TGS 2006: Chocobo & The Magic Picture Book Preview

Heres an excerpt:

If a Square or Enix game has familiar characters and yet can't be abbreviated to just DQ or FF and then some roman numerals, you sometimes have to take stock and make sure you're not getting overly excited. Let your fanboy fevor get away with you and suddenly you're the proud owner of Chocobo Racer. On the other hand, there is magic in the fringes sometimes if you're willing to get deep with a series, and the new DS game Chocobo & The Magic Picture Book looks to be a really charming spin-off for the big yellow bird. It comes across as a little bit of a kiddie game, but there's enough for the big kids to enjoy too.

The game is a collection of minigames either built into a story mode in single player or else accessible for many to play together in four-player mode. The RPG story mode features a gorgeous 3D engine as your Chocobo character explores small little pockets of land, speaking with other familiar Square figures as it comes to discover the mysteries of the game's Magical Picture Book. Those mysteries mostly break down into a continuing series of small puzzles and minigames, many which are actually quite addictive. You will see your standard slide puzzles and whack-a-mole stages, but also seen (and available to download and take home from the show via the DS Download feature -- very handy in the long wait for a seat in the Square theater here at TGS) was a nice little puzzle challenge sort of like Minesweeper but faster, where you must tap tiles to reveal instructions for finding the next tile (one, two or three blocks away in any direction) to find the crown without finding an enemy. Another was an otaku's dream puzzle we're informally calling "Speedy Squaresoft" -- on the bottom touchscreen are dozens of classic 8-bit Final Fantasy characters, and up top is a slowly closing door that the characters will be randomly running past, visible for just a split second through the crack of the door. You must tap the correct character based on memory to rack up points.

Full article at IGN