Nostalgia is one of the new titles hitting the DS this October, so it’s interesting to delve into the game a bit before the release. Set in an alternate 19th century, gamers get to travel the world in a hot air balloon, looking for treasure while fighting the forces of evil. It sounds like an interesting take on RPGs and will allow players to travel to Cairo, St. Petersburg, Tokyo, Easter Island and New York.

Nostalgia is one of the new titles hitting the DS this October, so it’s interesting to delve into the game a bit before the release. Set in an alternate 19th century, gamers get to travel the world in a hot air balloon, looking for treasure while fighting the forces of evil. It sounds like an interesting take on RPGs and will allow players to travel to Cairo, St. Petersburg, Tokyo, Easter Island and New York. ‚ Now, I can go on and try to describe the game to you, but that would be pointless since we have screencaps and a trailer for you! Check them out below.

Nostalgia will be released October 27th. For more information, visit the website. Comment below with your thoughts on the trailer.

With the Muramasa Release Party only two days away, Ignition Entertainment has released a new trailer for Muramasa: The Demon Blade. The new trailer explores the immense arsenal available to Kisuke and Momohime, the main characters. The trailer shows the protagonists launch an unrelenting assault against all enemies who stand in the way of their destiny. This game is shaping up to be a must have, and will be given a wide release on September 8! Check out the trailer below and comment with your thoughts.

Well, that was fast. Just yesterday it was announced that XSEED was no longer going to be publishing Muramasa: The Demon Blade in North America, but no worries, as Ignition Entertainment almost immediately stepped in to keep this game alive and kicking for those of us who are stateside.

Muramasa is being developed by Vanillaware, who is responsible for one of the best games released all of last generation in Odin Sphere, a Playstation 2 exclusive. That title was known for more than just its gameplay, as its 2D presentation helped it become one of the prettiest titles the gaming world has seen. This is no mere hyperbole either; take a look at the screens for Muramasa, and you will know exactly what I mean, as you could certainly argue that it’s the prettiest looking game being released this year on any platform.

Muramasa is a Wii exclusive that is now slated for release in September of 2009. We will have more information for you on the game as it nears release later this year, but just know that based on footage of the Japanese version of the game, this looks like something we should all take some time to look at. For those of you who are worried about motion controls and the like, you can stop right now, as the game will support your “traditional” Wii control scheme of Nunchuk and Wii Remote, as well as the Classic Controller and the GameCube controller. I may just play this with the Cube controller, myself, though we’ll see how the button mapping for the other two plays out.

In addition, Ignition is boasting about 16:9 widescreen support and branching storylines for replayability. That’s two things I love to hear.

It may be hard to believe given the number of titles don’t make it over to North America from Japan, but Boing! Docomodake, based on a Japanese cell phone mascot, has made its way stateside and is now for sale. Let’s forget for a moment the inspiration for the game, as I’m going to assume that most of those reading have no attachment to the character or previous experience with him. What we have here is a fun and quirky puzzle platformer game that exudes charm, despite not knowing anything about the characters involved beforehand.

You play as Papa Docomodake in this AQ Interactive developed title, as he searches for his missing family members. In order to find them, he needs to reach the exit of each area after solving a few puzzles along the way. Papa is a bit plodding and slow on his own, but thankfully he has a nifty power: he can split himself into mini Docomodake’s, which can then be used to build ladders, bridges, fill in gaps, and be thrown as objects. You start with four of these minis, but gain more as you travel by finding treasure chests along the way.

There is actually a lot you can do with the minis, and you will need to utilize all of their powers-sometimes within the same levels-in order to collect all of the coins and treasures as well as find the exit. Thankfully, the game comes with a tutorial that you can use to prepare yourself for the main game, and each time a use for your minis comes up or a new obstacle appears for the first time, your in-game info screen is updated; this can be accessed at any time during the level, so if you have forgotten how to do something, you can access it right there and save yourself some time.

You can move and jump with either the directional pad or the face buttons (so no worries, left-handers, this game is designed with us in mind as well), and the stylus is used to move your minis around the screen to wherever you wish. While you can move your minis anywhere that is visible on the screen without moving Papa as well, they are vulnerable to attack (and you as the player accidentally ramming them into a floor of spikes) and have 10 seconds to live after this occurs; reattaching them to Papa Docomodake resets this clock and saves them. If you do happen to lose some minis along the way, have no fear, as you can either wait until the end of the level to regain them, or hit the bell found in some levels with a projectile mini to revive them. If Papa is hit while he has his minis collected, one will pop out with this same 10 second clock, but if he is all out of minis, it will be Game Over for you. Thankfully, you can restart from the level you were just on with all of your progress saved, so it isn’t a huge deal to fail.

The gameplay is fun, but there are some minor issues. Controlling all of the minis can be a pain on occasion when you have enemies or spikes around, as you may cause injury to some of them without meaning to. There are also jugs you need to fill up, and the minis shoot out of them once they are full. If another accidentally goes in the jug though, you have to fill it again and hope it doesn’t happen a second time. Pressing the shoulder buttons causes four minis to come out of Papa at once, which is convenient unless you’re backed into a corner; then they bounce off of the wall and maybe into that nearby bed of spikes. None of these are serious issues though, but are just something to consider while playing and strategizing with your minis.

You could take exception to the game’s length-it’s about four hours long-but you are able to go back and replay the levels to earn better grades in them by collecting all of the coins and treasures in a timely fashion. You can then use these coins to unlock different assets such as art work and music, which is a nice reason to go back if you find yourself enjoying the game’s charm. Boing! Docomodake also retails for just $19.99, so there’s a solid amount of content given the price.

The puzzles aren’t particularly difficult, and the game is a bit short, so it probably skews more towards the younger DS crowd than the older. But there was charm in it for this gamer, thanks to the mini game mechanic, the ranking system, and it’s quirky nature, and it’s hard to go wrong for just $20, especially given it has some replay value. Pick it up if you see it in stores, and hope more titles like this will make their way to North America in the future, whether through standard retail or the upcoming DSi Ware online store.

Blue Dragon Plus, published by Ignition Entertainment, is a fairly entertaining and very, very long combination real time strategy and role-playing game for the Nintendo DS. Developers Mistwalker and Brownie Brown did a good job of addressing elements from both strategy and RPG genres, providing lots of maps, abilities and combat units for the strategists, and plenty of stats, story-motivated gameplay and back story for the approximately one-bazillion party members for the RPG-ers. Unfortunately its combination of the two genres falls flat overall, ultimately leaving you with un-innovative, though technically sound gameplay. Blue Dragon Plus boasts a story campaign of over 30 hours, which is a lot of time to spend hunched over your DS, and to really appreciate it, you would have to sort of meet it halfway and show it a certain degree of patience.

Blue Dragon Plus is the sequel to Blue Dragon, a 2007 RPG for the Xbox 360, and its story picks up a year after the events of that game, with very similar premises. Shu, a generic spiky-haired anime hero must set out to save the world from certain doom in the wake of the destruction wreaked by purple-skinned super villain Nene through the course of the first game. For those returning to the franchise, a good chunk of the heroes and villains in this game are familiar faces from the original, and for those newcomers, everybody’s talents and place in the story are explained at length and easy to pick up. The most relevant common element are the Shadow powers the characters have, which are big animal spirits that each party member can summon to unleash special abilities in battle. Shu’s manifests itself as a big, blue dragon-hence the game title.

The game takes place on a big mechanical space cube infested with hostile mecha-robos programmed for wanton destruction. Shu and company must investigate the old technology on this cube and shut its down while preventing the robots from escaping and bombing their home city. Also, Nene comes back to life and you get to fight him all over again. There are twists, turns, friends become enemies, enemies become friends…a fairly standard RPG story.

Progression through the game is broken into two parts: individual combat stages and a map screen connecting all the stages and showing how your parties move around between them. The combat stages are where the RTS elements come into play, and generally where the story unfolds, and the map stage is where all the RPG stats tweaking, character adjustment and item organization happens.

Because combat is RTS-style, every combat encounter is a wide stage with a pre-set number of enemies against the members of your party, the number of which changes according to the story and to your adjustments. Now, as anybody who has ever fallen victim to a Zergling rush will tell you, there is strength in numbers in any RTS game, and what this means for Blue Dragon Plus is that there are a lot of playable characters (up to 16 at times). This is mitigated some as the story forces you to split your party up into 2-4 groups to explore different areas of the map, but while a good group size is three or four party members, if the story leads two groups to combine, you can suddenly have 9 characters in a crowded hallway all trying to be part of the boss battle and all getting in each others way. ‚ At its best, its like watching a 16-bit 3 Stooges routine, but at its worst, your best attack units will not be able to reach a monster because they’re stuck behind your healers who are on the front lines for some reason, taking all the damage.

The combat is a pretty basic point-and-click system with the stylus. Characters will automatically engage nearby enemies with a physical attack, and the player can activate more powerful Shadow abilities. These abilities need to be recharged between uses (so you can’t just spam over-powered ones) and are type-sensitive, (so, for example a ground type attack is more effective against flying type enemies). The system is pretty intuitive, but the game still does a thorough job of walking you through the finer points of RTS combat, even giving you tips on how to arrange your units in battle and which ones to pair together for optimal results.

These beginner tips and simplicity of the combat system mean that Blue Dragon is really more an introductory-level RTS game, and doesn’t have some features more advanced players would expect. The stylus isn’t the most precise instrument in the world, and will often select the ability or location just next to the one you were trying for, which, mid-battle, can be a little frustrating. Also, there’s no way to influence a characters point-to-point movement, which means occasionally a unit will decide the best way to get across the map is to wander through enemy territory, unintentionally leading all your enemies right to the rest of your party. And, if you are gearing up for a fight, there’s no good way to ensure that the first person who reaches the battle isn’t your low-defense healer and not the high-defense attack unit it’s supposed to be. The gameplay isn’t rigorous enough that these missteps ever become a real problem, or cost you more than a few HP before you correct them, but they do limit the quality of the RTS elements to a point so that the novelty wears off long before 30 hours have elapsed.

There is a sharp contrast between the amount of time the game dedicates to introducing the player to the fairly simple RTS combat system (a tutorial and most of the opening few chapters) and the arguably much more complex stat and item system (almost none: read your manual). There’s not necessarily anything there that is new to any RPG player, but it’s a familiarity the game assumes of its players, sort of like it’s an introduction to the RTS genre specifically tailored for RPG fans. Items can only be equipped in the map stage in-between combat, which means if you forget before starting a fight, you can back yourself into an unpleasant corner, but once you do start playing around with stats modifiers, healing and attack items and mixing and matching types of party members for streamlined combat, it’s hard to stop. Like any good RPG, there are a slew of stats to be built up (though when there are 16 characters in play, this can get maybe a little out of hand) and plenty of items that can boost your weaker areas, and even unlock shadow abilities of a different type to round out your party (healers can learn powerful attack spells, etc.).‚  There are also plenty of opportunities for exploring the map and power-leveling in between story missions, and, if 30 hours of story and a zillion playable characters aren’t enough, there are side-quests a plenty and the option to construct robotic party members with parts you find on the map. So, if you are the kind of gamer whose favorite thing to do is wander through the tall grass in Pokemon, endlessly capturing and levelling up, you’ll find plenty to play around with here.

Blue Dragon Plus isn’t a bad game; it’s just that at times there’s too much of it. The story relies too heavily on our interest being hooked from the previous game, and it’s difficult to really develop a character well through dialogue boxes, let alone when he or she has to share the stage with 12 to 15 other players. The RPG and RTS elements are for the most part pretty solid representations of the two genres, but the game doesn’t do anything creative with them beyond just throw them together (which was innovative two years ago when FFXII: Revenant Wings came out, but is now just sort of copy-cat). There are some good elements here, and if you have 30 hours to kill, there are certainly worse ways to do it, though there are definitely better ones too. The $30 price tag seems reasonable given just how much game there is here to sink your teeth into, but do some soul searching first, and make sure you have the patience for it.

Ignition Entertainment’s new DS side-scroller is a retro, fast-paced button masher that’s both addictive and entertaining.

About Teenage Zombies: Invasion of the Alien Brain Thingys:

The Earth is under invasion by a horde of Alien Brain …uh … Thingys! Humans, succumbing to ray-guns, mind-control, and shiny flying saucers, have failed to defend their planet and have let it fall easily into the clutches of the Big Brain and his army of Brain Thingys. The only hope left for mankind is three Teenage Zombies that have arisen from a graveyard disturbed in the invasion. The undead trio ignores their normal human victims in favor of the pulsing pink brains they see EVERYWHERE, all the while being lured to the ultimate lunch: THE BIG BRAIN! The Big Brain soon realizes he’s overlooked this “Super Race” as they inexplicably resist mind-control, are unaffected by ray-gun wounds, and devour his Brain Thingy Armies like popcorn! He refocuses his efforts and resources to battle the Earth’s greatest champions: The Teenage Zombies!

With a whimsical style reminiscent of 1950s science-fiction, Teenage Zombies: Invasion of the Alien Brain Thingys features side-scrolling action, stylus mini-games, and challenging puzzles and boss battles. Teenage Zombies: Invasion of the Alien Brain Thingys is now available in stores at a suggested retail price of $19.99.

For more information visit http://www.teenagezombiesgame.com/.