Category Archives: Mini-games

Nintendo has announced the Australian release date for the Square Enix-developed Mario Sports Mix, pipping the UK and US at the post by over a week for a January 27 launch.

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A mysterious new sports game has been outed by an interview with SEGA Studios Australia producer Kim Sellentin.

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Kinect Sports, which seems to be an Xbox 360 version of Wii Sports, has been developed by Rare.

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In the first LittleBigPlanet, if you could create something that wasn’t a second-rate Mario level, you were heralded as one of the finest minds of your generation. In LittleBigPlanet 2, someone’s already made a Command & Conquer clone.

That’s right: in LittleBigPlanet, you made levels. In LittleBigPlanet 2, you create entire games. How do we know? Because the latest issue of Game Informer’s leaked the lot.

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Just Add Water has announced it’s creating a new series of titles for the Minis collection on PSP and PS3 and for iPhone known as Vektar.

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During the course of the week, loads of indie games, less mainstream titles and those point-and-click adventures you are always hearing about, sometimes get lost in the shuffle -what with news on Uncharted 2 and Modern Warfare 2 happening every three minutes or so.

That’s why, much like the MMO news round-up, we’ve decided to remedy this by giving you a heads up on news, demos, patches, announcements, trailers, screens and other doodads pertaining to these games that you missed out on during the week.

Yes, it’s all here for you in one post! See how much we love you guys? Another wall of text for the win!

While not comprehensive, since there are loads of this sort out there, we will do our best to be as thorough as possible.

Read on past the break for the first of, hopefully, many “Indie and other games of interest” post.

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Nintendo’s announced it’ll be releasing Mario & Sonic at the Winter Olympics on October 16th for Nintendo Wii and Nintendo DS.

Umm, thats pretty much it. The game was announced back in March.

Thanks, CVG.

Nintendo’s announced “Britain’s Best Brain”, a Five TV programme in the format of the endless, suicide-inducing talent shows vomited all over recent annual schedules.

Contestants will take part in national heats, competing on Wii and DS games including Dr Kawashima’s Brain Training: How Old is your Brain?, Wii Fit and Big Brain Academy.

There’s a list of regionals after the break. If you’re interested, look at this.

Coincidentally, MCV reckons Nintendo’s coughed up £2 million for this.

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505′s secured the rights to Grease. As in, the movie. With Rizzo. Undated Wii and DS games are on the way.

This happened yesterday. We must have been drunk, or something.

“Paramount Digital Entertainment is pleased to be working with 505 Games to develop Grease,” said Paramount’s John Kavanagh.

“Grease is the ideal opportunity to reach a broad gaming audience who love to sing, dance and have fun with a party-style game.”

You can insert any one of 500 billion quotes from the film here as a “joke”. Then read the PR after the break.

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A huge, in-depth survey into teenager’s gaming habits and the relationship to civic engagement has shown that the five most popular games played in the US are Guitar Hero, Halo 3, Madden NFL, Solitaire, and Dance Dance Revolution.

The wide spread of genres on display is not uncommon, says the survey:

80% of teens play five or more different game genres, and 40% play eight or more types whilst 55% of daily gamers play eight or more types of games; just 33% of less frequent gamers do so. Girls play an average of 6 different game genres; boys average 8 different types.

Through this link are more stats about US teenage gaming habits than you could shake a stick at. Get the coffee ready and dive in.

Good grief. There’s a video after the break of WarioWare Snap being demoed in the Iwata keynote at GDC on Wednesday. It’s preposterous.

Seriously. Look.

Thanks, Destructoid.

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Rich Amtower, localization manager/producer at NoE has confirmed to IGN the games that will launch alongside DSi in the US on April 5th.

There’s the Opera Browser, WarioWare Snapped!, Art Style: Aquia and Bird and Beans.

No price as yet, full details through the link.

The DS officially has its You’re in the Movies-killer.

At today’s GDC keynote, Nintendo gave conference-goers a look at WarioWare: Snapped for the DSi.

The game requires that you line up your head and hands for the camera before catapulting you through a, er, typical WarioWare gauntlet so that it can then play back recorded footage of you playing the game after you’re done.

Sounds like the kids’ll soon have a new set of questionable tapes to innocently stumble onto. God help us all if the game has multiple save files.

Speaking to MCV, Nintendo UK marketing boss Dawn Paine has admitted there are currently no plans for any more Brain Training games from Nintendo.

“The idea behind More Brain Training is that people can move across to it once they have played the first one, and vice versa, and are looking for new challenges and training exercises,” said Paine.

“Given that both titles continue to perform well, there are no plans for any more titles in the series.”

More through the link.

GoNintendo is reporting that Caffeinated Games is weighing up whether or not to bring its latest “board and collectible card game” from PC to WiiWare.

All that’s needed to make it happen is for you to leave a comment over at GoNintendo and ask for it, apparently.

We love board and collectible card game, so we’ve already spammed it to kingdom come.

Join us through the link.

By Mike Bowden

Nintendo UK has confirmed that Wii Wario Land Shake is a real title and will release in Japan in July, as previously rumoured.

“Wario Land Shake has been announced in Japan where it is scheduled to be launched in July,” a rep told videogaming247 this morning. “Nothing announced for Europe right now.”

The spokesperson also confirmed the following for Japanese launch and gave dates, a list that differs slightly from the previous story:

DS

• June 26 – Band Bros DX
• July 10 – Densetsu no Starfi
• July 31 – Rhythm Tengoku Gold
• Aug 7 – Fire Emblem

Wii

• June 19 – Super Mario Stadium Family Baseball
• July 24 – Wario Land Shake
• July 31 – Zero

A list of new Nintendo titles and dates just popped up on NeoGaf, including a Wii version of Fatal Frame (first scans on GoNintendo) and something called Wii Wario Land Shake. The info’s ostensibly translated from this Japanese blog.

• July 10 – DS Densetsu no Starfi
• July 24 – Wii Wario Land Shake
• July 31 – Wii Rei (Fatal Frame)
• July 31 – Rhythm Tengoku Gold
• Aug 7 – DS Fire Emblem DS
• Aug 22 – DS Inazuma Eleven

We’ll check with Nintendo now.

It’s a Wii game that isn’t made by Nintendo and it’s out on Friday, so you should be interested.

“Combining chaotic arcade driving with a huge range of mini-game challenges, players must race against the clock in one of three emergency vehicles – a fire-truck, ambulance or police patrol car to reach different incident scenes,” said a Codemasters press release.

Hot diggedy. See the screens after the link.

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Colour us shocked. Joystiq’s reporting that the Boom Blox head-tracking feature – that was supposedly going to allow players to move the game’s camera with head movements – has been pulled. From the site:

At the Nintendo Media Summit, Boom Blox senior producer Amir Rahimi confirmed that the final version of the game will lack the head-tracking mode. We understand that it was always an Easter egg, requiring gamers to set up Wii Remotes as cameras, and hacking together their own IR LED glasses. But you didn’t have to go to TED to see the promise, and we’re disappointed to see it removed.

More here.

Want to read some sketchy notes about a really long WiiWare presentation in America? Course you do. IGN live blogged the second day of Nintendo’s Media Summit just in case you do. There’s stuff in there about Strong Bad, World of Goo and the fact Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles and Major League Eating were playable but no one can write about them until next week. Enjoy.