Kidzworld's Official Blog

Level-5 is the developer of our latest featured game, White Knight Chronicles. They’re an often overlooked RPG dev, with some amazing games for Sony systems in particular over the years. Here’s a quick rundown of them, and why you should pick them up if you see them for $5 in a bargain bin somewhere.

• Dark Cloud (2000) – PS2. Actually very similar to White Knight Chronicles in that it’s a regular RPG with city-building elements. A real under-recognized gem.
• Dark Chronicle (2002) – PS2. Sometimes it’s called Dark Cloud 2. It has the same city-building stuff combined with RPG stuff, and then adds in this odd photography system. It has awesome, stylish graphics.
• Dragon Quest VIII (2004) – PS2. Again, great cel-shaded graphics. Japanese magazine Famitsu called it the fourth best game of all time at one point.
• Rogue Galaxy (2005) – PS2. It’s pretty unfair to say it’s a sci-fi version of Dark Cloud 2, but I don’t have a lot of room to talk about it here, so I’m just going to say it’s like a sci-fi version of Dark Cloud 2.
• Jeanne d’Arc (2006) – PSP. A tactical turn-based RPG instead of an action one like the others, plus it’s (loosely) based on the story of Joan of Arc. One of my favorite PSP games.
• The Professor Layton series (2007-today) – DS. Not an RPG, but rather a game of puzzles set around a storyline, with some adventure-y elements. Definitely a must-have for DS owners, unless you’re really ticked off by brain teasers.

There are four different cars you can get as a bonus for pre-ordering  Gran Turismo, and I’m going to give them all to you at once here, so you can decide.

• Amazon.com – 2002 Enzo Ferrari
• Gamestop – 2009 Bugatti Veyron
• Game Crazy – 1974 Lamborghini Countach
• Best Buy – 2008 Citroen GTbyCITROEN

I truthfully can’t decide which is my favorite out of those, but I think I’m going to go with the Ferrari anyway.

So, Metroid Prime Trilogy is coming out for the Wii, as I said in last week’s news post. This means that, for 70-80 dollars, you can get every Metroid game all on your Wii at once! The original Metroid costs 500 Wii Points ($5) on the Virtual Console, Super Metroid costs 700 points, and then it’s only $50 for the three 3d Metroid games! That sounds like a pretty great weekend or two, just playing through every one of those games all at once. You’ll need a Wii Classic Controller for $20, though, if you don’t have one by now.

Here’s a full list of sports in Wii Sports Resort, because we couldn’t fit one into the news post:

• Swordplay
• Table Tennis
• Frisbee Dog and Frisbee Golf
• Golf
• Bowling
• Wakeboarding
• Power Cruiser (Jet Ski)
• Basketball (3 point shootout and 3-on-3)
• Archery
• Cycling
• Air Sports (including dogfights between two planes!)

Though the game comes with one MotionPlus accessory, make sure you pick up at least one more for the multiplayer.