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No one ever seems to have a good word to say about the men from the council. They're either increasing our taxes, setting up road calming humps, or fining us for putting envelopes into our paper recyling sack (by mistake, we didn't mean it!). If it was a Ninja Council, we assume the level of compliance from the local population would improve somewhat. The first Naruto on DS (the previous two titles being GBA games), we don't imagine the latest in the manga spin-off series involves going around cleaning up graffiti or dealing with noisy neighbours. Instead, you'll work your way through 60 missions using a fluid attack system that enables you to combo the jutsu techniques from over 20 characters. Plot-wise, headstrong ninja-in-training Naruto Uzumaki and classmates Sakura and Sasuke will be doing their best to learn the importance of friendship, teamwork, loyalty, hard work, and beating crap out of their enemies – all under the watchful eye of their teacher, Kakashi. And after you've attempted to battle your way to the top as your favourite character from the TV show, you'll be able to relax with your friends via the four-way multiplayer battle mode. Due a 2007 release in the US, there's not yet a confirmed European publisher for Naruto: Ninja Council 3. Let's just hope it can repair the damage to handheld ninjitsu's reputation following the lamentable Shinobido on PSP, which we reviewed earlier this week.
Most of us at Pocket Gamer are supposedly grown up, which occasionally makes us wonder if we should put childish things away. Then a box set of Futurama or perhaps Family Guy will beckon us into their warm embrace, and we may as well be 14 again.
Fair enough, you think – but surely SpongeBob SquarePants is a step too juvenile? So my guilty secret is out. If I'm honest, I actually enjoy the antics of Bob of the spongey pantaloons, Patrick Star and Eugene Krabs.
Whether that enthusiasm will transfer to the latest SpongeBob SquarePants game remains to be seen, however. There have been plenty of previous game examples – mainly on the GBA, but a couple on DS – and they haven't been too impressive. In fact, most have been downright pants.
This time, as the 'and Friends' part of the title informs us, Bob and Pat will be joined by their Nicktoons chums in the battle against an evil spirit from the Ghost Zone, who plans to destroy their island paradise.
So as well as the SpongeBob SquarePants dudes, you'll be able to choose playable characters from some ten other Nicktoons series, including Danny Phantom, The Fairly OddParents and Jimmy Neutron. There'll also be an option to play through the game in a co-operative two-player mode.
Not surprisingly, the action itself will be strictly of the 2D action platforming and exploration variety, as you make your way up the dreaded volcano, disposing of various cartoon villains as you go.
Until we hear more about why this game will be different from previous examples, we'll not be too excited. But perhaps there's still time to get some good news from publisher THQ: SpongeBob SquarePants and Friends: Battle for Volcano Island isn't due for release until June.
Reaxion is putting a new spin on the classic 'match three coloured shapes' puzzle genre – literally!
The game is called Spin-It!, and has an innovative structure that involves rotating a mechanism to match coloured spheres in sets of three.
There's also the usual bonuses that help you create chains and boost your score, with special balls including Bomb, Rainbow, Painter and Link Ball to collect and use.
The game will feature four modes: Career, Action, Puzzle and – for the really hardcore players – Endless. The game supports Reaxion's own Gamarama community for players to upload high scores, while also going to the Gamarama website to chat to other players.
Spin-It! is launching soon in the US, and hopefully soon after over here in Europe too.
In terms of difficulty, securing a publishing deal as a start-up video games developer is as tricky as finding a suitable use for the Millennium Dome. And if what you're trying to get published isn't part of an existing franchise or licensed to a major brand, then you may as well step into a Canadian grizzly bear sanctuary wearing a blazer lined with the freshest Scottish salmon. You'd have a better chance of winning over the bear than attempting to sell an original game idea within a publisher's meeting room (and you won't get torn to pieces as much – grizzlies aren't a match for marketing men).
So it's tough to be lost in the gaming space without a publisher – but Tiki Games isn't afraid of boldly going where few have gone before. Undeterred by the cold darkness of uncertainty it faces, the developer has been working on Galaxy's End, an original sci-fi realtime strategy concept designed specifically for PSP. This means that the convoluted control system usually associated with such titles has been streamlined to compensate for the fact that the last time we looked, the PSP didn't come with a slide-out keyboard.
We don't know how well this works in practice (Tiki is reporting the feedback it's had so far in this regard has been encouraging) but judging from the work-in-progress screenshots and accompanying trailer (click 'Watch It!'), all of the staple elements of an RTS appear solidly in place.
Galaxy's End currently seems promising, even if unlikely to prove revolutionary. That's by no means a criticism – the PSP could certainly do with an RTS, if only to broaden its horizons, and in the absence of competition there's surely no need to re-invent the warp drive?
Of course, without a publisher on board we'll never know, so let's hope one keeps its marketing department at bay long enough to give Galaxy's End the chance it seemingly deserves.
It must be fun being a fish breeder. Plonk a pair of guppies in a tank, stir in some Viagra, and await some frenzied fin action. Something like that, anyway.
Fish Tycoon may disprove our sketchy theory. It's a Tamagotchi-style game where you play a fish breeder, who has to save the eco-system of a magical island called Isola by, well, breeding fish. Stick to what you know, we say.
You control a virtual aquarium, and have to feed your fish and keep them healthy, while also breeding them to get new varieties. There's over 400 types of fish in the game, apparently, some of whom have special powers and magical properties.
Fish Tycoon is due out by summer, and is being published by Oberon Games, which is one of the larger web gaming firms, so has plenty of experience in these types of casual games. Check the trailer out below.
Buoyed no doubt by the massive success of Tetris DS, Nintendo today announced that the latest beneficiary of the revamp-o-wand will be Panel de Pon, a puzzle game that has been previously released as Tetris Attack, Pokemon Puzzle League and Pokemon Puzzle Challenge.
Never heard of it? Not to worry, it's pretty simple: players swap adjacent tiles in a large wall of blocks, with the aim being to make horizontal or vertical lines of three or more to delete them. A bit like Zoo Keeper, come to think of it.
In addition to benefiting from touch-screen control, the game will feature both a mission mode and a puzzle mode, the latter of which sees players trying to clear the screen of blocks with a limited amount of moves.
The game makes use of the DS' wi-fi capabilities to provide not only four-player local matches, but also battles over the Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection, complete with full voice-chat support.
Also new to this edition are items, which are used in competitive matches to hinder your opponent's progress.
Panel de Pon is set for a Japanese release on the 26th of April for
the modest price of 3,800 Yen (approximately £16). Although there's no word of an international release, if it's as succesful as Tetris DS we'd certainly not rule it out. Click on 'Track It!' and we'll keep you informed.
Tom and Jerry isn't much like the real world, is it? At least not in our house, where despite the cat bringing in a bedraggled rodent every couple of days, they've never once been on the wrong end of an anvil as a result.
Glu's previous Tom and Jerry games have been extremely popular with The Kids, but the publisher's new effort has the potential to cross over to grown-ups, too. It's called Tom and Jerry Pinball Pursuit, which should give you a clear idea about the game's content.
Yep, it's pinball, with the distinctly disturbing sight of a ball-shaped Jerry being pinged around three colourful tables. Each table is based on a certain area of the pair's house, which will be recognisable to anyone who's a fan of the original cartoons.
We had a go at 3GSM last week, and the game is looking really nice, with bold visuals and a great variety of angles for Jerry to travel in.
Tom and Jerry Pinball Pursuit is due out in the first half of this year, and already seems a cut above the usual lazy pinball tie-in games that have made themselves a nuisance on mobile in the past.
As you'll have noticed, there's no shortage of Breakout clones available for mobile. It's partly because the mechanics of hitting a ball with a bat to destroy bricks suit the confines of a mobile screen, and partly because they sell like hot cakes.
Pandora Bricks is another in a long line of bat-and-ball games to hit your phone, but it's at least trying something different, by sticking four bats on the screen, two running up and down the sides, and two moving across the top and bottom.
In solo mode, you control the bats at the top and bottom, while your mobile controls the ones at the sides. There's also a multiplayer mode, using Bluetooth, in which a nearby friend takes over the mobile's role. In the latter mode there are 30 levels to play through, plus three bosses to defeat.
As you'd expect, there are power-ups to collect along the way, including multi-balls, mallets, caterpillars and magnetic fields. There's also a plot concerning a battle between Chaos and Orde, an ultimate being called Enki, and a hero called, erm, Gilgamesh. We'll need to brush up on our mythology.
Plot aside, it's the quad-bat system and multiplayer mode that may mark Pandora Bricks out as an original addition to the Breakout genre. We'll have a review for you soon.
You can't beat a good Super Mario platform game that involves jumping on cartoon enemies' heads. And Akira Hero is a new game that provides exactly that.
Based on OrangePixel's existing Dynamo Kid games, it's a bouncy platformer with nine levels and more than 30 bonus rooms to explore, plus a skirmish game mode that generates random levels whenever you play.
As the name implies, the visuals are distinctly Manga-influenced, while there's a Princess Peach
Akira Hero is out this month, including a free version on the advertising-supported GameJump to save along the way. The game also works with OrangePixel's online rumbleX high score tables, so you can see how you rate against other players. portal. OrangePixel says it's the first in a new line of hardcore games, to add to its existing one-thumb and casual mobile games.
Kart games are an oddity. Too often, slapping existing characters from other genres into a cartoon racer results in a tawdry piece of brand extension that only a loon would want to play.
On the other hand, if you want proof that transferring characters from, say, a platform game to a kart game can be genius, you don't have to look further than Nintendo's Mario Kart.
Gameloft hopes Rayman Kart will follow the success of the latter, clearly, and it was shaping up well when we got hands on at 3GSM last week. Now the company has released first shots of the game, so you can see too. Nice, innit?
Needless to say, we'll be reviewing the game when it emerges faster than Rayman can say, "Isn't my lack of limbs a problem when it comes to handbrakes, steering wheels and pedals?", so hit 'Track It!' for a trackside seat.
Prizes too for Crazy Matches, Mega Monster, 3D Tilt-a-World and Anima Wars
We're still recovering from a few days' hectic networking at the 3GSM show in Barcelona (too much paella and sangria), but one story well worth reporting is the culmination of the 2006 International Mobile Gaming Awards.
Having whittled down 400 entrants to 26 nominees before 3GSM, Barcelona saw the winners announced in five categories, plus a Grand Prix award for the best overall game.
That top award went to Triangler, which also won the Most Innovative Game prize. Created by Dutch research institute TNO, it's a location-based game for two teams of 100 players who have to run around encasing each other in 2,000-metre equilateral triangles. As you do. The game uses GPS, voice and chat communications.
The Best Interactive Experience (that is, the most fun) award went to 3D Tilt-a-World from US developer Super Happy Fun Fun. We've written about this gem before: it's a 3D ball-rolling game that uses your phone's camera to tilt the playfield.
Meanwhile, the Excellence In 3D award went to Australian developer Firemint for its Mega Monster game, which sees you playing an extremely angry monster smashing towns to bits.
Best Use Of Connectivity went to Anino Mobile for its Anima Wars game, which combines turn-based strategy with 3D hack'n'slash action for up to eight players over the network.
Finally, the Best Use Of Flash award went to Polish firm IKS Mobile for its Crazy Matches, a suitably silly (in a good way) collection of mini-games starring zany sticks of fire-lighting fun. This award was for the best Flash Lite game – a technology we'll be hearing more about in connection with mobile gaming in the coming months.
Last year's Dragon Ball Z: Shin Budokai was mostly well-received by fighting fans, not least those who enjoy two-player ad hoc battles and also have a penchant for the Dragon Ball Z anime series on which the game is based.
The just-announced sequel, which pits combatants from DBZ, Dragon Ball GT and Dragon Ball
And it does so while wrapping everything up in an all-new story arc following the future world of Trunks on his adventures against rival Majin Buu.
Other than that, it's more or less business as usual – the game even features the same cel-shaded, cartoon-styled graphical look as its predecessor. We'll find out whether it plays any better this May, which is when Dragon Ball Z: Shin Budokai 2's fighting is schedule to begin. worlds, will not to tinker with the fundamentals but does offer an apparently improved fighting system, with over 50 new fighting skills and ultimate attacks.
For most of us, fiery vengeance is what happens the morning after an ill-advised curry.
That's not the case for Johnny Blaze, though. He wreaks fiery vengeance every night in his role as the Ghost Rider, an immortal motorcycle stunt rider who roams the streets seeing off evil gangs.
You might know him from his Marvel comic, but now he's got his own mobile game too (ahead of an upcoming movie) courtesy of Hands-On Mobile.
The core of the game involves racing the streets killing enemies using fire balls, shotguns and, erm, 'hell chains'.
You can do power slides and wheelies along the way, which build up a 'flame bar' that when full, gives you invulnerability, unlimited fire balls and a speed boost for a limited period. If only real-world motorbikes had these kinds of features.
The game includes story levels, where you eliminate enemy henchmen and then see off their boss, and bonus levels which are more about big stunts.
Ghost Rider is out soon, and we'll have a review for you soon. Once we've recovered from that vindaloo, obviously.
