Do a barrel roll!
Today Nintendo released two new titles for the European Virtual Console. They are seminal shooter Lylat Wars and Donkey Kong Jr. Math, for 1000 and 500 points respectively. First, the good news. Lylat Wars (also known as Star Fox 64) is every bit as ace as it was ten years ago. The things that really …
Cool runnings
Slim pickings this week, folks. Diddy Kong Racing is the most prolific release, though reviews have been mixed. The touch screen controls don’t work too well, the graphics aren’t as smooth as expected and the character voices are still as annoying as before. Apparently though Rare had to change Taj the Elephant’s Indian voice… On …
Better living through chemistry
Jeff Minter has confirmed on his Live Journal that his trippy shooter Space Giraffe is now finished and should be ready to download on Xbox Live Arcade soon for a paltry 400 points. He’s not a one man code machine, you know – the excellently named Ivan Zorzin makes up the other half of Llamasoft. …
News pick ‘n’ mix
Sony might need a hug in a mug » UK:R continues the everlasting anti-Sony campaign, pointing out that last week the PlayStation 3 was outsold 7 to 1 by the Wii in Japan (11k PS3s, 75k Wiis). The country where it’s sold at a reasonable price. In the US the Wii outsold the PS3 2 …
TMNT
Yes, we’re reviewing another Turtles game. The third this year, if you’re keeping count; as well as the home console versions based on the recent movie, Ubisoft and Konami collaborated to bring the legendary Turtles arcade scrolling brawler onto Xbox Live Arcade. Even though it’s still perfectly playable, it’s really starting to show its age. …
Look, daddy: news
Serious driving games on Nintendo formats always seem a bit wrong to me, and even more so on Nintendo handhelds. So you’ll excuse me if I’m not a shining light of enthusiasm about Race Driver: Create & Race for the Nintendo DS. I’m as big a fan of Codemasters’s Race Driver series as you’ll find, …
Cover version
During a recent radio interview, John Madden let slip that Vince Young is going to be on the cover of Madden 08. Not that interesting you might think, but apparently American football fans in the US place bets as to who the next cover star will be. Not that interesting either? Then you haven’t heard …
Heroes in a chart shell
The weak puns are rolling in today, oh yes. TMNT jumps a place to this week’s #1, just ahead of the once invincible Pokemon at #2, in the form of Pokemon Ranger for the DS. You’ll have to accept my apologies, because I can’t be doing with finding the accent for the ‘e’ in Pokemon …
Loris Capcomrossi
So, Capcom have nabbed the PlayStation format MotoGP rights from Namco. Good. For a long while, Climax and THQ have had it far too easy. Their Xbox MotoGP games have been of a uniformally high standard, but they’ve also not changed much over the years. So a bit of serious competition for the biking crown …
M.A.C.H.
Codemasters’ Heatseeker has been dubbed ‘Burnout in the sky’ because of its fancy motion blur and impact cam, but this airborne racer is more deserving of that label. Not only because it is a racing game – whereas Heatseeker is an arcade-style combat game – but because boost is earned by flying close to the …
Fat-headed babies
This week on the Virtual Console there’s Pac-Man for the NES, ActRaiser for the SNES and Bonk’s Revenge for the TurboxGrafx. They come in at 500, 800 and 600 points respectively. First up is Pac-Man for the NES, and quite frankly, it’s not worth nearly five quid. Sure, it’s a classic, but how many times …
Boom Boom Rocket
Due to the firework detonation connection, EA’s first Xbox Live Arcade title has been receiving comparisons with Fantavision – one of the few PlayStation 2 launch titles that was worth having. It’s not entirely fair to call it a clone though – Fantavision had you twisting the analogue stick all over the place to link …
Statistics are fun
Official UK console sales figures have, this week, been leaked to the press. Obviously there’s a mole in Chart Track. They should get Jack Bauer in. The sales figures are quite interesting, actually. The Wii was the largest selling home console with 24,000 sold, which is due to increased shipments. However, it’s still pretty much …
Lazy, lazy… lazy?
Can I be the only one who gets bored really quickly with ‘adventure’ games, for want of a better term? I imported Hotel Dusk: Room 215 – yeah, get me importing, it’s only out in the UK this week – months ago, and after a few sessions I found myself wandering around failing to do …
