First Impressions News, First Impressions Features - Page 8 of 12

8-bit run amok!

RUNNER is the fourth and next entry in Gaijin Games' six-part Bit.Trip series and we've been fortunate enough to spend some time with the latest build, which has just been sent off to Nintendo for final approval. Though this preview is based on the "final" version of RUNNER, we want to emphasise that changes are still possible in response to feedback from Nintendo, so..

Alice in bullet-hell land

Genterprise has published a steady string of G.G. Series games for DSiWare, delivering some much needed arcade-style gaming at a budget price with the majority of games coming from development studio Suzak. Wonder Land is a bullet hell shooter based upon Alice in Wonderland – not exactly a logical pairing, but certainly an amusing one. The sprite-based graphics are sharp..

My little water demon

In case you don't know what a kappa is (and we certainly didn't until we first heard of this game), know that it is a mischievous water sprite from Japanese mythology prone to eating small children (and cucumbers – hence the "kappa maki" found in Japanese sushi restaurants); now residing on the DSi. A product of internal Nintendo studio Brownie Brown, Inc., Kappa..

Picross meets ... Quarth?

Nintendo seems to have single-handedly popularised picross on home and console game systems, with only Hudson daring to dabble in the same space. Continuing the tradition they've partnered with D4 Enterprise to bring a new faster-paced game to the DSi which combines traditional Picross with elements of Konami's old puzzle/shooter, Quarth. Instead of creating an image..

Lots of flash; not much substance

Nintendo isn't exactly known for publishing shooters, much less shooters of the "bullet hell" variety, but that's exactly what we have here. Developed by Arika and recently shown at the Nintendo Media event in North America as Metal Torrent, Aa Mujō Setsuna is certainly one of the most graphically impressive DSiWare games we've seen, but the gameplay is..

Hands-on with three very different titles

You've already heard what we thought of Metroid: Other M, Super Mario Galaxy 2 and Sin and Punishment 2, and we got to play Monster Hunter 3 a few weeks ago, but there's still plenty to tell about the other titles available to play throughout the summit. One title we made a beelin

Blasting, slashing, stunning – trailer inside!

It took forever (well, nearly) for Treasure's seminal N64 game Sin and Punishment to see a Western release, but thankfully the sequel isn't due to take anywhere near as long to find its way to your Wii disc tray, with a European release date of 7th May. When Nintendo offered us the chance to play it with the Wii Zapper on a huge projection screen..

Hey, you got your Columns in my Quarth!

Fantasic Cube is very much an old-school puzzle game, but a decent one and more full-featured than most of the puzzlers we've seen lately. There are three single player game modes on offer and two-way multiplayer either locally or over Wi-Fi connection with friends or random strangers. The primary game mode is your typical Story Mode: the little witch girl..

Budget majaan on the go

Mahjong (or, as they call it in Japan, "majaan") is incredibly popular in Japan where you can find gambling parlours with fully automated tables shuffling, dealing and stacking tiles for players. It therefore should come as no surprise that there are a few mahjong games available in the Japanese DSiWare shop and Handy Mahjong is one of the cheapest available at..

Hit me baby, one more time

As stunning as Retro Studios' Metroid Prime Trilogy undoubtedly is, we still fondly remember Samus Aran's formative years, and particularly the seminal Super Metroid. It seems we're not the only ones fond of this piece of the bounty hunter's history however, as Team Ninja and Tecmo's take on Nintendo's sci-fi franchise kicks off straight after the SNES classic ends..

Truly spacial

Super Mario Galaxy 2 had by far the biggest queues of the day, with a cordoned area showcasing the plumber's latest adventure. Our crafty writers, however, took advantage of everyone else's hunger by striking when most other journalists were stopping for lunch, managing to get a good half an hour of hands-on time. With such high hopes surrounding the sequel to arguably one of Mario's..

Budget shooting on the go

Genterprise has published a lot of DSiWare in the past year, mostly as part of a budget line called G. G. Series. These are small arcade-style games with a 200 Point price tag which have caught the attention of many who read our weekly Japanese download news because we just aren't seeing this kind of thing elsewhere for some reason. Z・ONE is one of the first of these..

Two street fighters and a microphone

No doubt many have seen the latest and greatest fighting game on the Wii and thought "me and my mates could do better than that." Well Nintendo must have read your pixie-stick addled thoughts because they went and released a D.I.Y. fighting game for the DSi last December in Japan called Photo Fighter X so you can prove it! Okay, you won't be able to..

We take this gravity puzzler for a spin

And Yet It Moves is heading to WiiWare, fresh from its critically-acclaimed PC appearance, so we were naturally curious how it would stack up on the Wii. If you've not played the PC demo yet, here's a brief summary to get you up to speed. And Yet It Moves is a side-scrolling platform game that puts you in control of a Fido Dido-like chap who, handily,..

Portable Driller action is Go!

Namco's Mr. Driller is certainly one of the greatest arcade puzzle franchises ever, and has even surpassed its arcade heritage on home consoles in the the past decade of its existence. Whilst Drill Land remains the franchise pinnacle, subsequent releases on WiiWare and DS have still been fun entries in the series, providing plenty of drilling action for

Round 'em up, move 'em out

So far we haven't been told much about Onteca's upcoming WiiWare title Monsteca Corral, so when the developers offered us to see the game in action for ourselves we jumped at the chance. It's tough to describe Monsteca Corral in traditional genre terms, but it's perhaps closest to a real-time strategy game, although it also reminded us of European GameCube launch title..

Growing a beaut

US readers may scoff at the "First Impressions" title of this article as Rune Factory Frontier has been available in the Western hemisphere for nearly a year, but as always European gamers are left waiting for any Harvest Moon-related titles. However, farming fans need not fret much longer, as Rune Factory Frontier is due for release in the near future, and looks set to be..

Dig Dug II: a new action film from Michael Bay

Tom Create are no strangers to the Nintendo download scene having released a WiiWare "card battle" game and three budget DSiWare games last year. Earth Saver was the last DSiWare game from them in 2009: a puzzle game with a play mechanic very much like Namco's Dig Dug II, but a setting like a millennial disaster flick. The Earth is threatened..

Test your "Chicken Bird Soul"

The DS has become massively popular in part due to the number of games on it which claim to test players cleverness in some way. These are typically referred to as "brain training" programs and they've clearly been embraced by a large audience of people that enjoy being tested on math skills and such. This application appears to be a parody of these games in..