Retro News

November2009

  • Review Bomberman Blitz (DSiWare)

    A cut down, portable Bomberman Blast.

    Pretty much every platform in this gaming generation has had a downloadable Bomberman title. The DSi hadn't yet, so Hudson must've figured "Why the heck not?" and made yet another one. As with all other downloadable (non-Virtual Console) Bomberman titles, this is strictly a multiplayer affair — there...

  • Review LEGO Rock Band (DS)

    Does the series’ DS debut rock or roll over and die?

    DS music game fans have a pretty good selection for a portable, with Nintendo’s own stellar Rhythm Heaven and Activision’s Guitar Hero and Band Hero outings eager to put your rhythm skills to work. Harmonix’s Rock Band series has now taken the handheld’s stage for the first time in the...

  • Review Carnival King (WiiWare)

    Is this take on the old-fashioned carnival shooting gallery a hit or miss?

    There have been quite a few games over the years that have made use of various carnival-style shooting galleries. Some have leaned towards an arcade feel while others have gone for a more realistic experience using a light gun. Intelligent Technologies, makers of Target Toss...

  • News Game Boy Granted Access To National Toy Hall Of Fame

    Nintendo's classic hand-held rubs shoulders with other vintage playthings

    The Game Boy has entered the National Toy Hall of Fame in recognition of its incredible influence on the video game industry and its uncanny ability to keep kids quiet on long car journeys. The Strong Museum of Play's National Toy Hall of Fame is intended to celebrate toys and...

  • Review Chibi-Robo (GameCube)

    Is this a charming game about an altruistic robot or a shambolic scavenger hunt?

    Meet the Sandersons, your atypical dysfunctional American family: Mr. Sanderson is an out-of-work engineer-cum-manchild who lives on the lounge sofa playing with action figures and watching his favourite superhero program Space Ranger Drake Redcrest(TM) (apologies if...

  • News Old Cart on the Block Has the Right Stuff

    Rare prototype NES box surfaces on eBay

    Every now and then, eBay turns up a real find, something you never thought you'd see in your natural life: a rare console edition, a forgotten classic, a badly beaten prototype box for an unreleased NES game. If you're a fan of the latter, you'll be thrilled by this story that a scuffed box for the sadly...

  • Feature Retro Duo Console Review

    Bring your 8-bit and 16-bit Nintendo titles out of retirement

    Retro gaming is a hobby that is both rewarding and enlightening; like leafing through an old book or listening to a record from many moons ago, there’s an element of discovery for those who weren’t around to enjoy vintage titles when they were first released. Conversely, those of us...

  • News Sin & Punishment Team Talks N64 Development Hell

    The console "didn't work at all"

    The paradigm shift from 2D to 3D that game developers faced in the 32/64-bit era was so drastic that not only did developers have to grapple with new tech but also figuring out how on earth their games would work in a new dimension. It didn't always work out so well, but when it did it was magical. Nintendo CEO...

  • Review Family Card Games (WiiWare)

    The family that plays drinking games together, stays together

    Worn out from extended sessions of Table Tennis, Mini Golf and Slot Car Racing? Feeling like if you have to look at Mommy, Daddy, Billy, or Sarah’s plastic smiling faces one more time you will throw your Wii Remote through the TV? Why not unwind with a few pleasant card games?...

  • Review Fighting Street (Virtual Console / TurboGrafx-16)

    Proof that some memories are best left in the past

    Before Street Fighter 2 became all the rage in arcades and one of the most popular fighting games in the world, it began life as an overlooked arcade title called Street Fighter, which saw the light of day way back in 1987. While the title was far from the monster hit its successor would become, it...

  • Review Sparkle Snapshots (DSiWare)

    Adults may find it excessive, but little girls will eat it up.

    In 1995, Atlus joined with Sega to create the very first Print Club machine in Japan. Print Club was a special kind of photo booth with the ability for users to add decorative borders, graffiti, backgrounds, and clip-art 'stamps' to their images, which were printed out in sticker form...

  • Review Wii Fit Plus (Wii)

    A worthwhile upgrade or just Nintendo milking its new cash cow?

    Wii Fit's runaway success seemed to take even Nintendo by surprise given the number of times Satoru Iwata has publicly stated he never thought he could sell millions of bathroom scales as a new kind of fitness product. It's probably not much of a surprise to see them testing whether not...

  • Review Little Red Riding Hood's Zombie BBQ (DSiWare)

    Not your childhood's Little Red Riding Hood!

    You might've heard of Little Red Riding Hood's Zombie BBQ before; after all, a classic fairytale character blasting zombies to pieces should be almost guaranteed to get your attention. Chances are, however, that you never saw the game in stores — this is because the game never actually saw release in...

October2009

  • Review Tales of Monkey Island: Chapter 3 (WiiWare)

    A well-liked classic character returning makes everything better.

    As you might have expected, it's a tad pointless to review this game. It's a direct sequel to the previous chapter, and plays exactly the same way. As it is not recommended to play this before playing the previous two chapters, you should already know what you're getting into when you...

  • Review Doc Louis' Punch-Out!! (WiiWare)

    What's your favourite WiiWare download, Mac? Mine's chocolate.

    Before the release of the Wii version of Punch-Out!! earlier this year, rumors began circulating that a few "surprise" fighters would make appearances in the game. One of those rumors was that Mac would have to face his trainer, the rotund and irresistibly optimistic Doc...

  • Review PictureBook Games: The Royal Bluff (DSiWare)

    A unique card game on a service that's quickly becoming crowded with them.

    We've already seen a host of card games released for the DSiWare service, but PictureBookGames: The Royal Bluff looks to add a little variety to the mix with its unique gameplay and entertaining royalty theme. But with a service already loaded with card games, can it beat a...

  • Review Sudoku (DSiWare)

    Pick a number from one to nine

    Sudoku was invented in the late 70's and introduced to Japan in the mid-80's, but it waited nearly thirty years to become a worldwide phenomenon. Newspapers publish sudoku puzzles even more prominently now than the crossword puzzles that have held dominance for nearly a century, and there are sudoku books, toys, and...

  • Review Midway Arcade Treasures 2 (GameCube)

    This time the spotlight is on Midway's glory days

    Whilst the first Arcade Treasures collection was firmly focused on the Williams catalogue, this second collection is all about the Bally Midway and Midway brands featuring games spanning the mid to late 1980s and 1990s, with a handful of Williams and Atari Games titles for good measure. This...

  • Feature The Spooky Denizens of the World of Nintendo

    We run down the scariest of scaries the Big N has cooked up

    We here at Nintendo Life love Halloween. Despite the fact it was originally a time when the dead were believed to cause sickness to the living and damage their crops, but nowadays it's just a good excuse to gorge ourselves on delicious, delicious candy. As part of our All Hallows’ Eve...

  • Review Zombies Ate My Neighbors (Wii Virtual Console / Super Nintendo)

    B-Grade horror movie action comes to the Virtual Console.

    Every once in a while a game is released that's so unique it garners a cult following and becomes more popular years later than when it was first released. Toe Jam & Earl for the Sega Genesis is one such game, but another prime example would be Konami's Zombies Ate My Neighbors. The game...

  • News Celebrate Halloween With Nintendo Life's Exclusive 8-Bit Decorations!

    Print 'em, cut 'em out and scare the retro crap out of everyone.

    Ah, Halloween, the one day of the year where little kids are encouraged to defy all parental advice and take candy from strangers. It's so close you can almost feel the post-holiday sugar hangover. Are you excited? Nintendo Life is pretty excited, and that's not just the sugar talking...

  • Review Ghost Mansion Party (WiiWare)

    Less party, more pooper.

    Mini-game collections are becoming a dime-a-dozen on the Wii console as of late, and with Halloween coming up, it comes as no surprise to see an aptly-themed release that's packed to the gills with yet another round of fairly standard mini-game fare. But at a lofty 1000 Wii Points, is this haunted board game release good...

  • Review Nostalgia (DS)

    One of the most unique and enjoyable DS RPGs to date.

    The developers of Nostalgia have repeatedly stated that they've been putting the game together for the better part of a decade. While this might seem like an exaggeration at first, when you begin playing the finished product you'll quickly see the many different eras of RPG influences that make...

  • Review Cate West: The Vanishing Files (Wii)

    An enjoyable way to make time disappear

    While adventure games are becoming more and more popular over recent years, there has been a new entrance to the arena: the Hidden Object Game. This new breed has inundated the PC with numerous variations on the theme, taking place in fairgrounds, lost temples, mysterious locations and even haunted houses, and...

  • Review Combat of Giants: Dragons - Bronze Edition (DSiWare)

    Sadly not the Gold Edition.

    DSiWare has already seen plenty of "A Little Bit of..." games, which are basically smaller, budget-sized (And priced!) versions of Nintendo-published DS retail games. It seems that other developers are now taking similar advantage of the service - Mitchell recently released Sujin Taisen, and now Ubisoft has...

  • Review Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Winter Games (DS)

    Enjoy Winter Olympic fun on the move.

    Refreshingly for a simultaneous release on Wii and DS, the handheld version is a completely different beast to its big brother: far from being a stripped-down conversion it’s a decent accompaniment to the Wii version, although one aimed at a completely different gamer. Where the Wii game looks to capture the...

  • Review Shinobi (Wii Virtual Console / Virtual Console Arcade)

    Put on your ninja suit and rescue the kiddies once again!

    After treating retro gaming fans to the delights of Revenge of Shinobi and Shinobi III from the Mega Drive / Genesis, it is only right that SEGA bring us back to basics and let us get our grubby mitts on the original arcade game from 1987 where this glorious franchise began. Considered to be...

  • Review Harvest Moon: Tree of Tranquility (Wii)

    A withering flower

    Tree of Tranquility is the first game in the main Harvest Moon series designed exclusively for Wii, following 2007’s disastrous Gamecube port Magical Melody. It’s been available in the US for over a year, but now it’s finally available in PAL territories it’s time to see how it measures up. You’ll either be relieved or...

  • Review Mini Ninjas (Wii)

    With a boss named 'Windy Pants', you know this game was made for the kiddies

    The developers at IO Interactive - previously known for such mature titles as Hitman, Kane & Lynch, and Freedom Fighters - decided to switch things up this time around and try to create a game that they could play with their children; thus, the story and gameplay in...

  • Review Shootanto: Evolutionary Mayhem (WiiWare)

    An evolutionary step for light gun shooters?

    In the grand tradition of so-called “light gun” games, Shootanto uses the pointer function of the Wii remote to task the player with shooting targets onscreen as quickly as possible. Given the strengths of the Wii remote in this regard, the Wii should provide fertile ground for this genre. But is...

  • Review Rock-n-Roll Domo (DSiWare)

    It's still rock-n-roll to Domo.

    Closing off our title-by-title wade through Domo's résumé, we have Rock-n-Roll Domo, which finds our fuzzy brown friend fronting a wildlife-staffed garage band. It's a rhythm game that might strike many as a little too simplistic, but compared to some of Domo's other outings, this one's not half-bad. The gameplay...

  • Review White-Water Domo (DSiWare)

    Preferable to drowning. Just.

    Our week-long Domopalooza continues with a look at White-Water Domo, which finds our fuzzy, angular hero kayaking along a periodically-treacherous stream. As a single component in the larger cluster of Domo DSiWare titles, White-Water Domo doesn't do much to stand out, but neither does it do much wrong. In fact,...

  • Review Crash-Course Domo (DSiWare)

    Sometimes less is more, and sometimes less is less

    When you have mini-games like the Domo releases that are so simple in design and execution, it's difficult to review them as separate entities. Crash-Course Domo is basically a bicycle racing game that's extremely basic and easy to pick up, but features very little depth as a stand-alone title...

  • Review Hard-Hat Domo (DSiWare)

    Domo needs his hard-hat because of all the falling quality

    With five Domo games to choose from this week, it's more or less a given that some are going to be markedly better than others. That's okay: we like it when games are better than others, and we're sure you do, too. Of course, the flipside of this implication is that some are going to be...

  • Review Pro-Putt Domo (DSiWare)

    It might be cheap, but it doesn't look or play like it

    When the Domo titles were first announced for the DSiWare service, many people were left unsure of what to think of them, especially given their rather inexpensive 200 Nintendo Point price tag. Now just as quickly as they were announced Nintendo has released all five titles onto the service at...

  • Review Academy of Champions (Wii)

    A drab 0-0 draw

    Over the years there have been some really enjoyable and innovative takes on the game of football (or soccer to our overseas chums) – Nintendo brought us the Mario Strikers series of course and Sega released the stereotype-laden but still enjoyable Sega Soccer Slam on Gamecube. Now Ubisoft are after a piece of the half-time meat...

  • Review A Boy and His Blob (Wii)

    Now this is how you're supposed to update a classic

    Originally released in 1989 on the NES console, A Boy and His Blob was quickly praised for its originality and unique gameplay ideas. Unfortunately, it was also criticized for its often sluggish control system and sometimes confusing level designs. Over the years several developers have created...

  • Review Little Tournament Over Yonder (WiiWare)

    It can stay over yonder for all we care!

    The strategy genre is not a very popular one on WiiWare - aside from the RTS game Swords & Soldiers, there's no real "traditional" offerings available. Little Tournament Over Yonder finally gives us a turn-based strategy game, although it has some action genre elements as well. A match in Little...

  • Review Viking Invasion (DSiWare)

    Pillage the village!

    Viking Invasion by BiF is a tower defence game that puts the player in charge of protecting various castles and forts from hordes of Viking invaders. The game takes a slightly different approach to the standard tower defence set up, with foes pouring in through various waterways and rivers. Set over three difficulty levels and...

  • Review Wakugumi - Monochrome Puzzle (DSiWare)

    Ikaruga: the puzzler

    There’s a great “I’ve got it!” moment in Wakugumi where you graduate from simply sliding blocks about in the hope of making a capture to preparing combo captures with expert precision. Something about the game simply clicks and you find yourself having that classic puzzle inner monologue – “well, if this bit goes...

  • Review Porky Pig's Haunted Holiday (Super Nintendo)

    A Looney Tunes platformer that's actually not too shabby.

    For anyone who's watched the classic Porky Pig cartoons, you know that animators were quite fond of placing our stuttering pig friend into scary situations. Who could forget the leprechaun shoes or the moose head with the gun barrel protruding from its mouth. Well you'll be happy to know that...

  • Review Heron: Steam Machine (WiiWare)

    WiiWare: the home of arcade puzzling goodness

    Many people ask "don't we have enough puzzle games on the Wii already?" Triangle Studios answers "no!" and it's hard to disagree with them - especially given the quality of recent releases including their own Heron: Steam Machine. A little animated introduction tells the game's back...

  • Review Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Winter Games (Wii)

    For once, there's no bad puns - snow joke!

    A few years ago, the unthinkable happened – Sega announced that Mario and Sonic were to put aside their 16-bit rivalry and join forces in an officially licensed Olympic game. Clocks ran backwards, dogs barked uncontrollably in the street and the whole world lay in danger. Then we played it, and saw that...

  • Review Ninja Captains (Wii)

    A mini-game too far...

    Mini-games. One might say that mini-game (or, more nicely, "party game") collections have a serious presence on the Wii; it is often a fact bemoaned by more "hard-centred" gamers. Some of these titles are amongst the more successful games on the platform: both Carnival Games and Game Party have done quite...

  • Review Gravitronix (WiiWare)

    One of the first titles announced for WiiWare finally sees the light of day.

    Among the very first games announced for WiiWare, we might have expected to review Gravitronix around two years ago. But, as they say, life gets in the way. Plans change, things don't work out the way we expect them to, and release dates slip further and further away. It...

  • Review Pinball Pulse: The Ancients Beckon (DSiWare)

    Maybe too realistic for its own good

    Pinball simulations have always been a mixed bag over the years. While some developers have chosen to shoot for more of an authentic pinball machine experience, others tried to make their pinball simulations more arcade-like using multiple boards and mini-games to further accentuate their gameplay schemes...

  • Review 1080° Avalanche (GameCube)

    Dude, where's my snowboard?

    With its December 2003 GCN release, 1080° Avalanche faced a quandary which mirrored the mixed up personality of the board sport it represented. Development had to decide between following the previous 'extreme to the max' approach of SSX 3, or to continue in the vein of its N64 predecessor 1080° Snowboarding, which...

  • Review Big Brain Academy (DS)

    A bit of a mental lightweight

    There's something intrinsically addictive about the whole genre of 'brain training' games. Implicitly we all want to better ourselves to a greater or lesser degree. By being told just how much a success or a failure we are at intelligence-related tests, there is definitely a major hook in this whole genre of games that...

  • Review MechAssault: Phantom War (DS)

    A stomping good game?

    MechWarrior. You’ve got to love it. The very concept of stomping around in your own personal giant robot, crushing things underfoot and blowing things up really is the sort of thing we gamers live for. Go on, admit it: every one of you has at some point had ‘the MechWarrior fantasy’. Up until 2002 however, the MechWarrior...

  • Review LostWinds: Winter of the Melodias (WiiWare)

    Is this Winter warmer as good as Toku’s first adventure?

    LostWinds was one of WiiWare's launch titles, and is still one of the best games on the service. Now, almost a year and a half later, it has finally gotten its long-awaited sequel. For the uninitiated, in LostWinds you took control of Toku, a young boy who found a magical crystal containing...

  • Review Wonder Boy III: The Dragon's Trap (Virtual Console / Master System)

    It's a trap!

    Wonder Boy III: The Dragon’s Trap marks the end of the Master System trilogy. It’s a direct sequel to the wonderful Wonder Boy in Monster Land with the action starting out in the final lair of the last game. Unlike the original Wonder Boy, though, there are no loincloths in sight. Most Master System fans will consider this game to...

  • Review Happy Holidays: Halloween (WiiWare)

    Take your holiday elsewhere!

    The idea of sending greeting cards to your Wii friends isn't a bad one - after all you can already send messages with photos - so as a concept a cheap and cheerful greeting card program could easily have a place on your Wii, but a Halloween-focused one? Creating an application that will only be used once a year seems...

  • Review Word Searcher (WiiWare)

    Words fail to impress

    Digital Leisure and Aksys seem locked in a fight to the death to see which company can release more generic, public domain games on the WiiWare service. Following up on their release of Sudoku Challenge earlier this year, which we found to be about as barebones a presentation of that game as you could get, DL now brings us...

  • Review Final Fight 2 (Wii Virtual Console / Super Nintendo)

    Final Fight for two

    The Mad Gear gang are back and out for revenge. This time they’ve kidnapped Guy’s fiancée Rena and her farther, so it falls to Haggar and friends to rescue them from the gang’s evil clutches. The original Final Fight was a classic side-scrolling brawler which received two paltry SNES ports, the first of which is already...

  • Review Final Fantasy (Virtual Console / NES)

    The game that kicked off the most popular RPG series in existence.

    Role-playing games began their climb to popularity during the early 80's on the many personal computers of the time period. These turn-based titles brought a more strategic element to gaming for those looking to use their minds more than their reflexes. Square obviously saw the...

  • Review Thorium Wars (DSiWare)

    One more proton and you'd be playing Protactinium Wars.

    It's always refreshing (to us at Nintendo Life and also, we imagine, to you folks at home) when a game is released for WiiWare or DSiWare that fills a tangible gap, and the first thing you'll notice about Thorium Wars is that it's like nothing else available through DSiWare. That uniqueness...

  • News Vintage NES Game Up To $8.5K On eBay

    Nintendo Campus Challenge 1991 cart proves yet again that collectors have oodles of money

    As a retro game fan, if I had a ton of money to blow I'd probably point my browser over to this eBay auction for a Nintendo Campus Challenge cart and lay down the law. $8,500 of your American currency? Pfft, tis child's play. Forged by Nintendo's blacksmiths...

  • Review "Aha! I Got It!" Escape Game (WiiWare)

    Will you want to escape from this game as fast as possible?

    "Escape the room" games have been quite popular on the internet for a while — a quick Google search will yield a number of creative flash-based puzzlers in which the aim is to solve a number of puzzles within a single room in order to escape. With "Aha! I Got It!"...

  • News Nintendo Shows Off Its History at Kyoto Cross Media Event

    Lots of cool retro gear on display

    This weekend the Kyoto Cross Media Experience 2009 took place in - you guessed it - Kyoto, Japan. Nintendo was in attendance and had plenty of goodies for avid gamers to ogle at. As well as showing off new games for the Wii and DS, the video game veteran had a massive display which illustrated the company's long...

  • Review Art Style: INTERSECT (DSiWare)

    It'll drive you mad!

    Games in the Art Style series have a reputation for originality, aesthetic invention and for being among the highest quality games on WiiWare and DSiWare. Art Style Intersect, however, is a remake of an old GameBoy Advance title known as DigiDrive, originally produced by Q Games of Pixeljunk fame. Although it might sound...

  • Review Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 (Wii)

    Ultimate? Not quite.

    Marvel Ultimate Alliance was one of the launch titles for the Wii in 2006 and despite being a port of a game also released on the PS3 and Xbox 360, it was still good fun. As a love letter to Marvel fans over the decades it provided a virtual travelogue of the people and places of the Marvel universe and was a wonderful...

  • Review Banjo Tooie (Nintendo 64)

    Can you bear second helpings?

    Banjo Kazooie was a game that revolutionised platforming on the N64: Rare's off-the-wall-humour, creative level design and sublime controls made it the pinnacle of platforming on Nintendo's console. Fans of the original will most likely remember Rare's lavish promises about the second game, Banjo Tooie, including the...

  • Review Art Academy: Second Semester (DSiWare)

    Less of the same.

    Two weeks ago, Nintendo released Art Academy: First Semester. We reviewed it and were happy to do so. The title was impressively functional, easy to use and very much successful at fostering creativity. These are all good things. We were painting apples and red peppers like there was no tomorrow. The sun was shining. We were merry...

  • Review Dead Space: Extraction (Wii)

    One of the most polished and immersive Wii titles yet.

    Hyperbole is not uncommon on the back of video game boxes; claims that the game you hold in your very hands in the store is the “most exciting” or “mind-blowing” tend to be full of crap. For Dead Space: Extraction, EA studio Visceral Games went with “most cinematic action horror...

  • Review Super Double Dragon (Super Nintendo)

    Billy and Jimmy Lee star in Super Double Draggin'!

    The scene is set: grimy, littered streets patrolled by ruthless gangs, whose sole intent is to cause mayhem in the neighbourhood. This urban jungle setting for Return of Double Dragon (Super Double Dragon in the West) is as synonymous with 2D side scrolling beat-em-ups as it was with movies like The...

September2009

  • Review Dragon Quest Wars (DSiWare)

    It might not be a typical Dragon Quest RPG, but there's still plenty of fun to be had

    It goes without saying that the Dragon Quest series has enjoyed phenomenal success around the world as an RPG series over the years, so placing the name on any game is going to automatically heap certain expectations onto that game, no matter what type of game it...

  • News Smart Bomb Issue One Now Available

    Former Super Play artist produces awesome comic along with fellow Rare employees

    If you're a UK-based SNES fan then chances are you will recall a fantastic magazine called Super Play. Easily the best publication devoted to Nintendo's 16-bit machine, the mag was especially notable for focusing on import releases (when all other magazines ignored...

  • Review Yummy Yummy Cooking Jam (DSiWare)

    A fallen soufflé

    You may remember this game from its appearance on WiiWare, so you won't be surprised to know this is a direct port. We didn’t think much to its incarnation on the Wii, particularly struggling with its controls, but now it’s on the DSi is it more to our taste? Yes and no, is the answer. Essentially, the DSiWare version is...

  • Review DJ Star (DS)

    Will DJ Star get your party started?

    Sold as a sort of DJ-ing equivalent to the Guitar Hero franchise, DJ Star offers up the Guitar Hero concept for the Ibiza generation. You won’t find any guitars here: your instrument of choice is instead a set of decks, and your mission is to fill the dance-floor with as many dancers as possible. Loading up DJ...

  • Review Wacky World of Sports (Wii)

    Or should that be "Tacky World of Warts"? Maybe...

    It’s a well-known fact that the Wii excels at quick-fire games – sports compilations and minigame packages abound, and amongst all those renditions of golf, tennis, boxing and the rest you’d have to assume there’s no sport on Earth yet to be rendered in glorious Wii-o-vision. Well, you would...

  • Review Opoona (Wii)

    Stranger in a strange land...

    Would you like to hear a story? Good! This is a story about Opoona and his family: his daddy is a famous Cosmo Guard -- that's right, Opoona and his family are from the planet Tizia. In fact, Opoona's daddy is one of the most famous Cosmo Guards ever! He was recently awarded the title of Startizian -- a rank only a...

  • Review R-Type (Virtual Console / Master System)

    Blast off and attack the evil Bydo Empire once again in 8-bit!

    While we applaud Sega for bringing some of its most fondly remembered Master System games to the Virtual Console, we can’t help feeling that on this occasion it is a little bit pointless. After all, we’ve had a near arcade perfect port of R-Type on the TurboGrafx-16 since 2006, which...

  • Review Biker Mice From Mars (Super Nintendo)

    Time to rock 'n ride!

    If you want to know what Biker Mice from Mars is like, think of it this way. Take RC Pro-Am for the NES, change the cars into Harleys, and then throw a bunch of thug-like mice onto those bikes and there you have it. It's pretty much a carbon copy of the ideas and gameplay found in RC Pro-Am, with the over-the-top weirdness of...

  • Review You, Me, and the Cubes (WiiWare)

    Are these cubes worthy of Rubik, or just rubes?

    Anticipation for this title has been somewhat high 'round these parts, thanks to some excellent first impressions by our own Sean Aaron. The only question was whether or not we would ever get our hands on it, but as of this week, we have. And so should you. Brainchild of the mad genius Kenji Eno,...

  • News French Government Lobbied To Establish Retro Gaming Museum

    Now there's an idea we can all agree with!

    MO5 - a group of retro video gaming fans - has lobbied the French government to start up a retro video game museum. More specifically, it's after a "National Institute of Digital Sciences", where visitors can view - and play - classic systems. MO5 members between them currently own around 30,000...

  • Review Clubhouse Games Express: Strategy Pack (DSiWare)

    Nintendo rehashes another set of Clubhouse Games, so we rehashed the review. Touché!

    Nintendo seems to have a penchant for taking its DS retail releases, cutting them up into bits and selling them on the DSiWare service. So it should come as no surprise that it's at it again with this third release in the Clubhouse Games Express series. This time...

  • Review Family Tennis (WiiWare)

    By downloading this game, you agree to get served

    One of the very first Wiiware games was also the first in Aksys’ “Family” series: Family Table Tennis. We gave it a fairly generous 5/10 score considering we labeled it “outclassed,” “hard to recommend” and even “un-loseable.” Well, it seems that someone at Aksys was paying...

  • Review Scribblenauts (DS)

    Write your way to victory!

    You don’t have to solve - or even begin - the included challenges to fully appreciate what Scribblenauts is trying to do. Right after the opening credits slide show, you are greeted by Maxwell standing in a field with nothing to do but smile as he always does. So you give him something to do. Anything. Type...

  • Review Rayman DS (DS)

    Any port in a storm?

    For those of you who missed out on the PS1/N64 generation of the late 1990s, Rayman was actually quite a big deal. Viewed by many well recognized gaming institutions as one of the ‘Greatest games of all time’, Rayman 2: The Great Escape received many plaudits for its innovative level design and gameplay features. Though a...

  • Review MySims Camera (DSiWare)

    Ever wanted to share a photo with a My Sim? No, we haven't either...

    My Sims Camera is a simple program that requires an equally simple explanation; essentially, it takes animations from the My Sims series and allows you to edit photos taken with the DSi camera by placing characters and stamps into your photos in various poses and styles. The game...

  • Review Learning with the PooYoos - Episode 1 (WiiWare)

    Who said gaming was just for big kids?

    Children’s games and WiiWare – a coupling that hasn’t really been explored. Well, that was the case until Lexis Numérique released Learning With the PooYoos Episode 1 on the WiiWare service. Designed for children between the ages of 3-6, this game set out to captivate the minds of the youngest gamers,...

  • Review Muramasa: The Demon Blade (Wii)

    Gorgeous, engrossing, flawed.

    A lot of Muramasa: The Demon Blade's pre-release hype hinged on its art; while you could get a good impression of the beauty of the game, it isn’t until you have it in motion on your own screen that it hits you. Vanillaware has delivered a visual and aural feast in its portrayal of feudal Japan; Muramasa is truly a...

  • News Rare: Fate Was Against Us With Goldeneye

    UK developer sees little chance of a Virtual Console release

    A while back we got rather excited about the prospect of seeing the N64 classic Goldeneye on the Virtual Console. Such enthusiasm was perfectly understandable - it's still one of the best FPS games you're ever likely to play - but sadly legal wrangles between Nintendo, Microsoft and...

  • Review Star Fox (Super Nintendo)

    Pretty Foxy stuff...

    In 1993 the Mega Drive / Genesis was selling well and 2D was the bread and butter of console gaming. "Emergency, emergency… emergency, emergency! Incoming fighters prepare for launch", hailed the 16-bit Nintendo counter attack. For Sega and NEC it was too late: the swooping Nintendo Arwing squadron hammered the early...

  • Review Magnetis (WiiWare)

    A magnetic arcade experience with plenty of attraction.

    Whilst it seems that there is a surfeit of puzzle games on Nintendo's WiiWare service it has to be said that their overall quality goes a long way to making their numeracy forgivable. Magnetis is developer Yullaby's first offering on WiiWare and definitely deserves a place in the list of...

  • Review Soul Blazer (Super Nintendo)

    Still one of the greatest action RPGs ever created.

    At a time when action RPGs were truly beginning to catch on with gamers, Soul Blazer came along and offered up an adventure that was as charming and engaging as any role-playing game fans had experienced. Taking many of the unique gameplay elements found in the Actraiser title that came before it,...

  • Review Golden Axe (Virtual Console / Virtual Console Arcade)

    Sega's classic fantasy side-scroller hits the Virtual Console in its original arcade form - but is it any good?

    It would be fair to say that the expansion of the Wii Virtual Console to incorporate arcade releases has been extremely welcome, but it has resulted in one rather unusual side-effect: we’re seeing rampant duplication of titles already...

  • Review Mart Racer (WiiWare)

    Will you have the patience to shop till you drop?

    Kart racing has a long and illustrious history on Nintendo consoles. Now replace “Karts” with “shopping carts” and “racing” with “be the first to complete a tedious task” and you have Mart Racer, arguably the most unsatisfying racing game on WiiWare. Mixing the usual suspects of...

  • Review Art Academy: First Semester (DSiWare)

    Paint Misbehavin'

    Much moreso than WiiWare, DSiWare has seen a significant number of non-game releases. Applications, utilities, programs...call them what you will, but they're not games, and they've not been exactly welcomed universally, either. Art Academy may well be poised to change that, not least because they've selected as their focus...

  • Review Crash 'n the Boys: Street Challenge (Wii Virtual Console / NES)

    It's River City Ransom with a side order of Track & Field.

    What do you get when you combine the River City Ransom theme with Track and Field-style gameplay? You get Crash 'n the Boys: Street Challenge. The game takes the street gang theme and creates some fitting Olympic-style events to go along with it. Sounds like a mouth-watering proposition, but...

  • Book Review Game Over: How Nintendo Zapped an American Industry

    Game over man

    You won’t find an abundance of book reviews here on Nintendo Life – we’re aimed squarely at providing you the best content from the world of interactive entertainment, after all – but anyone who considers themselves to be a fan of The Big N (or video gaming in general) should read David’s Sheff’s Game Over (or Game Over:...

  • Feature Super Nintendo Review Fridays

    We're going to show the Super Nintendo console some love each Friday.

    You might remember that we recently gave some love to Nintendo's Game Boy system in our Game Boy 20th Anniversary Special. Well the feature went over so well that we've decided to do another one and this time we're going to be showering some attention on another legendary Nintendo...

  • Review Solomon's Key (Virtual Console / Virtual Console Arcade)

    A near-identical version of a game already available on the Virtual Console

    Way back when the Wii came out in late 2006, one of the initial games available on Virtual Console was the NES version of Solomon's Key. Now that arcade games have been added to the service's catalogue, Tecmo has chosen to release the original arcade version. But is it...

  • Review Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story (DS)

    Is the third time the charm for the Mario & Luigi series?

    After years of hearing Super Mario RPG fans clamor for a sequel, Nintendo put developer AlphaDream to work creating a new Mario-themed RPG for their Game Boy Advance system back in 2003. But instead of copying the same ideas used in the original Super Mario RPG, AlphaDream came up with the...

  • News Left 4 Dead Map Infects Mushroom Kingdom

    You gotta shoot 'em in the head

    Has the Mushroom Kingdom ever really been a happy place? Seems every time we visit the castle is under siege, the princess is kidnapped and a Brooklyn plumber goes on a killing spree. The old kingdom looks like it's going to be in for another bumpy ride as, what else, zombies are preparing to muck up the...

  • Review Cursed Mountain (Wii)

    Have your prayers been answered?

    Cursed Mountain, like its ghostly enemies, came out of nowhere to surprise us: a bona fide adult game, where the phrase doesn't equate to gratuitous swearing, gore and nudity, designed exclusively for Wii. With a story heavy on Buddhist philosophies, a combat system that requires prayer gestures and plenty of other...

  • Review Spaceball: Revolution (WiiWare)

    Balls in Spaaaaaace!

    The primary attraction of the arcade puzzle game is the immediacy of the arcade experience. Unlike a game like sudoku or a crossword, there's no taking time to figure out what to do next, you simply play out the game reacting to events and aim for the highest score possible. Of course the key to a good arcade puzzle game is...

  • Review Rygar (Virtual Console / Virtual Console Arcade)

    Lesser-known than its NES counterpart, but is it still worth picking up?

    When you utter the name "Rygar", many people will instantly think of the NES game with the same name. In it, you played as the bare-chested warrior Rygar, making his way through both side-scrolling and overhead stages using his unique weapon, the Diskarmor, to take...

  • Review 2-in-1 Solitaire (DSiWare)

    Like a deck of cards, only smaller...

    As you'd expect from a 200 point version of Solitaire, you're not exactly going to be blown away by all the options on offer here. You've got Spider and Klondike versions of the card game, and they both have two initial difficulty settings to choose from, so once you've made your selections on both screens...

  • Review Kid Klown in Crazy Chase (Super Nintendo)

    You don't have to be crazy to play this game, but it helps!

    Super Mario World, Yoshi’s Island, Super Metroid, ActRaiser, Ghouls ‘n Ghosts, Mario All-Stars, the Donkey Kong Country trilogy…these games all have three things in common: they’re all platform games, they’re all on Super Nintendo, and they’re all genuine classics that stand out...

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