First Impressions News, First Impressions Features - Page 7 of 12

For fans of mind-bending only

Most of the G.G. Series previewed to-date have been pretty accessible puzzlers or arcade style games from various genres, but here's the first one that's probably only going to be a hit with a small audience due to the nature and level of the challenge on offer. The gameplay is essentially similar to Toki Tori and freeware Flash games: you control a small stick man who..

Arcade gymnastics

You have to give credit to developer Suzak for the work it's done with the G.G. Series. Whilst most of the games are interesting takes on traditional genres, it also likes to throw out the occasional brand-new concept, like Tetsubou: a game which could be best termed a "gymnastic puzzler." Players are presented with a multi-screen playfield consisting of a start point..

A refreshingly novel take on the "match three" puzzler

There have been many variations on the "match three" puzzle game, often involving adding another item to complete a matching set, but it's rare to see a truly new and novel mechanic used in what has become something of a cliched puzzle game style. For this reason G.G. Series Conveyor Kombō is something of a surprise, because it not..

Challenging mahjong battles at a budget price

Mahjong games have existed on Japanese consoles almost since the first machines were rolled out, and over time certain standards have emerged, to such an extent that having experience with one mahjong game will lead you to expect certain conventions in another. Part of the attraction of Tasuke's 200V...

All the way from Poland!

Recently an intrepid Nintendo Life reporter made the long and arduous journey to visit Polish developer Gamelion, the chaps behind DSiWare hit Extreme Hangman, to check out their upcoming WiiWare roll ‘em up Furry Legends. With the first instalment currently awaiting approval from Nintendo there was plenty to get our teeth into, and the chance to get some answers about..

Carrying the standard for a forgotten genre

Back in the early 80s the "maze" game was a popular genre both in arcades and on home consoles, featuring a fixed screen and expected mechanics of navigating a character around hazards whilst collecting objects. Once platforming and adventure games took off, the maze game all but vanished; even the king of mazes, Pac-Man himself, has long since..

Pretty girls and shooting action: a recipe for success

If you weren't already jealous of the number of old-fashioned shooting games available in the Japanese DSi Shop thanks to the G.G. Series, now you have another one courtesy of I.T.L. Roughly translated as Shooting Space Girls, this is a side-scroller with a difference, though what that difference is won't be immediately apparent. You have an..

Not a mad dentist, just more arcade fun!

It's not hard to see why we keep on downloading G.G. Series games to preview because as many as there are, they all seem to have been made by people who care about delivering a quality slice of simple gaming fun. That they're only 200 Points each is just icing on the electron cake of arcade goodness. Drilling Attack features a robot (or person in chunky..

Tank-tastic arcade fun!

Tanks feature in some of the earliest arcade games, from vector graphics classics like Battle Zone and Armor Attack to "newer" sprite-based games like Vindicators and Tank Force. As with the latter D-Tank sees players controlling a tank and trying to defend a base from attack by incoming waves of enemy tanks: a fairly simple premise, but as with other G.G. Series..

Arcade action the G.G. Series way

The G.G. Series of games in the Japanese DSi Shop really are a little slice of arcade heaven. Not just because they offer some good old-fashioned fun, but because they're such well-crafted titles generally. Assault Buster is certainly one to put into the "pretty good" column, offering an interesting combination of run-and-gun and shooting action. Players..

Breaking new ground with the DSi camera

Although rumours abound of a motion-enabled successor to the DS being readied for unveiling in the near future, it seems some developers just couldn't wait and decided to attempt the same kind of game mechanics afforded by accelerometers utilising the second camera present on the DSi. The system is known as...

A touching game of combat

Tom Create's follow-up to the cheap-and-cheerful space-based take on Dig Dug II is Touchpen Wars, an arcade-style shooter that's also offered at the budget price of 200 Points. Don't be fooled by the title – it's not a game laden with sentiment, but uses flicks and taps of the stylus to launch projectiles from gun emplacements at the bottom of the lower screen towards..

More budget puzzling fun from Suzak

Vertex is another take on the puzzle genre in the G.G. Series and like Energy Chain it's a competent and fairly original concept, but not necessarily an addictive one. Players move a small glowing green dot at the bottom which is projecting a guide line to the top of the screen. The object is to press buttons to light up the correct number of darkened vertices..

A refreshing spin on the classic Tetris concept

Sakasa Drops is the second DSiWare effort from Tecmo and like Gyaku Shooting is played holding your DSi upside down with the touchscreen up top. It's a novel gimmick that literally conveys the fact that the tables are being turned on some familiar gameplay. This game most strongly echoes the classic puzzle game Tetris with a couple of twists: players..

It's Star Force in a world gone mad!

Tecmo have finally dipped their toes in the DSiWare water with a couple of games that have the novel feature of being played holding your DSi upside-down with the touchscreen at the top. This first one is based upon the classic Tekhan vertical shooter Star Force, which was one of the Virtual Console Arcade launch titles on the Wii. In both graphics and sound..

Budget puzzling from the budget DSiWare machine

We have to figure that Suzak is porting games they originally developed for mobile phones for the G.G. Series, because it just doesn't seem possible that they could have made so many games in so short a span of time and actually had this many of them turn out to be worthwhile. Energy Chain is a puzzle game and whilst we wouldn't necessarily call it..

"You're a shining star, no matter who you are..."

Sakura Wars is a rather interesting series of games and one of Sega's biggest franchises in Japan, though oddly only the spin-off anime has been seen elsewhere – until now. The fifth Sakura Taisen game (as the series is known in Japan), So Long, My Love is the first to get localised for Western markets and as such is a rare treat. We were lucky..

"There's a super-man coming, there's a super-man coming..."

This entry in the G.G. Series is a nice little brawler with a superhero theme. As with other games in the series, there's no menu options to worry about, game modes or story: instead you just use the D-Pad and a couple of buttons to pound on some costumed freaks until they get the better of you. Stages have static backgrounds and are a few..

Buggle Bobble

Please note that these impressions are based upon playing an alpha version of the game code. Changes are certain to be made prior to the final game release. If a developer is going to make a puzzle game that uses a well-established mechanic – such as matching three objects of the same colour – it's important to put a new spin on things, and thankfully that's what Sudden Games has..