Tiny Diggers – An iPad Construction Truck Game for Kids Age 2-5

Up until E3 2009, I had seen little of the Spectrobes series, as I have not been a huge fan of the capture, train, battle animal games that follow in the vein of Pokemon.  That said, I do know that there is a huge following for the Spectrobes titles on the DS (to the tune of 1.6 million units), so I figured I would sit down with the producers of Spectrobes: Origins, and find out about this new, exclusive to Nintendo Wii title.

Spectrobes: Origins is a sequel to the first two DS Spectrobes titles, “Spectrobes” and “Spectrobes: Beyond The Portals”, and stars two characters, Rallen and Jenna, with a story that plays out through flashbacks to important events in the past.  It also appears that a major galactic event is about to happen that could change the universe as we know it.  I found out that Spectrobes are little creatures that come from fossils.  Your goals is to befriend these creatures, feed them and train them to become fierce beasts that can be called upon in battle with other Spectrobes trainers.

In my first segment of gameplay, we got to see Rallen in a battle using two different powers.  All of the Spectrobes powers are element based and they each have two attacks that can be used during battle.  The first attack is a standard fight attack, that uses the A button the Wiimote.  Secondary to that, we have a charged attack.  Hold the B button down and release to send out an elemental based attack that will hit enemies for a lot of damage.  Throughout the battle, you can change out between all your Spectrobes by swinging the remote foward to summon a Spectrobes and motioning backwards to call a Spectrobes back to you.When you finish a battle, you get a readout showing how you performed in combat and then you gain a chunk of experience for both your Spectrobes and your player.

The allure of titles like Spectrobes is the whole aspect of collecting creatures and training them, and in Spectrobes: Origins has a section of the game focused on this aspect of collection.  Aeropause was shown a collection screen where you see Spectrobes in a square fossil form.  From here you use the tools similar to what a paleontologist would use to extract a fossil.  You have a plasma cutter, dust blower, chisel, hammer and other tools to get at the Spectrobes inside the fossil block.  We can also use an X-Ray machine to get the shape of the Spectrobes, and the strength of the Spectrobes is determined by how well you clean the fossil without actually hitting the creature inside.

Overall, I think that people that are fans of Pokemon and collection type games will find a lot of fun with this title.  I really did like the whole fossil extraction part of the game, with trying to extract a fossil with the full amount of strength being very challenging and a lot of fun.  Look for Spectrobes: Origins on the Nintendo Wii in the Fall of 2009.