Tecmo Bowl and Super Tecmo Bowl no doubt made up the cornerstone of my sports playing life back in the NES days (the other games being Ice Hockey and Blades of Steel). I’ve moved away from sports games like a bullet cause I just prefer the boiled down simplicity of the old school sports games. So I was pretty excited when I found out that Tecmo Bowl was making a comeback and coming to the DS no less, which seemed like a perfect fit. But with the PSN, XBL, WiiWare, etc. there’s more than a few places to go for re-releases of our old school games.

Does Tecmo Bowl: Kickoff continue the trend or get lost in its pixelated past? Continue Reading »

Jim’s been talking about this game for a while now, and it was announced during E3 that we’re going to be getting the game stateside! It’s from the team who brought you WarioWare and looks awesome.

The video below is a collection of Japanese commercials for the game which offer a few seconds of gameplay and the same level or weirdness we’re used to when dealing with Japanese game commercials.

Earlier today Konami announced Elebits: The Adventures of Kai and Zero for the Nintendo DS. A sequel to Konami’s 2006 somewhat well recieved Wii title Elebits, Kai and Zero will have the player hunting for hidden creatures in order to power any number of devices and solve some fairly rudimentary puzzles. It’s a fun idea, but for a lot of us the Wii version fell flat. Despite having a high cuteness factor, things became repetitive quickly and the controls needed a lot of fine tuning. They’re big complaints — but couldn’t they both be solved by a move to the DS?

The pick up/put down nature of portable play might help reduce that repetitive factor, and the idea behind the controls should translate a lot more smoothly to the DS than it did the Wii. There’s a certain level of precision that the wiimote was just lacking early on — definitely a situation that could call on the stylus.

An interesting development in my book — definitely one to watch. Expect it this fall.

Over the years I’ve come to learn that I’m a lot of things to a lot of people. Father, husband, victim, defendant, cellmate, etc. Yes sir, Jim Squires is a regular Renaissance Man. Now I can add hypocrite to that list.

A few weeks ago I got up on my soapbox and told you why I wouldn’t be buying Metal Gear Solid 4. I was being the pretentious dick who wanted to abandon the possibility of a great game experience just so that I could focus on smaller and independent titles. What I neglected to factor in at that time was that A) I’m a weak, weak man, and B) I can both have my cake and eat it too. You see, there’s no reason why I can’t balance my time between AAA titles like MGS4 and off-the-radar games.

A few different factors lead to my decision to pick up Metal Gear a scant three days after writing my last post, all of which can be heard in BitCast #47. Why I picked it up isn’t really all that relevant. What’s relevant is that I caved to peer pressure (thank god — the game is fucking fantastic) and in turn lied to you all. Whoopsie! So officially my apologies go out to all.

In an effort to cleanse my soul I decided to make a relatively exciting purchase in the world of smaller games. Hopefully it’ll help offset my karmic emissions. So what is this mystery purchase I speak of? A DS homebrew card.

There’s a thriving community of homebrew developers out there creating amazing original content for the Nintendo DS, but unless you have a programmable card you just can’t get on the boat. After reading the excellent DS Fanboy cart comparison, I decided to go with the M3 Real. It’s essentially the R4, and it ships with a rumble pak for the same price.

Every now and then the card seems to freeze up, but it’s really not too often. I’ve had the card for a week, been using it about 4 hours a day, and have had games freeze on me twice. All in all a worthwhile purchase. I’d love to tell you where i got it from, but they’re shipping was for shit so they’re not getting a free plug.

Thus far I’ve grown an addiction to Still Alive DS, been moderately frustrated by the Amplitude clone AmplituDS, and have been trying to find an easy way to convert video to DPG for use on the DS. Anybody out there have any recommendations on what I should be checking out?

Thanks Nintendo. I was having a perfectly good day and you have to sneak in an announcement that forces me to change my pants.

The original Rhythm Tengoku (video below) easily falls under three main descriptors for me: best GBA game, best import game, and best rhythm game. Imagine blending WarioWare (it’s the same team behind both series) with PaRappa, and you’ll be in the right ballpark. Rhythm Tengoku Gold will be hitting the DS on July 31st. I’ll be getting my pre-order in the second it’s available on Play-Asia.

[via Joystiq]

Looks like Blockbuster is hitching it’s wagon to the games industry again, and who can blame them? This time around they’ve recommitted to the gaming masses by announcing that they’ll be carrying Nintendo DS games for rent by the end of the year nationwide. This news comes shortly after the announcement that game releases will now appear on the new release wall as of this past Tuesday.

They’ve also announced that they’ll be offering a special PS3 bundle that will include Transformers: The Game, a blu-ray copy of Spider-Man 3, HDMI cable, a blu-ray remote and and a card that’ll let you rent 12 games in 12 weeks. It’ll be $499.99 — not that bad for all that stuff (even if the Transformers games did suck).

Hit the jump for the full press release;

Continue Reading »

Chalk this one up in the “good god I wish they had this over here” category, cause if there was a zombie-killing DS game that taught me Japanese I’d be all over it!

Sega really is getting their use out of the “…of the Dead” game aren’t they? First a light gun game, then a typing teacher and now a language tutor? What could possibly be next? Sadly Sega has a bit of a track record of beating a franchise into the ground (cough, Sonic)