‘Starfox Command’ is Nintendo’s fifth Starfox game (if you count ‘Starfox Adventures’) and their first Starfox game for the DS. I’ve been a long time ‘Starfox’ fan, ever since the original was released back in 1993 (wow, it’s been 13 years already?). I’ve always been a fan of non-simulation shooters and since I’ve been craving a new game for my DS, so ‘Starfox Command’ was an instant buy for me. I jumped on this title the day it was released, but was I too quick to throw my thirty bucks at it so eagerly?

Starting Out:
The game starts out just as you’d expect, you’ve got your basic start menu for single-player, download play (multiplayer modes which I’ll cover later in the review), wi-fi play (again, I’ll cover later) and your options menu, all complete with dramatic Starfox music! You’ll probably want to hit up the options menu first, considering that the game starts out with non-inverted controls and if you’re anything like me, you’d normally expect them inverted in a flight game. You can also adjust your sound settings with the ability to change the characters voices. You have “normal”, “recorded” and “machine”. Normal goes back to the classic “Starfox” sounding voices, if you never played the original, they’re basically the same gibberish, “Microsoft Sam” sounding voices like in ‘Animal Crossing’. “Recorded” is actually really cool because it asks you a bunch of questions, getting a range of sound from your own voice and cutting it up and mixing your phrases into fake words, giving the characters the tone of your or a friend’s voice. “Machine” is just the old-school beeps and bloops during text. Also in the options menu, you can set up your nickname for Multiplayer and Wi-Fi modes.
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Shit Sandwich.

This game is terrible. I’ve played some dumbed down crap games, but never had an excellent, barnstormer game like Burnout been lost so completely.

The blame lies entirely in the DS hardware. It can’t support Criterions’s “RenderWare” engine. The game engine in its place is some kind of Ridge Racer knock off, very slow, with the added ability to explode on any crash. But with the limited DS capabilities, the crashes don’t entertain or amaze like the Xbox version or whatever.

I don’t even want to talk about it. Its been out for months, but I finally rented it. I really loved Burnout Revenge. I really hate this. I had to post this just in case someone out there might find it in a bargain bin and remember how well reviewed the console versions were.

In addtion to Baby Mario, we found out at E3 that Yoshi would also carry a Baby Princess Peach and a Baby Donkey Kong.
But in the lower and upper left corners of the final box art we see a Baby Bowser and a Baby Wario. The different babies promise to add new gameplay mechanics to the platformer, which iteself is a sequel to an underrated classic on the SNES.
Also of note, theres a Nintendo WiFi logo. 2 player online Co-op? Versus race? Mini Games? Nintendo hasn’t said anything yet.
Yoshi’s Island 2 will be released to the Nintendo DS on November 13 in the US.

Man, I haven’t seen this many babies in years.
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News article on Nintendo.com gives you the how-to. Rumor has it there are several items to get through this deal, so you may want to plan multiple trips, or possibly one long one. Kotaku seems to think these are Mario-themed items, and I have little reason to doubt them, though they did get the conclusion date wrong.

This late news is in effect now through the 30th.

The official site for the Animal Crossing movie is online. It’s got wallpapers, character information and all kinds of info that’s confusingly not in English.

Check out the trailer to get a look at what the movie will be like.

The movie centers around a girl named Ai who moves to a town populated by animals. Similar to the story of the popular Nintendo Gamecube and Nintendo DS games of the same name she will befriend the townspeople and get a part time job helping out to make ends meet. Game favourites Tom Nook, Kap’n and Tortimer will be featured along side a sample of the animals from the game. We’ll see Sally, an elephant, Bouquet, a cat, Alberto, an aligator and Saruo, a Monkey.

Set to be released on December 16th 2006 in Japan it’s far too early to tell if this will get a North American release.

Kotaku send word that Nintendo of America will be presenting US President George W Bush a Nintendo DS Lite and a copy of Brain Age for his 60th Birthday this saturday.
I’ll now open the floor on the comments section for jokes about why Nintendo thinks Brain Training is a good idea for Dubya.
Link: Nintendo Gifts DS Lite to President Bush

Just the other day I was relating to friends that I thought MP:H failed in the single player department. Phil Bond seemed to think the multiplayer made it worthwhile. So much for that.
4cr reports a hack allowing “Infinite Energy, Infinite Missiles, Infinite Sub-Weapon, and Hold B To Levitate” has been specifically designed for Nintendo WiFi.
Heres the first big obstacle for Nintendo’s fledgling online service. When cheaters started to populate Halo 2, Bungie and Xbox Live unleashed the “Banhammer” program that autodetected hacked files and removed players from matchmaking or Xbox Live altogeher. Does Nintendo have the ability to implement something similar?

New Super Mario Bros. is selling 20 units every minute in the US. Thats 1 every 3 seconds, up from 1 every 4 seconds earlier in the month. Wow.

The DS Lite has moved over 136,000 in the first 3 days, far outpacing the orignal DS launch.