Unlike Optimus and the Autobots, though, many of the robots in Chosoju Mecha MG were meant to be piloted by humans riding inside - the story cast you as one of these aspiring pilots, making the whole thing also feel a lot like Nintendo's other robot-battling series, Custom Robo. The mechs in the game, called Marionation Gears, could transform into shapes appropriate for either kind of contest - not unlike those other "robots in disguise" you might be more familiar with. Chosoju Mecha MG was a Nintendo-published mech game that hit the DS in Japan in 2006, and featured stylus-controlled giant robot battles, and stylus-controlled giant robot races. It's the same company that took a risk on bringing us the oddball Puzzle Quest too, you know, and that decision seemed to work out pretty well.ĭid you know that Nintendo totally knocked off Transformers in Japan? It's OK if you didn't, because while Chosoju Mecha MG looked like it was set to become a domestic release for a long time, the likelihood of a localized version of the game making it out of Japan has certainly dissipated greatly now that it's been over two years since its initial release. The game hasn't been confirmed to come to the States yet, either - but with d3 Publisher handling distribution in Japan, there's certainly hope that this odd game could come to our shores. But if you're intrigued, you can check out its beautiful official website for a look at more screenshots, videos and artwork. RIZ-ZOAWD isn't quite on sale yet, as its Japanese debut isn't set to occur until just after the start of the new year. Until you run into an enemy, of course, when things shift to more traditional turn-based battling action. The touch screen on the DS displays a giant, spherical surface for you to slide your stylus across, and doing so moves Dorothy and Toto along the yellow brick road at increasingly rapid rates. The concept alone would be odd enough, but developer Media Vision has made the design even stranger by including a truly unorthodox control method - a trackball. Frank Baum's legendary book (which is now over 100 years old) and transforms them all, such that they're certainly not the happy-go-lucky skipping friends you remember from the famous 1939 film - Dorothy, the Scarecrow, the Tin Man and the Cowardly Lion are now all RPG heroes, doing their best to emulate the success of other role-playing games like Final Fantasy or Dragon Quest. (The title is a letter jumble of "Wizard" and "Oz.") The game takes the setting and characters of L. Kicking off our countdown is RIZ-ZOAWD, a wonderfully twisted and ridiculously wacky re-imagining of the classic tale of The Wizard of Oz. So read on below and get ready to give thanks, because without the DS the gaming industry would still be way too normal.
You got the first five on Monday, five more yesterday, and the final five picks have now been revealed today, the day before Turkey Day - just in time for any or all of them to make your last-minute Christmas list before the Santas in your life head out to buy your stocking stuffers. For the three days leading up to Thanksgiving this week, we've been showcasing some of the strangest, most off-the-wall concepts to come to Nintendo's already-odd-itself dual-screened handheld. Really messed-up stuff.Īnd so we present our latest countdown, The Top 15 Most Bizarre Nintendo DS Games. But more than the system's good games, and more than the system's cheap games, the thing that most marks the Nintendo DS in our minds is its varied assortment of patently weird games. It's also easy to be grateful for the many great values available for the system, especially as we enter into the most notorious shopping weekend of the holiday season - and, too, we recently did that as we presented the Top 25 DS Games Under $20. We've done that recently, when we counted down The Top 25 Games released so far for the system just a few weeks ago.
It's easy enough to look back on the DS software library so far and appreciate the quality of many of its entries. The many incredibly odd, preposterously strange gifts. And so, in the spirit of Thanksgiving, we too have felt compelled to ponder the past, musing over the many gifts the Nintendo DS has given us in its four years on the market. That time when everyone takes a break to enjoy a period of humble reflection, thinking back on the things they're most thankful for. That time when everyone relaxes, when everyone pushes pause on their busy lives.