If you neglected to pick up Super Dodge Ball Brawlers two weeks ago -- and we suspect you did, considering how few people are talking about the game -- you can still terrorize playgrounds with River City Dodge Ball All Stars!!
Developed by doujin groups Miracle Kidz and Downtown7 (along with Famicom Kunio series creators Yoshimitsu Yoshida and Mokeke Sekimoto), this PC title was actually released several months ago in Japan, but the demo is still worth downloading and playing. Plus, there's an English version of the trial!
The game doesn't suffer from the slow pace many have complained about with the DS release, and it even offers two speeds -- Normal and Retro. River City Dodge Ball All Stars!! doesn't, however, include some of the cool features introduced in Super Dodge Ball Brawlers, like the equipment shop, throwable items on the field, and the 8-player local wireless brawl mode.
As its title suggests, the PC game comes with the added bonus of a roster filled with recognizable names from the River City Ransom cast! Smack people in the face as end-boss Slick! Dodge super shots as Zombies gang member Turk! Wear panties on your head as, uh, Panty!
With the DS being the most loved gaming system in the galaxy, one might think that it's the perfect platform for a graphic adventure title. From a business standpoint, it's a no-brainer, but the stylus and touch-screen also provide the perfect control scheme for titles in this genre. Not only do we, but the fine folks at Eurogamer also, think that bringing old adventure titles to the DS would be a very good thing. Lucasarts shot down our hopes, however.
"The cart size of the DS makes it impossible to put out ports of any of our old graphic adventures," claims assistant producer Jeffrey Gullett. "There's literally not enough room on those carts to put the games out." Kind of an odd answer, when you think about the size of older adventure titles such as The Secret of Monkey Island.
All you young whippersnappers probably love your computers, but did you know that you can actually play games on these newfangled technology boxes? Who would've thought?
Should you fall into the PC gamer crowd, though, you should check out our new sister site, Big Download. The site's only in its beta version at the moment, so be gentle, but it still has a lot to offer anyone interested in PC gaming. You can hit up Big Download to check out its shiny PC downloads engine, or just meander on over to read the latest gaming news -- whatever strikes your fancy. The site also has some neat-o features, like a file tracking system that remembers your favorite titles, and fee-less access to content such as demos, patches, mods, and then some.
Since it's only in its beta form, though, you may run into a few hiccups here and there. If so, be sure to report them, so that we (and by we, we mean tech savvy people that aren't actually us) can fix those right up.
It looks like Myst isn't the only oldschool PC adventure game to be ported to the DS. According to Mindscape, Syberia is on its way, too. Since it's only a port, it won't contain any new content. Yet, we're glad to know that the game will feature touch-screen functionality, since that's always a plus in adventure titles. You can also expect an improved interface and menu system, to make inventories easier to navigate.
In Syberia, you take control of businesswomen Kate Walker, who's looking for the long-lost heir of a toy-making family. One of Syberia's best aspects, though, is its surreal, steampunk-esque setting, which we hope translates well onto the DS.
The game is scheduled to release in Europe this October, but there's no word yet of a North American localization.
What a great time to be a handheld shoot-em-up fan! On the commercial front, Nanostray 2 just hit store shelves and Ketsui DS is still on the way. Homebrew gamers had their lives changes by Super Wings's release last week, and now they have two more titles to play with -- OpenTyrian DS and World Reborn.
OpenTyrian DS (v0.2) is a port of vertical-scrolling shooter Tyrian, originally a PC title. Players pick up cash while blasting their way through stages which they can then spend on ship modifications in between levels. There's a huge variety of upgrades available for purchase -- primary and secondary weapons (with 11 levels), "sidekicks," shields, energy generators, and even alternate ships. If you have a flaschart handy, you definitely need to try this one out.
As for World Reborn, this horizontal-scrolling SHMUP (with an RPG leveling system) was originally intended as a commercial GBA release and even had a DS sequel planned for a minute, but the game never made it to the retail market. Though developer NeoPong (now defunct) had plans to publish World Reborn with DSI Games, that deal fell through, and the studio has decided to put up the ROM for free rather than pack it away in a warehouse, Indiana Jones-style. Jump past the post break for a trailer of the game.
Read - Download OpenTyrian DS
Read - Download World Reborn
Promotional Consideration is a new weekly feature about the Nintendo DS advertisements you usually flip past, change the channel on, or just tune out. Our christening post takes a look at an Italian ad for the handheld that won Epica's silver award for Press last year. Check past the post break for the full image.
Looking back at the game now, Super Monkey Ball: Touch & Roll's stylus controls can't compete with the level of immersion and intuitiveness we're seeing with the Wii's labyrinthine games -- Mercury Meltdown Revolution, Dewey's Adventure, and Kororinpa: Marble Mania. Thanks to homebrew hardware like the MK6-Motion and the DS Motion Card, though, we can now emulate the same motion-sensing features on our handhelds.
It's unlikely that any commercial release will ever acknowledge these unauthorized add-ons, but homebrew developers have already put out over twenty games and demos that use the data gathered from the accelerometers/gyroscope. Check past the post break for videos and screenshots of three puzzle titles that've been rigged to detect your tilting DS.
We usually wait until a homebrew project has had time to mature past its alpha builds before calling the game to your attention, but we take exception with any and all plans for a portable X-Com: UFO Defense. Our love affair with the turn-based, tactical title has been a romance with few equals, inviting comparisons with Shakespeare's tragic coupling of Romeo and Juliet. Should society ever try to separate us, you'll find that we've already taken measures to leave this miserable world, our lifeless arms entwined with X-Com's diskettes even in death.
Blue_knight has posted screenshots of the progress he's made so far with adapting the game's data for the DS. The handheld clone already features tileset loading/creation, four height views, and touchscreen support for scrolling around the battlescape. Though there's still a lot left to implement, like fog of war and a map overview on the second screen, that hasn't stopped us from scouting countries for potential bases and trading tips on how to best attack Chryssalid terror sites.
Posted May 24th 2007 3:15PM by JC Fletcher
Filed under: News
Gamecock Media, the new publisher formed by former Gathering of Developers executives, have announced a new DS game from Crackpot Entertainment: a "third-person shooter/detective game" called Insecticide.
The game, also coming out for PC, stars Detectives Chrys Liszt and Roachy Caruthers as they attempt to solve a murder at the Nectarola soft drink company. In addition to shooting bad guys, players will have to investigate environments and clues using the stylus. We are loving the concept art. It's got a great detective-thriller atmosphere combined with Psychonauts styling, which is very appropriate for what looks and sounds a whole lot like an adventure game. Obviously this art is a little too hi-res for DS, but we hope they can pull off a similar look.
It's amazing what people are turning into computers these days, as this original Game Boy has become the case for one of the smallest Windows XP PCs we've ever seen. Complete with 2 USB ports, LAN and VGA outputs, the cartridge slot has even been turned into a Compact Flash drive. This thing is sick!
Though we hate to think of the Nintendo DS as a system overrun with ports of old games, we won't raise any arguments when those ports consist of PC classics. Homebrew developer Beathwho has started work on bringing over a DS version of Warlords, one of the finest turn-based strategy titles to hit home computers in the early 90s. If you've played Puzzle Quest, then you're already familiar with the series' fantasy world of Etheria.
With Infinite Interactive already planning a commercial release of Warlords 2 for the DS, we can't imagine that they'd be too happy seeing games from their franchise put out for free. Still, it's great to see someone deliver these old favorites to our handhelds. Now all we need are ports of X-Com and Civilization!
Xider Interactive, who we previously reported as not actually bringing Sam & Max to the DS, have announced their real DS releases for the UK. The titles, which are probably familiar to German PC gamers but definitely not familiar to us, are:
Luminator DS (May)
Ankh 1 (August)
Ankh appears to be the first in a series of Egyptian-themed adventure games-- and there's no part of that description we don't like. Luminator (PC version shown above), from what we can tell, is ... let's say a faithful tribute to Lumines.
We don't know if either of these games will be headed to the US. Have any of our European friends played either of these? We need to know about the quality of Ankh before we get too excited about OMG ADVENTURE GAME.
In the third part of their Picture Quality Shoot-Out series, PC Magazine, along with DisplayMate Technologies' Dr. Raymond Soneira, put Nintendo and Sony's handhelds under the magnifying glass to try and discern which had the superior picture quality. Given that most folks are happy with whatever choice they made for handheld gaming (or both if they're pretty hardcore), picture quality superiority isn't all that important in defining a console's overall worth. However, having the word "fanboy" in our title means we need to comment on the report and you fine readers undoubtedly need to comment (we welcome the comments!).
Surprisingly, the picture quality on each device is close to equal. The PSP has a better DPI (dots per square inch) coming in at 130, with the DS Lite trailing at 110. However, the brightness on the DS beats out the PSP, even when plugged in to an AC outlet, by featuring a 200 cd/m² brightness (compared to the highest possible on the PSP being 148 cd/m² and 115 cd/m² when unplugged. Finally, the article points out that the DS is leagues better at handling colors than the PSP, with the largest color gamut of handheld devices at 74%, compared to the PSP's 54%.
According to the report, the PSP wins with a score of B+ compared to the DS Lite's B. Still, the margins of victory are fairly small on each aspect tested, so the technical superiority of either platform is easily argued.
We can't even clearly remember the last time we had to escape an outbreak of demons on Mars. Actually, it's happened to us so many times that we'd never want to experience such a thing again, the past experiences just one long blur of events in our memory. Nope, not even in video game form would we ever want to take part in such a boring activity again.
In case you're looking to visit the Red Planet and battle some demons yourself, we won't try and stop you. If you're the kind of person who wants to kill demons on Mars instead with the ability to pause the battle and maybe grab a soda from the refrigerator, then this homebrew port of the popular PC game Doom might just scratch your itch.
Man, we would've killed to have a flamethrower that last time.
With the DS being the most loved gaming system in the galaxy, one might think that it's the perfect platform for a graphic adventure title. From a business standpoint, it's a no-brainer, but the stylus and touch-screen also provide the perfect control scheme for titles in this genre. Not only do we, but the fine folks at Eurogamer also, think that bringing old adventure titles to the DS would be a very good thing. 
Looking back at the game now, 
We usually wait until a homebrew project has had time to mature past its alpha builds before calling the game to your attention, but we take exception with any and all plans for a portable 
Though we hate to think of the Nintendo DS as a system overrun with ports of old games, we won't raise any arguments when those ports consist of PC classics. 
In the third part of their Picture Quality Shoot-Out series, PC Magazine, along with DisplayMate Technologies' Dr. Raymond Soneira, put Nintendo and Sony's handhelds under the magnifying glass to try and discern which had the superior picture quality. Given that most folks are happy with whatever choice they made for handheld gaming (or both if they're pretty hardcore), picture quality superiority isn't all that important in defining a console's overall worth. However, having the word "fanboy" in our title means we need to comment on the report and you fine readers undoubtedly need to comment (we welcome the comments!).
We can't even clearly remember the last time we had to escape an outbreak of demons on Mars. Actually, it's happened to us so many times that we'd never want to experience such a thing again, the past experiences just one long blur of events in our memory. Nope, not even in video game form would we ever want to take part in such a boring activity again.
_thumbnail.jpg "Prince of Persia: The Fallen King")
