Famitsu Reports

Issue 834 (26th November 2004)

Famitsu this week presents a four-page interview with Shigeru Miyamoto, probably the world's most famous game designer. Click here to read a translation of the part of the interview discussing the new Nintendo DS (other sections involved the GC and GBA, the new Zelda, and Nintendo's next-generation console codenamed Revolution.

Sega has two double-page spreads of adverts for Kimi No Tame Nara Shineru, which translated as I Would Die For You, but has been given the abysmal English title Feel The Magic: XY/XX. What the Christ were they thinking? Anyway, the adverts are very striking and make good use of the game's unique graphical style.

Launch Lineup Reviews

Here are the scores for the most interesting of the Japanese launch games (some others were reviewed).

Trainee Doctor Tendo Dokuta
7/8/7/9, total 31
I Would Die For You
8/9/7/9, total 33
Sawaru Made In Wario
9/9/8/10, total 36
Super Mario 64 DS
9/7/7/7, total 30
Big Concert! Band Brothers
8/8/8/8, total 32
Intuitive Stroke
8/7/8/8, total 31
Pokémon Dash
8/7/8/8, total 31

Some interesting scores: Super Mario 64 DS gets one point less than Pokémon Dash, which looks like a pile of pump based on the footage on the Famitsu DVD.

The reasons the three '7' reviewers give for marking Mario down are all the same: difficult to control using the touchscreen. Perhaps conversions of old games aren't such a good idea -- they hardly seem necessary given the possibilities afforded to developers who create new games utilising the richness of control the DS offers.

In any case, I've already preordered a copy of this with my system, along with Sawaru Made In Wario, which is the highest-scoring of the launch games.

A few of the games that aren't yet out in the US have working English titles: Sawaru Made In Wario is WarioWare Touched!, which isn't too bad. Big Concert! Band Brothers will probably become Jam With The Band, and Intuitive Stroke (trust me, it's not as funny in Japanese) is looking likely to be known as One-Line Puzzle, which is just about the most sensible title translation I've seen in a while.

posted by CTU Kyoto @ 11/27/2004 04:57:00 am