NP Promo DVD

[Nakor BlueRider]

Volume 194 (August 2005) of Nintendo Power contained a promo video, and while I haven't bothered watching everything on it, I thought I'd comment on everything I have seen.<
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>Gamecube<
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>The Legend of Zelda - E3 2005 Trailer<
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>Even yet, I really don't have an idea what to think of this game. Personally, the graphics don't wow me as much as they're supposedly supposed to, but then, graphics rarely do. There was a scene in which Link got transmuted into a wolf, though, and that was admittedly pretty wicked. Wolf Link seems pretty nice. The weirdass thing that sits on his back . . . not so sure about that one. <
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>There was very little video that appeared like it may be on the inside of a dungeon, which is one of the biggest things I look at in a Zelda game, and no idea about what the puzzles may be. The gameplay (controls-wise) looked pretty much like other Zeldas, except for wolf-form Link of course, who seems to do combo-style attacks, striking enemies in sequence. Only one or two quick scenes of this, however.<
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>In short, something that definitely requires more info to have even an inkling of judgement on.<
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>One Piece: Grand Battle<
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>Graphically, very not stunning. The gameplay here didn't look entirely spectacular either. Still, it's tough to judge a fighting game without knowing the controls. 16 playable characters is a decent number (probably just above average as fighting games go), but only a few were shown in the video. If memory serves: Luffy, Nami, Zoro, Arlong, and Kuro were shown, maybe one or two others I'm forgetting. I'm fairly sure that I saw neither Usopp nor Sanji in the video, however logically they should be in the game, since Kuro is Usopp's introductory arc, and one of the fights was outside Sanji's restaurant.<
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>Current Outlook: Could be good, but don't keep your hopes up.<
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>Hello Kitty Roller Rescue<
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>Pure morbid curiosity drove me to watch this clip. Actually, I've never seen Hello Kitty at all, so it was completely new to me. Having seen this, I have no idea what people possibly find in it. The characters look horrible. Back on topic though, this one seems very . . . odd. Some block-people come from outer space, randomly decide to attack Earth, and then Hello Kitty (or whatever the main character's name is) get's transported just in time while being attacked by block-things to some cute-world version of a science lab where she (he? it?) gets roller skates, a bow tie, and a heart wand.<
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>The game then shows clips of the cat-thing skating around the enemies and dizzying them with the heart wand . . . somehow. It was all very reminiscent of Sailor Moon gone very, very wrong, somehow.<
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>My thoughts: Save your sanity.<
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>Nintendo DS<
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>Kirby: Canvas Curse<
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>Despite being a big fan of the Kirby series, this video did nothing to improve my confidence in the game. The gameplay seemed relatively slow, and there was nothing in the video that hinted at much of a challenge.<
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>The video only displayed a couple of absorbed powers, which did seem pretty decent, in addition to being original ones, but no actual display of Kirby using them.<
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>The video actually showed very few scenes in which the stylus was used to draw paths . . . mostly it was being used to cause Kirby to do things by tapping him (causing cannons to fire, or his current power to activate). The areas seemed quite wide open, not leaving the player prone to requiring precise movements, although that again perhaps reduces challenge a bit.<
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>My thoughts: I hope it's more challenging than it looks? (And of decent length.)<
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>Polarium<
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>I thought I'd watch the video of this for some reason or another, even though I realized well in advance I'd see nothing that I didn't already know well enough. The only thing I learned from this video is that whoever was playing during the video is a very slow player. <
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>The game has a decent premise, but I can only see it losing it's lustre in the long run. In short, it's no Tetris, and there's another puzzler in the list that caught my interest far more anyway.<
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>Thoughts: I'll pass on this one.<
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>Yoshi Touch & Go<
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>Based only on the video, pure disappointment here. Yoshi seems to move incredibly slowly, and the purpose of the game seems to be drawing paths and
idges so that Yoshi doesn't trundle right off of an edge. o_o<
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>Now, I imagine that the later levels add some sort of a challenge, but the game just doesn't strike me as on-par with some of the other Mario games involving Yoshi. But then, of course, Yoshi's titled games always seem to be of a shorter, easier
eed anyway.<
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>The video focused mostly on two parts. In one, Yoshi was on the top screen, falling (the area scrolls, so Yoshi stays on the top screen) and the player had to draw paths on the bottom screen before they scrolled off onto the top screen, to guide Yoshi into coins and away from enemies. In the other part of the video, Yoshi was moving at a crawl on the left side of the lower screen toward the right, and the player was drawing
idges over gaps, as well as circling harder to reach coins, and then dragging them toward Yoshi.<
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>Thoughts: Disappointement.<
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>The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe<
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>I know I've seen this movie once, long ago, which is why I decided to watch this game's trailer. All I actually remember of the movie though, was some scene in lots of snow and a mostly dead forest. It's like one still-frame I can remember, with no clue about anything else.<
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>The game itself seems decent. The trailer only showed what appeared to be early stages of the game. It involves a party of three characters. In what was shown, the characters were involved in several short battles, mostly with wolves, on the top screen, and otherwise travelling about. The bottom screen seemed to be character status or something (it hadn't been translated yet), and when a character started fighting, it changed to indicate which character was doing so. I got the impression that the player controlled one character (perhaps of their choice?), and the CPU controlled the other two, but I could be wrong.<
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>Thoughts: The bit that was shown looked good enough, but it was only a very little bit.<
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>Lost in Blue<
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>Ahh . . . I want to play this game so much. v_v It features two main characters (one boy, one girl, as you can imagine) stranded on a large island in the middle of the ocean. The game starts out as a game of survival, and develops from their as the characters live their life on the island.<
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>From what was shown in the trailer, the menus seem very intelligently designed, and each character is given a few status bars (hunger, fatigue, warmth if memory serves) with percentage figures to allow easy knowledge of their current status. The player picks one character (boy or girl) at the start, and the other character is controlled by the CPU. The player, however, still has some control over the other character (for example, the game showed one scene where the boy character, presumably the player in this case, was guiding the girl up a series of cliffs).<
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>Thoughts: It seems very original, and very enjoyable. I would love to try this game out.<
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>Puyo Pop Fever<
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>Here's the other puzzler I was talking about. This game is all about speed, and I'm a bit of a speed-obsessor in gaming sometimes. The chibi characters, while hardly important to the gameplay, are of course awesome, and the gameplay itself seems intellegent, and appears to make good use of either the touchscreen or button/dpad controls. <
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>Thoughts: Fast, furious, fun, but probably best if you have human opponents. Also consider Meteos, though.<
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>Trauma Center: Under the Knife<
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>Assuming they don't put miserable voice actors in that will kill the ears of anybody who plays this (it wasn't translated in the video) this game looks to be very, very awesome. Not constrained to a random series of operations like it first appears, the game actually seems to have a solid RPG-like storyline that develops. The stylus controls seem to be very well done, and the menu system which allows for choice of surgical tools is extremely quick to use.<
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>The only thing I didn't get was near the end of the video. All of a sudden they showed a couple situations where a 5-pointed star was drawn on the screen and the problem was cured or frozen or something. o_o It was quite odd, and probably has something to do with the storyline, of which I know little more than it has to do with an unusual plague.<
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>Thoughts: Definitely worth the look, probably will be a great game.<
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>Gameboy Advance<
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>Riviera: The Promised Land<
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>When this game first was mentioned and
iefly described in NP, I thought it was going to be great and original. Well, original it seems to be, but maybe not so great. It appears to be targeted at a younger audience, with simplistic controls designed for people not used to RPGs. Selecting a point on the screen causes the character to suddenly appear there. The player selects a weapon for their characters, but the enemy they target appears to be automatic.<
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>The game will probably be great for RPG beginners and novices, but as far as the members of this board go, it's probably a passer.<
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>Thoughts: Maybe the story will be worth it?<
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>There are several more games listed on the trailer disc, which I may or may not watch another day, after which I may or may not add a review for. Among the ones you're more likely to see me add here are Medal of Honor: European Assault, Nintendogs, WarioWare: Touched!, and Viewtiful Joe DS. <i>There are many rules of<
>physics that govern our world.<
>There is only one exception.<
>His name is Nakor.</i><
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>--Nakor, the Blue Rider<
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><i></i>

[TStodden]

If you need a little Zelda: TP fix... I have 26 wallpapers available on my website @ http://www.geocities.com/TStodde.../Zelda-TP/ <
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>Twin Galaxies DDR Ref at Large<i></i>

[soloist]

I have already viewed all of the demos from Zelda: Twilight<
>Princess... and from what I have viewed, the visuals s-<
>eem to be somewhat dated, but if the gameplay su-<
>rpasses this aspect, I am certain a successful s-<
>elling item it will be (especially when you ta-<
>ke in consideration the Zelda fan-base)!<
>During the E3, I watched them all an-<
>d while the idea of becoming a wo-<
>lf does little to impress me, I a-<
>m curious about the many si-<
>de-quests which are said t-<
>o be available in this Ze-<
>ld game. Nintendogs i-<
>s high on my list, as<
>well as Viewtiful J-<
>oe DS and Kirby!<
>Thanks for th-<
>e informat-<
>ion thou-<
>gh, Na-<
>kor!!<
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>(any of them animated, TStodden?) <i></i>

[KenseidenXL]

I've beaten Zelda: TP several times already. I love being a beta tester. In the end, there can be only ONE!Only the
ave enter The PortalCome to the Fuzzy Pink Board...if you dare!"I'm not going to talk about what I did as a child. What I am going to talk about -- and I am going to say this consistently -- [is that] it is irrelevant what I did 20 to 30 years ago. What's relevant is that I have learned from any mistakes I made. I do not want to send signals to anybody that what Gov. Bush did 30 years ago is cool to try."—George W. Bush<i></i>

[TStodden]

Sorry, I don't have any animated wallpapers. Mainly because GIF's are a poor format for wallpapers & PNG animations can sometimes yield undesireable results.<
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>...not to mention that I don't have the software to pull it off. I do have GIMP, but I haven't tried everything in it due to the lack of the help files offline. <
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>Twin Galaxies DDR Ref at Large<i></i>

[NOAImawario]

I didn't watch too many of those trailers. I did watch the Zelda one though. It was cool. <
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[soloist]

Not essential are the wallpapers of my mentioning, though<
>TStodden. Those that existed at the link you provided<
>were suitable enough in my opinion. I would not m-<
>ind being a beta-tester, however, the schedule<
>would have to suit my current one, and eve-<
>n I tend to get tired of game-playing, bu-<
>t it would be something worth looking<
>into. How did you approach such a<
>task/job, Kenseiden if you min-<
>d not my asking? I only hope<
>I can be more objective i-<
>n my reviewing of gam-<
>es since I tend to be<
>able to appreciat-<
>e just about e-<
>very game <
>I play!!!<
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>(laughs) <i></i>