DS News (Page 7)
News The Nintendo DS Celebrates its 8th Birthday in Europe Today
Blow into the mic to put out the candles
Eight years ago today, Europe became the last major territory to get its hands on the original DS, that now known as the "phat". It can be easy to forget that it was a handheld that truly innovated the concept of mainstream handheld gaming, incorporating a clamshell two screen design famously pioneered in the...
Review Puzzler World 2013 (DS)
A puzzling affair
There are a number of reasons why the Puzzler World series continues to see new life on DS. For one, it's still a bestselling series, which is no doubt partly down to the DS's impressive install base around the world. However, it's also the fact that the titles' word and logic puzzles — which historically have been restricted to...
News Ace Attorney Collection for 3DS Has Been Proposed "Many Times" at Capcom
We should "hang in there"
While the 3DS has seen some notable franchises carry across from its predecessor, the DS, one that hasn't done so in the West is Ace Attorney. Japan has been enjoying Professor Layton vs Ace Attorney since late last year, while Ace Attorney 5 is expected in the same region later this year; alas, localisation hasn't even...
Feature Series Reboots That Have Divided Gamers
They did WHAT with [insert treasured franchise name here]?
There are some undeniable truths in life, death and taxes being two examples, and the video game industry has its own rules and obligations that can never be avoided. One of these revolves around reboots of treasured franchises — if you're going to "re-imagine" a popular character or...
News Scribblenauts Collection Out Now in North America
Both DS instalments on one handy cartridge
North American gamers have been pleasantly enjoying Scribblenauts Unlimited on Wii U and 3DS for a while now, while Europe is still waiting to get its deprived mitts on it. It looks as though Europeans will have more reasons to be jealous now, as Warner Bros. has released Scribblenauts Collection on the DS...
News Mythical Pokémon Meloetta Available at GameStop in March
Music to our ears
Pokémon fans in North America are to receive a special treat in March, as the mythical Meloetta will become available to download onto your Pokémon Black and White or Pokémon Black and White 2 cartridges at GameStop. Meloetta is a Normal Pokémon that can double up to become either a Psychic or a Fighting type during an actual...
Hardware Classics Nintendo DS Lite
This is how you redesign a console
Let's be brutally honest here — the original DS design was ugly. Quite what Nintendo's designers were thinking when they came up with it we'll never know, but the dumpy, two-tone casing hardly got pulses racing, even back in 2004. It felt like a system that was rushed out of the door purely to meet a deadline,...
News "Emergency Maintenance" Planned For Nintendo Online Services on 26th February
Don't get too excited
It seems we have a monthly trend of service maintenance kicking into effect with Nintendo online functionality, as more "Emergency Maintenance" is on the way in major territories next week. There was a round of downtime on various platforms on 28th January, and a similar period is on the way from 26th February, or very late on...
News Legendary Pokémon Meloetta Distribution Date Announced
This one's a real fighter
Good news Pokémon fans! Starting 4th March, the mythical Pokémon Meloetta will be distributed by participating GameStop stores across North America for Pokémon Black & White and Pokémon Black & White 2, for a limited time only. Meloetta is the very first Pokémon able to change its Forme and type during a...
News Nintendo Hints At An Additional Platform In The Future
Because Wii U and 3DS are not enough
Nintendo recently confirmed that it would be merging its handheld and console divisions into one single entity this month. The two departments have always run separately in the past, but Nintendo now feels the time is right to bring them together under one roof. With the two departments merged, Nintendo's...
News XSEED Talks Wii Support And Why It Isn't Touching Retro Game Challenge 2
"Our love for the game blinded our business reasoning"
XSEED Games has a reputation for localising great Japanese-only titles for the west. The publisher has been very successful with its choices, with The Last Story becoming its most successful title of all time. Another highly-regarded title is Pandora's Tower, a game that has already made it to...
Talking Point The Trends and Inconsistencies of Localisation
Predicting releases is getting tougher
Yesterday brought the news that Project X Zone is being localised and released in PAL regions and North America this summer. To many that would arguably be a surprise, as the title has endured a relative failure in Japan, culminating in a major price-cut. Yet recent years have taught us that predicting...
News Scribblenauts Is Doubling Up On Nintendo DS
New bundle includes the two DS instalments
Warner Bros. is bundling together the first two Scribblenauts games - Scribblenauts and Super Scribblenauts - for the Nintendo DS in Scribblenauts Collection. Amazon's US site has a release date of February 26th. It's not currentl
News Pokémon Video Game Winter Regional Championships Begin This Sunday
A special Cloyster up for grabs
This Sunday thousands of dedicated Pokémon trainers will flock to several host cites with their copies of Pokémon Black and White Version 2 to attend the Pokémon Video Game Winter Regional Championships. The tournament will see competitors from three different age divisions battle it out for the title of Pokémon...
News Nintendo Announces 890,000 Wii U Sales in U.S. Launch
Higher revenues than Wii launch, 3DS has over 1.25 million sales in Holiday period
Nintendo of America has issued a series of facts and figures for its Holiday period performance in the U.S., following publication of the latest NPD figures that cover 25th November to 29th December. There were some solid results and, perhaps most importantly, decent...
News Footage of Renegade Kid's Crash Bandicoot DS Demo Emerges
No kidding
Crash Bandicoot, a series that originated as an exclusive on the Sony PlayStation but evolved to appear on multiple platforms, has been relatively quiet of late. In fact since Activision attained rights to the series in 2008, when it co-published Crash: Mind over Mutant, it's only appeared on mobile platforms. That's not the say that more...
Review Adventure Time: Hey Ice King! Why'd You Steal Our Garbage?! (DS)
I'm ready for you now Brad
Back in March 2012 fans of the cult TV series Adventure Time rejoiced around the world, as series creator Pendleton Ward announced via a doodle on his Twitter page that WayForward Technologies and D3 Publisher would be working on a video game adaptation for the DS and 3DS, the absurdly named Adventure Time: Hey Ice King!...
Feature Nintendo in 2012 - Part Two
Lots of Mario and Wii U's arrival
In the first six months of 2012, which we looked at in the first part of our 2012 retrospective, Nintendo oversaw some major releases on 3DS and announced the XL model, the Wii had a few memorable arrivals and E3 came and went with its own brand of madness. There were also a number of quirky stories that passed by,...
Feature Nintendo in 2012 - Part One
3DS fought back, hype mode was engaged
Not so long ago it could be argued that Nintendo was having some relaxing times, with DS and Wii systems flying off shelves and console rivals rushing to the platform in order to hop on the motion-control train. Of course, technology and the gaming industry evolve, and in 2011 Nintendo found itself trying to...
News LEGO Laying More Bricks With Legends Of Chima This Year
Coming to 3DS and DS
Warner Bros. and TT Games have revealed the next installment in the increasingly popular LEGO series. The title isn't based on a popular TV series or movie - it's a completely new game, based on LEGO's new Legends of Chima line of figures which is set to launch in 2013. The game - LEGO Legends of Chima: Laval's Journey, to give...
News Goodbye Galaxy Games Responds To Renegade Kid's Piracy Claims
Indie developer says plenty of other factors contribute to poor sales
Over the weekend Jools Watsham, co-founder of Renegade Kid, wrote in a blog post that he felt hacking into the guts of the 3DS would result in an increase in piracy - something that could force developers to stop supporting the system. Watsham pointed to the DS which suffered...
News Nintendo DS Inspired The Uniqueness Of Wii U
Former president's philosophy still being put into practice
Wii U is currently the system on everyone’s lips. It’s the first home console to add an extra screen to the television with the inclusion of the GamePad, but it’s not the first time Nintendo has added one to its hardware. In an interview on Hobo Nikkan Itoi Shinbun, President of...
News Fresh Figures Suggest Nintendo DS Is The Most Popular Console Of All Time
Overtakes the PS2 in global sales
According to VGChartz, the Nintendo DS is now officially the most popular games console of all time. Updated sales state that Nintendo's dual-screen handheld has shifted an amazing 153.69 million units worldwide, while the PS2 has sold 153.68 million. The DS - which hit the market in 2004 - has sold 56.47 million...
News Level-5 Responds To SEGA's Legal Threats Regarding Inazuma Eleven
"We've concluded that there is no patent violation"
Japanese developer Level-5 has responded to SEGA's recent legal campaign to have the company remove its Inzauma Eleven series from sale due to an alleged patent infringement. SEGA is claiming that Level-5's soccer RPG features a touch-driven interface which violates two of its patents. The...
News SEGA Takes Legal Action Against Level-5 Over Nintendo DS Patent Dispute
Inazuma Eleven to blame?
In one of the strangest turn of events we've witnessed for a while, Japanese publisher SEGA is suing Professor Layton studio Level-5 over the use of touch control patents on the Nintendo DS handheld. Japanese news site Yomiuri Online broke the news, revealing that SEGA was taking action to protect two patents it had...
News Etrian Odyssey DS Trilogy Set For Reprint
Canadian retailer is first out of the gate
The Etrian Odyssey trilogy of games on DS can probably be regarded as cult classics for the handheld, an RPG series famed for relentless difficulty and harsh punishment of failure. Of course, when you combine that genre with a sufficient level of challenge, there'll be a group of gamers more than willing to...
Feature Your Guide to a Nintendo Holiday
Christmas time, Mario and Trine...
It's Christmas time, and we all know what that means — rapidly depleting bank accounts, lots of food and merriment, and plenty of video gaming. The Holiday season actually means different things depending on your own perspective, of course, but to many it's a great opportunity to spend time with family and...
News Wii U Shifts 400K Units in Début Week
It's "essentially sold out of retail"
Nintendo's revealed its sales results to incorporate the Wii U launch and the Black Friday festivities, with NoA COO Reggie Fils-Aime weighing in with the company's perspective in an interview with CNET. Nintendo's total hardware sales — according to internal data — hit around 1.2 million units in the U.S.,...
News Japanese Import Ban on R4 Cartridges Becomes Law
Only years too late
So, R4 cartridges. These are the devices that allow gamers to circumvent the security measure on a DS to run custom code — often referred to as homebrew — and illegally download copies of games. While the former reason often provides the grounds for defence of these cards, there are also a lot of people who used them to...
Thundercats, noooo!
Perhaps we were foolish to get our hopes up about Thundercats. It is a licensed game, after all, and while that's not a universally bad thing, it should by this point at least make us think twice. Then again, it's Thundercats! The original cartoon is an enduring classic, the recent reboot was surprisingly good, and the...
News CyberConnect2 Confirm Interest In Solatorobo Sequel
The quest for a new adventure has begun
CyberConnect2 boss Hiroshi Matsuyama has revealed at a Namco Bandai event in Barcelona that his company would love to do a sequel to Solatorobo: Red the Hunter. Matsuyama was questioned about the possibility of a sequel, in which he expressed his desire for a new title and confirmed that they are already...
Podcast NLFM Episode 23: Revenge of the Halloween Hootenanny
Best served as cold as a corpse
Grab your bluntest instruments and aim for the head because NLFM has risen from its grave for the third annual Halloween Hootenanny! More spooky, more sinister and more deathly, this episode is best listened to in a dark castle dungeon while eating raw pumpkins. Failing that, anywhere else will do. 1. Masanao...
News Pokémon Comic Gives You Even More Black & White 2
Patience with those page turns, young Trainer
Pokémon Black and White 2 has now been in Western stores for a couple of weeks, and we have little doubt that quite a few of you are still building super effective teams at this very moment. Many of you are undoubtedly veterans of the Pokémon scene and know the intricacies and tricks of the game, but...
Review Jewel Master: Cradle of Egypt 2 (DS)
Is history repeating itself?
In these risk-averse times, publishers are increasingly relying on sequels to existing IPs to ensure that they turn over a profit. The problem doesn’t stem so much from a dearth of creativity in the industry, but rather as consumers we have a horrible habit of sticking with what we know. Much like the video game...
News Knock Yourself Out With This Exhaustive Pokémon Black And White 2 Infographic
Everything you needed to know, and possibly more
Nintendo UK has published a staggeringly comprehensive infographic for Pokémon Black and White 2. Rather than waste our time coming up with witty commentary, we thought we'd merely replicate the entire thing for you below. Enjoy.
News Pokémon Black and White 2 Catches a Strong UK Chart Début
Both versions in the top five
Pokémon Black and White 2 may be getting played on a lot of 3DS systems at the moment, but we shouldn't forget that it probably represents the last big hurrah for the humble DS. It's a big release for fans of the series that Nintendo no doubt hopes will perform well, and early indications in the UK charts are certainly...
News Pokémon Video Game Autumn Regional Championship Details For North America
Your journey to Victory Road begins this weekend
It's just a little over a week since Pokémon Black & White 2 released across the US, and already the Pokémon Video Game Regional Championships will take place this weekend. That's right fellow trainers, the Championships begin in North America this Sunday, October 14th. The Autumn Regionals are...
News Thundercats Let Loose On DS October 30th
Feel the magic, hear the roar
An official trailer for Thundercats has finally put a release date in place for the DS action epic. The game had previously been scheduled for a North American release September this year, but was pushed back a month. The side-scrolling action game follows the first six episodes of the rebooted Thundercats series where...
News Activision Releases New Trailer For Transformers Prime
Planes, trains and Autobots
Based on the award-winning animated television show produced by Hasbro Studios, Transformers Prime lets you play as your favourite Autobot character and embark on an action-packed adventure to save the earth from the evil Megatron and his new secret weapon. Get a preview glimpse of the Wii U version in the video below,...
News PETA Targets Pokémon Black & White 2 in Latest Campaign
Opportunism or a fair moral case?
Last year, with the arrival of Super Mario 3D Land, PETA — People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals — launched a campaign against Mario, on the grounds that his Tanooki suit encouraged the wearing of furs. It was a widely criticised move, as it disregarded the sheer fantasy of obtaining the suit from a...
News Hotel Transylvania Coming To Europe On Nintendo DS And 3DS
Embark on a spooktacular journey with Hotel Transyvania this Halloween
Avanquest Software Publishing has today announced the release of Hotel Transylvania for the Nintendo DS and Nintendo 3DS, with a release date of October 26th 2012 for DS and November 9th on 3DS across Europe. The game is being released to tie in with Sony Pictures Animation’s...
Review Pokémon Black and White 2 (DS)
Pokémon used Sequel! It’s super effective!
It's fitting that the franchise typically relied upon to sell Nintendo handhelds is also the swansong that bids farewell to the mighty Nintendo DS. The enormously popular Pokémon series graces the highest-selling handheld console of all time for one last hurrah and the result is nothing short of...
Review Learn With Pokémon: Typing Adventure (DS)
SEMI-COLON COMMA WOOBAT
It would be very easy to dismiss Learn With Pokémon Typing Adventure as ‘just another Pokémon spin-off’, or even worse, an ‘edutainment game’. Yet in fact, the title conceals a rather addictive addition to the Pokémon franchise, bundled with a nifty Bluetooth keyboard and stand. As with most Pokémon spin-offs,...
News Pokémon Black and White 2 Designed for Dedicated Trainers
"Let’s open up the complexity of Pokémon for people who want it."
The Pokémon series is one of the most serious in gaming, with world championships and resources for Trainers that are reserved for the most dedicated and skilled. One trend with the most experienced players is to dig down into the games and understand the hidden stat values for...
News 999: Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors Gets A Reprint
With new cover art to boot!
To celebrate the newest installment in the Zero Escape series, Zero Escape: Virtue's Last Reward, Aksys Games is reprinting 999: Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors with redesigned cover art. Ben Bateman, who served as an editor on the game, explains the last minute change. For “Zero Escape” we wanted to create a...
Feature Diamonds in the Rough - Dementium: The Ward
Worth a scare
Whenever we look back at a console’s lifespan, the first thing we nearly always do is remember the good stuff. We remember the Marios, the Zeldas, the hordes of Pokémon, and maybe even the odd Kirby game depending on your level of pink puff-ball persuasion. But we’re often so caught up in remembering what’s great that we very...
News Ever Wonder Why Pokémon Black And White 2 Isn't On The 3DS?
It's all about the numbers, baby
When you're trying to sell as many units as possible of your latest console, you might assume that its simply best practice to ensure that all your strongest games are released for that system. Common sense, right? Not quite. Take Pokémon Black And White 2, for example. It's coming out on the Nintendo DS and not...
News More Playable Titles Announced for EB Games Expo Sydney 2012
Pokemon Black & White 2 playable, special appearances announced
The team at EB Games Australia has announced the next string of playable games and presentations that can be experienced at its October expo in Sydney. We can't help but feel the event still needs a bit of Wii U in there, however, as only Pokemon Black 2 and White 2 has been confirmed...
News Mythical Pokémon Genesect to be Distributed to Black & White 2 Early Birds
Worth it for the Techno Blast move
Pokémaniacs all around the world now have only a month to wait until Pokémon Black & White 2 hits stores in North America and Europe, as well as some AR zapping fun with Pokémon Dream Radar on the same date. Nintendo is upping the ante further to encourage early adopters of the DS sequel, through a Wi-Fi...
News Diamond Trust of London Now Available to Buy
Limited numbers, so don't wait too long
Diamond Trust of London, which is actually called Jason Rohrer with Music by Tom Bailey: Diamond Trust of London, is notable as the first successfully player-funded DS title. As we reported back in May, Diamond Trust of London hit its Kickstarter funding target, meaning that game designer Jason Rohrer was able...
