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

Ten years on, we’re getting nifty new versions of the Pokemon games that were perhaps the best in the series, Pokemon Gold and Silver. Remember when the first “new” pokemon critters were revealed and over-zealous Pokemon fans dubbed Marill “Pikablu?” Man, I hated those people. It’s time to choose me and read-a-long!

Issue #252, March 2010
featuring Pokemon HeartGold and SoulSilver (DS), Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands (Wii), Tournament of Legends (Wii)

Nintendo Power’s six-page look at Pokemon HeartGold and SoulSilver does not do much to impress you that the games have received wild and necessary improvements. Sure, the graphics are better than a Game Boy Color game! Sure, the sound is better! Much of the article simply rattles off the features that Gold and Silver added ten years ago… like the Steel and Dark types, a real-time clock, held items, and a daycare for breeding. Aside from WiFi play (and I assume the Global Trading Station), there is little talk of features cribbed from modern DS mega-hits Pokemon Pearl and Diamond. At this stage it would have been nice to be reassured that HeartGold and SoulSilver was going to follow that legacy rather than just be a remastered port.

But then there’s the Pokewalker.

Of course I had the Pokemon Pikachu 2 GS back in the day. A combination virtual pet and pedometer, the PP2GS recorded my steps and beamed info into my Pokemon Silver by way of the GBC’s infrared receiver. Flash forward ten years later and you’re about to see me do that all over again with the Pokewalker, a combination virtual pet and pedometer that will do the same with HeartGold and SoulSilver. Although the PP2GS was a separate purchase, Nintendo wisely has the Pokewalker bundled with every copy of HeartGold and SoulSilver. Naturally, this bumps the price up to a slightly dizzying $40.

NP describes a little of the Pokewalker’s functionality. You can transfer one of your pokemon from the DS game to the ‘walker. As you walk around in the real world, the pokemon walks along its own Route… your steps generate Watts which are then used to unlock new Routes back in HeartGold and SoulSilver (does this mean the new Johto map will have multiple new roads and shortcut paths that you’re expected to uncover with the Pokewalker?) Watts can also find items or catch pokemon on the Pokewalker itself, making it kind of like a highly-focused, miniaturized version of the Pokemon concept itself. The most important feature is that pokemon can gain levels after doing their time in your ‘walker.

Oh yes, I shall be levelling up all workday. Pokemon HeartGold and SoulSilver will see release on March 14. Check to see if your local store is offering the preorder bonus of a little Ho-oh or Lugia plastic figure!

Would the Kingdom Hearts fan community that orchestrated this please stand up?

Two months ago Nintendo Power opened up voting for the annual Nintendo Power Awards. As in previous years, they have separated the winners into two halves: one set chosen by the NP editorial staff and one selected by the online popular vote. Predictably, New Super Mario Bros Wii and Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks won the magazine’s Wii and DS Games of the Year, with NSBMW also taking Overall Game of the Year. But in the online poll, voters chose Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days as both DS GOTY and Overall GOTY, defeating both Mario and Zelda by a large margin. Furthermore, Kingdom Hearts swept all seven categories in which it was nominated!

Seeing that Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days was one of the most tedious DS games I played in 2009 (and I played Blue Dragon Plus!), I smell a very dedicated fan community somewhere that rose to the occasion and swamped the vote.

It’s a fair play; online fansites are powerful beasts packed with passionate voices. I just wish a more deserving game had felt the love.

Allow me to draw your attention to this huge blank space.

Not even Nintendo Power can find enough to say about Data East Arcade Classics to fill out roughly two inches of blank column space.

Are you a bad enough dude to own a crappy retro collection?

Nintendo Power has No More Heroes 2 all wrong.

They gave it a 9.0, which is a pretty shockingly high score. The cynic in me wants to say that NMH2 was the beneficiary of a +2 point bonus simply for being an M-rated, shock-filled, mature-o-fest, like the high scores awarded to The Conduit and Madworld. As much as I love No More Heroes, #2 is not better than #1 (which NP gave an 8 out of 10.) Here’s why.

Much has been said about NMH2 removing the empty, no-frills third-rate-GTA overworld. While in the original, yes the motorcycle was a giant slug and yes the city was largely empty, at least it gave us a sense that this was an actual, explorable location that added to our understanding of Travis Touchdown’s world. In NMH3, every single shop, minigame and level is selectable from a menu. This is a boring, half-assed way out of the problem. The solution is to make the city better not erase it entirely. NMH2 sacrifices immersion and believability by reducing the experience into a disconnected series of quests chosen from a menu.

Do not believe anyone who tells you the 8-bit-styled minigames “are a treat.” Nintendo Power, hilariously, claims to have spent hours playing them yet refers to them as “often fun, sometimes frustrating, and always rewarding.” Often fun? WTF? There’s a key word choice there – “often” – that should notify sensitive readers that NP does not want to admit that these minigames are confusingly explained and poorly controlled.

NP also brings up alternate playable character Shinobu and says her controls are “not as solid as I’d like.” No kidding. Shinobu’s jump might as well contain a random coin-flip generator that determines if you’re actually going to land on the platform you intended. It is terribly loose… and naturally her levels contain quite a bit of vertical scaling. So you’ll be doing a lot of vertical falling.

I love this series. The cutscenes and dialogue and characters are just as good in NMH2 as they were in NMH1. The combat is fast and fun, combining ridiculous light saber attacks with equally ridiculous wrestling drops. The bosses are bizarre and wonderful (although many seem to be purposefully cheap in order to make a metatextual point.) But the loss of the overworld, the obfuscation of the minigames, and some awful control choices (don’t even bring up the motorcycle prelude to the Ryuji boss fight!) add up to some major subtractions to this installment.

A Decade of Nintendo.

The “Best of the Decade” article (quiet, decade-counting purists!) has a great timeline featuring over 100 important games from the N64 through WiiWare. Out of 103 titles, I own 69 of them, which puts me at a pretty great fanboy rating.

According to the timeline, the biggest drought of major releases from from February 2005 to August 2005. And even then, there’s not a single non-DS title noted until November 2006. Looking at that, I’m not surprised that the gaming populace was ready for Nintendo to abandon ship and go software-only in the year prior to the Wii’s ascendance.

Also, your decade of NP Overall GOTYs is as follows:

• 2000: Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask (N64)
• 2001: Super Smash Bros Melee (GameCube)
• 2002: Metroid Prime (GameCube)
• 2003: Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker (GameCube)
• 2004: Metroid Prime 2: Echoes (GameCube)
• 2005: Resident Evil 4 (GameCube)
• 2006: The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess (Wii)
• 2007: Super Mario Galaxy (Wii)
• 2008: Super Smash Bros Brawl (Wii)
• 2009: New Super Mario Bros Wii (Wii)

Yeah, I believe this letter.

Nobody in their right mind would suggest that the last decade of Sonic games was better than the last decade of Mario games. But I somehow doubt that, two months ago, a die-hard Sonic fan suddenly discovered the Wonders of Mario after reading NP’s “250 Reasons to Love Nintendo” feature… and then fired off a lame “I was wrong” letter in time for issue #252 to see print.

Download Staff Picks: Castlevania: The Adventure ReBirth (WiiWare), Pilotwings (SNES), The Oregon Trail (DSiWare)

Top scoring Wii review: No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle, 9.0 (all scores out of 10)
Top scoring DS review: Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth, 8.0
Lowest rated Wii review: Super Monkey Ball Step & Roll, 5.5
Lowest rated DS review: Ragnarok DS, 5.0

Also this month, Nintendo Power gave Sonic and SEGA All-Stars Racing 8.0 on Wii and 6.0 on DS, Endless Ocean: Blue World (Wii) hit 7.5, and Shiren the Wanderer (Wii) managed a 6.5.

No more dangling Remotes! – The $80 official Tatsunoko vs Capcom arcade stick controller from Mad Catz plugs into the Wii Remote instead of having it’s own wireless connectivity. What the hell man. Is the wireless tech really so cost-prohibitive that we all have to suffer with dangly loose Remotes hanging off our fighting sticks and Classic Controllers?

Whuh-oh. – When discussing the swordplay controls in the upcoming Red Steel 2, NP says “Wii Sports Resort is closer to the kind of sword control that many of us had in mind.”

Your marching orders for Second Quarter. – This spring, you’re going to get WarioWare DIY Showcase for WiiWare and you’re going to enjoy my handmade WarioWare levels I created with WarioWare DIY for DS.

Yeah, we noticed that. – NP points out that Castlevania: The Adventure ReBirth for WiiWare has no save option. But according to New Super Mario Bros Wii, that’s okay because it honors the memory of classically difficult retro titles, right?

Next month in Nintendo Power… the goods on WarioWare DIY, plus a look back at Super Mario Bros 3. Plus, Red Steel 2 gets a review score of 7.0 or lower.