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Posts with tag budget

Simple frights await you in this Abandoned Building

Abandoned buildings (in this case a hospital), spooky little child spirits -- sometimes the most popular horror clichés can still be highly effective. D3 clearly thinks so, anyway, because it's included both of the above in its latest Simple game, Simple DS Series: Vol. 42 - The Abandoned Building.

From what we could gather from machine translation, you play as journalist Akira Kashiwagi, who sets out to an old, closed-down hospital to investigate the murder of four youngsters twenty years ago. It's played from a first-person perspective, you can hide in various spots throughout the hospital (lockers, for example), and it looks scary.

Needless to say, that first shot past the break (of the little girl peering through the elevator doors) will stay with us for our next few sleepless nights.

Continue reading Simple frights await you in this Abandoned Building

Phoenix plans twelve games to avoid this year


Generally, when it comes to the DS, we tend to associate the name "Phoenix" with good things. European publisher Phoenix Games, though, is determined to break the mold, tainting the name we've come to know and love on our handhelds. The company is bringing twelve games to the DS this year (with twelve Wii titles to match), none of which sound fun unless you like the sound of Jungle Crew, Love Heart, and Dalmatians 4.

Grabbed from the bowels of the "rejected game ideas" pile, these twelve games probably never even had a chance. Of course, if they're developed with care, we'd be able to overlook some bad concept decisions. Seeing how Phoenix is popping them out faster than an over-sexed rabbit, though, we doubt this is the case.

Even though these games are budget titles and obviously marketed to kids, we don't think we're being too harsh. Phoenix has a track record for releasing awful titles, and we wouldn't recommend subjecting children to these horrors.

For a list of what games to expect from Phoenix, check out the company's website here.

[Via GoNintendo]

Japan gets cheap Phoenix Wright

Our initial reaction to hearing that Capcom was slashing the price of the Gyakuten Saiban series in Japan can be summed up by the picture to the right. It was only after we had sulked for a few minutes that we remembered how every one of those games comes in both Japanese and perfect English!

In other words, if you're thinking of picking up one of the four Phoenix Wright titles in the near future, then we strongly advise you to, well, hold it! From April 17th, the games will become part of Capcom's new budget lineup, "NEW Best Price! 2000," and cost a piffling ¥2,100 (just under $20) after tax.

See also: 2008's Biggest Blips -- Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney

[Via NeoGAF]

Tasuke prepares another round of 1500 DS Spirits games

Just three months after the last round of 1500 DS Spirits games, Japanese publisher Tasuke is getting ready to launch another barrage of cheapo games at the Japanese public. It's all the kind of stuff you'd expect from a budget game line, too: Vol. 6 Trump, Vol. 7 Chess, Vol. 8 Darts, and Vol. 9 Futari Uchi Mahjongg (Two-player Mahjongg) are the newest offerings in the line. While we supported Tasuke last time in the battle with D3 over cheap games, we find ourselves feeling that D3's weirder offerings, like driving education and, on the PS2, The Daibijin, make their Simple series line much more interesting overall than Tasuke's vanilla lineup. D3's got that kind of stuff too, but they also have the hilarious games. To Tasuke's credit, the character art (which is shared in all four games) is nice, with shading reminiscent of Falcoon's work on recent King of Fighters games.

We'd like to see this kind of thing in the U.S. regardless of our lack of interest in these specific games. We have cheap games, but we don't really have games that self-identify as cheap.

505 Games did it, Mum!

European budget publisher 505 Games announced a new title for the children. Because the children are a very profitable demographic our future!

The game is called I Did It Mum! and comes in boys' or girls' versions. Both versions are jam-packed with educational minigames like "Toy Train" and "Drive the Car." And both versions are totally for preschoolers, so you have an excuse not to be interested in the thing yourself. But if you have kids, this may be perfect "Playing DS Games Training" to help them get ready for other training games.

[Via Joystiq]

Mankind ill needs a boxart such as this


So, uh ... remember that Amazon Castlevania deal that we got all excited about, and encouraged you all to take advantage of? Yeah, about that. NeoGAFfer Reilly bought a copy of Dawn of Sorrow from Amazon, and what you see above is what arrived. Konami has started their own "Konami's Best" branding, and rebranded Castlevania with the lovely new label. If you don't know what the original boxart looked like, it's the one pictured on the new box. We knew nothing of this when we sent you all to Amazon. At least there's still a fantastic game in there.

You want to know what's really sad? We kind of want one of these "Konami's Best" copies for our collection.

Konami rides the budget wave

There's already a couple of Player's Choice titles on the GameCube and Gameboy Advance, and they happen to be some of the best titles on each of their respective platforms. Getting quality at a cheaper price is always a treat, so why haven't we seen Nintendo introduce this on the DS yet? Taito has already gone ahead and issued some of its games at rock-bottom prices for the DS over in Japan and now Konami is following suit with 3 games of its own. Ganbare Goemon (Mystical Ninja), Castlevania, and Survival Kids will all be released with a new price tag of 2940 yen, which comes to about $25 US, by Konami over in Japan on 6/29.

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