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REVIEW: Harvey Birdman: Attorney At Law

By Shaun Hatton - February 21st, 2008

Developed by High Voltage Software and published by Capcom for Wii. Also available for PlayStation 2 and PSP.

Capcom’s Ace Attorney series for Nintendo DS has been a cult success. The games are rich with story, character development, tension, and humour. Harvey Birdman: Attorney At Law, on the other hand, is a cartoon from [adult swim], and is not known for its rich story, character development, or tension. It is, however, funnier than just about anything else you’ve ever laughed at. And if you don’t think so, well, you may not have a soul.

Given my open fandom of the show and how much I enjoyed the Ace Attorney titles, I was really looking forward to the release of Harvey Birdman: Attorney At Law for the Wii. In fact, I had booked the day off work just so I could buy it upon its release and play it all day. Things didn’t quite work out, as the game was pushed back from its initial November release. When the game finally did come out, I was too busy playing through other titles to remember to pick it up. But I remembered this past weekend.

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Posted in Nintendo, PSP, PlayStation 2, Reviews, Wii | 2 Comments »

REVIEW: The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass

By Jorge Figueiredo - February 18th, 2008

Developed and published by Nintendo for DS.

My introduction to The Legend of Zelda series was through The Legend Of Zelda: The Wind Waker for GameCube. I can’t tell you why I had never been interested in the series before. Given the number of hours I poured into Wind Waker, you’d think I was a devoted fan of the series since the beginning (you can ask Shaun how obsessed I was with finishing this game).

So you can imagine my glee when Legend of Zelda: The Phantom Hourglass debuted for the Nintendo DS. Go ahead. Imagine!

Are you done imagining? Good.

Phantom Hourglass picks up where Wind Waker left off. Link has just finished saving Hyrule (once again), when suddenly he comes into contact with the legendary Ghost Ship. His captain, Tetra, leaps aboard in search of booty, but is essentially kidnapped. In an attempt to save her, Link leaps aboard the Ghost Ship, only to be hurled overboard and lose consciousness.

When he is revived, he finds himself on an island he doesn’t recognize. From here, you’re in control of Link and you must help him find the Ghost Ship and rescue Tetra.

Gameplay essentially switches between transit mode and dungeon-crawling mode. You will either find yourself sailing one of the four seas (on the S.S. Linebeck steam-powered paddle boat), or running around on islands exploring dungeons, solving puzzles, and talking to people.

Like Wind Waker, the production quality of Phantom Hourglass is very high. It’s what we’ve all come to expect from this series. The cel-shaded graphics are tight, and due to the simplistic nature of the design, the animation quality is incredible. It’s a bright, cartoony game. But that doesn’t take anything away from it, in my opinion. In fact, I would say it is very effective at drawing players into the fairy-tale nature of the story. The dual screens are used very effectively, too, allowing a new visual twist to play that wasn’t present in Wind Waker. It’s nice to have access to maps on the top screen.

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Posted in DS, GameCube, Nintendo, Reviews, Virtual Console, Wii | No Comments »

Guitar Hero: Aerosmith Announced For June

By Shaun Hatton - February 15th, 2008

We thought they couldn’t possibly get uglier. We were wrong.

Well, we all knew this was coming when it was slipped that the makers of Guitar Hero were working with Aerosmith. But now, it’s official. Yes, that’s correct, you’ll be able to shred to some of Aerosmith’s best (and very likely worst) tracks in Guitar Hero: Aerosmith, which is set to release in June. We’re looking forward to seeing whether they include “Lick and a Promise.”

This, however, isn’t the first time the band’s been featured in a game. Remember Revolution X (you might have wanted to forget about it)? This will probably be a lot more fun. Never a band with much humility, the members of Aerosmith have commented on having their own Guitar Hero game.

“Having a game built around Aerosmith has been a huge honour and really a great experience for us,” says Joe Perry. “We’ve put a lot of ideas into the game so that fans can have fun interacting with our music, getting inside our body of work and learning about the band’s history.”

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Posted in LIVE, News, Nintendo, PlayStation 2, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 | 9 Comments »

Clothing Company Rips Off 4 color rebellion Artist

By Shaun Hatton - February 14th, 2008

This piece of art is so good, it’s apparently worth ripping off for one clothing company.

Mitch over at 4colorrebellion.com is a talented artist who, apart from having his own web comic, illustrates Nintendo-themed Valentines each year that are posted on 4cr for all to enjoy.

Unfortunately, some people will do anything to make money, and those with little to no integrity see nothing wrong in blatantly ripping off independent artists. Take that image above, for example. On the left is a detail from a Valentine Mitch drew back in 2006. On the right is a product shot of a T-shirt a certain London, England-based company is selling on its website for a wallet-destroying £40. It’s bad enough that they’re charging such a ridiculous amount of money for a T-shirt, and that in itself is arguably criminal. But plagiarizing an independent artist (they’ve at this point still not given credit or royalties to Mitch), is just as low as one can get.

I would not be surprised to find out they employ blind child labourers. While I’m not going to link to the offending company’s website, I will direct your attention to Mitch’s post on 4colorrebellion.com in which he details how he found out he was being ripped-off. He takes it quite well, considering he should be absolutely livid. Just goes to show that he’s a stand-up guy. It’ll be interested to see how and if the clothing company responds.

Link: Zounds! We’ve Been Plagiarized! (4cr)

DIGG the original post here.

Posted in News, Nintendo | 2 Comments »

The Great Experiment: Wii Fit

By Shaun Hatton - February 6th, 2008

And you thought you looked silly playing Wii Sports!

Wii Fit will be released in North America later this year, but Vinnk over at 4 color rebellion lives in Japan and already has his hands (and feet) on it.

“Long-time stalkers might have realized that I am getting a bit… chunky,” he writes on the site. “I blame the holidays for the weight gain, but I blame myself for the fact that it is still there long after the holidays are over.”

So, he’s decided that it’s time to do something about his extra poundage by putting Wii Fit to the ultimate test. He’ll attempt to use Wii Fit at least half an hour every day till his wedding on March 29. He’ll be eating slightly healthier in the meantime, too, but plans to keep a similar diet to what he’s become accustomed to.

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Posted in News, Nintendo, Wii | No Comments »

REVIEW: Super Mario Galaxy

By Jorge Figueiredo - February 3rd, 2008

Developed and published by Nintendo for Wii.

One of the most recognizable characters in all of gaming history adds another notch to his belt with his latest Wii platform adventure. Super Mario Galaxy is an incredibly rich and fun game that will not disappoint.

I’ve always had a soft spot for the short plumber ever since I bought my own Game Boy in high school. That’s right. While I tried Mario Brothers on the Commodore 64, and played Super Mario Brothers on the NES, I didn’t really play any Mario game in earnest until I had my very own Super Mario Land cartridge.

Since then, I’ve been hooked.

Super Mario Galaxy does not disappoint from any perspective. Taking advantage of the Wii’s full medley of hardware, the game is a feast for all of the senses (well, except taste and smell, unless you put some sugar or cologne on the disc). You can tell the bar for production value was set high. Even though the character designs are streamlined, there is still an incredible amount of detail present in both them and the worlds you will be playing on.

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Posted in Mario, Nintendo, Reviews, Wii | 2 Comments »

Colors! Provides Versatile Sketching On The Go

By Shaun Hatton - December 19th, 2007

Detail of Autobot Leader Optimus Prime’s face, sketched in Colors!

Nintendo DS is proving to be a system with something for everyone. Its games range from the insanely difficult (such as Contra 4) to the easily accessible (Brain Age) with all kinds of titles falling both in between and outside of the range completely.

And then there’s the homebrew scene. While SD card adapters such as the R4 are seen as a game pirate’s wet dream and Nintendo’s worst nightmare, the truth of the matter is that there is a really vibrant homebrew community for Nintendo’s little handheld that could. As with the commercial titles available for the system, there is also a wide variety to be found in the homebrew applications available for DS. Anything from music samplers to PDA applications to MSN and chat clients are all available for download.

Among them, you’ll find Colors!, a surprisingly robust but low-footprint drawing application. With Colors!, users can draw, sketch, doodle, and colour using a wide range of techniques. The app makes use of the DS touchscreen’s pressure sensitivity, so pressing harder will result in darker linework. Additionally, the different colours overlay each other much like they would if you were to use actual ink or watercolours. There is no undo, but the system does allow you to play back an entire illustration in-progress and stop at any point to try something different.

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Posted in DS, News, Nintendo | 3 Comments »

REVIEW: Contra 4

By Shaun Hatton - December 14th, 2007

Developed by WayForward and published by Konami for Nintendo DS.

The Contra series will always have a special place in my heart, despite my being unable to play through the original due to lack of skills. But what’s not to love about a game where you get to run around blasting aliens with ridiculous weapons.

Think about it for a moment. Seriously. A spread gun would never work in real life. First of all, it would kill everyone (though in the game, that’s the point) and secondly, there aren’t that many tomatoes in the world that can be used as ammo. If it’s not deadly tomatoes that thing shoots out, then I’m at a loss.

Contra games are notorious for their high level of difficulty. They’re basically like R-Type but with a lot of running. Thankfully Contra 4 contains Easy, Medium, and Hard difficulties to choose from. I’m not ashamed to admit I can only play through on the Easy setting. Medium is just too intense and Hard is, well, impossible. There are some key differences between the difficulty settings that make them progressively harder. For one, the weapons upgrades aren’t as powerful on the harder levels. Secondly, there are way more and faster enemies on the harder difficulty settings. For gamers who can actually make it through the entire game, yet another mode opens up: Challenge Mode.

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Posted in DS, Nintendo, Reviews, Super Nintendo | 4 Comments »