What’s that? More RPGs? Alright, alright… I’ve got more RPGs for yah. Sit back, relax and prepare for some good ones!

Etrian Odyssey 1 & 2

I’m not gonna lie to you. If you want a challenge, if you want a serious RPG, then this is the game for you. There aren’t flashy graphics, there are only stats, items, monsters and a very cool map-making system. You and your party of adventurers goes down into a dungeon few go into to find the treasure. You can pick classes, have as many members as you want. but can only carry a few around. The monsters get viciously difficult to kill very quickly. The battle system is your standard turns based on speed/surprise factor. Lots of fun, but I’m warning you now: Almost as addictive as an MMO(but so much cheaper!). I thoroughly enjoyed them, even if the god damn F.O.E.s obliterated me for days.
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The magic of beat/rhythm/music games is strong. Nothing makes you feel good like playing your favorite song, rocking out and getting the highest score you can. Well, not everyone knows what good music games there are out there, so here’s something that might point you in the right direction. Get ready to boogie!

Elite Beat Agents/Ouendan

If you haven’t heard of EBA, you probably need to come out of your cave. This game is totally amazing. The song selection is a bit… Odd, yes, but solid. Every second of this game is hilarious. The EBA go around the world and cheer on people who are in tough situations. How this would help someone steal back plans for their business or help a cat save a baby from a construction zone is beyond me, but I won’t complain. The game gives you numbered circles, and you have to tap them in sequence and rhythm with the playing song. Easy, right? For a while, sure, but you’ll be crying when you fail at the last stretch of “Without a Fight”. This game is on the DS only, has an American version(EBA) and two Japanese versions with different characters, scenarios, music, but that same awesome gameplay. There’s even a custom song game with gameplay very much like it on the PC called “Osu!”, but unless you have a touch screen PC you’re gonna be mousin’ it.
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Since I was lucky enough to register 400 dollars worth of Nintendo games, I’ve decided to review this Club Nintendo reward because most of you probably do not have it. Let me tell you, it was worth it. Previously only available in Japan as part of their Club Nintendo, this game was hard to come by. However, with Nintendo debuting Club Nintendo here in the “Americas”, we now have a chance to play it. Ordering the game requires 800 points on the CN (as I will refer to it from now on) website. This turns out to be roughly 400 dollars, if you registered only Wii games.

The Game and Watch Collection contains three G&W games:

• Oil Panic
• Donkey Kong
• Green House

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Won’t somebody please think of the CHILDREN?

That’s essentially the rallying cry of the watchdog group Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood, or CCFC. The name may ring a bell to those who follow the gaming news; those who don’t, well, really didn’t miss much. 

Once again the CCFC’s antics don’t fail to deliver on the entertainment value, and this time the object of their (pointless) ire is Lego Batman: The Videogame. Why, you ask? I don’t know either. 

Let’s try to rationalize the two basic components of Lego Batman: The Videogame:

• Lego = good, educational, mindless fun.
• Batman = awesome story revolving around the concept of justice and about how crime doesn’t pay. 

I certainly don’t see any problem with it; it looks like a winning formula when looked at from any angle. But of course, CCFC being a watchdog group that dedicates itself to the unneeded, unwanted, and unnecessary cause of taking commercialism away from childhood, they condemned Lego Batman as a virtual spawn of commercial Satan, including it in their list of Toys Oppressive and Destructive to Young Children. Check out their write-up:
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It’s come to my attention lately that there is such a thing as LinuxDS. That’s right – Linux for your Nintendo DS.

Now you’re probably wondering; just now? Yes, just now. I’ve only started to appreciate the home-brew world of the DS and not just the smattering of games one might acquire. Here’s my question; for an OS that’s composed completely of text, maybe you might want to leave it for a system that actually has a keyboard?
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There were so many ways that the DS could have evolved. Nintendo could’ve made the top screen touch-sensitive. The whole thing could have been compacted to fold up into a convenient Gameboy SP-sized package, like one of those shoop’ed ads circulating the interwebs from long, long ago. But no, they had to come up with the Nintendo DSi, which is basically a re-designed DS without the GBA port and dual 0.3 megapixel cameras. Well at least the screens themselves are bigger, and there’s some potential with homebrew ( the DSi also offers SD card support and internal storage as new features ). We’ll take what we can get.

Anyway, IGN seems to be on the vine with the latest regarding the latest model of the Nintendo DS, citing numerous but unnamed sources in their report that the redesign would cost around US$ 179.99, and will be launching in the Americas on April 4. That’s a bit of a hefty price, but it’s a good thing, considering that the Nintendo DS lite is still selling like hotcakes (selling 1.5 million units in November), making the DSi more of an optional upgrade than anything else. I’m sure I won’t be plunking money down on it.

It’s no surprise that Nintendo has won this gaming generation in terms of sales. Yes, we know about the shovelware and yes, we know that the Wii and the DS do have gimmicks, but even the most hardcore fanboy can’t deny the fact that Nintendo is literally making a killing, even with the recent economic crunch. Sony’s laying off people, Microsoft is planning to lay off people, Nintendo is in fact hiring more people to cart the ridiculous scads of money they’ve been making from the bank to their secret underground vaults, where they also store the world’s only supply of Nintendium. They’ve dominated each and every NPD chart since the history of forever, and it looks like they’re not stopping.

Take this latest NPD Group update, which tackles the sales of all videogame consoles last December (i.e. December of 2008). Here’s the actual list, first:

* Nintendo DS – 3,040,000
* Wii – 2,150,000
* Xbox 360 – 1,440,000
* PSP – 1,020,000
* PlayStation 3 – 726,000
* PlayStation 2 – 410,000

Oh, look, Nintendo’s at the top. No surprise there. What’s surprising is that for the entire month of December, Nintendo has sold over 5 million consoles. That’s both the Wii and the DS hardware sales combined. According to NPD, that makes a new record high – breaking the PlayStation 2’s record of 2.7 million sales for a month alone. And that’s just for the US. Nintendo is making so much money, it should be a crime.

Of course, now with all your money, Nintendo, isn’t it time to do something about your software? Come on. We’re literally eating right out of your hand. Take some risks! Be creative with your IPs! Super Mario Galaxy was great, Twilight Princess was pretty cool, but it’s always been more or the same. Ask Rockstar to help direct the next Zelda. Have Suda 51 develop the next Mario game, anything. Break the mold. PLEASE.

Remember Bob’s Game? That DS RPG that the creator, someone supposedly named ‘Bob’ himself put in a staggering 15,000 hours of hard work on? That indie game that Nintendo apparently doesn’t want to be completed, blocking it by way of denying its creator an SDK purchase? If so, then you might remember that ‘Bob’ himself bit the bullet by staging a 100-day protest inside a room, barricaded from the outside world, only to come out when Nintendo finally relents and gives him the SDK he sorely needs to make Bob’s Game ready for retail. Well, it seems that it will be a while before Bob’s Game actually makes it to the store shelves, as it seems that Bob himself has given up the good fight, letting himself out after only 30 days of being cooped up in his own room. Bear in mind that it’s quite the furnished room, and has all the amenities and luxuries of any room, and he even has a way to communicate with the outside (as well as a shower and food) – which is why him giving up even before the halfway mark a bit puzzling, and a bit sad.
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The latest installment of of the Fire Emblem series does exactly what we’d like of it – give us the same exact thing that we’ve come to love and know and put it on a portable. Swords still beat axes, axes still beat spears and spears of course topple swords. With the various items that reverse the combat-triangle scattered around the game world (I’m still not sure how a ‘Lance Reaver’ works, and how it’s different from a regular sword, but hey let’s just go with it.)

There is some wonderful nitty gritty to this adaptation of the Fire Emblem saga though; your characters can change classes. Yeah that’s right; the useless cavalier that you have 15 of? Pow, turn him into a backup healer. Now you can’t have more of a class than the game would normally have given you, plus one, so obviously you can’t turn all your footmen into cavaliers and have an entire horseback army, but you can come mighty close. Obviously heroes are an exception to this rule as well.

Your story is cliche and typical for a Fire Emblem. There is a bad guy, in this case a giant Dragon, who was stopped by one of your ancestors and of course has resurfaced with the intent to take over the world once again. As the last remaining descendant of said slayer of dragon, you must take up arms and kick some tuckus. Also your family has been murdered and you must rally the nations and old allies to your side.
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Eidos has always been a very respectable game publisher, but more recently it’s been getting itself caught up in a tangled web of misguided PR decisions – one of which we can easily recall as the event that made Gamespot the laughing stock that it is now, i.e. Jeff Gerstmann’s firing over his Kane & Lynch: Dead Men review.

Well, this bit of news isn’t exactly as heinous as that, but it’s a bit disturbing: a reader with an @eidos.co.uk email address in his profile has continously been voting for an Eidos DS title in a magazine GOTY poll. The magazine in question? Australian Magazine Hyper.  The title of the game? Soul  Bubbles.

It may be a troll, but at the same time it may not be one, considering that he keeps on harping that the game has “without doubt the best use of touchscreen ever and hands down the most impressive physics”.

Eidos. Eidos Eidos Eidos. I feel nothing but pity for you.