DDP Resurrection, 3DS and Groove Coaster

This is just a short post as there has been some new about today so I thought I’d post a bit about it.

Rising Star Games New Titles

Rising Star announced 5 new titles today, which is great news as they seem to have an eye for niche but decent titles. Obviously the headliner for me is DoDonPachi Resurrection, which is coming to the 360 later this year. After the great job they did with Deathsmiles this should be well worth picking up. They are also releasing King of Fighters XIII for the PS3, plus for the DS Harvest Moon Grand Bizarre,  Rune Factory 3 and Cradle of Rome by the end of the year. Its great so see a company so passionate about releasing these games and I hope they are successful.

3DS Price Drop

All is not well for Nintendo as the 3DS sales have been lower than expected with reports that only 900k have been sold worldwide. To combat this Nintendo are knocking around 1/3rd off the RRP, which I seem to remember being around £220. The smart money would be on a new price of around £150, which is still a little rich for me, at £125 I would pick one up. I think Nintendo are a victim of the fact that people mainly play mobile games on their phones now, and the games are so cheap that it becomes a bit pointless having a dedicated handheld, especially with £40 games. Don’t get me wrong, I like proper controls rather than touch screens and good quality titles rather than clones or rip-offs of classic games, but I think the titles on IOS in particular are really improving these days. Nintendo really need to get some high profile quality titles out and soon, which I’m sure they plan to do, it will be interesting to see the situation at Christmas.

Groove Coaster Released on IOS

Today Taito released a game called Groove Coaster on IOS. This is from the team that brought you Space Invaders Infinity Gene, one of the best games available on the iPhone and it has a very similar look and feel, in fact the menu’s seem almost exactly the same. Whereas Infinity Gene was a shooter though Groove Coaster is a rhythm action game. The premise is really simple, a line is drawn on the screen with dots that appear at certain intervals. When your icon lands on the dot you tap the screen which makes noises in keeping with the music. The idea is to get chains of correct presses, much like you would in Guitar Hero or any other music game.

The concept is simple, as is that gameplay but what it does well is that its very stylish, the wireframe graphics look great and colourful, plus the music suits the game perfectly, think the kind of thing in Lumines or Rez. Being a Taito game though it also has some Zuntata tracks, so far I’ve seen some from Arkanoid DS and Space Invaders Extreme, plus a DLC track from Darius Burst. Its a great game and is currently only 69p which is a total steal, I think the full price is £1.99 which is still a bargain.

Its funny that this and the 3DS news were on the same day as my first thought on the 3DS news was that I would probably buy one, but then getting the train home and playing Groove Coaster I realised that I do like gaming on my iPhone now, and it is a viable gaming platform. With games like the Cave ones that were released, plus some of the Namco, Sega and even SquareEnix games its a real treasure trove. I really hope more people release games for it, I’d especially like to see Falcom release something on it, maybe a new Sorcerian.

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