February2016
Review Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Blue Rescue Team
Pokécrawler: Blue
Many Pokémon are finding themselves in trouble and it's up to you and your rescue team to go and save them in this dungeon crawling spin-off from Chunsoft. Released for the DS in 2006, Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Blue Rescue Team sees you fighting ill-tempered Pokémon as you search a randomly generated floor for the staircase that...
Review Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Red Rescue Team
Pokécrawler: Red
As well as the regular series of Pokémon RPGs, a number of spin-off games have appeared over the years. Developed by Chunsoft, Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Red Rescue Team arrived on the Game Boy Advance in 2006 and (like a number of the studio's titles) takes the form of a dungeon crawler that has you battling against numerous enemy...
Review Bravely Second: End Layer
This’ll ring a bell
When JRPG giant Square Enix brought Bravely Default to the 3DS back in 2013, it took an old-is-new-again approach, bringing the feel of golden age Final Fantasies — four heroes, airships, crystals and castles included — to Nintendo's newest handheld. The result felt like a truly classic adventure with all mod cons, and it...
Choose your destiny
Fire Emblem Fates launches this week in Europe. To mark this event, we're republishing our review of the North American version of the game, which originally went live on the site back in February. Intelligent Systems got itself into a weird predicament after the stellar success of Fire Emblem Awakening a few years ago. Fire...
Shreddin’ the gnar
Originally released for the Nintendo 64 in 1998, 1080° Snowboarding was Nintendo's attempt to bring the snowboarding experience to its home console. It did a good job: six courses provide a variety of thrills as you hop on a board and tackle the snowy slopes. Five riders of varying abilities and several boards are available and...
D-Pad D-Bate
Super Mario 64 is undeniably one of the most influential games in the industry's history, so it's only natural that Nintendo would attempt to capitalise on its success with a re-release. What nobody expected at the time was for it to not only arrive on a portable console, but also feature Yoshi as the initial protagonist. Super Mario 64...
January2016
Review Super Mario Advance 4: Super Mario Bros. 3
It's a'me, Mario 3! (again)
We all know about Super Mario Bros. 3 for the NES. It was a fantastic game worthy of all the praise that it received, and that remains true to this day. So, this review won't discuss all the merits of the original game. Instead, it will focus on the unique features of Super Mario Advance 4: Super Mario Bros. 3, released...
More karting fun for U
Taking a bunch of Mario characters and having them speed around race circuits using a range of special items to rush or smash past each other is something that has worked very well since the Mario Kart series began in 1992. The games are amongst the most enjoyable on whatever platform they turn up on, and many people buying...
Review The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks
Choo-choo-choose the original format
No doubt partly driven by necessity as much as strategy, Nintendo's Virtual Console efforts on Wii U have been notable for including not only Game Boy Advance titles, but also various releases from the DS library. With the latter only possible courtesy of the Wii U GamePad questions of practicality are fairly...
Not likely to make you doze off
Game Freak is a developer known for its work on titles such as Pokémon Red and Blue, Pokémon Ruby and Sapphire and Pokémon Black and White. It does occasionally put out games that don't feature the pocket monsters, however, and one of those is Drill Dozer, a Game Boy Advance action platformer set across six...
Review Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars
The Mario RPG that started it all
There are very few areas of life the Mario franchise hasn't at some point explored. Mario himself has been a doctor, an amateur kart racer and later on in his career was recognised as a professional athlete when he competed at the Olympic Games in the 100 metre dash against Sonic. Quite simply – he's a jack of all...
Wonderful water racer
Wave Race was not a well known series prior to its arrival on the Nintendo 64. Actually it wasn't a series at all, but rather a single release: a top-down racer on the Game Boy. With its 64-bit machine offering the opportunity for new 3D gaming experiences, Nintendo decided to have another crack at a Jet Ski racer and came up...
Review Game & Watch Gallery Advance
Nintendo's Portable Hits: The Early Years
In the 1980's (before the Game Boy was released), Nintendo's series of Game & Watch handhelds provided people with portable gaming excitement. As LCD games they provided a stripped down gaming experience that Cranky Kong would approve of - basic sounds, none of those pointless fancy graphics and only a...
December2015
Black + white = fun exercise for the old grey matter
Draw a line. OK, you'll have to give it a bit more thought than that as you won't be passing through all the squares on screen, but Polarium Advance is a simple game to play. Each puzzle consists of white and black tiles and once you've picked a start point you must draw a single line, moving...
Review Animal Crossing: Wild World
Why this world?
The very idea of a portable version of Animal Crossing filled this reviewer with glee when he first read about it back in the days of magazines and routers without wi-fi as standard. Animal Crossing: Wild World has always been a very special game to fans as it expanded upon the original GameCube title (for this region at least) but...
Safety in numbers
Known in Japan as Atsumete! Kirby, Kirby Mass Attack is the final title in the long-running HAL Laboratory series for the Nintendo DS. Originally released in 2011, Mass Attack moves away from traditional platform game design in preference of a completely touch-driven experience. Thankfully, unlike the original 2005 entry for DS –...
Review Kirby: Power Paintbrush
Time has passed
Kirby: Power Paintbrush – also known as Canvas Curse in North America – was originally released on the Nintendo DS in 2005. Following the trend of many other franchises during this new generation of handheld gaming, the HAL Laboratory-developed title moved away from traditional platform game conventions by utilising the defining...
Pika-p and play
During the Nintendo Direct in November one of the surprise announcements was Pokémon Picross. It seemed like a bizarre idea, but crossing over the Pokémon franchise with the quirky Picross series is precisely what the somewhat stagnant puzzle series needed, adding a considerable amount of replayability and strategy onto the...
Review The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass
An epic sail
When thinking about the best games from the Legend of Zelda series, many automatically jump straight in at the deep end with the big, home console releases; games such as Ocarina of Time and The Wind Waker always seem to make it to the top of peoples' lists. Games often overlooked are those that have appeared on Nintendo's portable...
November2015
A Mira-culous discovery
Monolith Soft has made plenty of bold claims about Xenoblade Chronicles X. It's talked up the size of the planet as being five times that of Xenoblade Chronicles, stated that any landscape you see is there to be explored, and promised that there are not only dozens of hours of legitimate gameplay, but hundreds. Often that...
Review Mario & Luigi: Paper Jam Bros.
This Mario mashup is a real jam
Though it came as a bit of a surprise, quietly tucked away into Nintendo's Digital Event during E3 earlier this year, fans of RPG silliness have been anticipating the crossover of a lifetime since the announcement of AlphaDream's latest adventure. Mario & Luigi: Paper Jam Bros. (known simply as Mario & Luigi:...
Review Pokémon Super Mystery Dungeon
Gotta recruit 'em all
Pokémon Super Mystery Dungeon is very much a rollercoaster ride, frequently oscillating between highs and lows. Just when you think you can't bear the tedium any longer something interesting happens that pulls you right back in. On the other hand, just when things are starting to get good it levels off and you're forced to...
Review Animal Crossing: Amiibo Festival
The sigh heard 'round the wild world
Animal Crossing made its name as a quaint, cutesy, somewhat bizarre life simulator where something new to do, collect or modify is always around the corner. This year, two spin-off games hone in on separate areas of that Nintendo life: Animal Crossing: Happy Home Designer on 3DS explores "work," and Animal...
Review Mario Tennis: Ultra Smash
Into the net
Mario's spin-off titles have been integral to Nintendo systems for multiple generations, typically designed to bring families and friends together for light-hearted fun. The tennis spin-off has often found a fascinating middle-ground between depth and accessibility, though the home console entries have often been focused on simple...
Review Nintendo Presents: New Style Boutique 2 - Fashion Forward
Back in style
Like high-waisted shorts or the reemergence of leg warmers, some things just come out of nowhere. Syn Sophia's New Style Boutique was a similarly surprising success when it hit the 3DS runways in 2012, giving the fashion sim genre a real gem. After a few seasons off it's back for another appearance (in Europe at least) with this...
