2K Sports announced Don King Boxing will be coming to the Nintendo Wii and the Nintendo DS. Don King Boxing will be available on March 31st, 2009 and will offer uniqu controls and an all new story mode. Players can even use the Wii balance board in the game, if they own one.

2K Sports has designed the games to take advantage of all the features on the Nintendo Wii and DS. 2K Sports worked closely with Nintendo to make the games the best they could be for Nintendo’s devices. Players can play as or with twenty different boxers in real venues. If players have a Wii balance board they can get the full experience of throwing punches while ducking punches thrown at them using the balance board.

The Wii balance board adds another experience to the game, but is not required. It is interesting to see how the different Nintendo games are incorporating the Wii balance board into their games. In this particular game, the Wii balance board will add to the gaming experience. Sounds neat.

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Whack Attack! Games contains two iPhone/iPod Touch games to choose from. The first game is Blast-a-mole and the second choice is Memory Attack. Blast-a-mole is very similar to the arcade game whack a mole, but in Blast-a-mole you need to hit moles with targets on their bodies and not every mole that pops out of a hole. Memory Attack is similar to Simon. Players have to remember the pattern of colors that light up and press them in that order.

Blast-a-mole may sound like a simple game, but it can be challenging. Players get three lives, which are represented by hearts. Three lives basically means you get three times you can hit a mole without a target on it before the game ends. The goal of the game is to accumulate as many points as possible by hitting moles. The game gets tricky by delaying when some of the targets are placed on the moles. Moles will pop up out of the hole and, initially, have no target on them and all of a sudden you look again and there is a target on the mole. Much like the big box version at the arcade, players have to hit the moles before they retreat back into their holes.

Believe it or not, there are levels in Blast-a-mole. The levels start out fairly simple to give you a chance to get use to the game play. As the levels progress, there are more holes that moles pop out of and the graphics get brighter and busier, which makes it harder to see the targets on the moles. Eventually, players have to turn the iPhone/iPod Touch horizontally to allow for more holes on the screen. The more holes on the screen the harder it is to hit all of the moles that pop up.

Memory Attack brought back great nostalgia for me. My favorite game growing up was a game called Simon. For those less fortunate people that did not grow up in the Simon era, Simon was a plastic toy that contained four different colored lights. Players had to hit the lights in the order the game did. Basically, you had to watch the pattern, memorize it and then repeat it. Memory Attack is the same game only the lights are on the iPhone/iPod Touch screen and not a plastic device. There are four lights, red, green, blue and yellow. Players have to hit the lights in the order they saw them light up. There is a sound that accompanies the light, which makes it a bit easier to remember the pattern. Players can use both senses, sight and sound, to remember the pattern.

Points are not the only goal for both games. As a side bonus, players earn tickets by playing the games. The tickets can be used to buy different themes and sounds for the two games. If players can manage to save enough tickets, they can purchase another game as well. Players have to accumulate 5,000 tickets to open the third game.

The graphics are great for both games. The moles are clear and the target can be seen easily, except in the harder levels, but that is done on purpose to make it more challenging. The lights on Memory Attack are bright and when the light lights up there is a swirl that goes across the light making it easy to discern the light is on.

Whack Attack! Games offers a lot of fun and challenge. Players get two games for the price of one. Whack Attack! Games is a great way to pass the time and well worth the $1.99.

Hudson Entertainment has released screen shots of their latest snowboarding game, Snowboard Riot. Snowboard Riot is not your average snowboarding game. This game allows for four players to compete against each other at one time. Players can compete using the internet connection in the Nintendo Wii. 

Snowboarding use to be just racing down a mountain against your friends, but now it is much more interesting and challenging.  Players can utilize weapons, such as homing bullets, invisibility and land mines. Don’t like the fact that your friend is ahead of you in the race? Just launch a homing bullet and the problem will be solved.

Players have different options for controlling the snowboard, as well. Players can use the normal Nintendo Wii Controls, the Wii remote and Nunchuck or they have they option of using the balance board. Much like a real snowboard, players can lean to the left or right on the balance board to control the snowboard.

Snowboard Riot sounds like an interesting snowboarding game and I don’t normally play those types of games. The added weapons make the game seem more challenging. The game comes down to skill and a little bit of luck. Read the rest of this entry »

Midnight Synergy has announced the next release in their Wonderland franchise, Wonderland Adventures: Mysteries of Fire Island. Wonderland Adventures: Mysteries of Fire Island is a puzzle adventure game for the PC and it takes on the form of a console Role Playing Game (RPG), but uses the mouse to get through the adventure.

Players will have to get accustom to working with non player characters (NPC), interacting with various creatures and operating mechanical objects to solve all of the puzzles in the game. As the game progresses, players get magical abilities that will help them move the objects and even travel through time.

Wonderland Adventures: Mysteries of Fire Island sounds like an interesting game. Puzzle adventure games, if they are not too difficult, can be a lot of fun to play. If this souds like a game you would like, head over to Midnight Synergy and try it out.

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WordsWorth is a word puzzle game for the iPhone/iPod Touch. The goal of the game is to make as many words as possible and score as many points as possible. Each word’s points are displayed at the top of the screen letting players know how well they are doing.  Each of the letters have a point value, except for the vowels.

Players create words by tapping the letters that make up the words and chaining them together then hitting submit to submit the word. The other option to creating words is to drag your finger over the letters that make up the word. The dragging method causes the word to be submitted automatically, provided it is a legal word. Players know the word is legal because it will have a score next to it at the top of the screen.

The challenge is creating words that are bigger than two letters and are in the official tournament scrabble list. There are options to make the game even more challenging. Players can create a bigger word grid or only allow 4 or 5 letter minimum words. The letters are randomly filled in the grid as you create words. The letters are on a hexagonal tile and can be linked to other letters that are touching your hexagon.

Unlike many word puzzle games, WordsWorth has different levels. Each word players create scores them points and fills the level bar at the top of the screen. As the levels progress, they become more challenging by adding bombs that need to be used in a word before they blow up. If the bomb blows, the game is over. The timer on the bomb defaults to 90 seconds, but that can be changed to make it more challenging. Personally, 90 seconds is pretty challenging.

Along with challenging tiles, there are helpful tiles. There are green tiles that pop up every now and again that will score you more points when they are used in a word. There are wild card tiles, as well. The wild card tile is a bit different and instead of the user saying which letter they would like the tile to be, the tile is automatically filled in for them. For instance if you have a word that has an f*ll the wild card will become an i to spell fill. Players also have the option to shuffle the board if they can not make any more words. The downfall to shuffling is a bomb tile appears. There are five hats in the corner of the screen and they represent the number of times you can shuffle the board. Players gain shuffles as they create words.

WordsWorth is an extremely addicting word puzzle game. I kept telling myself one more word one more word and before I knew it a half hour had gone by and things weren’t getting done that needed to get done. The touch inface makes creating words really easy and the added bonuses and bad tiles make the game more interesting. If you like word puzzle games, you should definitely check out WordsWorth.