SwerdMurd

@Zaphod - there was also Prodigy and Compuserve I think....I remember those being the original 3 and all debuting around the same time.

@Lu - Shantae and Aura-Aura, maybe...but you'd prob be wise to pass on Zenonia. For all the strangely positive press it's gotten, it's like they took Secret of Mana, Zelda, and a dungeon crawler, and only used the worst aspects of all 3. Not a great way to spend time, imo...

maybe they'll add a combat system!

i played the original From The Abyss and it honestly felt a lot like this review sounded....Just pure lowest-common-denominator dungeon crawl.

eeew. graphics are gross.

Day one. Daaay one.

One of my favorite things about Nintendo consoles is Shin'en support

Dragon's Dogma was my biggest @_@.

Crazy to see how Western-influenced gaming is these days....and the Japanese guys seem to be picking out/refining my favorite parts of Western-styled games. Excited for the next couple years

oh no...no more monster hunter. Looks like my mindless online hack/slash/endless loot-grinding isn't gonna be reskinned. What will I dooooo!?!?!?

Yikes. That could be the single most brutal anything-Ware review I've ever read....

And what's worse--it doesn't seem hyperbolic. The game just sounds like an absolute travesty.

Just some advice--play the original version of La Mulana. Then tell me you want that steaming vomit-roll unleashed on the general public, any amount of graphical upgrade withstanding. I think people assume because the developer also barely touched Cave Story that it plays similarly...it doesn't. It's a screen-by-screen, slow attacking mess of an obtuse game that, even in the MSX days it tries so faithfully to replicate, would've been avoided like the plague it is.

La Mulana sucks.

sounds exactly like i expected.

@Tasuki - don't recommend the PS1 version of FF3 to someone....that's like recommending the PS1 version of Chrono Trigger. Ruined sound effects, slightly altered music, and load times all over the place.

And yeah....tracking down old SNES games is nigh-useless for non-collectors these days. I've taken immaculate care of my NES games and that, combined with luck, resulted in NES and SNES games with still-functioning save batteries. Buying games from that era now, used, seems like a horribly low-success-rate gamble.

"The external camera can be used to create stop-motion pieces and users can experimenting with rotoscoping techniques" - first sentence, third paragraph.

Come on Trevor...

"Absolute Baseball manages to take a great sport and turn it into a really long and uninteresting..."

Sounds like the most realistic baseball sim ever to me. The only sport that's slower to watch than Golf is Baseball. A turn-based RPG is the only format that adequately simulates the constant mind-numbing downtime of the baseball experience.

I liked Pilotwings....I just wish there would've been a little more. The core gameplay was fun, but I found it just a little too easy.

Overall I'd have to say that Monkeyball and Shadow Wars are probably tied for my favorite launch games...Monkeyball's 3D is just insane. SF4 is almost good....There's just no good method of control (Slidepad is too inexact to perform any of the moves and D-pad is too clicky and short-throwed to pull them off repeatedly) and the touch buttons kind of mask the problem and remove a lot of the skill needed to do well. Overall I'd say the button layout is the main culprit there...and online lag. Still a fun game though...

Kinda lucked out that I bought 4 of the 5 must-owns before these reviews came out!

is trollboarder that game where you write in the gamefaqs forums?

looks ! right up my alley design-wise

@y2 - man I was gonna make a Gameloft's-gonna-rip-this-IP-off-in-a-matter-of-weeks joke but you beat me to it

almost exactly what i expected of this game.....one i'll check out once it's bargain bin time

@Epic - apparently someone didn't read the Shadow Wars review

what a weird arcade gane

Captain America cracks me up. Over-the-top-to-the-point-of-being-comical Patriotism ftw

I knew this one would get high ratings. I saw a few gameplay vids really early on and it looked remarkably solid--good to know my only blind launch buy is gonna pan out!

despite the fact that i like digital distribution, he's still a douche

rofl rarely do i see screenshots that actually make me laugh. Uuuuuugly!

This series makes me wish I didn't own a Nintendo console.

lack of multiplayer in the nintendo version of a game!? what!?!?!?!?

typical nintendo. can't say i'm surprised.

but Gameloft makes amazing, original games!!!! Why on earth would a Gameloft game get a middle-of-the-road review? Their amazing work such as Clone of Existing Game, Uninspiring Sports Franchise Game, and IP We Purchased, Made Worse, And Re-released are all among some of mankind's finest, most influential work.

god that boxart.....i need to stand with one hand in a diagonal karate-chop action pose way more often

given that I don't really have too much love for the source material in the first place (no nostalgia glasses) I can safely pass on this one

good luck guys! Too bad the question is so difficult

looks a lot cleaner than ridge racer...and kinda has a burnout vibe. interesting....i might pick it up if/when it gets cheap (unless Mario Kart comes out before that happens)

tat-su-ma-ki sen-pu-kya-ku

...wot? I wanna see this in action.

Red Steel was a woefully poor-controlling mess that instantly ruined the Wii for 2 of my friends.

Still I can't help but agree that they aren't taking a lot of risks with the Launch Lineup. In addition to Steel Diver not looking like much, I don't see too much ground being broken.

dammit nintendo stop being so obtuse...Seriously Steam has retail-release-this-year games that occaisionally go on sale for 5 bucks. 5 dollars for gameboy games (as I'm sure will be the case) is a complete and total insult--stop pretending your products are magically worth so much more just because they appear on your consoles.

I'd like to see a game with my tech demo

PS - Monkey Target wasn't nearly as great as people like to pretend it was....no idea why it's gotten the "zomg easily best minigame ever" award so frequently

yet another example of steve's overhyped-ness. I guess being the first person noticed helps grow you a fanbase...but he's clearly the worst.

Team Hank forever.

aww...doesn't quite seem the way I expected, but not enough to cancel my preorder over. Here's to 80 solid levels and 2 actually-fleshed-out minigames (50 on Banana Blitz was nice....but they were so insanely shallow!)

i was expecting a port of the GBA game....a new game is much better news! (esp. since the GBA game kinda sucked...didn't hook me the same way the NES version did)

wow totally unexpected...I'll be pickin this up

overhauled battle system making it more remeniscent of the recent Ys series games?

...A man can dream, can't he?

luke17 wins the war.

what a genuinely kick-talking point article. Excellent points made!

Personally I'm on board with Donny McMustard - console-control games are not to be played on i-devices or touch-screen only devices. If there were dedicated, high-paid first party developers, maybe some better touch-only game concepts would've come out, but you've got low budget studios trying to copycat bigger-budget stuff made on consoles that utilize button or mouse/keys control. As my pages of iPhone games I will never touch again indicate, this is not a good thing. That said--I can think of some absolutely stellar game ideas (particular in the active time RPG genre) that would kill with a touch-screen like the iPhone's, but sadly I'm a demographic of one and I got bored with Angry Birds in minutes.

Who is buying these? I guess they're ordinary-war-setting enough to convince the super-casual Wiiware browsers to pay for the game unresearched...can't see who, after doing any investigation, could think either of these two experiments even counted as salable games.

/groan at plants vs zombies

create bunch of units on squares.
upgrade every unit in squares.
put pumpkins around every unit in squares.
put little flaming vestibule at the end of each line of squares.
watch the game play itself.
watch your 800 wii points aflame along with your taste in games.

first game i'm buying--same thing i did with Wii actually. Can't wait to see what they do minigame wise this time around--hoping for more quality and a bit less quantity than last time around!

I agree with the sentiments about the much easier track-driven level design though...hopefully those shots were mostly early-on levels

those textures are muuuuuuh-ddy! This will not be the "check out this awesome 3D effect, new skeptical friends!" game for me.

max 3d forever, max volume, and i'll be sitting in a chair with a fan on full blast blowing into my face for maximum dramatic emphasis. I might hire a really weak guy to occasionally punch me in the stomach when I get hurt in-game.

that last line made me smile...again