Portugal probably doesn't spring to mind as a hotbed of video game development, but the strangely named GameInvest is based in beautiful Lisbon and its first title, Sarah's Emergency Room, "revives the time management genre with fun, challenging levels and a frenetic pace with simulation management skills."
The game is being developed for the Nintendo DS, Wii, PlayStation Network, Xbox Live Arcade and PC platforms and allows you to assume the role of a graduate nursing student named Sarah as she moves from California to manage a busy emergency room in Arkansas. There "she discovers that managing an emergencyroom is a bit harder than she expected." Nothing like gender stereotyping with a female nurse who thinks life is hard. What's next, Sarah's Lunch Rush Hour where she runs coffee and waffles?
Not too long from now, at a Media and Business Summit not all that far away, LucasArts may be announcing a new game in the Star Wars Battlefrontseries. Online shopping megalith Amazon.com has added listings for Star Wars Battlefront III ... for no less than six platforms. The game is available for pre-order and has what we can only imagine is a tentative March 15, 2009 release date.
A new game in the series is hardly surprising; after all, Battlefront is the best selling Star Wars video game franchise of all time. Reports of it being in development also popped up following LucasArts' recent layoffs, though the company would not comment on it or any other unannounced titles at the time.
Amazon has Battlefront III slated for availability on PS3, 360, Wii, PS2, PSP, and DS. If this holds true, it would certainly debunk an old rumor that the game might only hit Xbox 360. Now there's the matter of a developer. With Pandemic – the studio responsible for the first two games – now owned by EA, and internal development slowing down at LucasArts, a new hope must arise. Our best guess at the moment is the rebel forces at Rebellion, the UK-based studio responsible for the generally well received Star Wars Battlefront: Renegade Squadron on PSP.
When Majesco announced last month that it would dedicate the bulk of its 2008 lineup to the Nintendo DS, we took this to mean that the company would do its part keeping store shelves stocked with casual games and cooking sims aplenty. We were unprepared, however, for the Cooking Mama evangelist to take up publishing duties for Away Shuffle Dungeon, the oddly named DS "roguelike" RPG from Mistwalker and AQ Interactive.
Offering a mix of both 2D and 3D gameplay, Away Shuffle Dungeon promises to cast players in the role of a lone hero branded with the unfortunate name, Sword, as he races to collect treasure and rescue prisoners caught in dungeons before they "reconfigure," hurting anyone left inside. The game also boasts some impressive credits, which include such luminaries as Final Fantasy sire Hironobu Sakaguchi and esteemed composer Nobuo Uematsu, as well as character designs by Sonic creator, Naoto Oshima.
Even so, we're still having a hard time getting over that title, and even now have simply begun referring to Away Shuffle Dungeon by a label more fitting its newly-named publisher. Readers, we give you Dungeon Mama.
The internet speculation switchboard lit up this weekend when a print ad for a trio of new Nintendo DS titles -- Disgaea DS, Rhapsody, and A Witch's Tale -- from NIS America in the August issue of Nintendo Power was found to show Nintendo's touchable handheld with noticeably wider screens. Some might even call these widescreens. But was this a simple Photoshop snafu, or an unintentional peek at Nintendo's E3 plot?
With Nintendo brushing aside the supposed leak as "purely rumour and speculation," we followed up with NIS America, the proverbial horse's mouth. "We placed screenshots on a DS backing to emphasize the platform, and edited them for effect," explained NISA marketing swami, Nao Zook. "These games are specifically for the current Nintendo DS, and as far as we know, there is no 'widescreen DS' in the works." She offered apologies for any confusion or elevated hopes the ad might have caused, adding, "we also agree that a widescreen DS would be really cool." We agree, almost as cool as being asked to purchase Nintendo's portable yet again ...
The DS version of The Force Unleashed tries to cram all of the light-saber-rage from the consoles into a handheld package. You'll be disappointed if you directly compare the two. I recently tried a late version of the DS game, and I didn't think enough of the system's strengths and weaknesses affected the design. The DS game gives a 3D perspective of the action on the top screen with adequate visuals, but the chunky graphics steal some of the excitement. And since the camera can't be repositioned, you'll be regularly attacked by people just off-screen. Worse, player attacks are issued by tapping on icons, causing hunting-and-pecking through battles.
Since The Force Unleashed is about going nuts with explosive superpowers, that sense of excitement got lost by scaling everything down to fit the DS. A wireless, four-player, local battle mode might make it a fun game to play with friends, but I wasn't able to test that feature. I hope the final game will grow on me after its September 16 release. But the time I had with this portable edition left me cautious.
Listen, we're excited by this week's biggest new release Civilization Revolution, but it looks to us like it's going to play pretty fast and loose with the truth. How can we tell? Well, let's take a look at the box art. It looks fine, right? Until you realize that Napoleon is towering over Genghis Khan!
Napoloean, as the less educated among you (and Firaxis) perhaps do not know, was 2-feet, 4-inches tall, so the thought of him being taller than anyone, let alone some of history's greatest leaders, is an affront to logic itself. The only thing we can imagine is that Lincoln is on his knees and Napoleon is standing on a apple crate of some sort, in which case we can only suggest that Honest Abe needs new representation.
Pokémaniacs will soon have the opportunity to find out who among them is best at the cultivation and production of pocket monsters for battle, and dare we say, delicious cuisine. This summer both Pokémon USA and Japan's The Pokémon Company will host the Pokémon Video Game Showdown 2008, which promises to pit the regions' best poké-trainers against each other in a multi-round tournament to discover once and for all who has the best poké-chops.
On August 16, 32 Pokémon aficionados from the US will make the trek to Orlando, FL to throw down against 32 of Japan's best poké-players, using the series' latest flavors, Diamond and Pearl. The contest will be divided into two different age brackets, with those trainers born on or before 1995 making up the "senior" set. And there's more than just poké-pride at stake, as the top finisher in each group will walk away with a Nintendo Wii package and a shot at a grand prize that includes a 6-day vacation for four to either NY, Honolulu, or Tokyo. However, we should tell you that interested players must first survive a qualifier round, and that registration has already closed. Even so, organizers note that additional players may be randomly selected from those in attendance at the events, so if you fancy yourself a poké-maestro, check out the dates below before you book fare on Air Pokémon.
With the recent announcement and then following super double announcement of Square-Enix's plans to bring Chrono Trigger to this week's second place finisher, our minds began to to wander like a starry-eyed, formerly monastic governess, vacationing in the hills of Austria. If Squeenix can turn a 16-bit RPG from 1995 into a soon-to-be bestseller in 2008, what other 13-year-old franchises could we breathe new life into in order to turn a tidy profit?
We immediately thought of Pogs, which swept the nation like a plague of circular cardboard locusts in the middle of the last decade -- after all, the obsession with collection hasn't waned in the minds of our nation's youngsters. Unfortunately, Archibald von Pogstein passed away last year, taking the secrets of Pog synthesis with him. We then turned our minds to music, and naturally, TLC's "Waterfalls", the official HIV and gun violence-related slow jam of 1995, came to mind. The Joystiq crew gathered to perform a breathtaking cover of the R&B classic -- unfortunately, we lost the master recordings shortly before distribution.
We eventually settled on bringing back one of the top-grossing films of 1995, Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls. Unfortunately, Mr. Carrey's reluctance to tarnish his new "serious" image by reprising his most beloved role brought the remake's production to a screeching halt. Instead, we're planning on making Ace Ventura quotes hilarious again by incessantly using them around friends and loved ones. We're sure we can find some way to parlay that into a get rich quick scheme -- aaalllllrighty then?
We would love to get excited for the upcoming video game adaptation of the sixth installment in J.K. Rowling's wildly successful series of books -- unfortunately, our ambitions of striding through Hogwarts' hallowed halls have been sullied by previous lackluster Harry Potter titles from Electronic Arts. To make sure Half Blood Prince is as faithful and entertaining as it can possibly be, we've written up a quick cheat sheet for the game's developers to inform them which elements from the source material should be included when the game hits store shelves in November.
Epic wizard duels -- Awesome.
Magical puzzles -- Entertaining.
Exciting quidditch matches -- Compelling, if handled properly.
Collecting "Bertie Bott's Every Flavor Beans", "Chocolate Frogs", "Fizzing Whizbees", or any other form of magical confection -- About as enjoyable as catching a faceful of Avada Kedavra.
Nineteen-year-old German homebrew programmer "Fuzzy" recently revealed his latest project for Nintendo's dual-screened handheld; a portable port of Nintendo's franchise mash-up brawler, titled Super Smash Bros. Rumble. The above shakycam video reveals the early fruits of his labor -- so far, only three levels and one character (Mario) are available. It obviously needs a massive amount of work, particularly in the character design and animation departments, but it's a wicked idea. We hope that Fuzzy will continue working on this inspired project, provided that Ninty's legal juggernauts abide.
After much speculation and painful hours of sitting on pins and needles, Square-Enix confirmed that their chronometric teaser was, in fact, counting down to the big reveal of a Nintendo DS adaptation of Chrono Trigger. The countdown just ended, revealing the first pseudo-trailer for the game; following Squeenix's promise for a "newly revamped" version of what many consider to be the greatest RPG of all time, our hopes were high for a 3D remake, ala Final Fantasy III and IV -- though the trailer shows that the visuals will retain their charming 16-bit aesthetic.
The trailer doesn't show off the game's new features, like the new dungeon, wireless play and touch screen support -- though it does end by touting the Winter 2008 release window we'd previously heard. Hopefully, future media for the title will show us exactly why we'll need to purchase the game again (other than the fact that it's frakkin'Chrono Trigger) -- until then, we'll be anxiously awaiting Christmas morning, when we'll scurry to the foyer to discover that Ho-Ho has left us stockingfuls of heartwarming nostalgia.
Update: We've got the post-countdown trailer posted after the jump, courtesy of GameVideos.
Reviews? Original content? Weird and wacky spins on DS news? We've got it all, and this week, we've even got extras. Don't fight, fanboys -- there's plenty to go around, and these are happy times. It's a holiday, we're looking at Chrono Trigger ... things are good.
Oh yes, we got to play Spore. The entire thing. With Will Wright providing backseat commentary. We also got some time with the Wrath of the Lich King's Death Knight, and DS Fanboy decided to play Homie Rollerz (so you don't have to). Check out all of our impressions and reviews from the Joystiq Network this week:
Preventing the world from plunging into economic chaos can be dirty, joyless work. Thankfully, foreign ministers of the ultra-exclusive G8 club were handed their very own perfume balls and custom DSs when they gathered in Kyoto recently to lay the groundwork for next week's leadership summit. You'll never guess what Condoleezza pictochatted Miliband. Poor Steinmeier, always the butt of their jokes...
Just under a month after shipping Don King Presents Prizefighter for Xbox 360, UK-based Venom Games is reportedly closing up shop. Computer and Video Games cites a source at the company, who divulged that Venom staff were informed of the closure Wednesday.
We contacted Take-Two, who published Prizefighter under its 2K Sports label, and were told by a spokesperson that it is currently "assessing the role of Venom Games in Take-Two's overall global studio system," and "in a consultation with the employees of Venom in relation to possible redundancies at the studio."
Star Wars: The Force Unleashed: Hands-on Impressions Unleashed
Come to our E3 afterparty, we've got over 200lbs. of swag to give you (and only you)
Podcast Rodeo is back, and now with thrice the fidelity!
Hands-on with Spore. All of it. With Will Wright feeding us commentary.
Highlights from Blizzard's Worldwide Invitational 2008!
Listen to the Joystiq Podcast (because your ears can't read)
Posts in category ds
When Majesco announced last month that it would dedicate the bulk of its 2008 lineup to the Nintendo DS, we took this to mean that the company would do its part keeping store shelves stocked with casual games and cooking sims aplenty. We were unprepared, however, for the Cooking Mama evangelist to take up publishing duties for Away Shuffle Dungeon, the oddly named DS "roguelike" RPG from Mistwalker and AQ Interactive.
The internet speculation switchboard lit up this weekend when a print ad for a trio of new Nintendo DS titles -- Disgaea DS, Rhapsody, and A Witch's Tale -- from NIS America in the August issue of Nintendo Power was found to show Nintendo's touchable handheld with noticeably wider screens. Some might even call these widescreens. But was this a simple Photoshop snafu, or an unintentional peek at Nintendo's E3 plot?
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