Nintendo Announces Western DS Game Line-Up

Thanks to Nintendo's press site for a release listing the Nintendo DS dual-screen handheld titles currently in development for a Western release. Although sharing many games with a recently announced Japanese listing, it's explained: "Many of the industry's biggest software companies confirm that they will deliver names like Madden NFL, Viewtiful Joe, Rayman and SpongeBob SquarePants to the Nintendo DS", and other new/surprising DS titles include GoldenEye from EA, an Atari Classics pack from Atari, and a Western release of the previously mentioned Caduceus surgery game from Atlus.

Comments

Not very many original games

[ALeavitt]

At first glance (yes, I RTFA) it looks like there are less than ten original titles on this list. Given the fact that the DS is supposed to be some sort of gaming revolution, opening up new control possibilities and allowing completely novel game concepts to be created, this bothers me. I realize that sequels to proven properties are more likely to be financially successful, but the DS is not the next logical evolution of a proven property. Why aren't game makers coming up with more novel concepts? The first generation of games, when gamers won't know what to expect, is the best time for such innovation. Who really needs another Bomberman, another lineup of Atari Classics, or yet another version of the Sims?

Re:Not very many original games

[The-Bus]

The first generation of games, when gamers won't know what to expect, is the best time for such innovation.

Yes and no. The first generation of games will have to use the new features but I think it's easy to argue that most features aren't used successfuly until the console is about a year old, at which point the developers are more at ease with the kits and know how to get "more" out of a console. Compare Mario 64 vs. Zelda: Ocarina of Time to get an idea of the difference. Remember, at launch there's usually 1 or 2 good titles, and a lot of filler (Luigi's Mansion for the GC, Fantavision for the PS2, Fuzion Frenzy for the Xbox).

My guess is that what "gamers won't expect" is not going to appear until 6-18 months into the life of the DS. Whether by then it would have gone the route of the Virtua Boy is beyond me.

And for what it's worth, the Bomberman title was a highlight to me.

Re:Not very many original games

[Rydia]

You're confusing originality with... I'm not even sure there's a word for it, but something along the lines of "lack of franchises." Just because something sports the name of a franchise doesn't necissarily that it'll be old-hat, nor does it mean it won't have both new content and novel concepts. To whit, Super Mario 64 was completely off from the previous games in the franchise. Sure, it was still a platformer, but the way it played was so completely different. Difficulty could no longer come only from enemy placement, everything had to be more non-linear, and so on and so forth. So what you saw was a game that could have been old hat do a lot of crazy things to take advantage of the new system instead of simply trying to recreate previous incarnations.

So, if the only test you have for originality in a game is whether or not it is in a series, than yeah, sure, a lot of the list will upset you. I think that most of us, however, are going to wait and see what the developers DO with the new hardware using the franchise they've already built up. I, for one, am looking forward to what a touchpad can do for some of these franchises (maps and menus in castlevania, minigames in goemon, control in metroid, and whatever else they thing up), because I realize that innovation, while many times is running around in left field, is also taking what you have and making it new and exciting with new capabilities and ideas.

Re:Not very many original games

[MBCook]

Exactly. What if in that football game you could draw your own plays using the touch screen and then the game would interpret them and run them out for you. Just because you've heard the name of the game doesn't mean it can't be innovative, as my parent comment pointed out.

Castlevania

[jvmatthe]

I sure hope Konami doesn't try to go 3D the Castlevania game. If they simply continued with the type of increasingly high-quality 2D game they've put into Castlevania: Circle of the Moon, Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance, and Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow, they will have something quite special. Add in some features that really exploit the DS hardware, and the press will fall all over themselves promoting it for you.

Konami's had their three strikes in 3D with Castlevania 64, Castlevania: Legacy of Darkness (N64), and Castlevania: Lament of Innocence (PS2), and should just stop trying, for now. (I guess it's three-and-a-half strikes if you count the aborted Dreamcast game.)

Not that the Castlevania games couldn't use some work. Harmony of Dissonance had some less-than-stellar musical tracks. All the GBA games have had a nearly useless map function that needs some serious enhancements to avoid driving players mad with backtracking insanity. And they could all do with a new set of artists and creative thinkers to get beyond the same tired enemy types that have existed since the very first games.

Anyway, I do think that Castlevania DS with a map screen that switches to an enemy profile when you're attacking would be neat. Let's hope they're doing it right so that we're not left saying "No special DS features? This could have been done on the GBA!"

Re:Well they are library fillers

[EddieBurkett]

Nintendo is just doing what it has always done. Cheap low price crappy hardware but fun. Sony is/seems to be doing quality good pricey hardware.

Most people I know are still able to play their original NES's. (Assuming they can get the cartridge to stay down.) Granted I haven't touched it in the last year that I've had my GBA, but my original Gameboy worked near perfectly (save for a couple missing lines near the edge of the screen.) Not that I pay all that much attention, but I haven't heard of anyone having any problems with the current line of GBA's or Gamecubes. Nintendo may be selling their hardware cheaper than their rivals, but by no means is that an indication of the quality of their product.

As for Sony, as I said, I don't pay all that much attention to these kinds of things, but even I have heard about problems with PS2's dying after a relatively short period of time. And this is from the company using the 'good pricey hardware'...

Re:Well they are library fillers

[Grey Ninja]

Nintendo is just doing what it has always done. Cheap low price crappy hardware but fun

NES - cart reading mechanisms tended to wear out over time, but the console itself and the carts have lasted 20 years now. The hardware itself allowed for large scrolling games. This was in an era where most games were on a single screen.

SNES - exceptionally durable console. I don't know of many broken ones, even this many years later. The quality is also quite exceptional, with a DSP that was state of the art at its release, and capability to display many more colors than the competition of the era.

N64 - as always, exceptionally durable. The quality of the console was unquestionable. The CPU was just a monster, with a fairly good clock rate, and the games easily blew away the other consoles of the generation. Held back mainly by a small amount of working memory and storage medium constraints. Not a nice system to develop for, but well made.

GCN - Durable as hell. There are a few people having problems reading discs already, but nowhere even close to the number of people having problems with the PS2. Hardware is designed with efficiency and ease of development in mind, essentially the anti-N64. Console is definitely a match for the current generation, trumping Xbox's graphics in many cases but at a fraction of the cost. (Xbox has higher clock frequencies, but GameCube beats it out in efficiency and coordination of hardware. Case in point, most polygons in a console game record still belongs to GameCube (Rebel Strike))

GameBoy - Essentially a portable monochrome NES. The durability is also unquestionable, but what really made this console great is that it didn't eat through batteries at too high of a rate, and was playable for extended periods of time.

GameBoy Color - GameBoy with a smaller form factor and a color screen... what more is to be said?

GameBoy Advance - This is probably the Nintendo console I am most familiar with. The hardware works together unbelievably well (ala GameCube), and functions quite well as a portable SNES, and does it without eating up batteries or compromising ease of development. Regardless of what you might think, this is truly a console for the ages.

Nintendo DS - Nintendo has packed in wireless connectivity, 2 lit screens, a touchpad, a microphone, a speaker, and 2 fairly high performance CPUs while claiming battery life comparable to GBA SP. I am prepared to take their word on it, as it's unlike them to lie about that. Especially compared to the battery life of the PSP, that is completely undeniably awesome.