Kidzworld's Official Blog

This week, Split Second is pumping a ridiculous amount of adrenaline into the racing game genre. On May 25th, two more racers are coming out with very different approaches. Let’s just quickly compare the three.

Split Second: Race opponents and your friends over chaotic courses that anyone can blow to smithereens at any time, totally changing the course and taking racers out.

Blur: The only one of the three with real licensed cars, it’s more realistic than the others as well while still being arcade-y. Racers still try to perform stunts and use power-ups to take down the other cars.

ModNation Racers: Think LittleBigPlanet meets Mario Kart. It’s a kart racing game where you get to make the characters, the karts, and the tracks, all with incredibly detailed tools that anyone can use.

Monster Hunter Tri came out this week for the Nintendo Wii, so here’s a quick rundown of all the game’s weapon classes for those who are interested.

• Bowgun: Projectile weapon with all kinds of different ammunition and all kinds of different uses.
• Sword & Shield: Sounds traditional and normal, but actually takes the most smarts to use, because you can use other items while still having your weapon out, so items are vitally important.
• Hammer: For those who don’t even care about blocking, and would rather just keep smashin’ ’til the job is done.
• Long Sword: Like a really huge, awesome katana.
• Great Sword: Powerful and able to block, but very slow.
• Lance: Shield that can’t be stopped combined with a huge long spear. Pretty tough for monsters to get around that!

Next week, Pokemon HeartGold & SoulSilver are storming North America, immediately after selling like (no, even better than) hotcakes in Japan.  For a remake, the game is getting unbelievably good reviews, too, so I’m collecting the ones that have been published so far right here.

• GamesRadar: 8 out of 10 – Believe it or not, this is the lowest score the game will get, and people were actually pretty mad that it was this low. Wow.
• IGN: 8.5 out of 10
• Nintendo Power: 9.5 out of 10
• Famitsu (Japanese magazine): 37 out of 40
• Games Master UK: 88 out of 100

Add to that the fact that the game’s sold over 3 million copies in Japan already, and, whoa… Sometimes I forget the awesome power of Pokemon.

Sonic & SEGA All-Stars Racing is the biggest kids’ release of the next week, and because maybe the coolest thing about kart racing games is all the characters, here’s a full list for you:

1. Sonic the Hedgehog – No surprises there.
2. Miles “Tails” Prower – Side note: It took me years and years to get the joke on why his name is Miles Prower. Do you get it?
3. Knuckles – Again, not too surprising.
4. Doctor Eggman – His real name is Dr. Ivo Robotnik. I guess “Eggman” was just a bad nickname he got in school.
5. Amy Rose – She was introduced in my favorite Sonic game ever, Sonic CD, for the SEGA CD. As a kid I had a combination Laserdisc/SEGA CD player, and I swear those are both real things.
6. Shadow the Hedgehog – I realize he’s the anti-Sonic and everything, but it still seems odd that a hedgehog can have a gun, like Shadow does.
7. Big the Cat – Another Sonic side character, and he looks about as much like a cat as Sonic looks like a real hedgehog. I mean, look at him.
8. AiAi – He puts the “Monkey” in “Super Monkey Ball.” Otherwise, the game would just be “Super Ball,” which actually might be trademarked already.
9. Amigo – From “Samba de Amigo.” For those keeping score, that’ s Monkeys 2 – 3 Hedgehogs.
10. Ryo Hazuki – The main character from the Dreamcast cult hit, “Shenmue.” Yeah, don’t worry if you’ve never heard of it.
11. Beat – From “Jet Set Radio,” another cult hit for the Dreamcast.
12. Alex Kidd – Oh boy, this is even more obscure. He was SEGA’s main man until Sonic took the stage, and hasn’t been in his own new game since well before you were born.
13. Billy Hatcher – From “Billy Hatcher and the Giant Egg” for the Gamecube. He, uh, wears a chicken suit. Hm.
14. Zobio and Zobiko – A zombie couple. Too early for Halloween and too late for Valentine’s Day.
15. Ulala – From “Space Channel 5,” another Dreamcast game you’ve probably never played, but should. I miss the Dreamcast now.
16. Jacky Bryant and Akira Yuki – From the “Virtua Fighter” series.
17. B.D. Joe - From “Crazy Taxi,” which hopefully you’ve seen in an arcade or something. Do arcades still exist?
18. Robo and Modo – Now here’s one I hadn’t even heard of. They’re from “Bonanza Bros.,” which apparently came out in 1990. Ooooookay.
19. Opa-Opa – A living spaceship. Cool.
20. Chuih, ChuBei, ChuPea, and ChuBach – All from “ChuChu Rocket!,” another awesome game for the Dreamcast.
21. Banjo and Kazooie – Xbox 360 version only. Sorry, Nintendo fans like me who played the original “Banjo-Kazooie” on the N64.
22. Avatar – Not like James Cameron’s Avatar or the animation show Avatar, but your New Xbox Experience one. Obviously, also Xbox 360 only.
23. Mii – For the Wii.

This week, Super Monkey Ball Step & Roll was released, the first in the Super Monkey Ball series to support the Wii Balance Board. Pretty sweet, but those of you who bought Wii Fit are still probably wondering: Just how many games support my balance board anyway? Well, here is every single one of them that’s cool for kids, with a helpful awesomeness rating out of 10 for each game to help you choose one.

• Academy of Champions: Soccer – 6/10 Awesomeness Rating
• All Star Cheer Squad – 7/10
• Dance Dance Revolution Hottest Party 3 – 7/10
• G1 Jockey 2008 – 3/10
• EA Sports Active (and Active: More Workouts) – 9/10 if you’re into exercise!
• Equilibrio – 5/10
• Gold’s Gym Cardio Workout – 7/10 again, just for exercise
• Imagine Fashion Party – 8/10
• James Cameron’s Avatar: the Game – 5/10 surprisingly terrible
• Jillian Michael’s Fitness Ultimatum 2009 & 2010 – 8/10 exercise only
• Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Winter Games – 9/10
• My Fitness Coach 2 – 7/10 only exercise
• NewU – 7/10 only exercise
• Overturn – 7/10
• Punch-Out!! – 9/10 and yes, there are two exclamation points in the title…
• Rayman Raving Rabbids TV Party – 10/10 perhaps the most awesome
• Rock ‘n’ Roll Climber – 6/10
• Shaun White Snowboarding (Road Trip and World Stage) – 9/10
• Skate City Heroes – 7/10
• Skate It – 9/10
• Snowboard Riot – 6/10
• Tetris Party – 9/10 I’m sad that I’ve never been invited to a Tetris party…
• The Incredible Maze – 4/10
• Walk it Out – 6/10
• We Ski – 8/10
• We Ski & Snowboard – 8/10
• Wii Fit – 10/10 but surely, you’ve played it, right?
• Wii Fit Plus – 10/10
• Wii Music – 7/10
• Winter Sports 2: The Next Challenge – 8/10
• Yoga – 6/10 Well, it is just yoga…

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.

This week’s gaming news post covered Vancouver 2010, the primary game of this year’s Winter Olympics. But there are other games for the Winter Olympics out there, both from the past and present. Let’s go through them.

• When they say Vancouver 2010 is the official game of this year’s Winter Olympics, there is actually one more: Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Winter Games. If you’re playing the Wii, this is the only official game you get for these games, and if you have just a Wii, chances are you’d rather play as Mario, Sonic, and pals than generic folks anyway. I like Yoshi way better than “German Athlete #3.”
• You can go back to previous years of official games. My recommendation: Nagano Winter Olympics ’98 for the Nintendo 64. It was made by Konami, and somehow had more events than they include nowadays. You could play curling!
• Then there’s one of the few unofficial games ever released, 1986′s “Winter Games.” It was released on a ton of different consoles back then, and is about to be ported over to the Wii Virtual Console in the near future. There are some who say this game has the worst controls of any ever made. It’s, uh… Not that good.

This week’s game release post only had three games, all for the DS, but there was a big one: The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks. The last DS Zelda game, Phantom Hourglass, let you steer a ship, and this one lets you drive a train, which was kind of unexpected for a medieval-fantasy-type game. So, based on that pattern of each DS Zelda game having a new type of transportation in it, here are my best guesses at what the next Zelda game’s title might be:

• The Legend of Zelda: Mysterious Biplane
• The Legend of Zelda: The Forest Halfpipe
• The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Pneumatic Tube
• The Legend of Zelda: Rally Car Rumble
• The Legend of Zelda: Segway of Truth

In our latest releases post, we mentioned the release of New Super Mario Bros. Wii, and there are a few cool things related to that to share with you here. First of all, the game is in a red box, which is kind of crazy given that every other Wii game to date has been in a white one.

Second, Nintendo has made a lot out of saying how difficult this game will be, much like the classics, but there is a new “Super Guide” feature that will let Luigi take on an especially tough level for you, basically.

As bonus material, check out this video of the Super Mario museum at New York City’s Nintendo Store.

Well, we learned in today’s Kidzworld gaming new releases post that in Wii Fit Plus, you can weigh your dog or cat, even though they can’t really play any activities! Well, I’m here to give Nintendo some ideas on how to better integrate our pets into the game:

1. If you have a dog, then the screen should show a picture of a kitten and make meowing sounds. That’ll get your dog running, or barking, or jumping, or something. At least he’ll be burning calories. Just switch roles if you have a cat.
2. Let’s add in some really high pitched notes into the game at various points, just see how your dog reacts.
3. Toy bone-shaped Wiimotes are a must.
4. Wii vitality sensor technology inside a tempting ball of yarn for your cat.
5. Maybe a new Wii balance board that can double as a scratching post?

And today’s question for you all: Do your pets ever even react to what’s on your TV screen?