Review Dress To Play: Magic Bubbles! (3DS eShop)
Mix and match-three
Late last year, Coder Child's Dress to Play: Cute Witches! flew onto the 3DS eShop with a unique blend of dress-up and side-scrolling soaring, a promising premise that we felt it didn't quite live up to. Dress to Play: Magic Bubbles! follows the same format of combining character customisation with simple gameplay, this time...
Review SpeedX 3D Hyper Edition (3DS eShop)
Lightspeed Lite
Last year's SpeedX 3D brought Gamelion's endless tunnel racer from the mobile phone market to the 3DS, adding a third dimension and physical controls and proving that mobile games can make excellent eShop experiences. Now the race returns with SpeedX 3D Hyper Edition, and while it's still a whole lot of fun, it's neither the sequel...
Jumping the Shark
The Nintendo Video service on 3DS has played host to a number of original series since its inception, including CollegeHumor's BearShark. These 3D animated comedic shorts tell the story of a rather unlucky man named Steve, doomed to be forever hunted by the most fearsome predators of both the land (Bear) and sea (Shark). The show's...
Review Super Mario World (Wii U eShop / SNES)
Everybody wants to rule the World
Right from the six-note melody that opens the first stage, you can tell there's something special about Super Mario World. This is the Super Nintendo launch title that set the bar impossibly high for day-one releases, created the magic that games such as Super Mario 64, Sonic Adventure, and Luigi's Mansion have...
Review Color Commando (DSiWare)
Mini-masterpiece
Quirky, innovative puzzle-platformers are becoming something of a calling card for Goodbye Galaxy Games, and this latest release fits nicely into that oeuvre. The final panel in a DSiWare triptych that includes the Flipper series and Ace Mathician, Color Commando similarly revolves around manipulating the environment — here via...
Review The Croods: Prehistoric Party! (3DS)
Party of one
When popular films are adapted into video games, publishers tend to cover their bases by releasing the results across as many platforms as possible. This often leads to portable systems receiving scaled-back ports from their big-screen brethren, and The Croods: Prehistoric Party on 3DS is a prime example of a handheld hand-me-down. We...
Review Soccer Up 3D (3DS eShop)
Own goal
These days, soccer games tend to fall on one of two ends of a spectrum: there's the relatively realistic sports simulation found in annual FIFA and Pro Evolution Soccer instalments, and then there's the zany over-the-top action of the Super Mario Strikers and FIFA Street series. In the golden days of the Amiga, however, there were other...
Review Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Summoner: Soul Hackers (3DS)
Soul Shakedown Party
As an enhanced port of a 1997 first-person dungeon crawling RPG for the ill-fated Sega Saturn, Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Summoner: Soul Hackers seems like an unlikely release — especially considering the original game never left Japan. Both time and the journey across the Pacific have been kind to this 3DS wünder-port,...
Review The Croods: Prehistoric Party! (Wii U)
Croodités
As a video game adaptation of Dreamworks' cave-dweller caper, The Croods: Prehistoric Party casts the film's characters in a Mario Party-style experience for up to four players. It borrows heavily from Nintendo's series, linking disparate mini-games together with a simple board game conceit. Like the movie's titular Neanderthal family...
Review Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Gates to Infinity (3DS)
Neverending story
With the Pokémon series nearly ready to celebrate its 18th birthday next year, some of its many spin-offs have become enduring gaming traditions in their own right. The Mystery Dungeon games are a prime example, combining classic roguelike dungeon crawling with the endless appeal of playing as Pokémon, and as the series' first...
Review Need for Speed: Most Wanted U (Wii U)
Just what U wanted
Criterion is best known for developing the smash hit Burnout games — which last appeared on a Nintendo console over ten years ago — but since then the studio's gone on to helm the long-running Need for Speed series of racing games. Its latest effort is Need for Speed: Most Wanted U, an enhanced port of last year's PS3/360...
Review Coaster Creator 3D (3DS eShop)
Layin' down tracks
Anyone who's ever stepped off of a roller coaster with a huge grin and an idea for a ride of their own will appreciate the immense appeal of Coaster Creator 3D's concept. It combines the classic video game experience of going really fast with the medium's unique ability to let you do things you wouldn't necessarily be able to in...
Review Etrian Odyssey IV: Legends of the Titan (3DS)
Wanderlust
The term "adventure" encompasses many things, but Atlus' Etrian Odyssey series comes about as close as it gets to a pure, digital embodiment of the concept. Blending classic first-person dungeon exploration with a cartographic twist, these games task players with charting out their own maps on the touch screen as they go. The series'...
Review Picdun 2: Witch's Curse (3DS eShop)
Dungeons & Drawings
As a part of INTENSE CO's GO series, the original Picdun brought a unique take on first-person dungeon crawling to DSiWare. A portmanteau of the words "Picture" and "Dungeon", the game turned the genre's traditional map into a pixel art canvas, where players would fill in a picture as they explored their environment. Picdun 2:...
Propellerheads
G-STYLE's latest import from Japan, Moke Moke stars a mysterious race of flying, forest-dwelling fuzzballs known as Moke. Combining the evolutionary advantages of sighted moles with the whimsical utility of those novelty helicopter hats, the Moke spend their time whizzing around the forest in an eternal contest to see who among them...
Review Brain Age: Concentration Training (3DS)
Old brain, new tricks
Thinking of Nintendo's efforts to capture a more mainstream audience with non-traditional games, the Brain Age series leaps immediately to mind - and then leaps right out again, because we can't seem to concentrate on anything these days. Dr. Ryuta Kawashima, Nintendo's resident neuroscientist, has noticed this too, and has...
Review Bloody Vampire (3DS eShop)
Bloody fun
Joining Witch's Cat in Agetec's recent duo of playfully spooky eShop releases, Bloody Vampire is a stylish, side-scrolling adventure in the Metroidvania vein. It tells the story of Latis, an exquisitely pigtailed half-vampire / half-human, who sets off to investigate the coming conflict between her two bloodlines with Cereza, her loyal...
Review Witch's Cat (3DS eShop)
Tabby Laby
Not many puzzle games are lucky enough to boast spin-offs, let alone side-stories - and though you wouldn't guess it from the title, that's exactly what Agetec has conjured up in Witch's Cat: a side-story in the ongoing Rabi Laby series. This eShop entry picks up where Rabi Laby 2 left off on DSiWare, but where the previous games' puzzles...
Impressions Brain Age: Concentration Training Demo
Fiendishly focused
Inspired by the work of famed neuroscientist Dr. Ryuta Kawashima, Nintendo's Brain Age games aim to keep players' minds sharp through daily mental exercises, and have proven popular since the DS original, Brain Age: Train Your Brain in Minutes a Day!. The first 3DS entry in the series, Brain Age: Concentration Training focuses its...
Review Reel Fishing 3D Paradise Mini (3DS eShop)
A bassing fancy
Natsume might be most famous as the house that Harvest Moon built, but fishing fans will know the name from its Legend of the River King and Reel Fishing series. Reel Fishing takes a more realistic approach to the angling action, and saw several installments on WiiWare with decidedly mixed results. Reel Fishing 3D Paradise Mini...
Review Unchained Blades (3DS eShop)
Do the wyrm
If you could wish for anything, what would it be? If you're anything like Fang, the immediately off-putting Dragon King protagonist in the opening moments of Unchained Blades, you'd ask for the name of the strongest being alive, start a fight with a goddess and get thrown out of heaven for your insolence. Thankfully, XSEED's latest 3DS...
Review Jump Trials Extreme (DSiWare)
Aiming higher
It's only been a little over a month since G-STYLE's Jump Trials hopped onto the DSiWare service, but its sequel Jump Trials Extreme has already made the long leap over from Japan. Like 10 Second Run, the Jump Trials games are all about performing daring feats of platforming in under 10 seconds. We thought the original was an enjoyable...
Review Goooooal América (DSiWare)
New World, old game
For all the emphatic 'o's in its title's iconic interjection, Goooooal América is not a game about football. Nor is it a foosball game, as you might think. If you happen to have owned a certain toy as a child, however, you'll recognize the game's inspiration right off the bat. It's based on a particular small-scale...
Review 3D Game Collection (3DS eShop)
Win, lose, or draw?
Casual appeal and touch-screen controls have made Nintendo's recent handheld systems a perfect fit for digital collections of traditional games and puzzles, and that's the niche in which the rather generically named 3D Game Collection sits comfortably. With 25 games from Backgammon to Battleship, Solitaire to slide puzzles,...
