Although it wasn't listed in the PR for some reason, the US also got Cut the Rope on DSiWare today, for 500 points.

"I realized that this and Kirby Mass Attack are both releasing in the same week. Now that's cool!"

Nope. Mass Attack is coming out September 19th in the US.

The US got an unannounced demo for Jam City Rollergirls on WiiWare in addition to Monochrome Racing today.

"But then they wouldn't be able to try to sell you the GB version of Pac-Attack later."

Good point. That'll probably show up eventually as well.

They should have released the GBC Pac-Man: Special Color Edition instead, which also included Pac-Attack in addition to proper coloring.

"How long do the demo's normally remain available to DL?"

Anywhere between 4 and 12 weeks, depending on the game.

"So the download verison has all 4 different people to pick from"

Yep. All 4 classes are there, and there's 2 save files.

"How does this compare to the retail release?"

As others have noted, it effectively is the retail release in terms of content, only with slightly lower quality sound and missing voice clips.

"what expansions of puzzle quest are you talking about (never knew the first puzzle quest had any expansions)"

There was an expansion for the PSN and XBLA versions, known as Revenge of the Plague Lord, which has extra character classes, spells, and items, along with a series of extra quests and enemies in a side area.

If it's the full game or close to it, $8 for Puzzle Quest isn't bad at all.

It looks like official games from Nintendo/NinSoft have ended in the US for this now, with the last Weekly Games on March 7th, last Big Name Games on January 3rd, and last Theme Contest Games (#15, Sound) as of April 30th...

The Learning with the Pooyoos: Episode 1 and Max & the Magic Marker demos have been removed as well.

"How many Hudson games are there on the N64? I hope this is a sign of things to come later."

There were three other Bomberman games (64, Second Attack, and a Japan-only 64 follow-up), plus Star Soldier: Vanishing Earth, a shooter like the others.

I'm not sure about the JP Bomberman sequel, but all the other games didn't require the Controller Pak (BM64 and Second Attack used it for custom multiplayer characters, and SSVE didn't use it at all), so they could potentially be VC candidates.

Sonic Triple Trouble, Tails Adventure, and Baku Baku Animal please!

I only ever owned one of their games, Centipede/Millipede on the Game Boy, which they developed for Accolade back in the mid-90s. It was an okay conversion, but nothing special.

Well, at least the DSiWare release is 1/4th the price of the retail game. Still, shovelware is shovelware, regardless of whether it's for retail or download.

"I just download all the demos anyway even if they're games I'm not interested in."

I do the same thing. Judging from its one demo track, Crazy Racers is awful, with no originality, poor physics, and overly sensitive steering. How could they expect people to pay $10 for this over Mario Kart 64, F-Zero X, or some of the cheaper WiiWare kart racers?

I suspect the DS will continue to receive support through at least 2012 if the GBA was any indication, but high-profile titles are basically done for once the 3DS hits, aside from perhaps a few late first party localization efforts, much like the GBA's 2006/2007 and GBC's late 2001/2002.

Yeah, I'm aware of that (there's a few dozen of those out currently), although the majority of the DSi enhanced titles have been pretty low profile.

"Did any DSi only software ever materialise? I was going to get one but then they announced the 3DS....."

At least in terms of US titles, there are currently 3 retail DSi exclusives that I'm aware of: System Flaw, Foto Showdown, and Picture Perfect Hair Salon, as well as the PAL version of Face Training.

I own the full game already, but the Cave Story demo is decent. It gives you the various difficulty and new/old music and graphics options as in the full game, and starts you out just after what would be the introduction, when you fall into the village, and ends after completing the 2nd boss battle (which occurs upon finishing the first main area).

"Well... Magical Drop II is already available on a disc compilation, right?"

No, but MD3, which is essentially MD2 with extra characters and play modes, is on the Data East Arcade Classics collection, and I'd recommend getting that instead, although both are solid puzzle games.

"The original Donkey Kong Land (from my experience) has broken control which is a pity, because it's sequels, DK Land 2 and 3, are perfect and are probably the greatest portable games of all time."

I wouldn't call them broken, but DKL2 and 3 and the GBC port of Country are all much more refined. DKL1 particularly has some collision detection issues and wonky physics after jumping on enemies that were fixed in the sequels.

I'll pass on this since I already have it on PC and WiiWare, but it's nice that DSiWare is seeing some more quality releases.

Got mine free with Endless Ocean: Blue World and it's still in the plastic, although I did download the Wii Speak Channel for the heck of it, even though it's useless without the mic.

"The only thing is that this game is most likely gonna take up a bunch of space. But I've been a WayFoward fan ever since Contra 4, so I'm willing to move some games for them"

DSiWare games currently max out at 128 blocks (16 MB), and I suspect Shantae will be pretty close to that.

Day 1 for me. The GBC original is outstanding, and the trailers for this looked excellent as well.

It looks like the US will be getting those S-E WiiWare games at some point as The Tales of Bearsworth Manor: Chaotic Conflicts and Puzzling Pages. The ESRB notes: "This is an action-strategy game in which players throw paper cut-outs of bears at little creatures on a storybook game board. Bears can attack enemy creatures that are trying to steal the players' crystals. "Cartoony" bombs occasionally explode on the board, and paper-bear attacks sometimes result in fiery bursts."

"Hey, it can't be any worse than Sexy Poker, right? We'll bring you the first potentially-but-probably-not-very sexy screenshots of this one as soon as they arrive."

I doubt it'll end up too sexy, as it's only rated E10+...

"I doubt that this one will; since it originates from a British paper, its puzzles are sure to be based on misspellings British spellings which would make it ill-suited for the US audience."

Well, it's been ESRB rated, so it should be showing up in the US in some form anyway.
http://www.esrb.org/ratings/synopsis.jsp?Certificate=28886

The vid on the Nintendo Channel made it look pretty bad, so I'm not surprised by this score.

Galaxy Fight wasn't Sunsoft's first fighter. They were also responsible for the SNES port of World Heroes two years earlier. Their other Neo fighter, Waku Waku 7, is much better than Galaxy Fight though.

"Either the special case is going, or they're going to put out separate editions of Prime 1 and 2 would be my guess."

I suspect they'll probably re-release the Trilogy at some point down the line, just without the steel case and art book. I don't see them putting out Prime 1 & 2 individually since they seem to have dropped the remaining New Play Control games (Chibi Robo, Pikmin 2) for the US market.

"How many bolcks of internal memory does this take up?"

It takes 79 blocks.

"Does anyone know what are the diferences betwen the Genesis and the SNES version?"

The SNES version has better sound and music, and slightly better graphics, although I actually prefer the screen display in the Genesis version more (the map is always visible, instead of having to be toggled in the SNES version, and the score and energy displays are off the main play screen in it). Both versions play pretty much identically.

I wonder if the "free" NES game redemptions will affect our top 20 VC list. Currently, Final Fantasy is at #3 (since earlier this week anyway, only behind SMB3 and SMB), but the rest of the list is pretty much the same.

"Is Revenge of Shinobi the sequel to Shadow Dancer? Or vice versa?"

RoS came first, then Shadow Dancer, then Shinobi III, in terms of the Gen/MD releases.

Neo games I'd like to see (in no particular order):
Blazing Star
Twinkle Star Sprites
Sengoku 3
Zupapa!

You can choose to finish the first set of three levels in any order you want, followed by the second set of three in any order.

"His description doesn't sound TOO bad. Between the review and him, am I supposed to understand that the story is actually in English? That'd be fine. I can live with Japanese level names, but I MUST be able to understand the story."

There isn't really much of a story to speak of. The intro cutscene has about 5 lines of (unvoiced) Japanese text. Each stage has about a two line description written in Japanese, and the rest of the in-game cutscenes are all voiced in English with Japanese subtitles.

"The second paragraph makes it sound like it was released on the SEGA Channel outside of Japan, but not on a cart (like Golden Axe 3). If that was so, wouldn't it be fully English, even the text? The game sounds pretty good, but I don't know if I'd want to try it if it isn't 100% English... I might just wind up disappointed like I did with Do Re Mi Fantasy. "

It was also untranslated on the US Sega Channel. That version still retained the Japanese stage descriptions and cutscene subtitles. There is far less Japanese text than DoReMi Fantasy has though, and both are excellent games IMO.

At least the Electroplankton DSiWare is cheaper than the cart version, even if you take all 10 parts into account. That totals $20, whereas the cart was never less than $30.

It also had a very limited release, only being sold online through GameStop and direct through Nintendo's online store.

It's a decent game, worth the $8 on WiiWare if you like the "falling block puzzle" genre IMO, but a retail release of it shouldn't be more than $25 or so at most, even with a larger track list. There just isn't enough to the gameplay to warrant a non-budget release price.

420K in worldwide shipments seems a bit high when you consider that it hasn't had a single new release in any territory since February 2008, with the last few major releases in November 2007.

@ Esposch

I realize that you wouldn't know, having not played it, but Shantae is definitely NOT a "piece of poo" game.

"Looks fun but how much is it?"

$50 with the wheel, $40 without.

"Just to be clear here, Designer Software was the old name of WayForward... Right?"

Yep. They developed Mickey's Ultimate Challenge and their mid-90s PC games under that name. I think the WayForward name was introduced around 1997, although they didn't really start getting known until their first GBC games in 2000.

"Sunsoft hasn't released any of these outside of Japan in the past..."

Actually, they have. There was a US release of Shanghai from them on the GBC. There have also been a number of console versions from other companies over the years, primarily Activision.

"Not that Pulseman isn't a bad game, just you can die quickly in about 3 hits (the flashing thing in the top left corner doesn't help indicating how much life you got left)"

It actually does serve as a health indicator. You have full health when it's blue. Get hit once, and it turns yellow, a second time, red, and a hit at red will kill you. Hearts with a small circle around them (often found in relatively out-of-the-way locations) are "Energy Repairs", and restore one level of health.

Additionally, 10 Spark Balls get you an extra life, as does scoring every 50,000 points.

"Is it me or does he sound like he's uttering an expletive when he fires his gun?"

It's supposed to be "Flash Arrow" but the quality is kind of poor.