8-bit bang

DSiWare has a decent array of shooters, ranging from bizarre baby blaster Paul's Shooting Adventure to classic outing X-Scape, and EnjoyUp Games wants to get a piece of the gunplay action with its own handheld take on the genre: 99Bullets.

There's a definite retro feel to the game that'll be familiar to players reared on arcade shooters, but the game's innovation is set to come from the way ammunition and lives are combined. The title should offer a clue, but from the sounds of the press release the player begins with 99 bullets and 99 lives: should you fire and miss, you lose a life, and likewise if you lose a life, you lose a bullet.

Hopefully this mechanic will encourage strategic play, but we won't find out until the game is launched on DSiWare later this year.