Topic: One Year (and a week) Later: Magnetica Plus

On a quick FYI, I list this as the first July 2008 release because the week it was released within was more July than June. Aaanyways...

One Year Later 008: (6/30/08) Magnetica Twist

17) Magnetica Twist (Mitchell [Nintendo], 1000pts)
Nintendo had shown off two particularly large WiiWare titles when they first announced it back in 2007, those games being Dr. Mario Online Rx and My Pokemon Ranch. During that time, however, Nintendo also showed off another puzzle game from the makers of Polarium: Magnetica Twist. Magnetica, for the uninformed, is otherwise known as Puzz Loop, and one of Pop Cap’s more popular titles, Zuma, is a knock-off of the game’s design. Magnetica, which came out on DS about two years earlier, introduced the franchise to handhelds, and this WiiWare game made a little –twist- to the gameplay, if you catch my bad pun. In the game, players choose their Mii character and proceed to sit at fixed points on a game screen. Along the same screen is a path, usually quite distorted and twisted (and even sometimes overlapped); on this path, a number of marble-like orbs will move toward the end of the path. The point of the game is for the player to aim his or her fixed character toward the ongoing line of marbles and shoot similar-colored orbs at them to destroy the line before it reaches the end of the path. It works much like any destroy-three game, but as the name goes, marbles of like-color are magnetized to each other, allowing for large combos and more strategy all around. What makes this game different from the DS title (besides price and console) is the Mii integration and more expanded levels and gameplay modes, especially with Multiplayer. In fact, up to four players can work together to stop the line, but teamwork is everything when it comes to games like these. Oh, and the game’s control system used motion “twist” controls to aim, perhaps a somewhat uncomfortable gameplay design decision. Reception: Reviews seem pretty positive toward the title, but amid a large number of games that just came out and speculation on what was to come, it was not really seen as a great title to grab for everyone. Both IGN and NintendoLife gave the title a 7, citing that the Quest Mode, along with other modes, made it a great addition to the puzzle genre, but they also felt that the controls and lack of online play (considering Dr. Mario did go online) made it hard to recommend. On the Top 20, this title was the first game to ever dwindle from the Top 20 and come back from the depths a week later. Like Toki Tori, it could not go higher than rank 8, but this game fell from the rankings faster than the puzzle platformer did. As for other July games, it outlasted a couple, but saying that is not saying much.
Outlook: Mitchell Corp has, for the most part, remained quiet since the release. There is potential to bring Magnetica and Polarium onto DSiWare, considering what Nintendo is doing with Electroplankton and other DS releases. However, I do not see any games coming out for WiiWare from this release. Sorry folks. One Magnetica is good enough, I guess.

Comparing to WiiWare Year 2: This (or last <.<) week we saw three releases, Water Warfare from Hudson, Reel Fishing Challenge from Marvelous/Natsume, and Silver Star Reversi from Agetec/Silver Star Japan. I think that, despite the poor quality of SiStR and simple game of RFC, Water Warfare and the number of title coming out at once outdoes last year’s single release. Of course, anyone is open to tell me otherwise. I should really start expanding on my reasoning, here, but that’s for next time, perhaps!

So, that’s OYL for last week. Tell me your opinions on the game one year later or just comment on my stuff in general. I’m still a week behind, so I’ll be getting one out quickly! Till next time!

Sheesh...I guess I've had my Wii for a year now, because I remember the Nintendo Channel coming out with a commercial for this game. (I'm assuming it was new then, or coming soon.)

Man. Time sure does fly.

Same here. It wasn't worth a download for me and despite being so into Zuma not too many years back on the PC, I expected I'd find a simple diversion here and it didn't do it for me. In fact, I lost interest rather quickly, I'm afraid....

I really liked playing both arcade PuzzLoop games in MAME so this was a no-brainer. I actually played it for the first time in ages last week and cleared a couple of tough levels that had me stumped before. I then hit another hard difficulty one which flummoxed me in the past and put the game down. Next time I pick it up I'll hopefully prevail! The expressions on the Miis faces when the balls near the end is priceless and there's a great variety of multiplayer co-op and competitive modes; shame there's no online, though.

Actionloop on the DS was cool and I wanted to download Actionloop Twist every so often,
but always ended up downloaded something else. This is still on my to-get list.

@Terranigma: Have you tried Pokémon Puzzle League (1000 Wii Points) yet?
If there will be a second Puzzle League game (on WiiWare) it should be online.