I think my age group has finally taken over the videogame industry, as it seems to be the mid 90′s all over again. New NBA Jam, new Mortal Kombat, new(ish) Duke Nukem, and a new Donkey Kong Country. One of the more puzzling announcements from E3 was Metroid Prime developer Retro Studios being well into development on Donkey Kong Country Returns, which is about as un-Metroid Prime as one can get.

Just as the NBA Jam guys obviously played themselves a ton of NBA Jam, it’s clear from the level I played that the guys at Retro locked themselves in a room with a Super Nintendo and a copy of Donkey Kong Country for two months and paid close attention to what made DKC so great. There were three levels to try out, but once the Nintendo rep informed me that one of the levels was a mine-cart level, I knew the proper choice to make.

They have added a couple of interesting things to the mix, specifically a trick DK learned from Super Smash Bros. Thrusting the Wiimote and nunchuk up and down allows Donkey Kong to slam the ground under him, thus stunning nearby enemies and smashing wooden crates. There’s also platforms where slamming them down changes the backgrounds and opens up a new area a la Paper Mario. These features are cool, but the meat & potatoes is still pure Donkey Kong Country. Memorizing those mine cart paths and precisely timing your jumps sent me right back to 1994.

Donkey Kong still looks the same he always has since Rare’s iconic re-design, but the incredibly bright and cheerful graphics make for one great looking Wii game. The transforming of the environments mentioned prior are filled with great looking explosions, and the game runs at a silky smooth 60FPS. The biggest change to the core game is DK’s ability to take two hits before death instead of one, which made me hope for a harder difficulty setting that returns to the original’s one hit deaths.

So Donkey Kong Country Returns is totally Donkey Kong Country, which is fine by me. The game has its detractors, and if you’re one of them, Retro Studios isn’t going to change your mind. It’s really this simple: if you like Donkey Kong Country, then you’re probably going to really dig Donkey Kong Country Returns this November.

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Tags: Nintendo Wii, Spider Man Shattered Dimensions, Trailer
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Kirby’s Epic Yarn is cute. In fact, you might even go so far as to say it’s absolutely adorable. It’s so cute that while standing in line, I actually heard more than one woman go “Awwwwww!” at the mere sight of it. If there was a award for “most happiness in a game” at PAX, Epic Yarn would win by a mile. The longest lines at the Nintendo booth were to see Epic Yarn, and nearly everyone who played it had a face plastered with a nice, big smile.

The most notable thing about the game is its highly original visual style, and all of the well-rendered cloth and string that makes up the world is as vibrant as feasibly possible. It’s a wonderful direction to take the franchise, as Epic Yarn is a Wii game that wouldn’t particularly benefit from the extra processing power available on other systems. A decade from now when modern games look like garbage in comparison to the games of the future, Epic Yarn will still look awesome.

The general cheerfulness of the graphics translates how it plays as well. I played the demo cooperatively with Mike Henry of Twisted Pixel, and we were wondering if it was even possible to die. We didn’t see something that could represent a health bar, and the Nintendo rep mentioned that she actually hadn’t seen anyone kick the bucket while playing the game. This isn’t really a problem, as the game is obviously tailored to a far younger demographic than myself, but anyone seeking a challenge will still  find it by searching the game for all the secret gems and treasure.

Mike took the role of everyone’s favorite pink ball while I was Prince Fluff. Fluff seems to be the ruler of the yarn world Kirby has stumbled into, and Kirby is helping him take his kingdom back. Kirby has had his trusty vacuum ability taken away, but he now has the power to grab his opponents with a whip using the 1 button. His whip can also latch on to zippers, strings, and patches that will change the environment. One section had both of us combine to form a giant tank where I shot missiles while Mike punched things, which was highly enjoyable.

It’s a relatively simple game from what I played, but Kirby was originally conceived as a beginner’s game, so it fits in the parameters of what Kirby should be: simple and fun.

If you’re looking for a fun game you can play with either your young child or inexperienced girlfriend, Kirby’s Epic Yarn will serve you right when it launches in October.

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Ubisoft has formally announced the download-only Outland it teased earlier in the week.

As seen from the shots below, the side-scroller features quite the eye-catching visual style and makes the game’s on-the-brink-of-destruction world look rather inviting. Other than that though, and that it’s being developed by Housemarque of Super Stardust HD fame, details are slim.

It’s expected early next year on both Xbox Live Arcade and PSN.

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Announced at PAX is new WiiWare title Fluidity from Nintendo. Don’t know about you but I think this is gonna be sweet!

Here’s the first details…

- Tilt-controlled puzzle game
- Direct water through trap-filled mazes
- Inside a magical book
- Tilt the Wiimote back and forth
- Puzzle of water will split apart if you direct it over gratings, holes, gaps between moving platforms
- Sometimes need to divide water
- Usually need to make sure not to lose too much water in different pockets of the maze
- Bubbles restore lost water
- Bubbles also add to the original puddle

- Locate and pop bubbles
- Convert your water to gas or solid at multiple points
- Puzzles start out very basic
- The first few puzzles made to teach you the basics
- Flick the Wimote up to jump over gaps in the ground
- Levels start to become more complex as you progress
- Roll water through treacherous spinning platforms that threaten to break up your puddle in one level
- In another level, you need to float a fish back to its bowl to receive a Rainbow Drop
- Rainbow Drop is the game’s currency
- Use Rainbow Drops to unlock stages
- Game is coming “soon”

Tags: Details, Fluidity, Trailer, wiiware
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The Line Drive is a weekly collection of news, links, and updates that didn’t necessarily warrant their own postings.

While I don’t usually like using this term to describe anything videogame related, there’s only one word that describes Japanese developer Treasure: hardcore. The company has been producing insanely difficult shmups and side-scrollers like Ikaruga and Gunstar Heroes for years now, but one of their lesser known franchises is Bangai-O. The franchise made its first official stateside release a few years back with Bangai-O Spirits on DS, and now they’re putting the final touches on another completely bonkers entry in the series entitled Bangai-O HD: Missile Fury.

In the Bangai-O games, you play as a tiny little mech with a whole lot of firepower. It’s a 2D game where you fly around a big maze full of all kinds of missile turrets, giant spaceships, spikeballs, and fellow mechs all trying to kill you. It’s a series known for its punishing difficulty, and D3 producer Jim Ramish wouldn’t have it any other way. “There’s only one difficulty: Treasure,” he said when asked if the game would have multiple difficulty settings.

The first thing fellow Bangai-O fans will notice with Bangai-O HD is the HD part of it. The game looks great, with beaming colors everywhere and a rock solid framerate, which the series has been desperately in need of since its inception on the Nintendo 64. In fact, the framerate boost actually makes the game more difficult. Bangai-O is a game with hundreds of things flying around the screen at once, and the slow motion that would ensue in the chaos could be used to your advantage in prior entries in the series, but that isn’t the case here.

Bangai-O HD features 110 levels. 50 of them are included in the game’s story mode, and the other 60 are unlocked after finishing the campaign, which includes the super difficult levels on top of some classic maps. The game will also feature a detailed level editor, but no word if they will be transferable via static sound waves a la Bangai-O Spirits on the DS.

The general wackiness that makes the series so charming is still in place here. Baseball bats are still a viable weapon, and you still collect various fruits to build up your score. This is one of those franchises that’s beloved by the fourteen or so people that play it on a regular basis, and as one of those fourteen people, I can say that Missile Fury is shaping up to be another excellent entry in the series.

D3 Publisher is shooting for a November release exclusively on the Xbox Live Arcade for 800 MS Points, which seems like a lot of bang for your buck.

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Starting today, fans can pre-order GoldenEye 007 for Wii at GameStop to receive an exclusive* code to unlock Invisibility Mode for split screen multiplayer. Invisibility Mode allows each player to become invisible for a set period of time. Run right up to other players without them ever seeing you and catch them off guard with a surprise attack in the heat of battle! *Exclusive until Dec. 31, 2010. For more info and an exclusive video sneak peek, visit this link. Get Invisible. Get the Edge. Get Your Friends.

Eager fans who purchase a copy of GoldenEye 007 at Best Buy will receive an exclusive* code to unlock Tag Mode for splitscreen multiplayer. Tag Mode takes the classic playground game and gives it a twist on the Wii. The player who is “tagged” cannot eliminate an opponent until they tag someone else – creating fast, frenetic multiplayer action where players are sprinting at each other from all angles. *Exclusive until Dec. 31, 2010. For more info and an exclusive video sneak peek, visit BestBuy.com.

For fans who love Oddjob, reserve the game at Walmart.com or purchase the game at launch at a Walmart store near you to score an exclusive Oddjob “Cheater” T-shirt. Go here for an image of the shirt, which players can proudly show off to proclaim their love for this classic, but often controversial, multiplayer character. Watch out for Oddjob’s bowler hat! Fans can visit this link for more info. This exclusive T-shirt is available at Walmart and Walmart.com while supplies last.

Developed exclusively for Wii and based on the GoldenEye film, GoldenEye 007 gives players the chance to use the lethal, gritty style of Daniel Craig’s James Bond to outwit, outmaneuver and overtake an arms syndicate that threatens the world in an innovative, modern take on the legendary GoldenEye movie. GoldenEye 007 features an unprecedented lineup of four-player split-screen multiplayer options that encourage social gaming, with over 50 total characters, including eight classic Bond characters, ten maps, three standard modes and 17 special modifiers that allow gamers to create hundreds of game combinations. GoldenEye 007 also features online multiplayer for up to eight players designed for seasoned FPS online gamers with unique modes and a robust XP system for unlockables and achievements. GoldenEye is back. Get Your Friends.

The GoldenEye 007 video game for Wii™ is rated “T” (Teen – for Violence) by the ESRB. GoldenEye 007 is developed by Eurocom (the Nintendo DS™ version is being developed by n-Space) under license from EON Productions Ltd and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc. (MGM). For more information about the game, fans can visit the official game site at www.goldeneyegame.com.

Tags: Gamestop, Goldeneye, Nintendo Wii, Pre-Order
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Twisted Pixel’s stock is quickly rising in the world of indie games. The Maw was a fun little romp, but ‘Splosion Man showed off the team’s ability to create excellently designed platforming levels along with its absurd sense of humor. I had Everybody Loves Doughnuts stuck in my head for a month after finishing that game. Now the team just wrapped up their biggest and most ambitious game to date with Comic Jumper: The Adventures of Captain Smiley, and Japan is going to love it.

The neat thing about Comic Jumper is the numerous visual styles throughout the game. Each level is a different style from a different genre of comic books, and the demo in question featured the highly anticipated manga level. Lead programmer Mike Henry said the team at Twisted Pixel spent a lot of time reading many comic books for research, but the crew actually avoided reading too much Manga. “[The Manga level] was fueled more by a lack of knowledge of the subject, so we just did as many crazy crap as we could.”

Captain Smiley transforms into numerous characters throughout the game, and the Manga level features a character that Square Enix could probably pursue legal action over if they cared to. As the spitting image of Cloud Strife, Smiley runs through the halls of Hent High (Yup) slashing through love stricken anime schoolgirls on his way to a boss fight featuring a mammoth teddy bear…thing. Anyone who enjoys poking fun at absurd anime is going to get a real kick out of this level.

The game is primarily a side-scroller where you switch between melee and gun-based combat, but occasionally the game veers into a 3rd person rail shooter of sorts. The shooting feels a bit stiff, and would benefit greatly from a lock-on feature, but Henry informed me that the game is gold, so that’s probably not going to happen by the time the game launches on October 6th.

The highlight of the demo was the incredibly funny banter between Captain Smiley and the star on his chest, who happens to go by Star. The two are constantly bickering throughout the entire level, with Star taking the role of the bully picking on his favorite schoolyard target. The script is really sharp with verbal back-and-forth like this:

Captain Smiley: “Hey what the hell is Pocky anyways?”
Star: “Dunno, but it’s like crack to these kids!”

I don’t know how well Comic Jumper is going to hold up as a game throughout the entire campaign, but one thing is for sure: it’s hilarious. The shooting feels a bit weak, but the melee combat was satisfying, and if you’re the type of person who can value a game that’s truly funny when so few games are, Comic Jumper’s looking like it’ll be worth your .

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