Anno 1701 Confirmed For June in Australia

via ign

The Nintendo DS continues to prove itself as a hugely versatile platform, and come June in Australia and New Zealand, gamers will get the chance to see another example of what it can do. That's the release month for Anno 1701 - a strategy title set between the 17th and 18th centuries, thanks to a new publishing agreement between German-based Sunflowers and Disney Interactive Studios.

The series originated on PC, and is one of the most successful PC game franchises of all time in German-speaking countries. Anno 1701 is at heart an empire-building sim, allowing players to explore new worlds and interact with a wide array of characters, and the DS version is being developed from the ground up to take full advantage of the system's dual screens, with stylus driven gameplay. Wilhelm Hamrozi, CEO of Sunflowers underlined this, saying that: "When expanding the property onto other platforms, we don't simply port the game design, but we develop new concepts that satisfy the familiar high standards in terms of quality and gameplay appropriate to the platform". In addition to a number of features unique to the Nintendo DS version, the game will also feature multiplayer for up to four players.