Nintendo Download 14th January 2011 (Europe)
3 new DSiWare titles, but the other services aren't completely ignored
Europe mostly plays catch-up again this week, with three of the five new downloads already being available in North America. DSiWare makes up the bulk of this week's releases, with the other two services only getting one game each, and it's also the only one of the services to...
Review Ghosts 'n Goblins (Virtual Console / Virtual Console Arcade)
The original quarter-eating monster returns
Over two years ago, before Nintendo introduced the Virtual Console Arcade, Capcom released the NES port of Ghosts 'n Goblins on Virtual Console. Arguably the most well-known version of the game out there, it's infamous for being an incredibly challenging and, frequently, totally unfair game. While it would...
Nintendo Download 7th January 2011 (Europe)
More Capcom arcade classics, plus a bunch of catch-up titles
Capcom is continuing their Virtual Console Arcade support with another two games, both of which were of course announced some time ago. At this rate they'll run out of games before we hit February! They're accompanied by a mixture of completely new games and games North America already...
Review GO Series: Dark Spirits (DSiWare)
In good spirits
The latest in Gamebridge's line-up of localised Japanese budget titles is GO Series: Dark Spirits, a horizontal shoot 'em up again courtesy of developer Suzak. It's not exactly a bullet hell shooter like Metal Torrent, but the difficulty can still get pretty high. You play the game as some sort of wizard who can only fire one rather...
News Japanese Virtual Console list - January 2011
Square Enix delivers another RPG epic
There's still another Friday left this month, but Nintendo of Japan has already added the next month's upcoming Virtual Console games to their site. Maybe they're taking a well-deserved break next week! Only three games are on the list, but as one of them is a highly requested title, it alone could probably keep...
Nintendo Download 24th December 2010 (Europe)
A mix of old and new
This week offers yet more catchup titles, consisting of games released in North America within the past few weeks, as well as the last few months. There's also two new games, however, both of which are for DSiWare and both of which are new instalments in two series which have been going for a while now. WiiWare: Hydroventure...
Nintendo Download 17th December 2010 (Europe)
Lots and lots of catchup titles
This week is almost exclusively made up of catchup titles, but that's not necessarily a bad thing, especially when it means that there's so many releases. Maybe there's something you'd like in the bunch. WiiWare: My Fireplace (Korner, 500pts) – Secretly the recently released in North America Fireplacing, for some...
Review GO Series: D-Tank (DSiWare)
Tank Defence
The GO Series already had a tower defence-esque game with tanks, but there's already another one now in the form of D-Tank. In Defence Wars you got a bunch of turrets, cannons and tanks to defend you against oncoming armies, but D-Tank takes its name quite seriously and only has one of those, the tanks. You control one single tank at a...
Something to sneeze at
iPhone ports are happening so often these days that they should barely come as a surprise anymore. Sneezies is yet another one of these titles, and like many other games, we can't say the transition has really been all that useful. Sneezies is pretty much yet another arcade-esque highscore game. There are four different game...
News Nintendo Download - 10th December 2010 (Europe)
The wait is over, Cave Story is here!
It's been way too long of a wait, but one of WiiWare's greatest games has finally managed to cross over to Europe this week. It's accompanied by a handful of titles for the other services, including yet another VC game. WiiWare: Cave Story (Nicalis, 1000pts) – Does anything really still need to be said about...
Review Rocks N' Rockets (DSiWare)
Rocking rockets
Most people are familiar with arcade classic Missile Command. In it, you control a bunch of anti-air batteries and have to shoot down the incoming enemies before they manage to destroy all of your cities. Rocks N' Rockets can pretty much be considered a revival of sorts of that game, although it does add a few unique twists of its...
Review DodoGo! Challenge (DSiWare)
DodoGo! Hard Mode
A little over half a year ago, Neko Entertainment released DodoGo!, a charming, decently sized puzzle game not unlike Lemmings. Now they're back with a new instalment, but is it worth another go? The basic premise of DodoGo is still here. Your objective in each stage is to safely get at least one of the present eggs safely to the...
Frenzied
We're used to quality from Two Tribes so far, with excellent titles like Toki Tori and Rubik's Puzzle Galaxy: RUSH available on WiiWare getting good scores all around. With its latest game being an iPhone port for DSiWare, can it keep up this streak of entertaining titles? Frenzic is a fairly simple game, but it can get deceptively hard...
Review Faxanadu (Virtual Console / NES)
Zelda II's spiritual successor
Not many people outside Japan are familiar with the Dragon Slayer series. Created by Nihon Falcom, the great minds behind Ys, the first game enjoyed a good deal of popularity and got many sequels, though unfortunately, almost all of them remained exclusive to Japan. The second Dragon Slayer game, Xanadu, actually...
News Japanese Virtual Console List - December 2010
Hudson and Capcom serve up some more games
Japan maintains a small lead on the rest of the world next month, by both catching up on two titles that were already released in Europe, and releasing three new games which everybody else will also likely see. There's nothing really surprising here this time! The games Japan will be getting next month are:...
News Mission in Snowdriftland Returns this December
chick chick BOOM's older brother is coming back as well
If you've been paying attention to Nintendo happenings on the internet for the past few years, you might be familiar with a little game called Mission in Snowdriftland, which was only available for about a month at the tail end of 2006. A conjunction between Nintendo and Extra Toxic, it was...
Review Supermarket Mania (DSiWare)
A pretty good sale
There's plenty of games available on DSiWare which are nothing more than glorified Flash games, which you could find playable for free online if you searched for just a few minutes. At first, we suspected that Supermarket Mania would join their ranks, but thankfully it offers a little bit more. As a single player-only experience,...
Nintendo Download 19th November 2010 (Europe)
One more demo
This week's download arrives with four new titles and one more demo available to download. There's no Virtual Console game, but with one practically confirmed for next week and another confirmed for the week after, there's not too much reason to complain. This week you can get... WiiWare: BIT.TRIP FATE (Aksys Games, 800pts) – The...
Review Spin Master (Virtual Console / Neo Geo)
Not masterful, but still pretty good
With probably about half of the Neo Geo's library of games consisting of fighting games, it's always nice to see another platformer for the system released on VC. In Spin Master, you take control of either Johnny or Tom as you try to recover five pieces of a lost treasure map and rescue Johnny's girlfriend. It's...
Nintendo Download 12th November 2010 (Europe)
A little bit more for every service, plus a new demo
With five new games and a demo on offer this week, you'd think that it would be pretty good overall. Unfortunately, only the Virtual Console game and the demo make up most of this week's goodness - The other four are all games North America already got, and none of them were very good. WiiWare:...
Review chick chick BOOM (WiiWare)
Bursting with goodness
Most people may not know it, but this little game has a bit of history behind it. Around Christmas of 2006, Nintendo of Europe launched a website with a Christmas-themed platform game that could only be played for a limited amount of time. It was quite well liked, so a few months later, developer tons of bits created another...
News Japanese Virtual Console List - November 2010
Three more classics, and one not-so classic
Japan's doing its usual job of getting games just before everybody does: three of the games they're getting this month have already been officially announced for release elsewhere and will be coming in the next few months. The fourth game they're getting is more of a Japanese thing, and won't be too sorely...
Pay the same, get less
Mahjong titles were strangely absent from all of Nintendo's download services for a long time, but this year there seems to have been a sudden explosion of them. This is about the fifth mahjong game we've had this year, so is there really anything new here? Probably the best of the previous offers has been Simply Mahjong. For...
Review Academy: Tic-Tac-Toe (DSiWare)
Tic-Tac-Tolerable
DSiWare is already host to numerous pen and paper games, but out of all of them, Tic-Tac-Toe has got to be most pointless thing imaginable to put into virtual form. Nobody should need an introduction to what Tic-Tac-Toe is. You have a grid of 3 by 3 squares, and you and your opponent take turns filling one square at a time with...
