The Rumble Pack

Wii owners, live it up while you can! This week, you get first dibs on Mega Man 10, another NES throwback that should bring in big bucks for Capcom. You also get a legitimately old (good) game in the form of Fatal Fury Special. DSi owners are less fortunate. However, I am curious about EA’s tween-focused Flips series, which appears to be  the DSi’s first batch of visual novels. The “genre” has an audience in Japan, but not so much in the states.

Special thanks to Nick for the Fatal Fury Special assessment.

Mega Man 10
WiiWare/Capcom
1,000 Points

Mega Man 10 doesn’t need a cheerleader, but I’ll still give it the full Justin endorsement. Whether it’s a worthy successor to the ninth installment remains to be seen, but it’s definitely fun…if your idea of fun is falling into bottomless pits and spike traps, that is. You can expect a full review in the next week or two once I’ve bested the game’s robot masters - which are not as goofy as they could have been - but this is a pretty safe investment. I also don’t think it’s quite as slapdash as the 1up review would lead you to believe. Read more

Two weeks ago, I recall sitting at my computer, taking in all of the X10 trailers and thinking to myself that Microsoft would absolutely have the strongest lineup of the year. Halo: Reach, Crackdown 2, Fable 3 - that’s a pretty amazing foundation, you must admit. There were lots of big announcements, big and small, and it just felt like this year would be the great gaming year that 2009 could have been if everything hadn’t been delayed. Well, just in case you had any doubts, Nintendo made sure to put them to rest on Wednesday with an even bigger barrage of release date bombshells than its Redmond neighbor.

To cut to the chase, Super Mario Galaxy 2, Metroid: Other M and Sin and Punishment: Star Successor will all debut this summer, long before the fall blockbuster season. The latter two franchises have very rarely been launched outside the winter months, so this seems almost unprecedented by Nintendo. Maybe this means that it has even bigger November guns in store for us, the most obvious of which would be Zelda. But even if Nintendo has inexplicably decided to forgo the November gold rush completely, we’ve still got a lot of great games that all of us here at The Rumble Pack are dying to play.

Here’s my take on everything that’s going to keep my Wii (and DSi) from getting dusty throughout the first half of the year… Read more

Will Sega ever have what Nintendon’t? Not if they keep adding asterisks and footnotes to nearly every good piece of gaming news they give us. Take today, for example, when longtime fans and Japanophiles alike were made aware that Yakuza 3, the much sought-after PS3 beat-’em-up RPG finally arriving on Western shores after nearly a year of localization requests, would finally be coming…with missing content.

What content, you ask? According to a Sega representative (talking to IGN.com): “…parts that we felt wouldn’t make sense (like a Japanese history quiz game) or wouldn’t resonate as much (such as the concept of a hostess club).” Given how much underground buzz and cult popularity this Shenmue successor has received, how vocal fans have been in requesting a localization and how apt Sega has been to make very crucial mistakes over the past few years, I think I speak for the majority of gamers out there when I give an emphatic “sigh” to this situation. What a mess.

Don’t even try to apologize.

Read more

You really can’t go wrong on the DSi this week. Flipper offers a destructive puzzler unlike any other, Flight Control finally takes off from the iPhone, and Aura-Aura Climber has a grappling hook, which automatically makes it worth a look in my book.

I won’t be able to try out any of the WiiWare releases until later in the week. THis means that I can’t vouch for Ghost Slayer, with MotionPlus support, or Mouse House, a rodent-infested puzzler. Download at your own risk now, or wait until next week’s podcast to see if they turn out to be sleepers. Oh, and nothing for the Virtual Console this week. Maybe Nintendo’s saving up its best and brightest to compete against Microsoft’s Game Room next month. Or not.

Flipper
DSiWare/XForm
500 Points

Games like Flipper are why I started this column in the first place, even if this particular effort has some problems. Hugo Smits, founder of indie studio Goodbye Galaxy Games, dropped out of school and gave up steady paychecks to realize his dream of creating a video game. Then, the publisher went bankrupt, and he moved the entire project to the DSi instead.

Flipper is a puzzle game in which you have to rescue a pet goldfish by traversing increasingly hilly arenas. This requires the use of terrain-altering coins that can add steps, fix bridges and blow up walls with pinpoint accuracy (like a baby Red Faction Guerrilla). While the touch screen movement’s a little too sensitive and camera control can be a little sluggish, his 3D Voxel engine mostly works. 500 points seems a little steep, but don’t lump this in with the service’s lazier cash-grabs and cell phone ports. Read more

Earlier this week, legendary game designer Will Wright delivered his keynote speech at the Engage! Expo in New York City. In addition to talking about the potential of games as “toys,” he apparently blew up a Barbie doll and kept the lid (mostly) sealed on his Stupid Fun Club. While this event made a few headlines, he also made a less-publicized visit to NYU last night. Wright’s speech, sponsored by the Games for Learning Institute, undoubtedly covered similar material, but here are a few tidbits that I found interesting… Read more

Howdy to the folks at BioWare!

First and foremost, congratulations on the fabulous critical reception for Mass Effect 2. The praise is well-deserved; some of us here at The Rumble Pack have even been tossing around best-of-2010 talk. You took what was already a solid sci-fi foundation and polished it into “instant classic” territory. No more clunky inventory system, better overall combat and the best walking-and-talking RPGs have to offer. I guess listening to the fans paid off, right?

Seeing as you went ahead and fixed nearly everything that anyone could ever gripe about from the first game, you’d think I’d be hard-pressed to find faults in the second. Unfortunately, not true, but that’s only because I pick at nits more furiously than anyone probably should. It’s an obnoxious habit, I know. You guys may be racking up the perfect scores and big sales, but I’d argue that if you implement some of my suggested tweaks, you’ll have your next masterpiece.

You may hear that my fellow podcast-mates and I never reached a consensus on these issues, but trust me, they’ll see the light when your trilogy concludes.

(Plenty of spoilers after the jump) Read more

There are some high profile names on the Wii and DSi this week, but I foresee some people objecting to the shoddy port of the second chapter in the Phoenix Wright saga. Or maybe they’ll be too distracted by yet another Sonic the Hedgehog Virtual Console release. Hey, it’s better than a Master System moldy oldie. And while I remain baffled as to why anyone would bring Titus’ Prehistorik Man to the DSi, at least Spotto! is another first-party success.

Once again, not enough hours in the week and bucks in the wallet to play everything, but Scrabble on the DSi sounds potentially awesome, depending on the multiplayer options. Let us know in the comments if you decide to pick this one up. Ditto for the DSi’s Spaceball, the Wii’s Art of Balance and whatever the hell this is supposed to be. While I’m willing to take the brunt of the damage, I think this column might work well as a collaboration.

Phoenix Wright Ace Attorney: Justice for All
WiiWare/Capcom
1,000 Points

This is the height of laziness, but I bought it anyway. Clearly, Capcom’s timing these to raise interest in Edgeworth’s spin-off, but I’m not sure that a DS port with the barest of bones is the way to do that. The game doesn’t look so hot when you blow it up onto an HDTV, and the lack of motion support is embarrassing at this point. That said, I originally lost track of the series after the first game, so it’s nice to play catch-up. Given that DS game’s price tag is obscene pretty, this is the most accessible version to newcomers. The script is still funny and the dreaded psyche-locks haven’t annoyed me yet - only a case-and-a-half in, admittedly - so I’m pretty pleased with this purchase, regardless of the circumstances. Oh, and Nick really loved it, too. Read more

I guess Konami isn’t the only company in the “ReBirth” business. Yesterday, Sunsoft launched its latest attempt to recapture former glory, Blaster Master Overdrive, and it’s actually pretty decent. However, while that game’s grabbing all of the headlines, Konami’s quirky Tomena Sanner, Nintendo’s latest DSi puzzler and an NES game with more vegetables than Super Mario Bros. 2 also get the DWN treatment this week.

We can’t afford to play all of this week’s downloadable releases, so let us know in the comments or the message board if we’ve missed a hidden gem. Special thanks to Tony for the Tomena Sanner write-up.

Master Blaster Overdrive
WiiWare/Sunsoft
1,000 Points

Let me start off by saying that I was never a huge fan of the original Master Blaster. I see the appeal - a jumping tank, a missing frog and Metroid-style exploration - but it’s obnoxiously hard, and those overhead sections are universally reviled for a reason. I think this is one of those “you had to be there” cases. That said, I came into Overdrive with an open mind. It’s a killer concept that just needed a bit more polish, and luckily, there have been enough tweaks to make this approachable for newcomers. Read more

Can you believe that it has been over a year since the last issue of Electronic Gaming Monthly hit newsstands? As a longtime subscriber - my first issue dates back to the Sushi-X days - the great 1up.com purging was heartbreaking. That magazine was a major influence on our Pack and a games journalism institution. It didn’t matter that I only had time for the cover stories, and it didn’t matter that so much of the content was “old” by the time it arrived in my mailbox. I was loyal to print and believed in whatever the 1up guys were doing, so paying for a subscription was a no-brainer. Plus, EGM was always a great toilet read. Boo on Hearst or Ziff or whoever else was ultimately responsible for its demise.

Shortly after so many of the veteran staffers were booted, Steve Harris, the founder of EGM, announced that he bought back publishing rights and intended to revive the magazine in the near future. We didn’t hear much for many months besides a few vague promises of a “new business model,” not unlike almost every other floundering print publication out there. Coming out of an incredibly cynical journalism master’s program, I was an immediate skeptic, but I vowed on our podcast to withhold judgment until we had more details. On Saturday, Harris provided said details…and I am cautiously optimistic. Read more

As you heard last night, I’m a big fan of Tatsunoko vs. Capcom. I’d argue that it’s the Wii’s answer to Street Fighter IV, a great game that takes a step or two away from the unbalanced madness of Marvel vs. Capcom 2. It’s both a licensing miracle and a beacon for hardcore fighting game fans, so I’m seriously praying that it sells well enough for the sequel.

However, while I’m eternally grateful for this game’s incredible domestic debut, I’m baffled by some of the playable Capcom combatants. The company has so many franchises and characters under its belt - see the last crossover’s roster - and yet some of the losers that they’ve dragged out of the archives just don’t seem befitting of the Ultimate All-Stars subtitle. Tatsunoko fans may be equally confused about their own side’s selections, but those guys are so obscure to me that an “off” choice or two wouldn’t make a difference. But for the Capcom side, there is definitely a handful I’d cut… Read more