News Tagged: First Impressions
First Impressions: Super Meat Boy
We take Team Meat's upcoming platformer for a spin.
The guys over at Team Meat were kind enough to send over a preview build of their upcoming PC/WiiWare title Super Meat Boy yesterday and we've spent the past few hours putting it through its paces and snapping a few screenshots in the process. The guys at Team Meat did want us to make sure and remind readers that this is a beta version of the game..
First Impressions: Shadow Walker (Japan)
Unconventional puzzling for the kiddies.
This game kind of came out of nowhere, but there does seem to be few WiiWare games concerning shadows on the horizon: Nicalis' Night Game and Hudson's Tower of Shadow being the ones that spring immediately to mind. Shadow Walker's story isn't completely clear seeing as it's relayed storybook-style with a lot of Japanese text. There's a boy with yellow hair..
First Impressions: Bit.Trip VOID
Could the third time be yet another charm?
Gaijin Games has really earned a place in many a retro-gaming fan's heart with their old, old-school Bit.Trip series on WiiWare. It's one of the shining examples of how good download games can really be: updated Atari 8-bit graphics with jazzed-up special effects and a soundtrack that's enhanced by the gameplay. The appeal of these games is cross-border,..
First Impressions: Castlevania: The Adventure ReBirth
Worth getting your teeth into?
The Castlevania series of action platformers is widely regarded as containing some of the best games on the Famicom, and indeed home consoles full-stop, with top-notch instalments on Super Famicom, PC Engine, Playstation and handheld platforms to name a few. Needless to say the news that the first GameBoy game was being given the WiiWare ReBirth treatment by Konami..
First Impressions: Manic Monkey Mayhem
How do we like these bananas?
It's a well-known fact that monkeys like to fling things at each other, so it should come as no surprise that UK developers The Code Monkeys have taken this concept and applied it to their first title for the WiiWare and DSiWare services, in the form of does-what-it-says-on-the-tin Manic Monkey Mayhem. MMM is a refreshing change from the regular crowd of party games as..
First Impressions: Derby Dog (WiiWare)
This breed needs a little more refinement.
Pet sims have been all the rage with the "yoof" for some time; especially on the Nintendo DS with scads of games having words ending with "Z" instead of the more grammatically correct "S." Derby Dog for the Japanese WiiWare service is clearly designed to cash-in on this trend, however instead of simply raising a happy pet to..
News: WiiWare & DSiWare London Event - WiiWare Coverage
London, 16th September: Nintendo hold their WiiWare and DSiWare media summit, and we’re lucky enough to have been invited…
Well, those of you who scan our site on a regular basis will know that today - in London - Nintendo made a few announcements regarding the WiiWare and DSiWare service: first of all, they gave us the release schedule for a lot of upcoming games and then dropped a great piece..
First Impressions: Minna de Tobikome! Penguin Diving Hooper Looper
Jumping off a cliff can be fun!
"Everybody dive!" is part of the title of Agenda's newest WiiWare game to hit the Japanese Wii Shop, and that is what this game is all about: diving off cliffs – as penguins are known to do – for big points! Of course this isn't March of the Penguins, so the penguins in this game aren't dropping off little icebergs, but plummeting off of cliffs so high..
First Impressions: Discipline (WiiWare - Japan)
Art-house gaming comes to WiiWare.
Discipline is a WiiWare game long-rumoured and only recently revealed. As possibly the most unusual game to yet grace the service, it game centres around a prison called Discipline, wherein you control a character apparently posing as an inmate. It's difficult to tell what exactly is happening because text plays a huge part in the game, with a lot of written..
First Impressions: Simple Series Vol. 4 - The Misshitsu Kara no Dasshutsu (WiiWare - Japan)
Not quite Steve McQueen...
Well, Simple Series Vol. 4 - The Misshitsu Kara no Dasshutsu is quite a mouthful, so for the purpose of these impressions please forgive the re-titling of this game with the shorter, but still thematically correct name Room Escape.D3 Publisher is known as a publisher of budget games and has pushed out dozens of them for the PS2 and other platforms over the years for the..
First Impressions: Tomenasanner
Rock rock planet rock, don't stop. Rock rock planet rock - DON'T STOP!
What Tomenasanner means is anyone's guess (try guessing in the comments - better still, please advise if you know!). It's written in katakana so it's apparently a word of foreign origin (sure sounds it!), but the closest that Google Translate offered was "tomen" which apparently means "bridle" in dutch and..
First Impressions: Water Warfare
We head to the playground to see if there's enough water in its soaker to keep gamers occupied
Earlier this month, Hudson took a gamble and decided to release a first-person shooter on WiiWare. Due to it being the first of its kind on the platform and a new IP, some thought that Hudson would regret making such a bold decision. In the end, though, everything paid off, as not only did Onslaught..
First Impressions: Melee! Pokemon Scramble
We go hands-on with the latest Pokemon spin-off.
Earlier last week, the Pokemon franchise returned to the downloadable scene in their second WiiWare outing. Developed by Ambrella, the folks behind the less than impressive My Pokemon Ranch, Melee! Pokemon Scramble is their most ambitious Pokemon project to date. Instead of something in the vein of their past works, such as Pokemon Dash and Hey You,..
First Impressions: Escape Virus
A fun little mobile game for the WiiWare service.
Escape Virus is the freshman effort from Peakvox - an iPhone and mobile game developer - with the focus being on pick-up-and-play arcade gaming and ascending to the top of the world ranking in each of five game modes.The menus throughout the game look like metal car number plates which drop onto a titled plane with a nice clanging sound. It's a bold..
First Impressions: Muscle March
Namco delivers possibly the most bizarre game to come from Japan in years.
If you've gotten into the Japanese import scene at all you've probably discovered that there's games released in Japan that never see localisation outside of Japan. Japanese game developers have a knack for coming up with some pretty unusual game concepts and Japanese publishers seem to be willing to bring these to a..
First Impressions: Arkanoid Plus!
Taito plays it safe in bringing back a classic.
Whilst Atari's Breakout and Super Breakout pioneered the arcade block-breaking games that are well-worn cliches today, Taito's Arkanoid really took the idea to the next level and no one's improved upon it since. The game concept is pretty simple: a bar at the bottom of the screen is used to bounce a ball into blocks at the top of the screen; after..
First Impressions: Tsuppari Oozumou Wii Heya
Su-mo! Su-mo!
Back in 1987 Tecmo released Tsuppari Oozumou for the Famicom. This was the first (and one of the only) sumo wrestling games to come to home consoles and was basically a button masher at heart where the object, like real sumo, is to force your opponent out of the ring or put him on his back like a fat unruly turtle. A sequel followed on the Super Famicom, but the character design was..
First Impressions: Contra ReBirth
BECAUSE YOU DEMANDED IT!
Remember Contra? After Green Beret (Rush 'N' Attack to Americans) it was the definitive run-and-gun game from Konami which saw two games in the arcade and ports and sequels on home consoles. I cannot say I ever played the latter, but the former I remember well. Despite being punishingly difficult (to me, anyway) there was something compelling about it that caused me to..
First Impressions: Let's Hitchhike!
Nippon Ichi delivers an oddball game as only the Japanese can.
It's literally called Let's Zenryoku Hitchihaiku!!!!!!!!! (yes nine exclamations!), which I guess you could translate as Let's Totally Hitchhike, Dude! (the "Dude" is my personal addition) and it's a recent release to the Japanese WiiWare service which I just had to try out after seeing videos of the game in action.Without..
First Impressions: Puzzle Bobble Wii
Taito delivers another enjoyable update to an arcade franchise.
For those who aren't familiar Puzzle Bobble is a late-90s arcade puzzle franchise from Taito featuring Baburun and Boburun from Bubble Bobble. Fans in the rest of the world may remember this game better as the ill-titled "Bust-A-Move." It's had five arcade iterations, two of which were ports on the Neo Geo MVS (Bust-A-Move..
