Today only Amazon.com are selling SNK vs. Capcom Card Fighters Clash for the Nintendo DS at $29.99 reduced from $??.?? with free shipping.

Looks like a broken DOTD to me

After playing Wii Sports I am sure I do not need to tell you how exciting it was to think about future games like The BIGS, or Brunswick Pro Bowling, and maybe some day Fight Night and Virtual Tennis coming to the Nintendo Wii platform. To each have their own game, where the developers could take the basic concepts from Wii Sports and then go above and beyond to higher degree of immersion with each individual sport. Unfortunately Brunswick Pro Bowling does not go to much higher.

This is a pretty comprehensive bowling game. You have the quick play option where you and three other people can basically just bowl ten frames. Or you have the career mode. In career mode there are entrance fees and minimum score levels which you must maintain. You can purchase upgrades, different clothes and what not. The graphics look pretty good, but I will be interested to compare them to the PSP and PS2 version of the game. The game play is pretty close to the bowling game in Wii Sports with some small changes. One of those changes is how you position where you will release the ball. In Wii Sports this was done with the directional pad which made it very easy to pick up. In Brunswick Pro Bowling you need to hold down the B button and rotate your Wiimote clockwise to move right and counter clockwise to move left. This is quite cumbersome at first but after a while you do get the hang of it. The other problem is that it is very hard to make minor adjustments to what path you want the ball to take. Adjusting the angle of the roll as well as the approach and throwing the ball are for the most part the same as Wii Sports. The game uses real life looking humans instead of cartoon characters, and these humans actually have legs unlike the Wii Characters.

Aside from the career mode, and the human looking characters there is not much different from Brunswick Pro Bowling to the Bowling in Wii Sports. Bowling fans will definitely get their monies worth. But for the average gamer who just wants to bowl with some friends, Wii Sports is definitely the obvious choice only because you probably already have it and Brunswick Bowling is not substantially different in functionality. Had this game featured online play that would have completely changed my perceptions of this game. The idea of getting to go bowling with a friend or relative who lives far away would be really appealing. Imagine sitting there talking like you were at a real life bowling alley, you take your turn, he takes his turn. Celebrating great frames and engaging in some friend trash talk between the two of you. The only difference would probably be the lack of a cute waitress to bring you your favorite refreshments and snacks.

But the facts are that Brunswick Pro Bowling did not include online play. That being said until you can find it for under $20 it is pretty hard to recommend the game if you already own its equivalent. If you do not have Wii Sports for whatever reason I would definitely recommend renting this game and or buying it for some good fun.

I totally recommend all three games this week, total A class games.

• Ghouls ‘n Ghosts (1989, Sega Genesis, 1 player, 800 Points):

Despite my best efforts I was never able to get very far into Ghouls ‘n ghosts on any of the various systems it appeared on. The Genesis did have a easier difficulty in it’s favor to keep you sane and in many ways the gameplay and even graphics still hold up today.
(YouTube)

• Super Contra (1990, NES, 1-2 players, 500 Points):

Contra, one tough series of games. I loved Super C when it was first released on the NES, perhaps I’ve grown weak over the years, but this is a very hard game to get back into. Perhaps I can’t get used to not calling it Probotector 2.
(YouTube)

• Breath of Fire II (1995, SNES, 1 player, 800 Points):

Wow a top class SNES RPG here, you have at least 20+ hours of a great RPG experience ahead of you if you purchase this for $8.
(YouTube)

I totally recommend all three games this week, total A class games.

• Shinobi III: Return of the Ninja Master (1993, Sega Genesis, 1 player, 800 Points):

Everyone loves a Ninja, I recently played this on GameTap and it’s still a great time. If you’ve never played a Shinobi game before then you are missing out on a series of side-scrolling Ninja games, not too much unlike many of the run and gun games that appeared around this time, except it has Ninja’s and is awesome.
(YouTube)

• Neutopia (1989, TurboGraf×16, 1 player, 600 Points):

Neutopia is an action RPG where you view the gameworld from an overhead perspective. You visit cities, fight in labyrinths (dungeons) with bosses at the end, you also collect weapons like the sword, bombs and fire staff, I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s an ocarina in here somewhere. Whoops! Did I just drop a Zelda reference? Neutopia is heavily inspired by the Zelda series, but that’s a great thing as there’s nothing wrong with imitating the best
(YouTube)

• Super Metroid (1994, SNES, 1 player, 800 Points):

Hardly surprising to see this here today, since it’s the only other Metroid game for the systems that the Virtual console supports, hopefully Nintendo will expand onto the Gameboy systems to add a little more Metroid fun to the Wii, allowing you to own the entire series. But until my dreamworld becomes reality we have Super Metroid for the SNES, side-scrolling shooters reached their peak with Super Metroid and is another game that’s well worth downloading
(YouTube)

When I first noticed news bites and other bits of information about Planet Puzzle League I thought to myself Oh alright another puzzle game for the Nintendo DS. Then I started hearing some great reviews so I got really excited when GameFly finally got this game in the mail to me.

One thing I liked right away was there was a menu option to erase all the previous data. Instead of trying to grow an additional arm with five more fingers so that I could press and hold whole bunch of buttons while I turned on the Nintendo DS to get rid of previously saved data. The user only needs to find the menu option only a couple of layers in and all those old game files are gone. This is a much better solution to the problem then trying to hold down five buttons while turning on the Nintendo DS.

The game concept is pretty simple. The player needs to match at least three of a matching block type in order for them to disappear there by allowing you to rearrange other blocks in sets of three or more. Now most of you are probably thinking, OK another Tetris game. You are close but Planet Puzzle League is a little different. The lines of blocks come from the bottom and build their way up. The player can only slide the blocks sideways to make matching sets of three. As time progresses more lines of blocks work their way upwards. You need to match them up to keep the screen as clean as long as you can. There are different games types, one of them piles garbage non colored block types and you have to make matches to finally convert the garbage to useable block types.

The game does utilize Nintendo WiFi which makes playing multiplayer with friends across the world possible. This does add a great deal of replay value to the game. And the game has some daily play options

At the end of the day Planet Puzzle League is just another puzzle game for the Nintendo DS. If you have Puzzle Quest, Brain Age, Big Brain Academy, or especially Tetris DS you may not really find Planet Puzzle League any more fun then the others. If you are looking to add a puzzle game or another puzzle game to your DS collection definitely give this game a look over I think you find that it is just as good as the rest.

Today only Amazon.com are selling Metroid Prime Pinball for the Nintendo DS at $12.99 reduced from $??.?? with free shipping if you add another $12.01 to your order.

Great fans of either Metroid or Pinball will get a kick out of this, turned out to be a heck of a lot more fun than I expected.

Today only Amazon.com are selling Nintendo DS Lite Browser for the Nintendo DS at $21.99 reduced from $29.99 with free shipping if you add another $3.01 to your order.

Not a bad little browser, but you have to be careful about what sites you visit, some sites have pages designed to be viewed over mobile devices, such as m.facebook.com or m.google.com, if you stick to these sites the browser will do you proud. Another thing worth mentioning, this will NOT fit inside a DS phat, lites only.

Today only Amazon.com are selling Tamagotchi Party On for the Nintendo Wii, for $17.99 reduced from $29.99 with free shipping if you add another $7.01 to your order.

Move along, nothing to see here

Today only Amazon.com are selling Pokemon Pearl for the Nintendo DS, at $19.99 reduced from $34.99, with free shipping if you add another $5.01 to your cart.

A great deal for one of my biggest DS time-wasters. Sadly the deal was so great looks like the stock has run out on this one, perhaps we’ll see more by the end of the day so keep your eyes open.

A couple of games here that I’d personally never heard of, and one I won’t forget.

• Shining in the Darkness (1991, Sega Genesis, 1 player, 800 Points):

Another old style dungeon crawl. From what I’ve heard and have briefly played it’s a pretty un-remarkable game
(No videos, sorry)

• Cratermaze (1990, TurboGraf×16, 1 player, 600 Points):

More than just a overhead Loderunner this game has some really good gameplay. I didn’t get to play it for long but I can imagine some serious challenge on some later levels. I’ll be going back to play this one a little more
(youtube)

• Metroid (1987, NES, 1 player, 500 Points):

An unsurprising release considering the recent Metroid preview channel, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t nice to see it listed amongst the greats on our Wii menu. I’d wholeheartedly recommend downloading, unless you’ve already beaten the dozen times already.
(youtube)