Entertainment Electronics Blog

A report from MCV has confirmed that two games based on the BBC’s long-running sci-fi television show Doctor Who are to come for the Wii and the Nintendo DS; Doctor Who: Doctor Who: Evacuation Earth for DS and Doctor Who: Return to Earth for Wii. As with Doctor Who: The Adventure Games, both games will feature the likenesses of the current Doctor’s actor (Matt Smith) and his current companion Amy Pond (played by Karen Gillen.)

It hasn’t been announced if the titles are connected by storyline, but it’s a fair guess that “Return to Earth” follows on from “Evacuation Earth,” with box shots showing the Daleks as potential antagonists for the DS title and the Cybermen for the Wii title.

BBC Worldwide (the commercial arm of the BBC) is working with Asylum Entertainment — developer of a previous BBC Worldwide Doctor Who game for PC, Destiny of the Doctors — and publisher Koch Media on the project, which is entirely unrelated from Doctor Who: The Adventure Games, a project of the ‘main’ BBC with developer Sumo Digital.

It won’t be very long before Level-5’s Ni no Kuni, the DS adventure game they’re teaming up with animation powerhouse Studio Ghibli to produce, is out in stores. (This week’s issue of Famitsu claims a fall release in Japan, but considering that the official site and every other source online says “spring 2010,” this is quite likely a typo.)

To celebrate, Level-5 has released a bevy of new information from their DS mega-game, essentially revealing most of the intro and the first set of quests Oliver the hero undertakes. If you’re sensitive to very light spoilers, feel free to skip the rest of this article.

- The game takes place in Hotroit, a white-bread industrial city that looks a bit like Anytown, U.S.A. as envisioned in the 1950s. Oliver and his friend Mark are both pre-teen tinkerers, retiring to the garage in their spare time to work on a secret car project they’ve been puttering around with for a while.

- One night, Oliver waits until his mother Allie is asleep, then sneaks out in order to test out the racer with Mark at the riverside. Allie, noticing that her son is missing, arrives at the scene just in time to witness Oliver crash the car and get thrown into the river, thrashing about helplessly. Allie dives in to rescue the boy as eyewitnesses look on, successfully bringing him back to shore uninjured. Just then, however, Allie is struck down with a heart attack and very suddenly passes away.

- Distraught, Oliver holes up in his room all day in mourning, clutching the doll that his mother made for him. He’s rather surprised to find that the doll comes to life before his eyes. It calls itself Shizuku, a spirit from the world of Ni no Kuni, and claims that Oliver’s tears are what freed him from a curse laid upon him by Jabow, an evil wizard. Shizuku wants Oliver to help him defeat Jabow and rescue the great sage Alicia — who apparently shares souls with Allie over in the “real” world. If Oliver saves Alicia, Shizuku says, he might be able to bring Allie back to life as well.

- The pair proceed through a magical gate to Ni no Kuni, a fantastic world filled with strange characters — many of whom bear an eerie resemblance to people and things Oliver knew in Hotroit. For example, the kingdom is run by Nyandahl XIV, a despotic ruler who looks quite a lot like a neighborhood cat named Frank that Oliver runs into now and again near his house. Nyandahl is extremely angry about something — what, nobody knows for sure — and refuses to help Oliver or even see him.

- Realizing that Ni no Kuni and Earth are more connected than at first glance, Oliver returns to his home world to find that Frank the cat is also acting rather annoyed — he likes having the neighborhood dairy-shop owner clean his ears, but the lady hasn’t done it lately because she’s lost her special ear-pick. Oliver tracks down the pick, Frank is happy, and before long, our hero finds that this has changed things for the better in Ni no Kuni as well…

No US release has been announced for Ni no Kuni yet, but a DS game with this sort of game-design and animation talent behind it not getting an English version would seem a terrible shame indeed.

Pokemon Heart Gold and Soul Silver have yet to hit the States, but they’re already gearing up for the next DS installment of the monster hoarding series over in Japan. The official Japanese Pokemon website (via Serebii.net) broke the news this morning that a new Pokemon game is on the way in 2010.

Details are still scarce, but the announcement makes it relatively clear that this will be a continuation of the main Pokemon RPG series and not a spinoff like Pokemon Ranger or the Mystery Dungeon games. They also promise brand new Pokemon to capture, but that’s pretty much a given.

Even if this currently unnamed Pokemon title hits Japan within the year, that doesn’t necessarily mean we’ll be seeing it in the U.S. anytime soon. The localization process for the series has historically resulted in a release gap of roughly six months or more between the Japanese and North American launches. So if you absolutely must catch them all in 2010, then you’d better warm up to importing.

In what may be the best symbolic example yet of Nintendo’s current phase of prosperity, president Satoru Iwata announced that lifetime sales of the Wii have surpassed those of the NES, and the DS has outsold the Game Boy — making them, respectively, Nintendo’s best-selling home hardware of all time and best-selling hardware period (via Shacknews).

“Needless to say, these are just two milestones of a larger journey in our efforts to reach the ultimate goal of bringing one home console for every household and one handheld for everyone,” Iwata said, possibly while stroking a white Persian cat while seated in a swivel-chair in the belly of a submerged nuclear submarine.

The numbers break down to 67.45 million Wii units sold as of the end of December, compared to lifetime NES sales of 61.91 million units. The DS has sold 125.13 million units as of December, compared to lifetime Game Boy sales of 118.69 million.

We believe the coarse phrase you’re looking for is holy crap.

Great news for Nintendo DS/DSi owners! Nintendo and The Pokemon Company have just announced two new handheld games are in the works. The games will be called Pokemon Heart Gold and Pokemon Soul Silver and will be hitting store shelves in North America and Europe in spring 2010, after releasing in Japan next month.

These new games are not entirely new, but remakes of the old Gold and Silver editions of the Pokemon series. Only this time there will be some touch-screen features, updated graphics and sounds, and “a host of surprises” for the two Pokemon titles, Nintendo says.

Some people may don’t like Pokemon games by thinking that it’s the same story over and over again, without any difference. For me, Pokemon games aren’t just about the story, it’s about the adventure, and building up a stronger team over time. The actual story in the game is something that happens under the surface. Hope they’ll be great!

Activision confirmed the release of a Modern Warfare game on Nintendo DS, titled “Call of Duty: Modern Warfare: Mobilized”. Developed by n-space, the game will hit DS to coincide with the release of Modern Warfare 2 on 10 November.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare: Mobilized will feature its own storyline and narrative, along with six-player online multiplayer that lets you host your own server. Additionally, Activision promises “an arsenal of cutting-edge weaponry, vehicles, tactics, arming players with precision controls for battle across the world’s most dangerous hotspots” through building-to-building combat.

Activision hasn’t provided details on how the game will function using the DS touch screen and stylus. But the November 10 is coming soon, just have your patience, or you can also dress up your DS for this new game!