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The line-up for NintendoDS over the coming month is certainly looking
interesting from here, with several First-Party and Third-Party
titles coming to us over the month of July.
First up, although not strictly released in July (30th June, 2006) but
well worth a mention is the eagerly anticipated and simply titled New
Super Mario Brothers. It is a return to the Super Mario
Bros. series in its purest form, a Side-Scrolling Platform
adventure the likes of which we haven’t seen since Super
Mario World on the SNES. Easily accessible for newcomers who
weren’t around or weren’t aware of the first wave of Super
Mario madness and a welcome blast-from-the-past for more
experienced players this is Mario at his greatest; jumping around
and collecting Coins whilst utilising various Power-Ups, both new
and old. These include the Mini-Mushroom, which makes Mario
absolutely tiny so he can fit into areas other wise inaccessible and
the Mega Mushroom, which makes Mario so large he fills-up the screen
and simply bashes through everything he comes into contact with!
Mario also comes with an arsenal of moves such as the Triple Jump,
Wall Jump and Ground Pound, using a combination of these moves are
necessary to reach some of the more hidden areas. Best seen on the
new NintendoDS Lite
the colourful universe has added depth
through clever use of textures and layering; reminding us that 2D
Platformers have actually changed in the last fifteen years! More
experienced Super Mario players may find they go through this
game at breakneck speed, completing the game in a couple of days,
but trying to find all 240 Star Coins is enough to be a challenge
to even the most dedicated of completists!
Big
Brain
Academy
(released 7th July, 2006) is going on the
same
educational vein as Dr. Kawashima’s
Brain
Training: How Old Is Your Brain?.
Big Brain Academy pushes logic puzzles to work out your
brain, this time around
focusing on five main areas: Think, Memorise, Analyse, Compute and
Identify. With three Difficulty Levels and over fifteen different
kinds of brain-teasing games to test your brain, although not
endorsed by an actual Doctor, as with
Dr. Kawashima’s Brain
Training: How Old Is Your Brain?,
this game will
test your skills in logic, memory and analytical thinking. You can
practice
these games before taking a test to reveal just how big or heavy
your brain mass is. It will then match up your brain weight with a
job which would be most suited to you! There is also a Multi-Player
Mode which lets up to eight players compete with just one Game Card,
allowing for much ‘my brain is bigger than yours’ type of
comparison. Obviously the person to finish quickest wins while
points are deducted for wrong answers, which would make you take a
bit more time to try and avoid any unnecessary mistakes. Set with
colourful and simple graphics this game features as part of
Nintendo’s Touch! Generations campaign to encourage new players from every
generation to pick-up their Stylus and play.
Another game which features as part of this campaign is Electroplankton,
already notorious in certain circles, a game which has been widely
rumoured to never see our shores has now been given a release date
by Nintendo of Europe. It’s in for July 7th,
2006, and already there is a lot
of interest in this title which I can only describe as sheer
innovation. For those unfamiliar with Electroplankton,
here’s a little low-down: designed specifically with the
NintendoDS in mind, Japanese artist Toshi Iwata brings us something
which is part videogame, part media-art. Iwata states that his
inspirations for this title are plankton, microscopic images and
Nintendo and all these are clearly visible as you play. There are
ten  different creatures you can use to make different sounds in
unique ways. From Recrec, who listens to any sound you make near the
microphone who will play it back to you to Beatnes whose funky
sounds come from classic Nintendo games that you can put together to
make some quite interesting tunes. There are some which respond to
you touching the Touch Screen or rely on you moving the environment
around them to make their music, all of which have their own
character and sound. Although there is nothing to kill and no
Power-Ups to get, this game can hold its own, but as you play it
just remember this isn’t a game, its art!
Not a great deal is known about THQ’s upcoming release Monster
House (July 21st, 2006), but what we can reveal is
this to coincide with the computer animated movie’s release on 21st July, 2006. This game, perhaps
unsurprisingly, features moments from the film you can relive as
well as parts which are inspired by the film. The plot revolves
around a house hell-bent on eating as many ‘trick-or-treaters’
on Halloween. You can play as three characters that each have
different abilities and can fight through traps using weapons
manufactured from household objects you find around the various
Levels. There will be many surprises and traps to keep you on your
toes, but only time will tell how this game will pan-out.
Last but not least we have Alex
Rider: Stormbreaker, also by THQ coming on 7th July.
Yet another movie tie-in, this time from a movie based on Anthony
Horowitz children’s books of the same name. The crux of the plot
is that the lead character, fourteen-year-old Alex Rider discovers
his uncle has been killed by terrorists so MI6 employ him to find
the perpetrators (because, obviously, MI6 don’t have any agents as
highly-specialised as that of a fourteen-year-old boy). In this
title exclusively for NintendoDS
and Game Boy Advance
you have to use a mixture of stealth, fighting and puzzling to find
your way through the game using your various gadgets to help you
along the way.
Also arriving we have Superman Returns, expected early-to-mid
July, Miss Spider: Harvest Time Hop And Fly and Puyo Pop
Fever arriving later in the month and Disney/Pixar Cars
and Micro Machines v4 expected on the 14th.
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