Fossil Fighter: Frontier

The Fossil Fighters series is one of Nintendo’s much more niche franchises. Bearing some passing resemblance to the popular Pokémon series; the games are centered around exploring environments in search of buried fossils, then reviving the fossils and having the “Vivosaurs” duke it out with other fossil fighters’ Vivosaurs. Sound familiar? All parallels aside, the series has certainly established its own identity and stands as an enjoyable gameplay experience, though it’s never quite been able to escape the shadow of its more well known counterpart.

It’s been relatively under the radar, but there’s a new entry in the series - Fossil Fighters: Frontier - due out for a North American release in just a few short days on 20th March (sadly, no update on Europe, yet). One of the important new features of Fossil Fighters: Frontier is the upgradable Bone Buggy, a drivable vehicle that’ll allow players to cover more ground than ever before in the endless quest to find stronger, better dinosaur bones for rejuvenation. Dig sites will be more dynamic than ever before, with some offering speed or puzzle challenges that will tempt players with rare and more valuable fossils. Multiplayer will be a prominent feature with local games featuring both co-op and battle modes, and an online mode will have 1-on-1 battles and leaderboards updated monthly. Even Streetpass will feature, allowing players to battle each other’s teams to train their Vivosaurs further.

Fossil Fighters: Frontier sounds like a surprisingly awesome game, it makes one wonder why it's received so little attention. Here’s some footage from last year’s E3 with an amusingly corny song to accompany it:

Will you be picking this up? Is this series finally ready to step into the limelight? Share your thoughts in the comments below.