Check out Wario Ware. Egg Monster Hero has a magic system not unlike what you were talking about before. Apparently you scribble out enemies or something. I know both the gun in Metroid and the Mario in Mario can be controlled with the stylus, but I’ve heard mixed reports about Metroid. There’s also some virtual pet game where you rub the bellies of puppies or whatever. Apparently they can wirelessly interact with other DSes in the area that are running the game, whether the machine is on or off. The Advance Wars functionality seems kind of obvious. Pac Pix looks interesting. You draw pac man to start off with, and then draw the maze to guide him around.
The full games haven’t been shown to the western press yet, and Nintendo is one reticent-ass company, but I’d expect some proper impressions very soon.
Why aren’t there more/more interesting titles in development from the west? Well, handhelds aren’t as big there as they are in Japan for one. There’s a French dating sim in development if that counts. From Ubisoft I think.
I really don’t feel that comfortable playing DS shill, so I kind of wish you’d looked a little harder, but at the same time I’m kind of excited by the possibilities of a touchscreen-based system with some actual support from real developers.
I am too. I’m not trying to be negative here. After screwing around with Donkey Konga for the last few days I’m firmly convinced that Nintendo in general has the bead on making games actually different, which excites me a lot more than newer/better/shinier graphics. But given the launch titles listed above and the info I could find on them, I couldn’t figure out where comments such as “My faith in Nintendo is well founded” were coming from. There’s just not much info out there about what actually makes stuff different, especially on the particular games announced, that I could find.
I’m also not quite as impressed by stuff like “Two screens means you can see the tactical map screen and the combat screen at the same time on turn based strategy games.” Because I don’t consider having had to switch screens previously to be particularly cumbersome to that type of gameplay. By comparison, two screens in a racing game, where the top screen is your rear-view mirror, so that you can actually see well enough to defensively block cars from the rear is a big deal.
Guess I’ll just wait until it’s been out a while before trying to get excited about it. Isn’t it coming out soon enough that we ought to be in the information overload portion of pre-launch hype? Like in a month and a half or so?
Anyone else seen this “Intuitive Stroke” that’s a launch title for DS in Japan?
http://www.gamasutra.com has a list of the Jap launch titles, and it’s one of them.
Intuitive Stroke?
What’s the sequel gonna be called? Obvious Aneurism?
Advance Wars DS uses the two screens to wage an air war and a ground battle at the same time, I think that’s one of the best uses of the two screens I’ve seen so far.
I have absolutely no time on my hands right now, but two of the games that really stood out to me, were Balloon Trip and Pokemon Dash.
Balloon Trip is the full-blooded Yoshi Cloud demo from E3, except now there are two modes. The first one, on each level Yoshi has to fall a certain amount to pass the level. You can see him in the upper screen and you draw clouds in the lower screen to influence his direction. You try to avoid enemies and collect coins. You can also circle enemies with a cloud to imprison them and then drag the cloud around, or even punt them off screen. Apparently, there’s some way to bring things into the screen too. There’s more to it than that as well, but I can’t quite picture some of it the way it was described.
The second mode is just like Yoshi’s Island, except its forced scrolled. You tap Yoshi to make him jump and you use the stylus to control shooting his eggs. Enemies and coins are in the top screen and you have to aim to keep them away from Yoshi and Mario. You can also draw clouds to help him over huge gaps, but these disappear at a set time. Its kind of like a cross between a shmup and platformer apparently.
The second game I thought was real neat use was Pokemon Dash. You race on 3D battlefields (not exactly racing courses) against other pokemon and you have to catch each pokeball as its shown on the upper screen. You use the stylus to move Pikachu. To complicate things there’s supposed to be power-ups, traps and terrain differences, but also an upper and a lower level. Sometimes the pokeballs will be on the upper level and you use a balloon to get there by rubbing it and that’s how you affect its speed. You can also pop balloons (he, he, he) and so on, until the last pokeball point is reached and the winner is declared. Sounds like a neat new turn for a racing game.
I also need more info on that adventure game (PC-style, apparently by Nintendo?) called Another as I’m really liking the graphics for it so far and the two-screen puzzles look pretty interesting.
Okay, really gotta go. Bye!
-Kitsune
http://www.nintendo.co.jp/ds/index.html
Be sure and click the movie link just below the giant DS logo.
Thanks Bob.
The Yoshi game looks fantastic… the one with the trampolines and such looked pretty good too. I’m still a bit worried about the one-handed stylus usage while playing frantic action games, but maybe the DS has a more sensitive screen than most of the PDAs I’ve seen.
Still, a lot of that stuff looked really intriguing. Now all we need is for them to throw in one of the gyroscopic cartridges and make a game with total input overload.
Are the N64 ports going to be playable without an analog stick? Seems like Mario 64 would be kinda painful on that control pad.
Been wondering about that myself. I think the absence of an analog stick is a major error on the big N’s part.
And I’m no basher, I own everything but the Virtual Boy and that Bazooka-gun for the SNES. Oh, and that gameboy camera/printer thing. But can you blame me ?
Gameindustry.biz has some more details up. Apparently Nintendo plans to have retailers provide time-limited demos for download. That’s a pretty great application of technology, IMO
http://gamesindustry.biz/content_page.php?aid=4796
The cross-shaped control pad is my biggest knock on the DS. I can manage on them, but a stubby joystick would be preferable. It depends on the feel, I guess, but the one on the gamecube controller is too stiff for my taste and I’m glad I never have to use it for movement (it’s ok for weird little extra functions in a few games, but I’d hate it if I needed good timing with it). Maybe I’ll superglue a joystick on the cross pad and just never, ever shut the damn thing.
An updated Advance Wars on the DS is a system seller to me. Between the extra screen real estate and the touch screen, I’m thinking the DS will be a great home for lite strategy games.
Crap. I was all ready to jump in to this topic as Negative Nellie and point out that the DS I played with at E3 was undewheling technically and horribly designed ergonomically.
And that after editing a PDA magazines for four years I can authoritatively state that playing games other than Infocom titles with a stylus totally sucks.
Then you guys had to tell me that they’re doing Advance Wars for the DS. Crap. Now look what you’ve done. “I hate it, yet still I want it.” Haven’t had that feeling since my college girlfriend.
I heard they also announced that if you bring your DS with one of the Pokemon games in it to the new movie next year you’ll get a new Pokemon transferred to your game automatically. Not sure if this is Japan-only or not, since you’d have to have a special transmitter in the theater. Anyway, neat idea, and a demo kiosk at EB or Gamestop would be pretty sweet, too.
Also cool, you close the DS at any time and it goes right into sleep mode. That’s pretty slick.
Edit: read your link after I replied. Still, the Pokemon thing is cool :)
Maybe it’ll do a thing like the old Gravis Gamepad where you screw the stylus into the D-Pad and it becomes an analog joystick.
We can hope, anyway.
Could that stylus input scheme be any more unportable? I have a Pocket PC and I love it, but you can hold your Pocket PC in the palm of one hand while writing in it like a little not pad. In comparison, if you want to play with the DS on anything besides a flat surface, it’s like writing into an open paperback book that you are holding in the air. For some reason, I don’t think of portable gaming as requiring me to sit at a desk with a pen in my hand like Ichabod Crane.
“Advance Wars DS uses the two screens to wage an air war and a ground battle at the same time” - couldn’t I already do this on one screen in Advance Wars? And that Metroid (?) screen doesn’t look any better than a GBA game.
Half of that movie simply looks like novelty games I’ll never want to play or that don’t really require the stylus. Add to that the ergonomics of trying to use a stylus on a wide, clamshell design and a whopping ten launch titles and I couldn’t be less enthused about this platform. A translation of the new Fire Emblem, on the other hand…
What GBA game looks like hunters? It’s way closer to n64 graphics than GBA, especially if you look at other screenshots or video.
Well look on the bright side Denny, if you hold the DS up to your ear you can pretend it’s an NGage.
I’ll be happy just as long as I can run my Tetris DX cartridge on it.
Then you won’t be happy. The Nintendoods will only accept GBA carts. It doesn’t work with anything older than that. Snag yourself a Game Boy Color for a few bucks. They’re cheap, probably even cheap down under.
–Dave
Oh thanks I didn’t know that. I already have a GameBoy Color though. But I will still pick up the DS. That Metroid game looks interesting. Hopefully they will make a new Tetris for the DS.
Meteos, the game that Mizuguchi (Rez, Space Channel 5) and Sakurai (Super Smash Brothers Melee) are working on is apparently some kind of puzzle game/shooter hybrid. That sounds like it’ll be right up your alley. :)
–Dave