ZakTDuck

If they add Game Boy Printer support I might be interested.

If there was one character from the Namcoverse that would be a perfect fit for Smash, it'd be Taizo "Dig Dug" Hori.

Woah, I wasn't expecting this. Thanks guys!

@26: Nintendo and Toho should do some 3D short films together to expand on that idea.

Ah well, if I'm interested in getting this tomorrow I'll either have to get a Channel ferry or wait until someone starts selling UK copies that "missed the recall" on Ebay.

At the preview event in Manchester last weekend the three release games that impressed me the most were Pilot Wings, Ridge Racer and Super Monkey Ball, so those will be my pre-order three. Of the other titles shown, Ocarina of Time impressed me the most, I have no interest whatsoever in beat-em-ups, and Kid Icarus Uprising was a major disappointment due to being forced to play with a stylus right handed when I'm a lefty.

@madgear, Only sort of. It's a new company who have one of the original Mastertronic founders, Frank Herman, as part of their team. He bought the rights back to the Mastertronic name from Sega. How did Sega get the name? Back in the late 80s when Virgin merged with Mastertronic, they'd secured a deal to become Sega's distributor in the UK and Europe. Virgin Mastertronic did so well that Sega acquired them, spun-off Virgin's publishing arm as a different company and appointed Herman as deputy MD of Sega Europe.

Nintendo's missed a trick here, why aren't there Unown instead of letters on the keyboard?

More Jason Rohrer stuff can only be a good thing considering Primrose worked out pretty well on the DSi.

@Ickaser: Upper one is a nuke which empties the board completely and awards bonus points for doing so.
Left one slows down time for a bit, giving you slightly more thinking time to put down your wedges.
Right one doubles any points you get for a bit.
They're awarded by getting all wedges of the same colour in that location and usable by tapping their icons. The three without powerups just award extra lives when you do that, but you'll definitely need those.
Although you can't stack multiple of the same powerup, you can use the three powerups in combination with each other. Slowing time followed swiftly by double points and then the nuke will rack up the points with ease.

Why did it have to be Waitrose? I'd be more inclined to "shell" out if it was one of the big four supermarkets, instead I've got to do a 30 mile round trip. No ta. Knowing Waitrose those eggs won't be a "poultry" sum either.

Another vote for Balloon Kid, that game was pretty awesome. I'd be very interested to see how they pull off multiplayer for that and other games, perhaps through some local wi-fi based gamelink emulation.

Well if Nintendo are going to be selfish like that, I won't show them my take on the timeline document

There was a Nokia ad that ran on bus shelters a few years back that was more or less a giant touch screen, Nintendo could do something similar with a parallax filter screen showing in-game footage.

As for print media, posters and magazines, why not have full colour holograms.

Might need to look at Pocket Pack Strategy Games, I'm a sucker for Nine Men's Morris especially if the 1player mode has a half decent computer player. I will however wait for a review first.

Will it take a Master System Converter?

I loved Descent and Descent 2 back in the day, this just made my day one purchase list.

If they provide a method to allow a one time DSiWare transfer of my current shop purchases I'll consider buying it. The argument that the accounts can't be linked in such a way feels untrue considering my DSi and Wii are tied to my Club Nintendo account and I can claim stars for those shop channel purchases. I'd rather not have to resort to buying those 20 games I got a second time.

This is currently breaking my brain, and I mean that in a good way.

Here's some in order of likeliness:

Mario Galaxy 2 will get dated for a pre-E3 release, and the New Zelda game will get dated for November and be playable at E3.

There won't be a teaser for either the DS2 or WiiHD, the former due to the DSiXL not yet being out in Europe and the latter due to it not existing yet.

Wii Firmware 5.0 and DSi Firmware 2.0. Wii is mostly be prepwork changes to allow Vitality Sensor to work. Dsi adds support to play your games off an SD Card and and update to the DSi Browser giving Flash support. Both firmware updates will also require a Shop Channel update.

The Shop Channel updates will also allow you to pool your Wii/Dsi points together if you've got them tied to the same Club Nintendo account.

This is certainly crying out for a DS or Wiiware remake/re-release. The GBA version came with literally hundreds of user created levels that had been uploaded to SegaNet/Dreamarena from the Dreamcast original. If they could pull the same trick over Nintendo Wifi and allow new levels to be shared with the rest of the world without (or even limited) restrictions, you've got a hit on your hands.

For S&K, does the "lock-on" work with having the games on the SD card or does it rely on them being in main memory?

If I recall correctly Sonic 3 was originally released with a number of zones missing to meet the release deadline, but evidence of the cut was for some reason left behind. Flying Battery, Sandopolis and Mushroom Valley all appeared in the Sonic 3 level select screen but were only "accessible" (in a Sonic 2 Hidden Palace garbled graphics kinda way) with a Game Genie or Pro Action Replay. With that in mind you could say Sonic 3 locked on to S&K is the true Sonic 3.

No. Just no. What's next - Mario as an exclusive character on the Wii version of Sonic 4?

Probably one of the first console FPS games, but certainly not the first FPS. That title would probably be awarded to Maze War on the Imlac PDS-1 which was around in 1974.

Great review, shame the rumour about linking multiple 4 player adaptors wasn't true tho.

They should but these days Blue Planet Software (formerly Bullet Proof Software) and its child company The Tetris Company are currently only interested in that cash cow.

@StarBoy91 Yeah, that's the easiest way to identify your friends/rivals/prey (delete as appropriate) in the game, and to rub their noses in it when you waste them!

Now there's a blast from the past, and one of my all time favourite games on any system at that.

Faceball 2000 was a portable remake and enhancement of an Atari ST first person shooter released a few years earlier called Midi Maze. That itself was fairly unique in utilising the built-in midi ports on the ST into a rudimentary token ring network, allowing up to 16 STs to be linked together for some hot deathmatch action. It also means that Midi Maze is for all intents and purposes the granddaddy of all multiplayer shooters, and the LAN party scene.

FB2K expanded on Midi Maze by improving on the enemy Smiloid AI for the single player Arena mode, but also throwing into the mix a fully fledged Cyberscape campaign mode. In Cyberscape your HAPPYFACE (which according to the manual is short for Holographically Assisted Physical Pattern Yielded For Active Computerized Embarkation) had to wander and shoot through over 70 levels to "face off" against the Master Smiloid. To help you through those levels there were various bonus items such as autofire, speed boosters, shields, plasters (for extra health) and extra lives, and believe me once you get through the first 20 or so levels you're going to need them.

The single player Cyberscape mode itself was worth the money at the time, but it's with the Arena mode where things get interesting. The box and the manual says that up to four players could battle it out in Arena, but that's not exactly true. With enough Game Boys, copies of the game, multiple four player adaptors and a lot of patience, you could actually get up to 16 players fighting it out just like you could do with its ST big brother. Xanth actually had a custom adaptor purely for this purpose as the daisychained 4PAs tended to hinder the frame rate, although 8 player mode was still quite playable. Even in this day and age, outside of PC gaming it's almost unheard of to get 16 players in a single game.

Here's a vid of one of the first few Cyberscape levels, and one of the smaller Arena stages in single player mode
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yqldFxRuxQQ
Zak Canard says: Have A Nice Day!

Have to agree that Link must remain a silent protagonist. As a compromise you would have thought Shiggy should let Martinet be the voice of Tingle, or would that be seen as some sort of punishment?

That's a thing of beauty.

My cousin's been thinking about getting a Wii, and I might treat the kid brother and my sister in law to the limited edition black one for Chrimble. Some work colleagues might be getting one as well, and no doubt I can spin this ambassador programme to them as some sort of "friend referral" system since they'll get some points out of it. Result! I'm potentially 5 up with very little effort by the end of the year.

This is a different Frobot to the one I'd heard of and played, which was Kyle Gray's Experimental Gameplay shooter.

Hang about, the more I look at those screenshots the more I see Trolls. In fact I'd go as far as saying that Oscar in Toyland is Trolls but with their own non-licensed character stuck on there. Compare screenshot 8 with this one taken from Trolls on the amiga

I played the first game on the Amiga getting on for 16 years ago. Here's what I can remember for those that never had the chance.

The original game had Oscar trapped in a cinema, and to escape from it you had to visit in any order you want the 7 movie themed levels (cartoon, jurassic, war, horror, western, sci-fi and gameshow (yeah I don't get that one either)). Each level was split into a number of "acts" that could only be completed once a set number of gold oscar trophies (hence the name) had been collected and the clapperboard found. Each level's theme not only applied to the enemies, but to Oscar's appearance. For instance the war level put Oscar in a green combat jumpsuit and tin helmet, horror had him dressed as a vampire, and so on.

Your primary method of attack like most platformers at the time was simply jumping on their heads. Some however couldn't be got rid of like that, so you needed to find a Yo-Yo hidden in one of the many film cannisters littering each act. Other powerups and powerdowns included the usual stuff such as trainers (speed and jump higher) ball and chain (slow down, jump lower), invisibility, clock (frozen enemies). Perhaps the oddest though were the Game Gear (caused all the colours washed out) and the Game Boy (similar but everything goes green).

There were bonus stages at the end of each level, but was also available between each act if all the BONUS letters were found. This was more or less a timed stage filled with There was also a much harder "bogus" stage which was essentially the same but with a bigger reward on collecting specific items from the bonus stage, but you only got that if you collected the G rather than the N.

I enjoyed Oscar at the time but compared to other platformers out on the Amiga such as Zool it felt like it was lacking just that little bit of magic. I guess it also didn't help that it was more or less a graphic swap on Trolls, a game of theirs they released a few months earlier.

Virtual Playground appear to be the same software house, but under a new name as these days they specialise in business simulation/tycoon games. It'd be interesting to see how well they return to their roots. Keeping an eye on this one.

Seems like a laugh, here's my first.
[flipnote:943F9220AA3A37ED:3A37ED_090A95897E047_000]

I loved this game when it first came out, can't wait for Another Code R to make its way to Europe in a few months time.

Looks like Skidmarks on the Amiga, but without the motorized cows pulling caravans. Heck even Skidmarks had 8 player "online" support of a fashion and that's getting on for 15+ years ago! Sure that required two Amigas connected via a modem, but it was cracking fun if/when you could pull it off.

Not a bad game, just uncomfortable to play. As the game is played with the ds on its side like a book, if you're a left hander like myself you'll end up either having to play right handed or obscure the other screen when you're using the stylus. Bad form Nintendo, the lack of a flip option for us lefties alienates a good 10%+ of the audience you're potentially aiming at.