IanUniacke

Gee have a QQ. If Sega "really" continue to make bad sonic games why do they continue to sell in the millions? Obviously Sega is doing something right, and although I think there are ups and downs (Sonic Adventure 2 was just about as perfect as 3d platforming gets) they overall all fantastic games. So what if they add new characters are you afraid that some Playstation fan boy is going to call you childish for playing? Tell them to grow up. At the end of the day ask yourself "am I enjoying this game?" If you are, then who cares about what some lame contingent of so called hard core gamers thinks, or that they spin some silly rhetoric about the "Sonic Cycle" ooooh...no you're still wrong, Sonic games are good.

Pokemon is an awesome game. I can't wait for the next one.

@cinemax: aha! You just gave me the answer to why some music was cutting out in one of my songs.

Can't wait for the rock edition. I have wanted to make more rock themed tracks since I first got Rytmik but found it problematic. Will we be able to make the likes of classic Doom style songs with the rock version?

To anyone who thinks 800 points is too much, take it from me you will definitely get your moneys worth out of this software. So far I have created over 10 full songs using it...in lots of different styles.

The shameless plug part of my comment: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uZqpVRwN_aE

"I wouldn't say that it's female per se but it's a feminine figure"

Birdo in Skyward Sword confirmed!

Although I think it might be someone like Navi.

Pinball Pulse craps on this game in every conceivable way. This game is dull to the extreme and I'm a huge fan of pinball games. There are no missions, no goals, no multi ball. It's just boring.

I think this is a great result for Nintendo, the larger software industry, and also indirectly consumers.

The homebrew argument is lame for several reasons, some of which are noted by others above:

1) There is nothing stopping you using other devices for your indie game
2) Breaking the system for homebrew or otherwise is an illegal act
3) The vast majority of users will not be using the device for homebrew and of those that are a significant portion of them will also use the device for piracy.

Also remember, the ruling does not stop you from hacking your own ds. You can still pull it apart and rewire it at your will. What it does stop is the mass market creation and distribution of devices that anyone can use to bypass the security of the system.

@Alphack3r: (just because you were one of the last commenters in a long line of comments)

No, it will not stop everyone from pirating. However it "does" stop big companies exploiting the ds market and selling them a turnkey solution to stealing games. This "will" stop the vast majority of piracy on the ds. I'm talking your mom and pop family who pirate every game that their child wants for the ds. If, as people like to fantasize, the majority of piracy comes from "hardcore" gamers than why was the biggest line of games hit by piracy the "Imagine" series from Ubisoft? (eg Imagine Babies) This is proof in positive (imho) that the vast majority of people pirating games are your casual market moms, dads and children.

@Mickeymac: You are right on the money. This is not about stopping people from legitimately using the products they bought. It is about stopping companies like those that make the R4, from exploiting the market and taking legitimate money from legitimate customers that should have gone to legitimate software developers. If an average family has 3 to 4 ds's than the amount of money that the R4 manufacturers are making from that family is the equivalent of about 8 to 10 games. This is a massive cost to developers.

Also as someone else mentioned above, if the game is a crappy game not worth the money than why are you downloading it?

Well anyway that's enough ranting from me.

This is an incredible achievement.

If there is no ganon, it is NOT a legend of zelda game.

also as per the timeline it is quite simple:

LoZ -> Mario -> Metroid

Or alternatively you could mimic the lame writing of some of the characters in the game

"I like bugs. They are so pretty."

"My daddy says I'm the smartest pokemon trainer. Want to study with me?"

Or some other cheesey dialog..

To the person asking how this applies to pokemon...

P1: "I challenge you...to an almighty..." lips out of sync "...battle for the ages..."

P2: "No...it is you who shall be punished!"

P1: "Banzaaaaaaaaiiii!!!!"

No "Jump The Shark" tagline? Oh well too obvious anyway

It's great that Nintendo are being humble and are not acting as though they are convinced this will be a success. It's a great way to enjoy continued success.

However, anyone who thinks this will "not" be the biggest electronic device of the 21st century so far, is deluding themselves. I doubt they even need to market something like this. Once the first million fan-boys buy one and start showing it to their friends and families the uptake on this device will be unheard of.

@RyuZebian: chirp chirp of crickets

I'd love to see more game and watch on dsiware. The original Donkey Kong game and watch was great and I'd love to play some that I never got a chance to like the Zelda game.

This game is ok, but I would say it's not really that great at being "golf" in a sense. Golf, especially minigolf which is what this game seems to be aiming towards, to me is about trying to take advantage of the physics of the situation to aim for holes in one, or at least a hole in 2 or 3. The two points that I think this game fails at in this regard is:

1) Many holes are clearly designed to take you many shots to complete....I'd be extremely impressed to see someone getting a hole in one on those courses, if it's at all possible.

2) The physics is a bit sloppy. No point aiming up shots carefully to bounce around the course because...well it's just not going to bounce how you'd expect it to.

Other than this though the game is a recommended from me for some mindless fun but I'd rate it more about 7/10.

I "do" love tower defense games but I still can't recommend this game. Quite frankly it's sloppy. The interface I find frustrating because you can easily place a tower instead of upgrading. The worst part is the difficulty. This is not just a "challenge". Some levels you will be convinced that the level is impossible. And that's on the "easy" setting.

Also there is no real strategy to the game due to it's ridiculous speed and attempt at making the game active rather than proactive. It's more throwing plans and then see what sticks. And if you accidentally click the wrong spot...too bad game over.

This game looks absolutely incredible. I agree with Prosody. This game just became a "must have" for me.

I think this has about a 50% chance of being correct given a few facts:

• Satoru talked about 3d video phone
• They have talked about connectivity "a lot"
• They talked about the problems with wifi working well in japan but the rest of the world not being densely populated enough
  It's my experience that nintendo likes to drop very subtle hints into what they say, and I believe it's very carefully calculated. Therefore I'd give this rumor a high degree of probability.

Also it would be absolutely awesome if my ds was also my phone.

Destructible environments? Sounds pretty awesome.

@ejamer: Actually I think that some of the best shooters have been activision shooters (at least if you go by popularity) eg CoD: Reflex edition.

That looks great. I hope it comes to Australia.

I would have to say if anything this game is rated too highly. I downloaded this and it's very shallow and quite boring.

I don't think Iwata is saying that third parties need to shape up or ship out. I think he is talking in general against the negative attitude the industry has towards success which is that failure is always someone elses fault. Instead of making excuses, whatever they may be, try to improve your product.

I think that the problem with AAA games is more that their previous success (2008/2009) was more a result of the buoyant economy rather than the other way around. Recent sales may be seen as a dropping off of sales but I see it more as a correction of previously overinflated sales. Therefore I see it as entirely possible that you can still get big sales if you make a good product. Just look at NSMB Wii or MW 2.

I had no idea this podcast was here till I read the audacity tutorial. Glad to find a good new source of game and game related music.

Good guide. Audacity is a great program, especially great that it's free! I hope to hear lots more Rytmik and Korg music

By the way you can check out some Rytmik songs I wrote on youtube, search for Ian Uniacke.

I got this game because it seemed like it could be interesting but I must warn people it is very shallow and imo not worth the purchase. You end up feeling like everything in the game is just a chore and there is no strategy at all (sure I'm not expecting starcraft level of strategy but at least some bare minimum thinking).

Even for the type of game this is, this game is incredibly shallow. You can play the game for 10 minutes and experience everything you will ever experience in the game. The rest of the gameplay seems to hinge around repetition and unlocking different colors of the same flowers through more repetition. I would highly recommend that anyone over the age of 5 avoid this game, even if you feel you "might" enjoy it like I thought before I bought it.

That charger looks awesome and I could use a second charger so I think I must buy one of those.

Well he does have a good point...the PS3 solution is better value because you get some cool shades B)

PS I'm being sarcastic in case you didn't notice.

@edofthe209: It's because this technology only works from close up right in front of it. It wouldn't work as a tv because tv's usually have multiple viewers at multiple points in the room.

Man that trailer is so good and it's awesome to see RE going back to its roots (style-wise at least). RE5 was a huge disappointment for me...this looks so much more like the RE I've come to know and love.

I love the end of the trailer...it's so suspenseful.."You're already...". Already what??? OMG I have to know

@slapshot82: I think you're wrong about playstation 1. A quick look at wikipedia (for want of a more authoritative source) suggests that the PS1 sold over 100 million hardware units, whereby the nintendo 64 only sold approximately 30 million.

Also I do not believe that the PSP has been profitable for Sony.

As people like to say at vgchartz....

Nintendo is d0med!!!!

I can't say I agree with this review. I mean, I would give it an 8/10 for depth of content, but the controls are terrible. I feel like most of the time I'm struggling more against the controls than the game, which is the exact opposite of what you want from a dsi game. Touch controls are unplayable and button controls work to an extent but still feel clumsy.

Also the different weapons in the game seem mostly indistinguishable. Why have multiple weapons when they all equate to basically hit the shoulder button to blow up one of the planes?

@cinemaxgames: ooh nice I shall have to brush up my skilz

Good luck taking your ps3 and xbox360 on the train.

I have wanted an app like this on a hand held for a long time and this ones really great. I agree with r0mer0's points about the improvements to be made but hopefully we'll see a Rytmik 2 with even more power. One thing that I like about this is that it's fairly easy for someone with no experience to make a song, other than grasping the basic concept of loops. I want to make a few songs and I'll record them and put them online and link it here. I'd love if anyone else does songs to hear those too.

@James: I am still a little confused about the speed of samples...one of my songs changes speed half way through. If you have time to offer some help, how do you change the speed of a clip? Also how do you do panning? Thanks in advance.

@Boman: I have been at 2nd place on some of the leaderboards, usually can hold onto around 4th place on red. Also I haven't played many bullet hell shooters before, I think you get high scores by understanding one important factor.

One thing that I think people are missing about this game that is really important is that when you destroy bullets they become metal cubes that go towards your ship and power up your special attack. That means you can destroy more bullets and get more power and you kind of want to set up a feedback system (hence the name Metal Torrent). The idea of this game (to me) is not so much about avoiding bullets as it is about destroying them and keeping the screen clear. This can bring your max chain up to around 2000 cubes which is crucial for high scores. Also you want as many total cubes as possible for that other end of game bonus.

Here is where the challenge comes in...the more you blow up bullets, the more exposed you are to dying. The pros want to keep their energy as close to the edge as is safe so that they can keep getting more cubes without getting hit while they're exposed.

That's why random versus pattern is so important. If you know what's coming up you can push yourself to the edge more at certain points (eg "oh the next guys don't fire much bullets so I can restore my energy then"). In random you must play more conservatively because going into certain enemies with no energy can mean certain doom.

Where blue is different to red is primarily the way in which you destroy bullets. Red you can just smart bomb them away, in a radius around the ship. In blue, holding down the special weapon creates a force field that slows down bullets near by. You will need to kill an enemy using the laser beam and then any bullets within the force field are destroyed. Also any bullets fired by the enemy you killed with the laser will be destroyed. This technique is crucial to making it through the blue stage as you will find it incredibly difficult to dodge all bullets. Keep in mind I have not yet cleared all 8 phases in blue (my best is to reach the 8th phase).

Got this on Friday. This app works really great. I wish I had more skills with this type of music production but hopefully that's what I'll build up over time. I have found the app extremely easy to understand, a difficult task considering the confusingness of many similar apps in the past.

I have been playing this game all weekend (in aus known as Metal Torrent). I think you are definitely missing the point.

Spoilers follow.

Try to think of the bullets not so much as damage, but as potential power for your special weapon. The point of the game is to expose yourself to being killed in order to absorb as much of the enemy bullets as possible. Also the more power you absorb the more points you are scoring. However, as you use your special weapon to absorb the points/power you are exposing yourself to be killed. Also if you are after a challenging bullet dodging game then you need to play the blue mode. In the red mode whenever you are hit your special weapon kicks in (if there's enough power) and saves you. Therefore if you are not going for a high score and not using your special weapon, then you "are" invulnerable. On blue mode this is not so. You will not be able to complete blue mode without a thorough understanding of the game mechanics. As of last time I looked on the leader board it seems that as yet (at least in the region covered by my leader board) no one has completed the game on blue mode, so it's definitely a challenge.

Well any way I'll let other people make up their mind.

I have been playing this game over the weekend and it is fantastic. At first you may be disappointed as I was but that was just because I misunderstood the game. I don't want to spoil anything for anyone but lets just say they break the mold a little with this one. Also the online leader boards really make this game fantastic.

@WaveBoy: Yes. You are the only one. Everyone else in the world, all 6 billion+ have a deep emotional connection to dsiware and treat it like their first born child.

I have a wild theory it has something to do with using 3d display to represent 4 dimension (ala time travel) in the same way you can represent 3d on a 2d screen.

Glad to see others agree with me. This is easily the best game on dsiware imho. I was even looking at a little scrunched up foil from an easter egg and thinking it was an ice ball and I would have to travel over and pick it up. Maybe I've been playing too much.

In more detail:

I spent half the weekend playing this and I feel like I'm only getting started. I find myself keep being drawn back inexorably to play this game. Ok I'll get the negative out of the way first, it's really rough around the edges. The translation looks like it was done by someone who failed English (lots of spelling and grammar errors ) and the game doesn't guide you as much as it should in some areas, leaving you wondering what some features do and how you're supposed to achieve some goals. Also the load times seem a little bit unneccesary.

That being said this game has a lot of depth and a good mixture of humour with sci-fi in the story niblets. You get to read a little bit of story while waiting for the game to load and this could be a hint about a certain feature of the game (eg what does such and such an upgrade do), or it could be adding to the mythos of the game. Bad english aside they are usually quite interesting and make the poor load times at least bareable.

The gameplay is your standard arkanoid style fare, which is to say, quite fun on its own. There are some inventive power ups some that make you feel super powerful, while in other levels the challenge will be more grueling. The strength is in the customisable balls and weapons. As you get further through you will find yourself kitting out your "spaceship" to overcome specific challenges.

Anyway if I write too much in a comment I wouldn't want to take away from the person who ends up reviewing this game. Totally worth the 500 points.

Here is a quick one line review:

This game = A win!

This game is a blast. Me and the wife have played it probably the most out of the game and watch games so far.

While this one is very easy (I clocked it first time) I still find it incredibly fun.

This one is very hardcore. I struggled to get to 100 points even. Quite a fun distraction.

I haven't tried this yet but looks good. I agree with the comments about the photo apps I never realised I wanted a handheld with a camera built in till I saw how fun some of the apps can be. Photo Dojo is a blast. This looks to be nearly as hilarious.

this is hilarious, even if the gameplay is short lived it's so much fun it's worth the 500 points. (or is it 200 can't remember)

I played this game on the weekend. It is not too bad. Although it will depend a lot on what your expectations are.

It is a lot like Harvest Moon, insomuch as it is a hybrid rpg/simulation. Also it has elements of Puzzle Quest/Puzzle Pirates, insomuch as you have to do little puzzle/mini games to achieve certain things such as leveling your pet or generating food for your park.

It's one of the more enjoyable 800 point games I've played and I would recommend it.

This is my favourite game on dsiware so far. I only wish there was more of it but it's still great value for it's price.