June2018

  • Review Chameleon Run Deluxe Edition (Switch eShop)

    Karma, karma, karma, karma, karma chameleon

    Created by indie developer Hyperbolic Magnetism, Chameleon Run is an autorunner that was originally released on smartphones back in 2016, going on to win various awards and generating an awful lot of positive reviews. The studio has now released a deluxe edition of the game for Switch, adding a dollop of...

December2015

  • Review Rytmik Ultimate (3DS eShop)

    A Major success? Or does it fall Flat?

    Music production is gradually becoming more and more accessible and is now much more affordable than ever before. In years gone by top quality records could only be created with a huge amount of technical knowhow and financial backing in fancy recording studios. Now it's pretty commonplace to have people making...

September2014

  • Review The Keep (3DS eShop)

    Old dungeon, new tricks

    Many dungeon crawlers tend to come pre-packaged with a dose of nostalgia through the nature of the genre alone, their exploration and equipment elements resonating as familiar conventions. Stick with a medieval fantasy theme like The Keep and it feels even more from Yon Olde School. The story of The Keep is kept rather...

May2014

  • Review Sokomania 2: Cool Job (DSiWare)

    Overheated

    Cinemax's 2010 DSiWare puzzler Sokomania received a disappointing 3/10 in our review, due to its cheap presentation, lack of content and absence of variety. Unfortunately, Sokomania 2: Cool Job, while sporting a little more personality and improved visuals than its predecessor, doesn't improve upon the one-note gameplay and feels just as...

December2012

  • Review Goooooal América (DSiWare)

    New World, old game

    For all the emphatic 'o's in its title's iconic interjection, Goooooal América is not a game about football. Nor is it a foosball game, as you might think. If you happen to have owned a certain toy as a child, however, you'll recognize the game's inspiration right off the bat. It's based on a particular small-scale...

  • Review Rytmik World Music (DSiWare)

    Bring the beat back

    Cinemax has cooked up a number of flavours of its Rytmik music production suite, allowing the musically-minded playgrounds with which to explore dance, chip tunes, hip hop, rock and now world music. Rytmik World Music is a fun little musical tool tha

July2012

  • Review Decathlon 2012 (DSiWare)

    Torch it

    Well, the London 2012 Olympic games are officially underway, and the eShop now has its equivalent of those ubiquitous bootlegged t-shirts in the form of Decathlon 2012, a digital souvenir that hopes to coast on the excitement of the Olympics without shelling out for the rights to refer to them by name. Already we're off to a great start,...

June2012

  • Review Goooooal Europa 2012 (DSiWare)

    Missing an open goooooal

    DSiWare is like any other downloadable game platform: it features gems full of creativity and compulsive play, and then it has titles like Goooooal Europa 2012, which tries to hide its painful inadequacies with a ‘fun’ title and a tenuous link to a major football tournament. The idea of a table football game with stylus...

May2012

  • Review Snakenoid Deluxe (DSiWare)

    In which the word "deluxe" is cheapened enormously

    Last year, we reviewed Snakenoid, a Snake/Arkanoid hybrid from Cinemax that answered our question of how one could possibly combine the gameplay from those two games. That answer was, "pretty disappointingly, thanks for asking." We felt it was a bit of a mess, at best, a complete waste of time and...

March2012

  • Review 90's Pool (DSiWare)

    It's pool! In the 90's!

    The Berlin Wall has recently fallen, Seinfeld is dominating television and Justin Bieber has just been born. Yes, it's the 1990s and, for some reason, we're playing pool. We'll leave the jokes about the title to you folks in the comments, as 90's Pool doesn't really leave us in much of a mood for fun. And for a video game,...

December2011

  • Review Commando: Steel Disaster (DSiWare)

    Steely gamers only

    In the early 1990s, when the very idea of 3D polygons was beyond most imaginations, 2D run-and-gun shooters were popular amongst dedicated and skilled gamers. Titles such as Contra on NES, Gunstar Heroes on Mega Drive and Metal Slug on the Neo Geo meant that most console owners experienced, and often loved, the genre. Commando:...

November2011

  • Review Rytmik Retrobits (DSiWare)

    Bits of class

    The original Rytmik sounded better than any DSiWare music studio deserved to, but follow-up Rytmik: Rock Edition fell a little short in offering a big stadium rock sound through Nintendo's little handheld. Keen to keep offering melody creation tools on DSiWare while embracing its limitations, Cinemax has now put together Rytmik:...

June2011

  • Review Puzzle Rocks (DSiWare)

    Puzzles rock

    Cinemax has seen both highs and lows on DSiWare — its Rytmik games have proven to be excellent composition tools, but games like Snakenoid, a bizarre mix of Snake and Arkanoid have missed the mark. Puzzle Rocks is a puzzle game, but we're not quite sure it's really similar to anything else, except maybe Connect Four. It's one of very...

May2011

  • Review Calculator (DSiWare)

    Does it add up?

    Although the majority of titles on the DSiWare shop are games, since launch there have been some items that would more accurately be described as ‘apps’. Common on smartphones, they have become increasingly less frequent on DSiWare. Cinemax are bucking the trend with Calculator; does it get the sums right? The list of features...

February2011

  • Review Hip Hop King: Rytmik Edition (DSiWare)

    Rapper's delight

    As the third entry in Cinemax's musical series following last year's Rytmik and Rytmik: Rock Edition, Hip Hop King: Rytmik Edition will be familiar to anyone who's dabbled with the series' previous releases; naturally, though, the soundscape here is vastly different. Where the original favoured electronic dance samples and the...

December2010

  • Review Biorhythm (DSiWare)

    Does it measure up?

    Cinemax releases have proven to be a rather mixed bag when it comes to DSiWare, from below average attempts such as Sokomania to the some of the best music applications available on the system, most notably Rytmik and Rytmik: Rock Edition. This time around, the company has provided a program for calculating biorhythms, which...

November2010

  • Review Rytmik: Rock Edition (DSiWare)

    Rock solid

    The original Rytmik completely surpassed our expectations of what a portable music studio could do within the constraints of DSiWare. Now the follow-up Rytmik: Rock Edition is here with a very different sound and new features, but crucially more of the same surprising control and musical freedom. If you haven’t dabbled with Rytmik yet,...

May2010

  • Review Rytmik (DSiWare)

    Music to your ears

    It's tough to know how to approach Rytmik: it has no game elements whatsoever, only existing to allow you to create beautiful (and sometimes not-so beautiful) music. Although its complexity is initially off-putting, spend some time with it and you'll realise it's a very competent and enjoyable music studio. One of the most...

February2010

  • Review Snakenoid (DSiWare)

    Combining two classics into one disaster

    Cinemax's last DSiWare game wasn't too hot, so we didn't exactly have high hopes for their second effort. It looks like our assumptions were correct, because although it borrows heavily from classics Arkanoid and Snake, it just doesn't work. How does one combine Arkanoid and Snake, you ask? Simple: by taking...

January2010

  • Review Sokomania (DSiWare)

    A budget title in more ways than one.

    When Cinemax first announced their plans to bring the classic Sokoban puzzle to DSiWare, we were somewhat excited – especially with the price being set at a measly 200 points. But unfortunately, in this case, this has also resulted in the game itself not offering much content. The game starts with pretty...