Tag Archive

New Pokemon Go Details Emerge From The Tall Grass


Posted on May 25, 2016 by Rae Michelle Richards

Today Pokemon Go publisher Nintendo released new information about how gym battles and shops will work in the beta version of the smartphone game. Prior to this announcement we’ve seen similar details leak out from folks who are in the current “Pokemon Go Field Test” in Japan but today marks the first official confirmation about the mechanics behind Gyms.

In Pokemon Go players take on the role of a Pokemon trainer, just like in previous main entries in the series, only this time instead of exploring the world of Kanto or other fictional regions the player’s GPS and camera from their smartphone supply the backdrop for Pokemon battles.  Gyms will be located in real world locations allowing trainers to take their journey to be the greatest to familiar locales. Gyms will operate differently from those in the main games – the reigning champion will be a real player whose team is stationed in the gym even when they are not nearby. Players can defeat the gym by defeating the gym by reducing its “prestige points” to zero. A gym’s prestige points can be increased by other trainers choosing to train the Pokemon with the defending team. Once the current leader has been disposed the new Gym leader will have their pokemon team stationed at the gym until it is defeated.

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In order to take on a gym trainers are going to need the basics – potions and pokeballs – at the very least to even begin their journey. Pokemon Go has potential trainers covered with locations called PokeStops which function like the shops from the main games. These locations will be positioned in well known locations like historical sites, art installations and monuments. This should ensure that trainers will be able to access their essentials regardless of where they might be.

Nintendo and Niantic have confirmed that the game will be free-to-play with optional micro transactions on both Android and iOS. No release date has yet to be revealed but several regional field tests have been conducted in Japan and the North American field test began today.

Source: Nintendo of Europe Press Release


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Skylanders Battlecast Launches on Mobile


Posted on May 25, 2016 by Jason Nason

Activision’s Skylanders Battlecast launches today. Based on the Skylanders videogame series, Skylanders Battlecast is a new, free-to-play mobile card game where players build their ultimate deck of cards, master strategic card combinations and use them in never before seen battles!

In addition to the digital cards in the game, physical card packs are also available for purchase in retail stores.

The special card packs bring Skylanders Battlecast cards to life as players scan their physical cards with their mobile devices to bring them to life through augmented reality. The game also allows players to add cards to an in-game digital spell book.

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Original Final Fantasy mobile RPG coming to North America this Summer


Posted on May 16, 2016 by Jason Nason

Square Enix announced today that a brand-new Final Fantasy experience called FINAL FANTASY BRAVE EXVIUS will launch for free (with in-app purchases) on iOS and Android devices this summer. The hit title has already drawn in more than six million players in Japan and is an entirely new role-playing adventure for the mobile generation.

The title brings the classic Final Fantasy lore with legendary heroes from the franchise.

Adventurers will follow two knights of the kingdom of Grandshelt, and a young girl who suddenly appears before them, as they begin their quest to pursue a highly sought after crystal. Players will make their way through various types of dungeons to search for items, collect gil, uncover hidden paths, and venture new routes.

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Nintendo: Animal Crossing and Fire Emblem apps on the way


Posted on April 27, 2016 by Jason Nason

Get ready for at least two more Nintendo apps for your smart phone this year. Nintendo announced that its next two mobile apps will be based on Fire Emblem and Animal Crossing franchises.

Nintendo plans to release both of these applications this fall.

For Fire Emblem, Nintendo plans to make it more accessible in comparison to the Fire Emblem games for Nintendo’s gaming systems. Nintendo said that it aims to offer the great value of a role-playing strategy game while make it more approachable.

Nintendo will design the Animal Crossing mobile game so that it will be connected with the world of Animal Crossing for Nintendo platforms. They said that by playing both Animal Crossing games, users will find increased enjoyment. It’s not known if this is in relation to current Animal Crossing Games (New Leaf or Happy Home Designer) or if the app will be compatible with a new, unannounced Animal Crossing console game.

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Miitomo reaches 10 million worldwide users


Posted on April 27, 2016 by Jason Nason

Nintendo provided some updates for multiple games this morning, with some news about their first mobile application: Miitomo.

Nintendo reported that their first app for smartphones and tablets has surpassed 10 million unique users worldwide. The free-to-start social experience app launched in Japan on March 17th and in a variety of other countries, including Canada, on March 31st.

In the United States, Miitomo reached #1 free app status in its various online stores shortly after release. As well more than 20 million Miifotos have been created.

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Digimon Heroes! update brings a new storyline and Digimon


Posted on April 16, 2016 by Jason Nason

Bandai Namco has released an new update for their mobile game Digimon Heroes! which brings a new storyline and Digimon characters. Digimon Heroes!, which has reached almost two million downloads since the game’s launch, is available to download for free from the App Store and the Google Play store.

In the latest update, players will have access to the new Aegiomon and the Olympos XII storyline. As gamers embark on their journey, they will unlock new episodes of the storyline, as well as powerful new Digimon. The story of Aegiomon and the Olympos XII immerses players into an ancient tale about a peace-loving Digimon forced to fight against invaders, pushing Aegiomon to unleash his own hidden power. Each episode unravels a new cut scene, immersing players deeper into Aegiomon’s story.

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Pokémon Camp now available worldwide on Android devices


Posted on April 16, 2016 by Jason Nason

The Pokémon Company released a new app for Android devices today with the release of Pokémon Camp. In the app younger fans can head off to explore an island whilst interacting with different Pokémon and activities as they learn what it takes to become a Pokémon Trainer.

Features of the app include Pokémon Theater. This feature lets you watch videos that are fun for Pokémon fans of all ages. Different videos are regularly added the Pokémon Theatre. There is also a section of the app for the Pokémon trading card game. Take part in Pokémon TCG Match, a fun way to discover and test your knowledge of the Pokémon Trading Card Game. You can even earn special Energy pins for your Pin Book.

There area also Pokémon Activities where you can play activities that teach the basics of Pokémon, such as Poké Ball Throw or the Battle Matchups quiz. You can also collect stickers and use them to decorate photos.

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Surprise, The Internet Loves Miitomo – Combining Miis & Cats Is The Best Thing Ever!


Posted on April 1, 2016 by Rae Michelle Richards

The internet loves adorable kitty cats and memes, right? Well, we can add Nintendo’s first mobile title Miitomo to that list as well, for the time being. The company’s first mobile offering is currently trending in top 10 on Twitter with over 135K tweets about the game. Sadly over on Facebook the story isn’t exactly the same, as of publication time Miitomo is not trending. However, for those who doubted Nintendo’s presence carrying over into the mobile space, this just shows that there is an appetite for Nintendo content on smartphones.

Miitomo is the first free-to-play mobile game from the company long known for Mario and single handedly reviving the video games industry in the 1980s, among other accomplishments.  For Nintendo Miitomo represents a shift away from their traditional release model of tying their exclusive games to proprietary hardware to more open mobile platforms like Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android operating systems.Read More


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Space Grunts | Review


Posted on March 28, 2016 by Robyn Robo

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Space Grunts is a lovely little game available now on Steam for PC/Linux/Windows, the Humble Store, Apple’s App Store & Google Play. For this article I reviewed it on Linux. The game was released cross-platform at the end of February. The one-man development team, Orange Pixel, has a track record of creating simple cross-platform action games. This game is similar to those in of its action-oriented screen shaking chibi-pixel style. It is unique, however, in of that it’s a turn based rogue like with a light strategy bent.

Like its predecessors’, Space Grunts is a straightforward game at face value, with three moderately unique classes to choose from, dropping you right into alien stomping action. As a full-on rogue like it features a wide variety of items, enemies, traps and variations on each. The dungeon is randomly generated, only saving your progress at the beginning of each level, but your ‘save’ is deleted if you die. Further, the current level regenerates upon loading a save. This means that save-scumming is pretty much impossible, which lends some credibility to the global leaderboard. If you can’t crack your way into that, there’s also a daily challenge with its own, daily, leaderboard. The game is glossed and polished extremely well, setting it apart from many in the genre.

In addition to the general polished feel, the game sets itself apart with the action heritage of Orange Pixel’s other games. While Pascal Bestebroer’s (Orange Pixel’s sole full-time developer) other games may not normally be turn based, they are all solid mobile adaptations of existing genres. Their past games have included Gunslugs, a run ‘n gun, Heroes of Loot, a twin-stick dungeon crawler & Groundskeeper, another run ‘n gun. All of these appear to have tapped the same team for art and music as well. Similarly, Space Grunts can be played quickly and is good for a jam session on the go. While this is unlikely to get you into high score territory, it’s fun and refreshing. The controls are simple, inventory management and character development are very light and mostly automatic. You can play with a joypad, keyboard, mouse and of course on mobile devices’ touchscreens. Played quickly, the game feels more like an old top-down shooter, such as Alien Breed, than a rogue like. Gameplay immediately reverts to a slower turn based rogue-like, however, when you’re faced with a challenging room.

Levels in the game are, thankfully, split into sealed rooms. Each room requires you to open the door before the monsters, turrets and NPCs come alive. This allows players to pace out the action and approach each room as its own unique puzzle to be beaten. A perfect puzzle-like assessment is impossible as a monster’s health is unknown at start and slightly random without an extra, turn limited, in game item. This means that there is an additional element of chance beyond just the loot drops and enemy movements, which I found refreshing over number-crunching.

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Why not both? Poison and healing spores.

With perma-death and no saves for old characters, you’ll be starting fresh frequently. The game doesn’t make this difficult and accepting that is part of the fun. Each play through is a chance to get further in the dungeon, or see a new hidden area. There are plenty of types of areas too, each occupying several levels and having unique challenges to it. Some are hidden behind destroyable architecture in the game, others caused by activating a found item. Lots of things are breakable, dropping loot or exploding in unique ways, even rooms can be reshaped by explosions. Despite the wide variety, I’ve yet to see an area that is simply unbeatable. It’s conceivable you may find an acid covered floor you can’t cross without boots and be unable to proceed. Some destructible elements are fairly unpredictable too, such as crystal flowers that can either heal your or irradiate a room. That said, I haven’t seen an area which careful tactics, experience and critical thought can’t manage. This is a hard balance to achieve with random dungeons, and again that polish is where the game shines.

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Exploration is a joy, taking things one room at a time. Some levels are fairly linear while others amble about with hidden bosses, and dead-ends. Some rooms seem to have pre-programmed archetypes. For example, there are rooms made entirely of flame grates firing in random sequences, almost always with an item in the middle. Being able to learn how best to navigate each room and when to use your items is essential. The items are almost never permanent, minus some stat upgrades and detectors. This makes almost everything ephemeral and takes some of the bite out of a character’s death, which in this case is probably a good thing. Characters dying so quickly, it’s reasonable that there’s no way to make permanent progress ‘developing’ them.

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I’m not showing what level this is from, because it’s embarrassing.

There are, by the way, only three main character types. Each has a unique variation on three main attributes: strength, tech and luck. These are respectively the character’s brute damage and hit points, ability to fully utilize new items, and likelihood of finding items. The characters’ types of “captain”, “strongarm” and “techjunky” don’t quite translate into the rogue/fighter/mage roles you’d expect. They do come close, though. All character types start off with the same three weapons, but are able to use each to different effect. There’s only four main weapons in the game, the three starters plus a crowbar mostly good for opening crates you find later on. Weapons can be upgraded via random drops, and there are limited use weapons such as mines, RC robot bombs and flame throwers. Other drops run the gamut of possible upgrades, one off ammo-burners, regeneration items, time stoppers, teleporters, practically anything you can think of. Ammo packs and health packs are used immediately, so it’s sometimes wise to skip around the health packs for backtracking within a level.

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Always wanted a Space Cube

There is some permanent progress to be made in the game. In addition to leaderboards and daily challenges, there are data cards revealing backgrounds on each enemy, a Moonbase Log updated as your characters proceed further into the dungeon and meet NPCs, statistics about your gameplay, three unlockable ‘skins’ that are actually more powerful characters, and plenty of achievements to reach. These synced across systems for me in Steam, I can’t vouch for Google Play but I assume it uses the cloud sync there as well. Proper support of ‘cloud saves’ has been on the uptake in games, and it’s lovely. I only wish there were ways to sync from Steam to the mobile app stores and vice versa with games like this. All of those extra numbers and items, in addition seeking the final boss of the dungeon, gives you plenty to rank your game mastery against.

The graphics are a solidly modern take on pixel art. Which is to say, pixelated but not retro. The effects and fog-layers are often high-resolution and 3D, glowing light sources and reflections abound. Your character even leaves little ephemeral foot prints. Effects and animations in the game run constantly, somewhat masking its turn based play. I see the style of the characters & mobs as anime influenced, with that big-headed chibi look to them. This look is in tune with the restraints of mobile screen sizes but still reasonably fun to look at on a bigger PC monitor. The music is similar, good, easy to listen to, but not overwhelming. A series of slick bubbly techno-ish tunes played over the ambient noises of machines in the dungeon and sound effects. The music neither grated on my nerves, nor made me pause to listen. I’d say only slightly better than average in this regard but it fits the game well and doesn’t sound like stock effects.

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Glowing, reflective, shininess

Despite having a one-man development team, Orange Pixel maintains proper community forums. They are very active on those and release frequent bug fixes and updates to their games. I have to say I’m impressed. I’ve seen plenty of better funded developers not do nearly as well by their fans.

The game also doesn’t “feature” in-app-purchases. Once you’ve bought it, you have the full game, regardless of platform. Prices vary between mobile and PC, which is frustrating even if it is standard practice. The PC version is the most expensive, at $9.99, while the Android and iOS versions are $3.99. It is nice to see Android & iOS at the same price point.

Are you a fan of Nethack or Rogue like games? If so, are you looking for something mobile friendly, more accessible and modern? Then this is a fantastic choice. If you were let down by “Steam Marines”, or if you want more of the same, definitely consider this game. Space marine alien stomping is one of my favorite themes and Space Grunts pulls off the ambience of it well. The graphics are slick, the music fitting and the gameplay tight. It isn’t a rich, beyond-expectations game, but it is clever and well made. It feels absolutely worth the price. Especially if you like the genre or want to try something new on mobile. Orange Pixel has been around for a while now releasing these well packaged, small games. Their experience and style shine through.


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Yo-Kai Watch Wibble Wobble Now Available


Posted on March 25, 2016 by Jason Nason

LEVEL-5 Inc. and NHN PlayArt have released their mobile YO-KAI WATCH game to mobile screens yesterday with the release of YO-KAI WATCH Wibble Wobble. The game is a skillful blend of puzzle gameplay and RPG mechanics for Android and iOS.

“We’re super excited to bring this fully localized version of YO-KAI WATCH Wibble Wobble to the United States, Canada, and Australia – and to be able to share the Yo-kai story with the world at large,” says Yukari Hayakawa, COO of LEVEL-5 abby. “Just last December In Japan, the 2nd YO-KAI WATCH movie beat Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens at the box office! The Japanese version of the game, also released last year, was rated 4.5 out of 5 stars and has amassed more than 6 million players. We’re confident that the localized version will be a big hit as well.”

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Miitomo reaches 1 million downloads in Japan; Could it be released this week in North America?


Posted on March 21, 2016 by Jason Nason

With Nintendo of America set to announce the launch date for Miitomo any day now, Nintendo of Japan recently issued a statement of the initial success of the app in Japan.

In the first three days Miitomo of release, Miitomo has been downloaded over 1 million times in Japan. The app was released for iOS and Android this past Friday, March 18th.

While no official date has yet been set for over here, Nintendo’s timeline is listed as late March. And by a look at the calendar we,re now in the final third of the month. If NOA follows the same Friday release strategy as back East, we could see the app available as early As Friday.

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Miitomo Launches in Japan March 17th


Posted on March 11, 2016 by Jason Nason

Nintendo announced late Thursday via Twitter that they will roll out Miitomo in Japan next week. The app will launch for iOS and Android.

Miitomo is a free-to-start social experience that lets you spark conversations with your friends in a whole new way and uses Nintendo’s Mii characters, which first debuted with the launch of Wii Sports in 2006. More than 200 million Mii characters currently exist across Nintendo systems worldwide. To get started, users can quickly create a Mii character, customizing its facial features, eyes, hair, as well as voice and personality. Users can also use the camera of their smartphone or tablet to snap a photo that will be translated into Mii form, or they can simply import their Mii from the Wii U or Nintendo 3DS systems using a QR Code.

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Final Fantasy IX Launches on Mobile Devices


Posted on February 11, 2016 by Jason Nason

FINAL FANTASY IX, a fan-favorite in the franchise, has been released for compatible Apple and Android devices starting today. The game is now available on the App Store and Google Play.

First released in 2000, FINAL FANTASY IX tells the story of the bandit Zidane Tribal who plans to kidnap the princess of Alexandria, Garnet Til Alexandros the 17th, with the troupe of thieves known as Tantalus. An unlikely series of events set Zidane, Garnet, the shy yet powerful black mage Vivi Ornitier, the loyal knight Adelbert Steiner, and other memorable characters on an epic journey as they learn about themselves, the secrets of the Crystal, and a malevolent force that threatens to destroy their world.

New features to the game include High-definition movies and character models, a new cloud save feature allows players to back up save data to play across other compatible devices, and an auto-save function. There are also seven all-new optional booster features, including high speed mode and no encounter mode, which will allow players to automatically master equipped weapons and gear, as well as maximize character levels, magic stone counts and gil.

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Miitomo, My Nintendo to Launch this March


Posted on February 3, 2016 by Jason Nason

Nintendo outlined its launch plans for both Miitomo, the company’s first smartphone app, as well as their new loyalty rewards program “My Nintendo” today.

Nintendo’s first app made exclusively for smart devices, Miitomo, will launch in North America in March for both iOS and Android phones and tablets.

Starting February 17th, people will be able to pre-register for Miitomo by signing up for the new Nintendo Account service using their existing email, social media accounts or current Nintendo Network IDs. People who pre-register will be among the first to be notified about the availability of Miitomo when it launches in March.

Nintendo will offer a special Miitomo bonus to anyone who signs up for a Nintendo Account between February 17th and launch.

Miitomo is a social experience that uses Nintendo’s Mii characters, which first debuted on the Wii console, to engage friends in a lighthearted and welcoming environment. Users can spark fun conversations and learn more about each other by answering questions such as “What song has been stuck in your head lately?”, “Do you believe in aliens?”, or even “If you saw a nose hair sticking out of your friend’s nose, what would you do?” Users can also easily take and share photos featuring their Mii with the Miifoto feature. Nintendo’s new My Nintendo rewards program will launch alongside Miitomo in March, and will be able to connect with the app.

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Dragon of Legends Launches Kickstarter Campaign Today


Posted on January 19, 2016 by Jason Nason

Thrive Games, an independent game developer based out of Hamilton, Ontario, launched a Kickstarter campaign today to help fund their first project Dragon of Legends. The game is an action based MMORPG for PC, Mac, and Mobile platforms heavily influenced by the mythic cycle of Gaelic Ireland and Norse mythology, where the lights of faeries border the realms of darkness.

The developers at Thrive Games are looking for the necessary additional financial assistance to finalize an open beta that everyone can start playing. Since launching the campaign just a few short hours ago, the Kickstarter has already generated just over $1,600 of their $60,000 goal.

The team has been developing the project for the past year and a half and the game has even been a featured project on the Square Enix Collective last year.

So what’s the game about?Read More


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