Somehow I don’t see it happening, but I wouldn’t be too shocked if it did. Recently, an executive over at Electronic Arts hinted to the idea of Sony and Microsoft will be rolling out new versions of their current consoles before moving on to the next generation of their respective consoles.

To be perfectly honest, I feel we’re still too early in the actual life cycle to be discussing these topics, even then, some people might look at the upcoming Natal and PS3 motion hardware as a form of upgrade as it is. Rich Hilleman, Chief Creative Officer at EA, on the other hand, seems to think that we should be speculating now by stating, ”I expect we’ll see a PlayStation 3.5 before we see a PlayStation 4, and an Xbox 560 before we see an Xbox 720.”

I’m fond of the idea of providing consumers the opportunity to upgrade their consoles, but not if it comes at the price of completely replacing their current models, or having to pay a like sum. It already bothers me that there will be some titles that I just can’t play on my Nintendo DS that will work perfectly on the Nintendo DSi. I’d hate to think that a console which I already paid $300+ for would be reduced in a similar manner.

So in the US last month, both the DS and DSi systems combined sold more than 766,000 units. That’s more than all current-generation consoles combined. The NPD Group, which tracks video game sales in the United States, released the numbers the other week clearly showing the hand-held systems’ domination over the competition. While I don’t have the exact numbers, the break down had nearly 424,000 DSi systems and more than 342,000 DS systems sold. 

“More consumers continued to gravitate toward products that offer quality experiences and great value for the whole family,” said Cammie Dunaway, Nintendo of America’s executive vice president of Sales & Marketing. “Consumers again selected Nintendo systems for those experiences, particularly our hand-helds.” Their other systems weren’t doing bad by any means either. Wii Motion Plus accessories also seem to be doing very well, and the system itself is still going strong despite the intial craze starting to die down. Of course, that leaves me wondering, how many people are still having a hard time finding the console? I’d think by now there really shouldn’t be any sort of shortage.

This weeks releases for the various Nintendo consoles include their fair share of shovelware, which is not surprising considering their popularity. Fortunately I’ve managed to weed through them for the most part and have come to what could probably be considered the better releases for the week. I hope these help you decide on what to get, oh and I haven’t included the metacritic links this time. Not because I don’t care, but because I feel that there are a number of titles out there which are quite good and end up getting panned any ways. If I feel that a game isn’t up to par, trust in me, I’ll let you know. I’ll also be forward with you if I feel I’m a bit biased about something.

Check out these releases after the jump. (more…)

The DS is released and the crowd goes wild, buying up all things Nintendogs and Brain Age and anything else sanitized and generic enough to earn a TV spot. Somewhere else, a more discerning buyer walks confidently into a store, not looking for the next big thing–no, what this person seeks would more likely bring ridicule or questions into one’s sexual preference; this gamer knows exactly what he’s looking for. From a shelf of Pokemon and The Sims and Mario and Sonic wannabes, this person picks an unlikely, pink hero: Kirby!At the 16 year mark, Kirby has outlasted the fads and garnered the respect of core 2-D loyalists for the difficulty and quality of some 10 games. Kirby is classic simplicity. Stubby-limbed, powder-pink cream puffs with real, lasting appeal don’t come along that often in our era of impossibly-fashionable, overly-accessorized, precision computer-generated characters. Or in games that opt not to invest in the creativity to put a fictional face to the name. On the contrary, Canvas Curse is creative something fierce, and the addition of the existing Kirby tropes only makes it better.The player creates guides to take a permanently-ballified Kirby through the levels with rainbow-coloured strokes of the stylus. He moves in the direction you draw the line, which can mean in circles, off of ramps, or down slopes as required. He gets some new powers amenable to traveling big, wide-open levels, like a missile that you guide. The game remains the most stylus-driven I’ve played, and just about the best application of this technology of the DS.It’s colourful, it’s bubbly, and it will hurt your pride all the more when you can’t stop making a red candied Kirby in the lava. But it’s well worth it.

You have to have patience and time to reap the rewards of the THQ’s Drawn to Life for Nintendo DS–otherwise, you won’t make anything but a clone of the Yeti from SkiFree. The main draw here is the heavy use of the stylus and, consequently, the touch screen, with which you’re expected to illustrate the hero and various objects in the world–but is it worth the effort to see your creations given animation?

Yes, for Drawn to Life is more just a sandbox, and more than glorified MS Paint. There’s a folksy plot casting the player in the role of The Creator, lead artist of an entire world…okay, maybe lead chicken-scratch designer is more like it, but at least the setting appeals. Skilled artists and animators have drawn most everything to life in ways you never could with the color-limited editor and small resolution, but the end result is that magic combination of fluid- and sharp-looking 2-D. So while your creations are going to look a tad out of place no matter how good you make them, budding artists and coloring contest entrants will enjoy the many opportunities to draw platforms, weapons, and vehicles. For the rest of us, it’s nice that they give you a lot of preset patterns with more to find as you play, in case you hate your God-given lack of artistic ability. There’s also new music, if you can find it–and you should try, because it’s surprisingly catchy goodness.

On to the problems. It would have helped your sickly creation fit in better to have a back-view for those top-down parts–say, there really are a lot of those. I thought this was a platformer/collection game… which it is, just with a mystical structure. In a 2-D game nowadays, you need levels engineered to trounce the best Flash-game offerings, and thankfully there’s enough such variety in Drawn to Life. You start in the hub of all action, the unnamed town of the Raposa creatures, which you must stop from becoming deserted by dispelling big clouds of Darkness. As you bring back the people, you’ll be able to shop, talk, and do all other manner of RPG things, but then you set out on the side-scrolling action adventure that’s the meat of the game. You can hop on heads, fire snowballs, punch, and ground-pound; you must also scrub the screen of shadow goo in each area and find the missing pages of the Book of Life. Lots to do.

More than I deign to cover in 200 words, you’ll just have to see Drawn to Life for yourself.

In the voluntary and gainful way, I mean: by playing a Treasure game. No dwindling number of gamers have elected the mental and carpal pounding that accompanies every Treasure release. Their feats of sprite-hemorraging, always comfortably leading the field like it weren’t no thing, have kept players’ synaptic activity off the charts since 1993. I’m sure medical science is just a hair’s breadth from discovering a neuronal imprint in the shape of the Treasure Cube amongst the oldest devotees.

The commonality amongst all Treasure games is that they do the same things over and over, but better each time. After all these years, that still sets them a universe apart from normal. Most recently, with Bangai-O Spirits, the bar might just have been irretrievably raised in Outstanding Achievement in the Field of Excellence. Consider 167 stages of kaleidoscopic mayhem with a tiny-giant robot at the centre of it all. A little bit Metal Warriors on SNES, a little horizontal space shooter, and–because Treasure works in everything Treasure wants–even a little sports game, Bangai-O Spirits equals a lot of crazy. For the sake of your own sanity–or at its expense, for attaining amaze-your-friends-and-impress-yourself gaming ability–don’t pass up Bangai-O.

Many moons ago, I ardently advised anyone not owning a DS that the time had come to borrow, purchase, purloin, or acquire by any means necessary at least one unit–and up to seven more as required. Since that time, Super Dodgeball Brawlers, hotly anticipated until the moment of its release, came and went–amidst only mediocre reviews. The Japanese import, deemed too slow by the earliest players, led to months of tweaks and additional wait time for a domestic release. Only now, as the mash-up finally becomes available to ButtonSmasher readers, shall we dispel some of the dust settled over yet another DiSappointment. (really–I love the thing, but there have been enough to warrant that jab.)

Although it doesn’t look much more than 12-bit and has its share of other antiquation, Super Dodgeball Brawlers, offers a throwback to the old school and DS multiplayer functionality better than the underwhelming grades often attached to its reviews. The tools of Technos’ combat-sports trade explode conventional boundaries once again, as players throw everything from poison food to explosives, to punches and kicks across the centre line, hitting friend and foe alike. Occasionally, you might even catch the ball and pull off the impossible jumps and hundreds of new Super Throws in the style that made the original NES game famous.

Aside from the fun and challenge of climbing the international dodgeball ladder in Tournament mode, one can spend a good deal of time customizing their own team of Brawlers with hundreds of eye, hair, and apparel choices, and take them to a good old-fashioned street fight. That’s where one card can support 8 players.

So with the dust settled, I still say Super Dodgeball Brawlers is a rollicking good time in excess of its average grade.

Some generations have their Great Depressions, their Grassy Knolls, or their Great Wars… … well, ours has Final Fantasy. The 1991 classic Final Fantasy IV, notorious for Cecil, Rosa, and the Spoony Bard line, has just been retooled for the Nintendo DS. Even if you’ve seen it every one of the 20 times it was reiterated–from SNES to PS1 to GBA and back to PS1 again–you haven’t seen it quite like this before. Even if you’ve seen the recent remake of FFIII on DS, you STILL haven’t seen it like this before. It may appear from the CG intro and general polygonality that Square has settled on a new engine into which to pump all FF’s till the end of time, but no: Final Fantasy IV is enhanced by voice-acted cut scenes, rebalanced abilities, the option to equip the essences of your departed party members to existing ones, auto-battle, and–in a natural move for a DS game–multiplayer.

You know whether you’ve liked FFIV before, but you may never really know until you try the definitive version. At least that’s what Square Enix is telling me… oh come on. If you don’t play it, where are you going to say you were when FFIV came out?

Yoshi’s Island DS may be best known as the sequel to the SNES masterwork Super Mario World 2: Yoshi’s Island, but the Artoon-developed title’s ravenous, soul-smothering difficulty soon earned it a reputation of its own. Safeguarding the biggest mascots in video gaming is not for the faint-hearted–it’s a million baby-killers to one baby-sitter. Including levels engineered to abet your demise, there’s a deceptive duality about this killer bedtime story, so don’t be fooled.

Anyway, after your inevitable, repeated ego-maimings, you’re going to need soft and cuddly–or, when the animal side gets the better of you, light and launchable–consolation. As a rare treat from me to you, here’s a link to one of the brave Yoshis willing to share your burdens.

Oh meaningless, meaningless puns… you make my posts get done, my paycheck arrive, my world go round. If only BandaiNamco Games hadn’t called their DS puzzler something as techno-babble as Trioncube, I would have to practice a little something called legitimate journalism. No matter–a game that animates an inter-dimensional rocket penguin as a progress marker doesn’t take itself that seriously, anyway. It’s the amusing barrage of space-nursery imagery on the top screen that gives Trioncube its winsome cuteness factor; the falling space matter on the bottom gives it the quality, not-a-Tetris-clone factor.

The object here is to place each falling piece such that it forms a 3×3 square with existing pieces. A single square’s difference will do. But it’s not that simple–the object also must be observed for as many drops as possible to build a sufficient chain, turning your stack into rocket-bird feed. One false move, and your would-be gold octane might become bronze.

Gravity is at work here, but so is time–until atmospheric pressure (or whatever that shaking is) becomes too great and spoils your chain, you can finalize the placement of a piece, flipping and all. That’s a new one for me.

Finally, Trioncube balances easy-fun, appealing-cute, and fierce-competitive in multiplayer, so you don’t even mind terribly if you lose. Everyone’s a winner with a game like Trioncube.