In Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, Voldemort is tightening his grip on both the Muggle and wizarding worlds and Hogwarts is no longer the safe haven it once was. Harry suspects that dangers may even lie within the castle, but Dumbledore is more intent upon preparing him for the final battle that he knows is fast approaching. Together they work to find the key to unlock Voldemort’s defenses and, to this end, Dumbledore recruits his old friend and colleague, the well-connected and unsuspecting bon vivant Professor Horace Slughorn, whom he believes holds crucial information.
Nintendo has enjoyed tremendous success thanks to the forward-thinking innovations of its DS and Wii systems, but the company’s lineup is focused squarely on the past. The publisher revealed today its first-party and third-party lineup of Wii and DS games through March of 2009, with a scattering of revamps and remakes comprising the majority of its own games.
For the Wii, Nintendo has only two releases planned, both remakes of GameCube games designed to support the Wii Remote’s motion-sensing capabilities. The self-explanatory New Play Control Mario Power Tennis and New Play Control Pikmin will both launch in March.
Nintendo UK has released a massive release date list of Wii and DS titles for Europe today. Eurogamer notes that this list features the first GameCube-to-Wii ports, dubbed “New Play Control!” titles, which include Pikmin and Mario Power Tennis. This new label sees classic GameCube titles revamped to utilize new Wii-specific control schemes. See below for the complete, huge list of upcoming European releases.
Wii Release Dates
Like Hull City in this season’s Premiership, Real Football 2009 (Real Soccer 2009 in the US) is something of a surprise package. And just like Hull, it may look rather rough around the edges but it offers a solid defense plus fast-paced, attacking football with occasional flourishes that allow it hold its own against the big boys.
That it plays such a good game is largely down to a control system that will be instantly recognizable to anyone who’s played FIFA or Pro Evo on another console. Gameloft haven’t done anything radical, they’ve simply transferred a tried and tested button set-up to DS, and familiarity breeds contentment. Read more
When released for the 360, Blue Dragon was a satisfying (if incredibly conventional) Japanese RPG for a system that at the time was lacking in the turn-based glory that consumers of the Rising Sun wholeheartedly enjoy. While it was a modest success, these days the 360 has more than its fair share of JRPGs, which may explain why Blue Dragon Plus, the direct sequel to Blue Dragon, is headed straight to the Nintendo DS. And on its way to Microsoft’s competitor’s hardware, it’s learned some new tricks. Read more
Telltale Games’ frighteningly amoral tag team of freelance police are ready to protect and serve (for a reasonable fee) once again. As part of a bevy of announcements, Atari announced this week that it would be bringing the second season of the downloadable, episodic adventure series Sam & Max to stores around the world next year.
Season 2 sees the cuddly yet violent detectives investigate a giant robot attack on their beloved city, perform an exorcism on Santa Claus, and even visit Hell, a heavily bureaucratic limited-liability company. As part of the international release, Sam & Max Season 2 will introduce full French and German translations to the episodes, as well as Spanish and Italian subtitles.
The venerable Atari brand has fallen on hard times recently, although signs are starting to suggest the possibility of a comeback. Sony alumn Phil Harrison recently took the reins of the beleaguered publisher, hoping to help turn business around. The recently-released Alone in the Dark Inferno on PS3 is the first step in a company makeover aimed at restoring the high level of quality we expect from this 30-year-old brand.
The company today announced its lineup of games due this coming spring 2009. There are a variety of console and handheld titles on the menu, suggesting that Atari will retain a broad publishing focus going forward. We are particularly interested to see how The Chronicles of Riddick and Ghostbusters turn out, after Atari snapped these franchises up in the fallout of the Vivendi-Activision merger.
Video game companies send me games: not surprising. Yesterday, Nintendo sent me a game they played for me: say what?
In my mailbox yesterday was a copy of 2005’s “Animal Crossing: Wild World” for the DS out of the shrinkwrap and accompanied with a letter on Nintendo stationery written in the voice of the game’s Mayor Tortimer, encouraging me to use this copy of the game to import all of its unlocked items and its character to “Animal Crossing: City Folk” on the Wii.
Nintendo must have known that I’m terrible at “Animal Crossing” and thought I’d need help. So they unlocked a lot of content for me. They appear to have quite accidentally gotten a bit hip-hop about all this. Whoever played this game for me back at Nintendo trained at least one of the characters to greet me with the line [censored here]: “How are you, N—a?”
Last month we learned exactly how the connectivity between the Wii and DS would work in the upcoming Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Echoes of Time, but if the latest rumor from Quartermann in the the January issue of EGM is to be believed, Square Enix will not stop there with the new technology. Our favorite gossip master has heard that the RPG giant will be bringing Dragon Quest IX: Protectors of the Starry Sky to the Wii as well as the DS.
While Dragon Quest IX being announced for the DS rather than a home console was a big enough surprise in the first place, fans of the long-running series were even more shocked to discover that this latest entry will sport faster-paced gameplay and a surprising MMO-lite option to play with up to four friends. Assuming this multiplayer mode works similarly to the DS-and-Wii-linking Echoes of Time, it makes sense that Square would bring DQIX to the console as well.
Earlier today, Square Enix unveiled their release line-up for 2009 which included 28 titles. Unfortunately, only 7 of these titles are related to the world of Final Fantasy.
It’s great that they are releasing all three Fabula Nova Crystallis titles in the same year, but they have seemingly merged Japanese, North American and European release dates all into one, so it’s difficult to tell if any will see the light of day outside of Japan this year.
There is also no news on Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: The Crystal Bearers and even though Square Enix recently announced that the game hadn’t been cancelled, it seems to be stuck in development hell.
