Nine Over Ten 9/10

I spent 2 days in Sitiawan, cleaning up the holiday home but I wasn’t lacking in entertainment. In fact, I spent most of my free time eating, sleeping, driving around my old hometown, or playing with either one of the two handheld consoles that I brought with me.

The first one, the Game Boy, had Bura Bura Donkey loaded up and the second console, my trusty old DS had the R4 and Digidrive. I’ve already gave a review of Bura Bura Donkey, so lets talk about Digidrive.

If you were to ask me how to describe Digidrive right after my first few attempts of playing it, I would be in a total loss for words. Despite the relative ease of getting into grips with the gameplay, I still find it hard to describe the game in words.

Part of the bit Generations series of games, Digidrive can be best described as a multi-faceted puzzle game, which is part Tetris and part racing game, by which if you are caught up, it’s game over. The game is part Tetris stems from the fact that you’ll spend most of your time shuffling and arranging different tiles (of 3 different designs) along a horizontal and vertical axis (like a cross). These tiles come in along the axis from the edge of the screen.

Arranging 5 tiles of the same design at one of 4 points along the cross will cause some sort of gauge to appear, and pilling in the same tiles (or pegs) into that particular point will cause the gauge to increase, and even change shape. Every now and then, a special tile will appear. I call it the “ambulance” tile, due to the sound effect of sirens being played whenever it appears. Driving this tile into a point in the cross will cause the gauge (if there’s one at that point) to be used up.

This is were the “racing” or “driving” part of the game comes into play. The type of gauge expended (used up) will determine how far the puck (on the right hand side of the screen) will move along a straightway. The distance travelled in meters is measure and it forms your score. Now we come to the main objective of the game, which is to use drive the puck away from some sort of barrier that is constantly approaching the puck. Once the barrier hits the puck, it’s game over.

So it’s pretty simple: arrange the same tiles, build up the gauges, use the ambulance tile to utilise the gauges to provide fuel for the puck to move away from the barrier.

One interesting aspect of gameplay is when all four points of the cross have gauges. This will trigger a mini game to be played, whereby you’ll have to guide incoming pegs into the respective points where the same type of pegs are residing. This will quickly fill up the gauges (and cause them to change shape). One mistake will end the mini game and the last gauge will be utilised to move the puck.

If it does sound a little confusing, have a look a the gameplay videos. The first one is a little sped up, since after all it’s an expert level attempt at some crazy high score:

The second video is a more, normal look at how Digidrive is played, although I would probably play it a little differently:

It does look a little baffling, but once you have tried the game, you’ll find it hard to put down. So do check it out!

Have you ever encountered any game that uses the shoulder buttons of a portable console, such as the Nintendo DS or PSP, almost exclusively? Well, I have, with Bura Bura Donkey, otherwise known as Donkey Kong: King of Swing for the GBA.

This game arrived yesterday along with my copy of Digidrive (more on that later), and I must say, Japanese GBA games sure have things going for them when it comes to packaging. The boxes are way nicer compared to their US counterparts. And the price was cheap too, just USD 7.90 (click here for purchase details)

Gameplay wise, it’s really different from any other 2D platformer I’ve seen. While the Mario games most often involve running and jumping left or right on a horizontal plane, Donkey Kong takes things vertical. You start by pressing both shoulder buttons to make the simian jump, and while in the air, press the left or right shoulder buttons to latch on to handholds (floating pegs) that are arranged vertically.

Alternating between handholds (by pressing and releasing the shoulder buttons), you guide the simian to the top of the level while grabbing bananas. Holding down the two shoulder buttons for a while, and then releasing them will cause a “boost jump”, handy to jump from one far handhold to another. And as far as I know, the “boost jump” is also the only way to destroy enemies.

On the matter of the collected bananas, they can be used to a. power up your jump (and thus attack) for even longer distances for a short period of time and b. restore the simian’s health. So don’t forget to grab ‘em bananas.

Bura Bura Donkey brings a very unique control scheme that I’ve never seen before, in a very pretty 2D platforming package. The graphics are crisp and clean, playing it on the GameBoy Micro. My only concern is that the GBM’s shoulder buttons do not have a satisfactory amount of “travel” to them.

It feels like I’m touch typing when I play that game and the small size of the console has led to cramps. But I guess this is what anyone will encounter playing anything on the GBM.

All in all, Bura Bura Donkey grabs a tonne of bananas for really unique gameplay, and truly deserves a spot in the handholds of your GBA games library. I’ve got the Japanese version, and language isn’t a problem here while playing the game. Here’s a video of the English version, just in case you need a reference:

To put it simply, Nodame Cantabile is classical music’s answer to Ouendan and its ilk. From what I can garner from the game, most of the action takes part in different portions of a school. The game is abit text heavy when it comes to talking to characters, but gamers are only face with choices whether to accept, or decline a challenge.

A big shout out to Pizza Pasta (The New New Era) for a very helpful tip on getting Earthbound Zero to run on the nesDS. I’m quoting his comment verbatim:

You might know this by now but Earthbound Zero is totally playable in NESDS, you just have to mess with it a little on your computer.

All you have to do is open Earthbound Zero in a NES emulator on your computer (I used Nestopia) and get to a point where you can save a file. After you save, transfer the Earthbound Zero SAV file into your NESDS roms folder and you should be able to resume your game in NESDS. Hope this helps.

Yups, it helps! Thanks man. And yeah, portable Mother/Earthbound Zero FTW!!

OMG OMG. Why are these funny shaped things chasing me? No, I’m not another substance abuse casualty, but welcome to the world, or should I say universe, of Geometry Wars: Galaxies.

Now, the first impression that I got when I started playing the game was it was similar to that old-time classic Asteroids. And even though GW:G is abit deeper than that, it essentially plays the same.

On the DS, you control the movement of your ship using the D-pad (or the ABXY buttons, depending on orientation), and the touch screen is used to control your “drone”, which fires automatically at the direction you are pointing at.

The objective of the game is simple, shoot down enemies to get points, score multipliers and “Geoms. Geoms is the currency of the game, with which you can upgrade the behaviour of your drone and unlock new levels (a.k.a planets).

I’m totally having fun now with the single player portion of the game, and before I forget there’s single card download play to play with a friend who doesn’t have the game, and also multi-card play throw in as well. The WFC connectivity is used to access online leaderboards.

The inclusion of Geometry Wars Retro Evolved (which is the classic infinite version of GW) presents a nice respite, as it’s less frantic and less claustrophobic compared to GW:G, but it’s still fun.

Welcome to the Ninth Edition of The ROM Report, and a Happy New Year! Today’s post is partially inspired by Retrojunk.com, because I really like the site’s articles on NES and SNES games.

Without further ado, here are the SNES games that I tested with SNEmulDS running on my R4DS/Nintendo DS:

• Robocop 3 - Runs OK. This action game is rather difficult to play; how do you shoot those grenade tossing bots??
• Rock ‘N Roll Racing - Runs OK. Despite some graphical glitches in the menu, you’ll be racing in down the isometric tracks in this rather interesting game.
• Kirby Super Star - Not OK. Failure to launch.
• Earthworm Jim - Runs OK. I remember playing an Earthworm Jim game on the PC. Same annoying worm, but OK gameplay.
• Super Punch Out - Runs OK..but just barely. Graphical glitches abound, including those happening IN-game, but still good for some laughs.

And now, for some NES games that I tested as well with, of course, nesDS:

• Kid Icarus - Runs OK. It’s like Ice Climber, but with arrows.
• Bad Dudes - Runs OK.
• Super Dodge Ball - Runs OK. Some graphical glitches here and there.
• Master Blaster - Runs OK. Is that a car that you drive around with a cannon attach on top, or is it a tank? It jumps pretty high too.

On a related note, yours truly intends to get a brand new PSP Slim & Lite. Wouldn’t it be nice to have The ROM Report on the PSP? But that would mean getting a modded PSP.

On the basis of supporting original games, that would be a bother, but in terms of unlocking the true potential of the device, a modded PSP is a must.

So, to have a modded PSP or otherwise, that is the question.