I like words. I even go so far to fancy myself as one of those indomitable writer types, wielding a pen for all things mighty and righteous and incredibly nerdy. It is with great reluctance that I write this particular column, however, for one simple fact: I suck at WordJong.
It's a simple game: clean interface, smooth gameplay, and a surprisingly entertaining mixture of classics Mahjong and Scrabble. The unholy union of these two titles brought about a gem of a game largely ignored by the DS-playing populace, though its relative obscurity might prove to be an advantage. It makes WordJong easier for all of you to track down, for one, but it also provides fewer people to compare my pathetic scores with. And that, my friends, is sweet.
Interested? Grab your handy dictionary and come along with this week's edition of Gaming to Go, wherein this columnist's crippling shame manifests itself in an overabundance of big words.
You know what gets taken for granted a lot? The morning crossword. Seriously, it seems like nobody opens up the paper anymore and sits down with their breakfast and enjoys a crossword puzzle. It seems everyone is nuts for this Sudoku thing. Well, we're trying to bring back the crossword, baby!
This week, we're unloading USA Today Crossword Challenge onto 5 lucky readers. That's right, we've got 5 copies (each valued at $20) of the game. How can you enter for a chance at one of these? Easy, leave a comment telling us the last time you sat down and did a crossword!
You can leave one comment per day and the contest will be closing on Sunday, August 17th at 11:59PM ET. The giveaway is open to folks 18 years of age or older and all entrants must be current and legal residents of the United States or Canada (excluding Quebec). Before you enter, give the official rules a read by clicking here.
Best of luck to you all and, as always, thank you for reading DS Fanboy!
Bury the Shovelware is a new weekly feature in which DS Fanboy dives deep into the mounds of gaming abominations dumped upon the unsuspecting public by various developers. Like a stool sample collected from a heap of animal dung in order to learn more about its creator, we'll be dissecting, studying and testing our subjects. We will record our findings, and mark how long the title can be endured. Every Wednesday, we'll take a closer look at the proletariat of the DS's vast library.
For this first installment, I sought something that epitomizes shovelware: a game that shows too little inspiration (or too much from one blockbuster title) and/or is virtually unplayable. These attributes are all well represented in Homie Rollerz. In an attempt to feed off the momentum of the "Homies" craze (of many years ago), developer Webfoot Technologies created a racing title that aspired to capture the invigorating frenzy of Mario Kart DS, but instead leaves the user bored, frustrated, and robbed of their time. How long could I stand Homie Rollerz? Roll on to find out.
Despite the fact that Nintendo's own Crosswords DS will no doubt outsell USA Today Crossword Challenge, due to the "Nintendo" on the front (and the Gamestop-exclusive release of USA Today), Destineer, developer Mercury Games and original engine developer Sanuk Games should feel very lucky that Nintendo released their own crossword game when they did.
It means that, in the DS crossword genre at least, Destineer can claim superiority over Nintendo. It may not have the extra modes that Crosswords DS does, but it is a much more pleasant crossword experience.
Remember Samurai Deeper Kyo, that anime-based game released with the Samurai Deeper Kyo DVD set earlier this year? It's a rare cart due to its limited availability with the expensive "Complete Series" collection, and it has the added allure of also providing a solid action experience, despite having been originally released in Japan back in 2002.
Well, those of you who saw the DVD set's exorbitant mark up and resigned yourself to never owning this gem might want to reconsider with Best Buy's sale price: $29.99. While that might seem like a lot to pay for a GBA game these days, that's less than half of its usual list price of $79.99! Plus, you'll also get a heap of episodes from an anime which may or may not be worth watching!
Maybe things are different within communities of alive stuffed animals, but every time we've seen groups of exotic wild animals (said experiences limited to zoo environments, of course, and TV specials), we seem to have just missed the balloon-popping events. Our understanding of bears was that most of their days are spent sleeping, eating, or totally mauling stuff, which leaves limited time for presiding over Ka-Plinko games.
Similarly, we know that other animals do often play a hide-and-seek-like game against tigers, but those games rarely end in hugs. Well, except for the hug of the tiger's teeth against its opponent's throat. Plushees may be a cute minigame collection, but it completely fails to teach kids the lesson about the importance of not hugging tigers.
Big John Games' Spitfire Heroes: Tales of the Royal Air Force is a simple game -- and I mean that in a good way. I'm not saying it's an easy game (far from it) or that there isn't enough to do. Spitfire Heroes is simple in the way that arcade games are: the controls are intuitive and easy to pick up quickly, and the objectives are clear. Despite its appearance as a flight sim (one of the most complex genres of all), Spitfire Heroes is an action game through and through, more After Burner than Microsoft Flight Simulator.
Unfortunately, some fairly major issues prevent Spitfire Heroes from an unqualified recommendation. Right up front: the game is too hard, which may prevent you from seeing the majority of the content. While it's easy to understand how to play, it is remarkably difficult to play.
Once nothing more than a completely plausible rumor, the Iron Chef video game has been revealed, giving two competitors one hour to devise four to five dishes featuring the game, made in their signature styles. Oh, no, wait, we're thinking of food. This has been revealed, giving you notice that it'll be out in stores this summer for people to buy.
Iron Chef America: Supreme Cuisine, developed by John Deere: Harvest in the Heartland (and Elf Bowling 1&2) developer Black Lantern Studios, will be based on the Food Network's version of the popular Japanese cooking game show, and not the original. It'll feature the voice and likeness of Double Dragon's Mark Dacascos, with other personalities to be announced later. Could an Alton Brown appearance in a game be far off?
Even if it is the new show, we're all about the idea of an Iron Chef game. At the very least, they've made a funny video.
I was pretty worried about reviewing Homie Rollerz. I didn't really get into game blogging to discuss serious issues, and the Homies franchise seemed to involve one. Is Homie Rollerz a good thing because it is designed for a Mexican-American audience (which, as a goal, is very cool and laudable), or is it an insult to that audience with broad stereotypes? The toys continue to be popular, so I happily suspect the former. However, my own impression of the characters and storyline is that I might find them offensive if I belonged to the supposed target audience. In any case, further investigation of this cultural issue turned out to be unnecessary, because Homie Rollerz is not very good. The biggest issues with the game turn out to be with the game and not with the subject matter.
We haven't covered Destineer's Spitfire Heroes: Tales of the Royal Air Force much, except to note that it came out last week. The game is kind of a surprise to us now, because this trailer actually looks pretty neat. The environments are a bit spare, but that's pretty much what happens when a game takes place almost entirely above the ocean.
In terms of gameplay, Heroes looks like a fast-paced, arcade airplane game like the vaunted After Burner -- with a little throttle control on the touchscreen, which is fun. We can only tolerate flying games when they're arcadey like this -- we don't want to take a class to play a flight simulator.
If the Homie Rollerz short that we posted yesterday piqued your curiosity about the game, you might want to check out some screens for it -- after all, that video yesterday didn't show us anything about the actual game.
We couldn't help but poke some fun at it (making some alterations to the screenshot on the right), even though Homie Rollerz is clearly aiming to be silly. You can even race as an alien or some guy that looks like a jester ghost, which we suppose is something.
Still, the biggest problem with these screens is that they're not exactly ... nice looking. We know our DS is capable of more, so we'd like to see a little more polish in the game. We hope the final product ends up looking and playing a better than what we saw in these videos.
Just when we thought we had played the last great GBA game, Siliconera pointed us towards Samurai Deeper Kyo, a slick action title recently brought to the US by Destineer. Marvelous Interactive published it in Japan back in 2002, but that doesn't take away from how fun it looks! The game only comes packed as a bonus with the Samurai Deeper Kyoanime series DVD set, so you'll find it difficult to acquire a copy.
Anyway, the idea of having another GBA release to look forward to finding and playing reminded us how long it's been since we tapped that bottom box on the DS's initial menu screen. Months! How long has it been for you? And what was the last GBA game you loaded up?
Indianapolis 500 Legends isn't your average racing game. Instead of presenting the player with a series of circuits, this DS title focuses on one, and only one track. To state the obvious, in the game you race in the Indy 500, an event known as "the Greatest Spectacle in Racing."
Since Legends doesn't try to woo you with a bunch of different courses, it attempts too add variety with the help of history. Through the game, the player is not only able to experience the Indy 500, but also learn about it. One way in which the game achieves this is by letting the player race as (and against) famous drivers (well ... they're famous in relation to other Indy car drivers, at least). But, can combining history with racing really work in the context of a video game?
When I played Homie Rollerz at PAX*, two things occurred to me: first, that I am absolutely not the target audience for this game (in that I'm not a fan of the Homies toy franchise) and that it would be amazing and pretty hilarious if the game turned out to be a really good kart racer. The version I played was way too early to make any judgments, but these videos at least show progress being made. There's a second video after the break.
Will Homie Rollerz be a Mario Kart killer? Well, no. Probably not, right? Trying to look at the thing objectively, however, and not as a weird licensed game, I can say that I like the track designs. It's got a lot of tunnels, which is interesting and different from the more open-air track designs of Mario Kart. Also it's online, which really makes any game better. I also feel the need to mention burrito car.
*I'm not trying to brag about having played Homie Rollerz or anything -- just stating my experience with the title.
What do tractors, video games, and shoveling up cow poop have in common? If you guessed John Deere: Harvest in the Heartland, you probably read the title of this review. In case you haven't heard of this brand-licensed game, though, it's essentially a farming simulator that was recently released for the Nintendo "Niche Games Haven" DS.
While the brand might not mean much to gussied up city folk, Deere & Company happens to be the world's leading manufacturer of farming equipment (thanks, Wikipedia!). In fact, the John Deere brand became so popular that it incited a horrible fashion trend a few years ago that led to people who weren't truckers wearing trucker hats. But, what does this all mean for Harvest in the Heartland? Is it possible that John Deere would not only find success in agriculture and fashion, but in video games as well? Let's find out, shall we?
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Big John Games' 
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Indianapolis 500 Legends
What do tractors, video games, and shoveling up cow poop have in common? If you guessed John Deere: Harvest in the Heartland, you probably read the title of this review. In case you haven't heard of this brand-licensed game, though, it's essentially a farming simulator that was recently released for the Nintendo "Niche Games Haven" DS.
