While Japan goes absolutely nuts for Dragon Quest IV, these videos landed on the 'net over the weekend, giving us our longest look yet at some of the meaty gameplay currently being enjoyed by over 600,000 Japanese gamers.
Truth be told, we're still not totally sold on the slightly jarring combination of 2D heroes and 3D environments, especially as the cheaper-than-everFinal Fantasy III and forthcoming Final Fantasy IV are both depicted in full 3D. On the other hand, we'll happily concede the environments do look rather spiffy. We reeeally need that western release date though, Square Enix.
Embark on a quest past the break for the second trailer.
The "right direction" being your nearest games emporium to pick up Contra 4. If you missed the perfect score we awarded to Konami's brilliant shooter earlier today, or just need a little more gentleencouragement, we'd advise watching these videos of the title in action. Both the first and second stages (the latter of which had this writer tied in knots for close to an hour) are featured here in their entirety, including the frankly nasty boss at the end of the Laboratory stage.
Take your ripped physique past the post break for a second video.
It's highly unlikely that SD Gundam G Generation Cross Drive will ever make it to the states; obtaining rights for 500+ characters spanning over a dozen different series, most of which having never made it out of Japan, would be a nightmare. Still, we like to keep up to date with the SRPG on the off-chance that a North American publisher might take a risk and pick it up, much like Atlus did with Super Robot Taisen Original Generations 1 & 2 for the GBA.
Bandai Namco has updated Cross Drive's official site with a two-minute-and-a-half trailer and a new commercial, advertising its August 9th's release. If you're at all interested in the title, or if you just have a bizarre fetish for chibi mobile suits, make sure to check both of the clips out!
At this point, we're about ready to offer Gamecock our firstborn child, because they are really rolling out the hotness for the DS. On the tails of recent good impressions of the upcoming Dementium: The Ward comes this new trailer, which features -- are you ready? -- nightstick beatdowns. Even if the rest of the game looked awful, we might sign up just for that. Of course, now we fully expect Renegade Kid's second DS game to be Touch! Police Brutality or something along those lines.
Did we mention we have an unhealthy appreciation for video game violence? Just go watch the trailer already.
Advertising for Jam Sessions may be somewhat less than good, but that doesn't make the title less worthwhile -- nor does it detract from this hilarious E3 demo! We've tucked it away after the jump, but first you have to run the screenshot gauntlet. We're bad, bad people.
We do find some of the screens a little disturbing, however. Is that redheaded chick puking? We really only need so much rock-and-roll realism in our video games, thanks ....
... but all good things must come to an end, eh? It's always nice to wallow in the explosion of news that surrounds a trade show, and even the diminished E3 was no exception. Sure, for Nintendo fans, at least on the DS side, things started out a little slowly, but once the media hit, we no longer had anything to be disappointed about! So what was tops for DS owners? Here's the best -- according to us, at least.
Top E3 trailers:
Contra 4 -- After all our Contragasms, you knew we were going to say this!
Front Mission DS -- What can we say ... we're big fans of ass-kickery.
Brain Age 2 -- We know you'll probably disagree with us here, but we can't help it. We a) dig a good, brainy challenge and b) think the selection of games looks even better than before.
Less-discussed games we desperately want right now:
Professor Layton and all his mysterious locales -- Okay, we wanted this before. But it was mentioned in passing around E3, and now we're more rabid for it than ever!
Nintendo Magic -- Another game we weren't sure would head our way, but that just sounds like fun.
Advance Wars 2 -- The first is one of the best the DS has to offer, though it seems to rarely get a mention.
Worst trailer that should have been awesome:
Insecticide, hands down. Please pass us some Dramamine on your way out.
Biggest disappointment:
Probably the missing wi-fi for Mario Party DS. C'mon, Nintendo, slip it in there! We promise not to complain about friend codes for at least a week.
Screenshot offerings were slim on the Revenant Wings front when it came to E3 media, but this trailer makes up for it, despite the lower quality. Obviously, we're Final Fantasy fans -- could you tell from the flood of FF-themed posts that occasionally inundates the site? -- but this game, along with Ring of Fates, is looking pretty good, even when we try not to be biased.
Hey, speaking of, where was Ring of Fates? We could use some new media on that as well ....
If your face hasn't been sufficiently rocked by the DS showings at E3, then we suggest watching this video of the first boss battle in Contra 4. Even if you feel like you've been rocked enough, you should go ahead and watch it, and allow Virt's brilliant cover of the Stage 1 music to rock your face clean off.
No brains are being trained here, people. Unless you count the brains of alien soldiers, which are being trained to blow up. We know it's early to declare a winner of E3, and we also know that E3 is not technically a competition. Even so, Contra 4 wins.
It looks like the second round of Brain Age will have a lot more to offer, and that's without even considering the unlockable Dr. Mario! We've updated our gallery with new screenshots that include images from a change-making game (a very helpful skill to practice) and a pretty dubious drawing of New York that's still better than anything we could manage (but somehow reminds us of Pictochat ... ). And don't forget to check out the trailer after the jump!
Well, call it a controlled explosion, kinda like a smart bomb -- but we're still pretty pleased to see some sweet new media from a brand new DS game. Er, mostly new, considering it's a franchise title. Still, Mario Party on the DS sounds like a winner, though we would prefer more than just local wireless play. Mario Party could only make Game Night that much more fun, amirite? Oh well, enough complaining -- check out the images in our gallery and the spankin' new trailer after the jump.
Insecticide combines a noir theme with visual elements of Psychonauts and personality-filled characters reminiscent of an adventure game. This is our first chance to see any of the actual DS version of the game, however, and something tells us the publisher doesn't want us to see it. The PC trailer certainly didn't get the shaky-cam treatment.
Check after the break for a textbook example of how not to make a video game trailer. Seriously, this goes beyond poor editing or bad screen quality and into intentional obfuscation. But it's worth it to check it out, because Crackpot's game looks fantastic.
We shooed Insect Wars (Konchuu Wars) away when the game's beetle-filled screenshots first flew into our periphery, believing the bug to be an uninspired pest. "Go away," we said, "and bother us no more." In our defense, language barriers kept us from understanding what the Success Corp. title was trying to communicate with its antennae and movement patterns.
Having studied its habits, we found that the game isn't a Mushiking clone as we'd originally assumed, but a tactical RPG where you command an army of customizable, mechanized insects. Our mouths were agape, monocles falling from our faces when the truth was revealed. Below is a sampling of Insect Wars' creepy crawlers:
a rifle-mounted praying mantis with buzzsaws -- my god, buzzsaws! -- for arms
a lightning bug that terrorizes foes with its beam cannon tail
a heavily-armored, treaded snail (pictured above) which acts as a transport for other units while healing them
Not since Puzzle Quest have our loins ached for such a game. Insect Wars swarms into Japanese stores this August 2nd. Head past the post break for a minute-long trailer.
Since we talked a little about import games here this morning, showing off a trailer for a game often mentioned in the same breath as "if only" seemed appropriate for our video spotlight. If you're one of the four people around who isn't familiar with Jump Ultimate Stars, let us enlighten you. Jump Ultimate Stars is a fighting game packed with hundreds of manga characters. Yes, hundreds, from dozens of series ... and it also happens to be a great fighting game on the DS. Check out one of the trailers for the game after the jump.
We've seen the tiniest of teasers, but now we can enjoy the full trailer for the upcoming title Dementium: The Ward. From this short video, the debut from developer Renegade Kid looks a little like the recent Touch the Dead, but with a few more character models. And should we be surprised? The games have a similar basic premise -- guy awakens in hospital and finds he must fight for his life -- but Dementium is more than just a shooter ... and it seems to have a few more character models to boot.
Publisher Gamecock has really been allover the DS lately, and from the looks of these releases, we hope they decide to stay.
If you've been following Doki Doki Majo Shinpan with the same level of interest as we somehow have developed, then you probably saw our first video footage of the game, taken from a store demo. But that was in a noisy store, shot with a handheld camera, and not really the ideal presentation for game video.
Well, this is significantly more ideal. It's a Windows Media stream of that same video, in much better quality. The only problem-- like we said, it's a Windows Media stream. Expect to wait a bit.
It's highly unlikely that SD Gundam G Generation Cross Drive will ever make it to the states; obtaining rights for 500+ characters spanning over a dozen different series, most of which having never made it out of Japan, would be a nightmare. Still, we like to keep up to date with the 
At this point, we're about ready to offer Gamecock our firstborn child, because they are really 
Screenshot 
Insecticide combines a noir theme with visual elements of Psychonauts and personality-filled characters reminiscent of an adventure game. This is our first chance to see any of the actual DS version of the game, however, and something tells us the publisher doesn't want us to see it. The 
We shooed Insect Wars (Konchuu Wars) away when the game's beetle-filled screenshots first flew into our periphery, believing the 
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