We celebrate the one-year anniversary of Nintendo's DSiWare service with a week-long best-of feature.
We allowed you, the viewer, to write in and berate us for missing great DSiWare games. I guess we did a decent job, because all we got were two love letters about Pop Island, a capture-the-flag-styled game that supports up to eight players in DS Download Play, one for Pop+ Solo, and one about AlphaBounce, which was a game that came out after the feature was finished and was therefore impossible to lump in with the rest of the games.
Pop IslandPublisher: odenis studio Developer: odenis studio Cost: 500 Points Players: 1-8 (DS Download Play) Release Date: December 7, 2009 Pop Island is a fairly simple game: everybody controls some kind of animal (penguin on a surfboard, bird on a bike, parrot, ...) on a team and tries to grab flags that spawn in specific positions on the map to their own score zone. The instructions take up one screen, it's that easy to learn. Everything's themed to be cheerful with happy noises and text everywhere and the terrain looks pretty good for the DS. The game is remarkable in that it allows up to eight players in a match using download play, any DS can download the game (not just DSis) from the host so one guy buys it and everybody with a DS can play. - KDR_11k Shall I say THE BEST DSiWare game for your dollar? Pop Island is a DSiWare Game for 500 Points or $5.00. It is a racing, capture the flag game in which is actually quite fun! You can capture the flag as one of three types, land, sea and sky. Land is slow on water, Sea is slow on land (which sucks because your base and all flags are on land) and sky is just slow everywhere yet is hard to be attacked. If the apposing has a flag you can attack him with a "firecracker" and take his/her flag and claim it for your our points. You can also can send a (pretty much) full version of the game to any DS or DSi! Then once they have it, you guys or gals can play against or with each other! The music in this game is simpily amazing! I personally love it, but I like kiddie music. - Nintendojack |
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Pop+ SoloPublisher: Nnooo Developer: Nnooo Cost: 500 Points Players: 1 Release Date: August 24, 2009 Nnooo's Pop arrived on the downloadable scene as a WiiWare launch title. Like the title implies, Pop+ Solo expands upon its predecessor's bubble shooting formula with a wider array of options. Players are tasked with popping bubbles of different colours, chaining together multipliers and using explosive power ups in order to rack up the points total. With a boss fight-filled adventure, Normal and Advanced modes, various minigames and a list of achievements, Pop+ Solo offers a lot of content for its meagre price point. The gameplay is relaxing, as is the tranquil soundtrack that changes dynamically as you play, but it is addictive enough for high score fanatics to sink their teeth into. - Killer_Man_Jaro |
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AlphaBouncePublisher: Mad Monkey Studio Developer: Mad Monkey Studio Cost: 500 Points Players: 1 Release Date: April 12, 2010 This game only came out after the feature was already over so of course there was no way you could have included it but it deserves a mention: Alpha Bounce is based on Break-Out but instead of merely being sent through a succession of levels you explore space in grid form with each square being a level, you explore planets, find equipment and so on while trying to determine the location of Earth. The equipment you find can be used to outfit your paddle(s) between levels and allows you to build up your power with many new tools. As a result the game is extremely addictive, there's always some short term goal in view, be it a new item, exploring a planet you came across or just playing around with the gear you got to find the best combination. Different planets have different styles of levels like being full of bricks that release dangerous debris when broken or being littered by gun turrets and the loading screen texts will often talk about facets of the universe you still haven't seen, always keeping you curious to explore more. The game has millions of procedurally generated levels and even though most of them are filler in between planets or other objectives the number of important levels is still very high and the various planets make sure that variety is maintained. I've been playing Alpha Bounce like crazy since I bought it on Friday (the EU release date) and it's only 500 points which seems ridiculously low once you're playing and realizing just how much there is to do in this game. - KDR_11k |
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