a new Biometal, called Model A, which enables transformation into a dual-wielding robot seemingly based on Axl from Mega Man X7, a game that we're glad is on the PS2 (so we don't have to like it).
We've included character designs and a selection of screens for you. Bask in their 2D-ness after the break, won't you? We shrunk them down a bit from Dengeki's original display, to make the basking more successful. Over-enlarged DS screens are not cool.
Continue reading New Rockman ZX Advent screens and character art
A look at some unsung DS villains
Modojo's Ryan Morgan took a trip into the underworld of DS games, finding the meanest of the mean villains and delivering stern warnings about them. These aren't the everyday spiny, cloaked, "NOOOOOOO"-bellowing villains we know, the kind that telegraph their evilness to the world, but some more insidious cads who, while they look innocuous enough, will strike and attempt to force you to feed their twisted, evil obsessions.The biggest offender? The color blue, who Nintendo seems to have collaborated with to render Brain Age players hoarse or even mute from repeated attempts at the Stroop test. Bluuuuuuuuuuuue!
Bone: DS adventure renaissance continues [update 1]
[Update 1: The announcement was about Bone for the PC and not for the DS. It mentions that the publisher is "focusing on the PC and Nintendo DS markets", not the game. We apologize for the misunderstanding. Thanks to eric c for the correction!]
Before the episodic Sam & Max games, Telltale Games were known among adventure game holdouts for their adaptations of Jeff Smith's Bone comic series. They followed a similar business model: periodic, bite-sized chunks of delicious puzzle solving, set in cult comic book trappings.
Now publisher Xider is bringing the Bone games to the
We're so proud of our little DS, bringing back two of our favorite long-lost game genres: the graphical text adventure and the 3D adventure game.
My Sims coming to US
My Sims, EA's designed-for-Japan take on their amazingly popular franchise, is coming to the US, and bringing its strangely Servbot-esque characters along! We actually weren't sure we'd see this one, since it was made expressly for Japanese audiences.They've set up a web page for the localized release, with an English trailer and screenshots. Strangely, the website doesn't seem to distinguish between the Wii and DS versions at all, and between the simple art style and EA's too-perfect screenshots, we can't tell which one we're looking at, if not both. Therefore, we decree that the game either looks fantastic on DS or not that great on Wii!
We're ... kind of looking forward to The Sims again! What a nostalgic feeling. We'll try to remember this feeling in a couple of months when we're rolling our eyes at My Sims Pets Go to College Expansion 2: New Dorm Furniture for Rock Stars!!!
[Via Joystiq]
Mizuguchi talks Meteos Disney Magic
This brisk Gamevideos interview with Rez, Space Channel 5, Lumines, and now Meteos: Disney Magic creator Tetsuya Mizuguchi is perfect for you if:- You're a huge Miz fanboy, and want to bask in his calm awesomeness
- You don't know how Meteos works, or
- You want to see some really great close-up videos of the new version in action
The video is after the post break.
[Via GoNintendo]
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