Posted Jun 29th 2007 9:50AM by JC Fletcher
Filed under: News
Frequent readers know that we are infatuated with Drawn to Life. It's a 2D platformer that makes use of a fun gimmick that is perfect for the DS. What's not to love? So every time some news comes around about it, we're thrilled to post it.
GamesRadar interviewed Scott Rogers from THQ about the game, and got a little information about the story. You play "The Creator" who draws in the Book of Life to create champions and items, etc., in order to save a race called the Raposa from some evil drawings. It seems one of the Raposa tried to use the Book of Life, but his drawings came out all evil, and then the whole town was covered in ominous darkness. Dude should have read the manual first.
Posted May 25th 2007 6:00PM by JC Fletcher
Filed under: News
Metanet's N is a physics-based platformer in which players run and jump around a big room collecting coins. It's a simple concept that is executed so well that it earned the game an Independent Games Festival Audience Award. Next on the list of honors: an official retail release on the DS and PSP from Atari, to be called N+.
We don't know how the game will be changed, other than the addition of, as Metanet puts it, "pretty cool new features and graphics." Really, we hope it isn't changed much at all-- especially the level-editing feature. Atari, we've never asked you for anything before-- let us make and trade N+ levels online.
You can download the Flash version of N here. Try it out and see how you'd feel about a DS version!
Posted May 24th 2007 2:25PM by JC Fletcher
Filed under: News
1UP's Jeremy Parish was lucky enough to get to play 5th Cell's Drawn to Life, a game whose hype train we have already boarded, even before we knew anything about the gameplay. Parish's preview has gotten us even more hyped, because the drawing element, rather than being gimmicky window dressing, is integral to the gameplay in really unique ways.
One example given in the preview: players are asked to draw a clam to be used as a springboard. We don't know if the player's drawing affects the performance of the springboard (if, for example, the angle of the thing affects its power) but it seems logical.
The actual platforming, according to Parish, was just okay-- inoffensive, but not exceptional. We could chalk that impression up to its lack of novelty compared to the editing functions; and as long as the game isn't bad, we think the drawing will carry it.
A few more screens of 5th Cell's Drawn to Life have popped up, and we're glad they did. We're getting a warm, happy morning feeling from them, because in addition to being generally pleasant, they're also pleasantly surprising.
It turns out that not only do you draw your own (jointed) characters, but you are also tasked with drawing many other of the game's assets: background details, weapons, vehicles, and platforms. Opportunities to draw these items come up during the game as obstacles: you come across a blank area and are asked to fill it in.
As evidenced by the many hours we've spent in Fighter Maker, we perk up at the sight of user-created content. With the potential to draw this much stuff, Drawn to Life has just suddenly shot to the top of our want list. We've posted some screens-- feel free to save them and doodle on them in MS Paint.
We weren't too impressed with Crash Boom Bang!, Crash Bandicoot's minigame-filled debut on the Nintendo DS. Crash Tag Team Racing DS couldn't even manage to drive itself out of the studio before the project was scrapped. Third time's the charm, maybe?
Crash of the Titans brings the series to not only the DS, but the GBA and Wii. Screenshots of the Wii title indicate that the blue-jeaned marsupial will be thrown back into his natural, platforming/adventure-gaming habitat, freeing him from the wacky genres that've watered down the franchise. Players will be able to unlock extra elements in the Wii version with a DS copy of the game.
We're much too cautious to let another Crash Bandicoot title get our hopes up, but we wish Radical Entertainment all the best with its development. Though the Spanish magazine that unveiled Crash of the Titans mentioned an October release, the game isn't guaranteed to arrive in the US at the same date.
Originally intended as a demo to entice interested publishers, The Old Well has been sitting in Athletic Design's vaults since 2004. The Swedish developer abandoned its hopes of a commercial release for the GBA title as years passed, and has decided to hand the puzzle platformer over to the homebrew community.
The Old Well starts with a cute introduction to the game's story and controls, but it's easy to pick up after a few seconds. Avoid the falling bricks that track your position, don't get trapped in a pit, and line up the slabs to progress to the next "level." You can punch, push, and jump over the blocks, so you aren't a complete slave to their whims. There's a limited amount of punches that you're able to throw before becoming tired, but you can get your energy back during the lunch breaks that come every ten levels.
The game plays out like a reverse Mr. Driller, forcing you to constantly move around and climb the accumulating landscape until you can pull yourself out of the well. It's a fun diversion, and you can't argue with the price.
THQ is picking up 5th Cell's do-it-yourself platform game maker Drawn to Life for a September release in Europe. We hadn't heard of the game before, but it looks pretty cool: you draw your own characters and items to appear both in an Animal Crossingish town simulation and a side-scrolling platform game. It sounds like sort of a 2DMagic Pengel.
Is it weird that our first instinct when seeing a draw-your-own-character game is to try to imitate other game characters exactly? Or is it totally normal to want to play through a cartoony platformer as Solid Snake?
Why haven't we seen more rhythm platformers since Donkey Kong Jungle Beat? And while we're at it, how come there aren't more games that feature primates? We were on the verge of sending out subpoenas and demanding answers from the video game industry's "top people," but then we stumbled upon Everlasting Love, a charming, monochrome game from homebrew developer Mia (Ninja & Zarbi, Oil Panic DS).
Following the single-song soundtrack (from We Love Katamari) and the monkey protagonist's head movements, players tap the A button to the beat. Just hitting the A button at all makes the simian character bounce around, but he jumps higher depending on how rhythmically accurate you are. You can use the directional pad to face which direction you want to pounce, but all movement is limited to hopping around.
While there's a lot of emphasis on staying with the rhythm, jumping as high as possible isn't the goal of the game -- you're actually meant to complete the levels with as few measured hops as possible. Some of the portions actually require you to jump off-beat, keeping your head down to avoid low-hanging spikes.
Everlasting Love can get pretty frustrating at times, but we're not sure if it's the fault of the game's or our own lacking abilities. Clearing the first pit took us a few tries before we could put it behind us, and the obstacles get exponentially harder after that. At version 0.1 though, Everlasting Love has a lot of potential to be the rhythm platformer we've been waiting for all these years.
Posted Mar 15th 2007 7:00PM by Eric Caoili
Filed under: News
While we can't say much about the quality of Rayman Raving Rabbids DS yet, we're more than happy to sing the praises of Ubisoft's marketing behind the recently-released platformer. The France-based company sent out three promotional images showing the game's villains, crazed and deranged rabbits, in various states of distress.
Kururin Donuts (Spinning Donuts) is a mascot platformer starring a giant donut. That's not so crazy. It's quirky, at best. It's a nice, colorful game, at least, and it looks a lot like Sonic Rush, which we liked just fine.
But here's where it gets weird, and where we start getting excited about this game: after you complete a level, you are rewarded with a recipe for a dessert. We aren't interested because it's an attempt to shoehorn one of the new DS fads into an otherwise average game. Although, now that we mention that, that is kind of noteworthy.
No, we're interested because your avatar is a dessert, and the recipes are also for desserts. So, there's a good chance that you'll learn how to cook and eat your character. That is brutal. We wonder if this will get a CERO Z rating because of the violence.
Screens featuring the doomed, tragic hero are after the post break.
These Tomb Raider: Legend screenshots certainly needed to be rounded up ... and immediately executed. They're not particularly impressive and the one on the right is notable for not featuring a tomb at all. Still, it's early goings for Lara's return-to-roots portable adventure, and if it's even half as good as the console outings, we'll be satisfied. We'd rather it be just as good, however, controlling well and featuring plenty of evil traps looking to mangle our beloved Lara's limbs. There's every possibility of that happening, but confidence isn't particularly prevalent when it looks like the touch screen seems to have been relegated to yet another glorified inventory menu.
Not content with conquering Japan and America, the newly revamped, newly released, New Super Mario Bros. now set its non-insidious sights on Europe, land of collosseums, queens and curiously leaning constructions. Nintendo of Europe has announced that the game has shipped to stores, just in time to be snatched up over the weekend. Expect Mario to hit his presumed homeland of Italy in full force, devouring mushrooms and smashing bricks, though sadly not fixing leaky plumping. If you haven't purchased the game already, check out its updated official site and catch yourself whistling along to the music.
1up has posted a preview of Mario's latest return to block-busting, mushroom-mashing, princess-procuring platforming and the qualities observed are quite promising. Everything old is new again. Perhaps unsurprisingly, New Super Mario Bros. still plays and feels exactly the way you'd want and expect it to, even despite the addition of Mario Kart's nefarious blue shell and a mushroom that unleashes Mariozilla upon an unsuspecting world.
Actually, the preview does make it seem like becoming giant Mario makes things a tad too easy. It's an awesome sight as far as giant plumbers are concerned, but the act of running from one end of the level to the other with nothing to stop your progress seems less enticing. Hopefully that particular mushroom won't be abused in the game proper.
New Super Mario Bros. is currently slated for release on 15 March May (unless Nintendo rudely changes the date again).
An EGM scan pretty much confirms what we've all been thinking: The DS Lite looks set to launch on 21 May, the same dayNew Super Mario Bros. bounces into stores. Don't worry--the game will still work on the old DS!
In a statement issued today, Nintendo have confirmed that Mario's triumphant return to smashing bricks with his head and chasing after mushrooms in New Super Mario Bros. is poised to help usher in the North American launch of the DS Lite, perhaps to a degree that few gamers were expecting. New Super Mario Bros. will only be compatible with the DS Lite and will not work with the original machine. Nintendo's name-taking, posterior-assaulting marketing guru, Reggie Fills-Aimes, explained that players would be able to see why this decision was made.
"Players won't be able to see. On the original DS, I mean. The screens on the old system are simply much too dark, making the new Mushroom Kingdom almost impossible to navigate.We had always planned to make New Super Mario Bros. a premier title for the Lite and its superior screens, and what better way to make it exclusive to that system?"
This lends more weight to the earlier murmurings of a Mario DS Lite bundle hitting US shores, though Reggie was quick to point out that the recent shortages in Japan may cause the system to launch a bit later than the game itself.
"New Super Mario Bros. should be out for a little while before the DS Lite, which is a great way of starting the marketing train rolling. The actual system won't take long to catch up though--two months at most."
The Lite-only New Super Mario Bros. is currently slated for release on 21 March.
[Update: Just in case you're reading this late, this story was an evil, bogus April Fool's trick. Shame on me.]
1UP's Jeremy Parish was lucky enough to get to play 5th Cell's 
A few more screens of 5th Cell's 
We weren't too impressed with Crash Boom Bang!, Crash Bandicoot's 
Originally intended as a demo to entice interested publishers, The Old Well has been sitting in Athletic Design's vaults since 2004. The Swedish developer abandoned its hopes of a commercial release for the 
Why haven't we seen more rhythm platformers since 
Kururin Donuts (Spinning Donuts) is a mascot 
These Tomb Raider: Legend screenshots certainly needed to be rounded up ... and immediately executed. They're not particularly impressive and the one on the right is notable for not featuring a tomb at all. Still, it's early goings for Lara's return-to-roots portable adventure, and if it's even half as good as the console outings, we'll be satisfied. We'd rather it be just as good, however, controlling well and featuring plenty of evil traps looking to mangle our beloved Lara's limbs. There's every possibility of that happening, but confidence isn't particularly prevalent when it looks like the touch screen seems to have been relegated to yet another glorified inventory menu.
Not content with conquering Japan and America, the newly revamped, newly released, New Super Mario Bros. now set its non-insidious sights on Europe, land of collosseums, queens and curiously leaning constructions. Nintendo of Europe has announced that the game has shipped to stores, just in time to be snatched up over the weekend. Expect Mario to hit his presumed homeland of Italy in full force, devouring mushrooms and smashing bricks, though sadly not fixing leaky plumping. If you haven't purchased the game already, check out its updated official site and catch yourself whistling along to the music.
1up has posted a preview of Mario's latest return to block-busting, mushroom-mashing, princess-procuring platforming and the qualities observed are quite promising. Everything old is new again. Perhaps unsurprisingly, New Super Mario Bros. still plays and feels exactly the way you'd want and expect it to, even despite the addition of Mario Kart's nefarious blue shell and a mushroom that unleashes Mariozilla upon an unsuspecting world.
In a statement issued today, Nintendo have confirmed that Mario's triumphant return to smashing bricks with his head and chasing after mushrooms in New Super Mario Bros. is poised to help usher in the North American launch of the DS Lite, perhaps to a degree that few gamers were expecting. New Super Mario Bros. will only be compatible with the DS Lite and will not work with the original machine. Nintendo's name-taking, posterior-assaulting marketing guru, Reggie Fills-Aimes, explained that players would be able to see why this decision was made.
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