De Blob and Nintendo Channel: Now Showing

We've finally got around to picking up a copy of the reasonably acclaimed De Blob for our Nintendo Wii. We have played the first couple of levels and out current analysis is: JOY. The sound, the colour, THE PURE HAPPY JOY. We're only three levels in; we hope that the Inkies don't suddenly turn into SUPER GENET(/R)IC MUTANT SOLDIERS or the game dramatically turns into a flight sim half way through because it's only a fundamental game change of that order that has the potential to ruin the rest of the game. It is a happy and pretty game and this cutscene might rank as one of our favourite game cutscenes of all time (well okay second to sexing a dead man).

The one we're on about is 2.28 in the video below, the favourite cutscene not the necrophilia one which can be found here.



A lot of writers have been going on about the problem with ubiquitous violence in video games but a quick glance at the games shelf and Zack and Wiki, Another Code: Rubbish, De Blob and others say that good non-violence is also out there. However, one thing we have noticed is that between the Inkies in De Blob and the Onii in Little King's Story even our relatively prejudiced-free cosmopolitan upbringing is beginning to crumble and make us hate the blacks as a default position*.

Now Showing on The Nintendo Channel
This is the third week of this feature making it one of our longest running features of all time! If we aren't careful we'll end up completing our top 50 ultimate TGAM top games best list of best games of all time ever feature currently 2 years old and up to number 41. Anyway, back to the new videos currently showing on the Nintendo Channel.

• Wii Play Campaign Trailer This slightly misleadingly titled video isn't in fact anything to do with the 2006 game Wii play but is actually a cool video stitched together to launch Play Wii, a campaign which seems to be a belated reply to all those 'no hardcore games on the Wii' morons. Worth a watch and it's good to see a company still supporting third party games that are older than a month; Little King's Story, Rune Factory Frontier, Final Fantasy Crystal Bearers and others getting some bonus coverage.
• Matt Bozon Creator of Shantai (which we ashamedly had to look up and whose cameo we missed in A Boy and His Blob) carries on those excellent Warioware: Do It Yourself videos that we love so much. Watching talented people make these micro games and then being able to go and play them addresses some of the problems fellow gaming celebrity Leigh Alexander brings up here. Matt makes an awesome little game called Shantae Nab available for download now!
• Nintendo TV episode 1 A video review/preview by the guys from The Official Nintendo Magazine, is one of three videos this week hyping an obscure game called Super Mario Galaxy 2. The Nintendo Channel seems to be as inconsistent as us here at TGAM when it comes to sustaining serial features so we'll see if Nintendo TV ever gets to double figure episodes. Super Mario Galaxy Trailer 2 and an interview with Shigsy on SMG2 are also up. We're feeling a little over exposed to Shigsy with both ONM and EDGE recently interviewing the man. Hilariously, commenting on how spoiled we've been with NSMB and SMG2, in the interview Mr. Miyamoto stresses that Mario should not be used in too many games otherwise he will lose his 'uniqueness'. That wouldn't be the same Mario that the 2008 Guinness World Records Gamer's Edition lists as the Most Prolific Video Game Character ever is it? Hmm /strokes chin.
• Lastly, Koei are getting some Nintendo love with a trailer for Samurai Warriors 3 and a rather good Samurai Warriors Historical Roots short documentary. We were huge fans of Dynasty Warriors but the series lost its way on the transition onto the HD consoles of this gen. Dynasty Warriors 6 was worse than Dynasty Warriors 3 in our opinion and staple issues with the series nonsensically seemed to get worse with more processing power; enemies cluster around evenmore lethargically taking it in turns to have a go; pop-up distance was down to about 2m making even Dead Rising: Chop Til You Drop's infamous pop-up look practically inter-continental. However, online co-op in SW3 might sway us to give the franchise a second chance. The eight minute long historical roots documentary, hosted by Dr Christopher Gerteis is cool, even if we aren't convinced that historical events played out exactly as SW3 would have you recreate events. Fans of Japanese history, the Warriors series or games in a wider context should definitely make an effort to watch it all. Intelligent games.

*Honestly, we do care but we're saving all of this material up for our Mickey Mouse PhD thesis, Racism in Games. Writing Media Studies theses is hard because it means you have to have an opinion on something.