Tuesday, May 9, 2006

2006 Nintendo DS games assault

Edit (11/05): You can download Nintendo's press pack from their E3 press site.
Username: media Password: E32006


Looking through Nintendo's E3 press pack, you will find galores of info on new DS releases for 2006, as well as the US release of DS Lite. Omitted from this blogger's list are crappy and generic titles published by the likes of Disney and THQ - you know games based on IPs like SpongeBob, Chicken Little etc. all of which are only bought by parents who doesn't like their own children).

Highlighted are the games that I really really want. I am happy to see Gyakuten Saiban 4 in the press pack in its supposed English title (Phoenix Wright 2). This means Capcom will be porting the game to English. Huzzah! And of course the breaking news of Hideo Kojima's first DS title, Lunar Knights (Boktai) makes things a wii bit more interesting.



Update: Apparently Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Justice for All will be the official title and will be a port of Gyakuten Saiban 2 GBA (not the new Gyakuten Saiban 4) with a projected US release in Q1 2007. Confusing and weird of course, but I guess this is to keep the storyline intact for the Western market. Jumping from Gyakuten Saiban 1 to Gyakuten Saiban 4 wouldn't make much sense to the storyline. In any case I hope they will finally release/port the rest of Gyakuten Saiban series as Phoenix Wright games.

Update 2: Yes, the screenshots above pretty much confirms that Phoenix Wright 2 will be a port of Gyakuten Saiban 2 GBA.

Big Brain Academy (Nintendo Software Technology, USA) 5 June 2006
Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin (Konami, Japan) Fall 2006
Chibi Robo Park Petrol (Skip, Japan) TBA
Children of Mana (Square Enix, Japan) Q4 2006
Clubhouse Games (Agenda) Q4 2006
Contact (Atlus, Japan) July 2006
Cooking Mama (Majesco, Japan) Q4 2006
Custom Robo Arena (Noise) Q4 2006
Deep Labyrinth (Atlus, Japan) Q4 2006
Diddy Kong Racing (Nintendo, Japan) Q4 2006
Dino Master (Majesco) May 2006
DK King of Swing (Paon) TBA
Dragon Quest Heroes: Rocket Slime (Square Enix, Japan) Sept 2006
DS Air (Nintendo, Japan) Q4 2006
Elite Beat Agent (iNiS, Japan) Q4 2006
Final Fantasy III (Square Enix, Japan) Sept 2006
Freedom Wings (Natsume, Japan) July 2006
Harvest Moon DS (Natsume, Japan) June 2006
Hotel Dusk: Room 215 (Cing, Japan) Q4 2006
Kirby - temporary title (HAL, Japan) TBA
Lunar Knights: Vampire Hunters (Kojima Productions, Japan) Nov 2006
Magical Vacation (Brownie Brown) Q4 2006
Magnetica (Mitchell Corp) 5 June 2006
Mario Hoops 3-on-3 (Square Enix, Japan) 11 Sept 2006
Mario Vs Donkey Kong 2: March of the Minis (Nintendo Software Technology, USA) 25 Sept 2006
Mech Assault: Phantom War (Majesco) TBA 2006
Mega Man ZX (Capcom, Japan) Sept 2006
New Super Mario Bros. (Nintendo, Japan) 15 May 2006
Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Justice for All (Capcom, Japan) Oct 2006 Q1 2007
Point Blank (Namco, Japan) June 2006
Pokemon Mystery Dungeon (Chun Soft) 18 Sept 2006
Star Fox DS (Q-Games/Nintendo, Japan) 28 Aug 2006
Steel Horizon (Konami, Japan) Fall 2006
Sudoku Gridmaster (Hudson, Japan) 26 June 2006
Rayman (Ubisoft) Nov 2006
Tenchu: Dark Secret (FromSoftware) 21 Aug 2006
Tomb Raider: Legend (Eidos) Sept 2006
Tony Hawk's Downhill Jam (Vicarious, USA) Q4 2006
Winning Eleven Pro Evolution Soccer (Konami, Japan) Fall 2006
Xiaolin Showdown (Konami, Japan) November 2006
Yoshi Island 2 (Nintendo, Japan) Q4 2006
The Legend of Zelda: The Phantom Hourglass (Nintendo EAD, Japan) Q4 2006

Phew. Nintendo isn't kidding when they said that the DS would be getting plenty of softwares by year's end.

Also in the press pack are a bunch of screenshots of the DS Opera Browser in action. Here is one I thought was quite interesting.



Not sure which handwriting technology Nintendo has licensed (may be Decuma's), but hopefully all future DS games uses some kind of handwriting interface. I am so sick of tapping the QWERTY keyboard in Animal Crossing: Wild World.

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5 comments:

Anonymous said...

I love Sudoku !

Anonymous said...

You're right about Decuma. Try it out in the new Brain Age game.

RichardAM said...

Final Fantasy III is more than a welcome addition to the line-up, and like I said earlier, i'm really loving Ninty's continued support for WFC. Also too, it's great to see some third-party support for it too, just look at the latest Tony Hawk Game.

HardiJ said...

Damn, can't wait to get hold of the new Phoenix!!

Jon Choo said...

Meh, I hate Sudoku. Gimme good ol' crosswords.

@Anon, thanks for the confirmation. That is good news indeed. Decuma is one of the best handwriting technologies out there. I am glad that Nintendo went for the best.

@Richard, I only hope Nintendo overhauls WFC and replace the Friend Code with something else - maybe a unified Friend Code system (for all games).

@Jenni, OBJECTION!