OMG Nintendo.com

Most of my job here at OMG Nintendo is just reading the vast dredge of Nintendo-related news on the net so you don't have to. I find the links I think are best, post 'em here, and call it a day. Of course, there's still some gaming goodness to be found in print, so I'm also going to try to read as many game mags of interest as I can to let you know whether or not they're worth you time. My first mags for this purpose have shown up this week, so let's get started, shall we? Our first subject is NIntendo Power, January 2008 issue.

Nintendo Power: January 2008

Total Pages: 96

Ad Pages: 23

Content-to-Ad Ratio: 3.2

Points of Interest

Pulse, p10: Editor-in-Chief Chris Slater declares The Adventures of Dino Riki for the NES the worst game ever.

News, pp16-19:Not really news so much as previews they won't call previews.

• House of the Dead 2 & 3 Return coming to Wii for $29.99, supposedly with new content
• Dungeon Explorer: Warriors of Ancient Arts for Nintendo DS. Co-op for up to three players, seems to be going in a more Diablo-like direction.
• Codemasters to publish Emergency Mayhem for Wii. Sixty rescue themed mini-games and four-player... the article makes it sound like co-op, but that sounds a little off to me.
• Aksys turns the Tantei Jinguuji Saburo series into Jake Hunter, Detective Chronicles for DS.
• Sega makes Brain Age clone Brain Assist for DS. Supposedly based on arcade game Touch de Uno!, but man, does this game look like a Brain Age ripoff.
• Alone in the Dark for Wii is going to feature motion controls for object manipulations, like pulling down candlesticks to reveal secret passages.

Previews, pp26-36:

So I guess it's "news" if they didn't have a build and a "preview" if they did. If these previews are hands-on, though, most of them are pretty bad. They all read exactly like the sort of thing you'd end up writing if you just had a press-release or a hands-off demo to go on.

• Destroy All Humans! Big Willy Unleashed: Holy crap these screenshots are terrible. No wonder Path of the Furon has been getting so much more attention.
• Professor Layton and the Curious Village: Nintendo is localizing this Level-5 title, which is a big and pleasant surprise for me. I knew it had been announced, but presumed someone else was handling it. Silly me! Anyway, this review is one of the better ones, but toward the end claims that this is going to be an "expanded audience" title along the lines of the Touch Generations stuff. I kinda doubt that, to be honest. I'm expending Layton to be a hardcore darling that doesn't quite hit the mainstream.
• Super Smash Bros. Brawl: A bunch of stuff the Dojo already covered. Whoo.
• Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Games: This preview is what I mean by "if these are hands-on, you can't tell".
• Nanostray 2: The writer makes a big deal out of being able to "upload your high scores over Nintendo Wi-Fi connection". By which he or she means: leaderboards.
• Mystery Dungeon: Shiren the Wanderer: Sardius, can you believe this is about to come out in English? I sure as hell can't. All of these DS roguelikes are bringing back my taste for the genre. I may be getting this one and scoring Izuna in the next few days. Also, this preview is not too bad, there's definitely some passion behind it.
• Harvest Moon DS Cute: But the real question, NIntendo Power, is if this girly remake of Harvest Moon DS will still be a buggy piece of crap like the original was.
• Zoo Tycoon 2: I'm not sure anyone could write anything that would make me care about this DS game.
• Bomberman Land: A Wii iteration of the Bomberman Land Touch formula. Eh.
• Bubble Bobble: Double Shot: I like how the text of the preview claims that the levels extend across both screens, when the screenshots show this is clearly not the case.
• Endless Ocean: Sometimes people question whether or not I'm an authentic gamer girl or a dude pretending to be a chick as part of an elaborate ruse. This should confirm my gender forever: I want to play this game so bad. I would play a million games about peacefully floating around petting dolphins.
• Archaic Sealed Heat: Interesting that they're admitting there's no word on US release while they cover it. While this game is amazingly beautiful for a DS title, the buzz from the import isn't so hot when it comes to gameplay. I'm hearing it's dull, with a broken stat system.
• N+: Okay, this game has to be a DS version of some old shareware game with a new coat of paint. I know I've played something exactly like this before on an old Tandy, but I can't remember the name. Someone out there in blog-land know?

Features

Ninja Gaiden: Dragon Sword, pp38-44: Far too many story and gameplay details on Ninja Gaiden: Dragon Sword to summarize here, and a one-page interview with Itagaki. Suffice to say this is a very good feature and worth the cover slot. Probably the best part of it is the "Live by the Stylus" sidebar with a guide to all the crazy crap you have to do with the stylus in Dragon Sword. Interestingly, Dragon Sword isn't connected to the NES Ninja Gaiden games-- it's a sequel to the Xbox title that's been ported and re-released a kerjillion times since then.

Ninja Reflex, pp46-47: Finally, some actual gameplay details on Ninja Reflex. These are exclusives, so I won't summarize them in too much detail, but this "mini-game collection" has basically six events in it. They all sound pretty neat, but... six events?

Dragon Quest Swords, pp48-51: Hey, this feature is one of the best things I've read in terms of describing what playing DQ Swords is like. There's the details you'd expect about the various motion controls, but what's interesting is the info about having to deal with enemy attack patterns. The article compares playing Swords to playing old-school Punch-Out, and that has me interested.

Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney, pp52-56: More so than any other anime character, Apollo Justice's design reminds me of Alfalfa from the Little Rascals. That's kind of all I took from this feature, which didn't communicate what the game would be like very well.

Mega Man, pp58-63: Kind of a cute humor feature celebrating Mega Man's 20th anniversary, though there's also a light 20-question interview with oft-unsung Mega Man producer Takeshi Horinouchi and a lot of great art. Probably the best bit in the interview is when Horinouchi talks about wanting to make a fighting game where all the versions of Mega Man fight each other.

Nintendo Power Awards 2007 Nominations, pp64-72: The magazine encourages everyone to go vote for the awards at http://npawards.wordpress.com. If you go there you can see a run down of all the categories and nominees yourself, so I won't spend too much time here. I can say placing my votes was hard... this was a pretty good year for Nintendo games.

Columns, pp74-82

• 20 Years of Nintendo Power: I laughed hard at this. It's a spotlight of the first issue of Nintendo Power ever, that mostly boils down to current Editor-in-Chief sounding bewildered and trying to find polite ways of typing "What were they thinking?" More magazines need to do this.
• Power Profiles: Toby Gard: A profile of... the guy who created and designed levels in the original Tomb Raider? What? I suppose this is supposed to coincide with Tomb Raider Anniversary, but it feels kind of random, given how intense the Nintendo/Sony rivalry was back when the original Tomb Raider hit. Still, the article's quite interesting, especially the revelation that Tony Gard abandoned his creation after the first game because he didn't like her being marketed as a sex symbol.
• Playback: Wrestlemania 2000 for the N64, with a sidebar about other titles like NES Pro Wrestling, WWF WrestleFest, WWF Royal Rumble, and the GBA Fire Pro Wrestling. The info about AKI is nice, but otherwise this was kinda boring. I usually love retro columns, too.

Reviews, pp85-90:Wooow, a games mag with only six pages of reviews in it? Actually, I sort of like that. It's honest, in a way, and gives them more pages to devote to their more worthwhile feature section. That in turn makes for longer pieces and a better read.

• NiGHTs: Journey of Dreams: 9.0. This score interests me because a friend at another outlet is playing NiGHTs now, and he claims the controls are horrible, the graphics lackluster, and that you can complete it in two hours.
• Warhammer 40,000: Squad Command: 8.0. War? Good god, ya'll. What is it good for? Absolutely nothin'.
• Samurai Warriors Katana: 7.5. Actually, this game sounds kinda fun, and the fact that it's shorter than the big Koei titles is a good thing. Probably not as good as Samurai Warriors 2, though.
• Draglade: 7.5. I need to make some time to play this, everything I read about it always sounds interesting.
• Boogie: 7.0. Before you flip out at the score, this is for the DS version. It sort of has to be better than the Wii iteration by default.
• Super Swing Golf Season 2: 6.5. Sounds okay, but not terribly interesting to me.
• Harvey Birdman: Attorney at Law: 6.5. This doesn't sound bad, but is definitely more something you get from GameFly than something you want to keep.
• Godzilla Unleashed: Double Smash: 3.0. Eesh. Maybe if Atari stopped publishing stuff like this, they wouldn't be on the verge of bankruptcy.
• MX vs. ATV: Untamed: 6.0 for both Wii and DS versions. What a boring game.
• The Golden Compass: 4.0. A score like that for this crapfest is being lenient. This is one of the most amazingly bad tie-ins this side of... uh... you know, just pick something else at random. It's probably terrible.

Community, pp94-95: Nintendo cosplayer Jenni Kallberg, three custom-made Guitar Hero axes crafted by Nintendo of America, and a collection of icons from Nintendo DS titles. You can view the icon collection page online at http://images.stumpnet.net/games/dsicons/.

Worth It?: I'm surprised, but I find myself saying yes. The emphasis on features makes this mag feel like a heftier read than I expect, and while the tone is often uncritical, there's little of the rah-rah fanboyism that permeates online games writing. Layouts are a little bland but at least clear and legible, with everything popping against white backgrounds. While previews and reviews are kind of weak, the tons of features really do a lot to make up for this-- lots of nice game info in one place, and written in a neutral enough tone that you can make up your own mind about the title. A good issue worth picking up for a NIntendo fan.

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