Since the launch of the Nintendo Channel for the Wii earlier this year, Nintendo has been providing a DS Download Service with demos of released and upcoming DS games. Wii owners can boot up the DS Download Service through the Nintendo Channel and download various playable demos directly to their Nintendo DS, using the Download Play option. It works in the same way as the in-store download stations. The third-party games get updated every week and we've got info on this week's batch to let you know a little more about what you're getting.

The week of November 3

Dragonball: Origins
The next Dragonball adventures hitting the Nintendo DS this month, and in preparation Atari is giving DS owners the ability to play through the tutorial to see just how impressive the touch-screen controlled game has turned out. There's some cool stuff to see in this demo: 3D environments that span both screens, and stylus-exclusive control that gives players the ability to take control of Goku and his crazy moves.

Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa
The big holiday push for the sequel to Madagascar's theatrical release is happening right now, and a downloadable demo based on the Activision DS game has just hit the Nintendo Channel. In this demo, you play a mini-challenge that features the four penguins from the flick, in a Lost Vikings "work together" design to get through the structures.

Spectrobes: Beyond the Portals
Disney's Pokemon-like RPG has been given the demo treatment, but the only taste test you're going to get here is in the "excavation" process. Use your stylus to hack away at rock, or solidify lava with water, or melt ice with heat in order to get down to the fossil hidden below. You won't get a chance to see which creatures are tucked away inside, it's just a challenge to see how many fossils you can pull out as unscathed as possible.

Ninjatown
Ninjatown is Southpeak's upcoming real-time strategy game based upon the Shawnimals franchise of cute plush Ninja critters. The downloadable demo is surprisingly robust with four different levels to get your Ninja on: the task is to manage resources and build up your Ninja army to protect the village from the invading demons.

Crosswords DS - Anagrams
Anagrams returns in its own demo. The demo features three levels of the Anagram minigame. Players take six letters and try to form them into words of three or more letters using the touch screen. As players find words, the other screen displays them, along with the progress and time. There are a few different letter assortments, so players should be able to play the demo a good three or four times.




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Nintendo also keeps a selection of first party titles up for download. They're not cycled out as often and most of them have been there since the Nintendo Channel launched.

Mystery Case Files: MillionHeir
The demo offers one of the levels for the hide and seek portion of the game. Players are given five minutes to find eight items in the level. Upon completion, players can start again, and find eight different items. We played it three times without having to repeat items.

Brain Age 2
The Brain Age 2 demo features three quick play modes. There's the Brain Age Test that will give the player an approximate brain age based on a verbal match of rock, paper, scissors. There's also a quick play training mode that shows off the rotating letters minigame, complete with touch screen letter recognition. Finally the Quick play sudoku lets players enjoy a quick sudoku puzzle in one of the better presentations for the system.

Brain Age
The older sibling of the Brain Age 2 demo. It's the same kind of deal. There's a Brain Age Test minigame that has players shout colors into the DS microphone. The training game is a simple math problem test that uses the touch screen to write. Sudoku is in this one too, which means you've got two free sudoku puzzles you can play if you get both demos.

Flash Focus
Flash Focus is a game designed to improve focus and hand-eye coordination. It features a simplified Eye Age test where players remember the direction letters are facing as they flash by on the screen. The training game is more hands on. It's a baseball minigame where players have to tap the ball to hit it. The pitches get harder each time the player connects with the ball and the game ranks you at the end.

Crosswords DS
For the non-Sudoku inclined, Crosswords DS features the classic crossword puzzles that have been gracing newspapers long before number puzzles. The demo features the classic Crosswords mode, one of three gameplay modes in the final version. Players can select the difficulty of the puzzle, as well as the option to turn on an assist mode that lets the player know if the answer is right or wrong. The whole demo uses the touch screen so players can see how well the letter recognition system works.

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via Computer and Video Games


The latest title in Atlus' big-in-Japan high-school demon-slaying RPG series must be getting closer to release in the West because the company's just released the first full trailer for the game.

The PS2 title stormed the Japanese chart back in mid-July and it's out in the US in December, but there's still no UK release date on the horizon. Still, don't let that stop you checking out the video, here. ...

via Computer and Video Games


The latest title in Atlus' big-in-Japan high-school demon-slaying RPG series must be getting closer to release in the West because the company's just released the first full trailer for the game.

The PS2 title stormed the Japanese chart back in mid-July and it's out in the US in December, but there's still no UK release date on the horizon. Still, don't let that stop you checking out the video, here. ...

It's been a while since we've had a really good "video games make our children violent" study, and I was beginning to fear we've given up on the idea, but then the story "Violent video games linked to child aggression" showed up on CNN.com this morning and my fears were completely assuaged. The story is about a study conducted by Dr. Craig A. Anderson, Ph.D., of Iowa State University, who studied three groups of children in both the United States and Japan to gage their violence levels three to six months after playing violent video games, versus children who did not play violent video games. The results may not surprise you at all.

The study found that children who played violent video games were more aggressive than those that did not, even taking into account children who were aggressive in the first place. The odd thing is the results were determined not so much through observation, though comments from parents and teachers were taken into account, but rather by asking the children about their own aggression levels.

http://kotaku.com/5074949/study-+-vi...ore-aggressive ...

See it’s not just us. Apparently everyone is into their iPhone for games, well at 25 percent of iPhone owners have downloaded a game for the device. Sure that’s really not even close to everyone, but it sure as heck beats out cellphones which, according to a recent survey, can only say that six percent of owners have downloaded a game.

Game developers have created nearly 1,700 games for the iPhone since its release, according to an article in the Los Angeles Times today. That’s more than twice the number available in the App Store’s second biggest category.

http://kotaku.com/5075024/1700-games-flood-iphone ...

So it's true - there really is a link between violence and video games. In an otherwise run of the mill article on how the next US President will have to deal with the issue of detainees at Guantanamo Bay, the New York Times printed this little nugget:


Nobody at Kotaku (especially those who frequently travel overseas) has any idea if that is even possible, or why SEGA specifically, but the story seems to originate from the case of Hassan Bin Attash - a seventeen year old (at time of capture) detainee that several human rights organisations claim was tortured in Jordan before being held in Gitmo. Possibly, after a few months of waterboarding a weaponized copy of Toe Jam & Earl: Panic on Funkotron might seem more credible.

http://kotaku.com/5075231/al-qaeda-s...ega-cartridges ...

The iPhone OS 2.2 is taking shape at a good rhythm. The user interface is being refined and development of new features keeps going on steady. While I'm sure most of us can only think "copy and paste! copy and paste! copy and paste!" and increased speed and reliability, there are a few new things that we would definitely like to have as soon as possible

http://gizmodo.com/5075154/the-iphon...rumor-round-up ...

Yes, you've seen the unboxing and all other manner of granular coverage for Nintendo's new DSi handheld, but now you can see the thing in action via the magic of YouTube. Embedded below is the requisite unboxing, a helpful browser speed test and a hopeless attempt at sticking in the R4 cart for a bit of homebrew. The good news is that the Japanese DSi fires up an English DS game just fine, so those slightly-confusing region lock concerns can be put to rest -- certain DSi-specific games won't work for everybody else, but the DSi fires up regular DS games from wherever with no problem. Import away!



http://www.engadget.com/2008/11/03/d...k-of-homebrew/ ...

Carphone Warehouse looks set to give away free smartphones running Windows Mobile 7 with copies of the upcoming Windows 7 PC operating system, Register Hardware has learned. A phone manufacturer source familiar with the phone retailer's plans told us that the Windows Mobile 7 phone and Windows 7 bundle boxes will be released on the same day that the new desktop OS is launched in the UK, which he said could come during September or October 2009."

http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2008/11...house_bundles/ ...