The mysterious Tingle game that Nintendo’s been teasing was revealed last night — when it was released. Dekisugi Tingle Pack is a DSiWare download that is actually not a game, but a set of little tools and apps, all starring Link’s “pal.”
The included utilities are a fortune-telling program (hence the fortune teller on the website), a calculator, a little dancing Tingle image that dances in front of your photos, a timer, and a coin-flipping minigame.
But don’t get upset about the secret Tingle project being a 500-point nongame and not a real game, because the latest issue of Famitsu reveals another Tingle DS game, this time more in the style of Tingle’s Rosy Rupeeland. The new game, called Irobuki Tingle no Ai no Balloon Trip (Color-changing Tingle’s Balloon Trip of Love) features the green-suited adventurer searching for, yes, love. The teaser site offers a fake news report, a fake dating show, and some Flipnote Studio Tingle animations, all in celebration of this new game.
Nintendo of Japan revealed a ton of new games at its fall media conference, and it’s just now getting around to talking about some of them. Kensax was one of the many first-party games buried in the avalanche of news, with nothing released but three baffling, context-free screenshots and a few seconds of video.
IGN has translated an article from the latest issue of Famitsu revealing the first information about Kensax, which, as it turns out, is about … search engines? The minigames in Kensax all revolve around putting words into a search engine and using the resulting hit count as a measure of progress and as the focus of multiplayer competition.
For example, “Battle! Search Panel 9″ tasks up to four players with combining words from a “stock” with words from a 3×3 board to conduct search terms. The player with the highest hit count steals a panel from another player. At the end, the game tabulates the panels in each player’s possession, as well as the total hit count, to assign a winner. In “Fastest! Search Shooter”, players shoot moving words to create high-hit-count combinations with their stock words. Kensax includes 3,000 words and their estimated hit counts, but players can go online to bolster the game’s vocabulary. Famitsu didn’t offer a release date beyond “2009″, and, of course, there is no word on a release outside of Japan. We hope to hear more about the other stealth Nintendo announcements soon, like Cosmic Walker.
Let’s consider, for a moment, the immense and stalwart dedication exhibited by one Jem Alexander, our man at an ongoing Sega event in a snow-encased London. Despite being in the magnificent company of games featuring a certain sword-wielding hedgehog, this blogger deliberately looked away from the screen (reminder: featuring a hedgehog wielding a sword!) to send us an important email from his iPhone. Which he briefly confused with his iPod Touch — a notable hazard for those eccentric and loaded enough to own both. What’s up with that, Jem?
Anyway, he says Sega’s rhythmic finger bash, Let’s Tap, has been announced for European release. With the party game’s undoubtedly arduous localization confirmed, it probably won’t take too long for Sega of America to drum up a press release of its own. We’ll point out (and at) any updates as we receive them.
Retro Game Challenge comes out in North America next week, but Japan is already one game ahead of us — the sequel, Game Center CX: Arino no Chousenjou 2, comes out there on the 26th. Famitsu has screenshots of two brand-new games in the sequel, and four … kind of new games.
Guadia Quest Saga is a sequel to the original game’s Dragon Quest-like RPG, released late-ish in the (fake) Famicom’s lifetime, in 1991. GunDuel, the sequel to StarPrince, is a vertical shmup with much more detailed backgrounds.
Four “rare” games are only available in the (in-game) game shop, presumably because your character can’t afford to buy them! Cosmic Gate: MASA-X version is a port of the first game’s Galaxian-like shooter, made in the style of MSX computer games. Rally King EX is a special “time trial” version of the original’s racer, and StarPrince SA is a special version of StarPrince in which players have just a few minutes to accrue a high score. Perhaps weirdest of all is Karakuri Ninja Haguruman: Koume Version, which was (in the alternate universe of the game) a special release of Haguruman with the hero sprite swapped out for his sister Koume, given to members of that character’s fan club!
“I feel that this game will bomb but only because of the olympic theme.”
“Ha ha ha!”
Those are just a small number of your initial responses to Sega’s prediction that Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games would sell four million copies worldwide. Not that we’re bragging at our readers’ expense, for we also pooh-poohed the notion. Over a year on from our mocking laughs, and Sega is now hoping to break two million by the end of this year — in the UK alone. Yeesh.
“Our aim is to hit two million by the end of 2008,” Sega UK sales director John Clark has told MCV (the most recent figures, which we assume are from before Christmas, have the title at around 1.75 million across the Wii and DS), adding that the game has more than a 30 per cent attach rate to British Wiis. We shall think twice before snickering into our Earl Gray and crumpets again.
Wii Play. About half of US Wii owners have a copy, and it’s just as popular around the world. That means that you probably have it! Getting an extra set of games for $10 when you buy a second (essential) controller is pretty compelling.
If you are a Wii Play owner, do you still get the disc out occasionally? Which games have endured? And, for context, how long have you had the thing? In our last Wii Play post we heard some support for the Tanks! minigame, a sentiment we certainly share. We’d be all about an expanded WiiWare Tanks!
Some of you may disagree with our enjoyment of the Let’s Tapsoundtrack, but we’re of the opinion that Prope’s percussive minigame collection features music that even penguins could tap their feet to.
These Let’s Tap “Rhythm Tap” mode videos are presented as “Rhythm Tap Training” on the website, because you can use them to practice for the actual game! You don’t actually touch the Wiimote while playing the real thing, so you can basically play along by watching the video and tapping yourself. You’ll just have to measure your own progress. Or you could just enjoy the song, “Milky Way Rendezvous.”
The same area of the website in which you can find these videos (fifth link from the left in the top navigation bar) features new wallpaper of the various vizualizers from the game.
It’s Sunday, and for some of you out there, it’s cold or even snowing. That means it’s a good day to stay inside and fill your hours with incredible silliness. That’s what we do when it’s freezing, anyway. Alternately, you could probably play video games, but talking about them can be so much more fun. But we don’t want to talk about real games. That isn’t any fun at all. Instead, let’s see if we can cook up some completely ridiculous Wii game concepts. With Wii MotionPlus heading out to improve our real motion experience, and the console’s fascination with minigames, what’s yet to come? Wii Music-er? Wii Dodgeball? Wii Cage Match? Call it now.
2K Sports just dished out a new trailer for their upcoming game, MLB Superstars, and it’s pretty much like the other updates we’ve had on the game. Instead of looking at ridiculousscreens, you get to look at ridiculous screens in motion. This trailer focuses on the ‘Whack a Wall’ minigame.
What do you all think? Still just a bunch of minigames thrown together, or do you see something you like here?
Hudson launched a site for a previously unannounced Wii game called Hataraku Hito (Working People), whose English name is translated as Hard Working People. It’s — we know, this is traumatic — a minigame collection. But it’s a really cute minigame collection about taking on various part-time jobs.
The three jobs revealed on the site so far give an idea of the 50 tasks included in the game: you’ll work in a yakitori restaurant, making food and serving beer; you’ll harvest vegetables as a farmhand, and you’ll even press buttons in response to a list of commands in order to work as an interpreter. Unless we’ve translated it wrong, which is quite possible, and would be ironic and hilarious.
The mysterious Tingle game that Nintendo’s been teasing was revealed last night — when it was released. Dekisugi Tingle Pack is a DSiWare download that is actually not a game, but a set of little tools and apps, all starring Link’s “pal.”
New Tingle game and new Tingle ‘game’ revealed originally appeared on Joystiq Nintendo on Wed, 24 Jun 2009 10:40:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
It’s Sunday, and for some of you out there, it’s cold or even snowing. That means it’s a good day to stay inside and fill your hours with incredible silliness. That’s what we do when it’s freezing, anyway. Alternately, you could probably play video games, but talking about them can be so much more fun. But we don’t want to talk about real games. That isn’t any fun at all. Instead, let’s see if we can cook up some completely ridiculous Wii game concepts. With Wii MotionPlus heading out to improve our real motion experience, and the console’s fascination with minigames, what’s yet to come? Wii Music-er? Wii Dodgeball? Wii Cage Match? Call it now.
