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Carnival Games expands to DS, back to Wii with Carnival Games: Mini-Golf
After shipping "more than one million units worldwide" with its debut title on the Wii, Take-Two just announced plans to expand its Carnival Games brand with two new mini-game miasmas: Carnival Games for DS and Carnival Games: Mini-Golf for Wii. We expect both to cash in on those nostalgic memories of trips to the carnival with grandpa, including that completely non-hilarious time you stuck your arm too deeply into the cotton candy machine.The DS version will demand interaction through a "frenzied combination" of stylus maneuvering, tapping, speaking and blowing (no surprise there), and will feature games such as Alley Ball, Frog Leap and the intriguing "Clown Hammer." Do we bludgeon the clowns or do we wield them? We'll find out in Summer.As for the Wii's Carnival Games: Mini-Golf, it comes exclusively to Wii and can best be described as "a hole in fun," it says here. A myriad of miniature golf courses awaits up to four players when it releases in Fall 2008. Say Harley Howe and Patrick Wilkinson, studio heads of 2K Play's Cat Daddy Games, "These new titles in our growing Carnival Games franchise are fun, have true-to-life physics and deliver on the promise of the original: you can almost smell the cotton candy."
Best of 2007: Worst attempt at a cash-in
During 2007, lots of companies realized that the Wii was doing good. Perhaps, too good. So, they scrambled to make games that they could port or "enhance" for the Wii, or other games that were made to take advantage of the console's adopters who were new to gaming and thus susceptible to spending money on crap games the unique capabilities of the Wii's controls scheme, causing a slew of cash-ins on the console that didn't necessarily bring anything new to the Wii other than another game sitting on the shelf. So, let's look at those games and you tell us what the most shameless and useless game of the lot is.
Carnival Games: Only for vanilla faces?
You can't really expect much from a budget release like Carnival Games, but Go Nintendo has reportedly received a number of complaints regarding the character creation process in the party game collection, specifically on the lack of darker skin tone choices. Judging by the screenshot above, you're limited to playing as the palest of the pale, completely untanned after having developed a vampiric aversion to the sun. Though we doubt that developer Cat Daddy Games intentionally limited race and color selection, it does seem a bit lazy on their part; diversity is an obvious point for any game with customizable characters. Perhaps the studio just didn't have the time or resources to implement everything they were hoping to?
WRUP: The greatest mystery edition
OK, we're sure if we put our heads together, we can figure this out. Of all the releases this week, what could you possibly be playing? Before we can attempt to answer the question, we must look at the line-up.Tiger Woods PGA Tour 08? Nah, doesn't seem like your kind of game. Carnival Games? Maybe, but not likely as you're almost fed up with minigames on the Wii. Oh, maybe it's this game starring some kind of arm cannon-wielding person with a large green visor?Yeah, maybe you're playing that? We just have one question to ask: what is a Metroid Prime?
Conjecture Countdown: 3 days to go
Even with a diminished E3, there's no controlling the wave of rumors that hit the Internet every year before the show. Why fight it? From now until E3 hits, we'll be posting one piece of wild speculation every day. Some may be patently ridiculous, and others just might turn out to be true. Even some of the ridiculous ones might turn out to be true! Rest assured, everything will be totally made-up and unfounded. Except, of course, when we speak about all the ass Reggie is going to kick. That part? Totally true.Rumor: Carnival Games' price point will be announced: free if you can knock down all the milk bottles.
Carnival Games officially announced
Global Star Software's Carnival Games, previously discovered via Gamefly listing, has been confirmed as a real game. It's pretty much what we thought it was going to be: a collection of midway-style (not Midway-style; no Kombat here) minigames for the family. Carnival Games, developed by Cat Daddy Software (Deal or No Deal PC) will feature over 25 minigames including Milk Can Toss, Dunk Tank, and Test of Strength. In keeping with the carnival theme, players will be able to win 250 prizes in-game, including goldfish and stuffed animals. There's a really goofy people-in-front-of-the-couch gameplay trailer at the official site, if you can't wrap your mind around the idea of minigames on the Wii.
Step right up for Carnival Games: more minigames for the Wii
If you're anything like us, one of your chief complaints of Nintendo's waggle-enabled phenom isn't the dearth of games that really push the control mechanism in new directions, it's the lack of minigame compilations! Sure, the system comes with Wii Sports, Ubisoft gave us Rayman Raving Rabids, Nintendo brought us WarioWare: Smooth Moves and Wii Play, EA's got EA Playground, Nintendo still has Mario Party 8, and now Take-Two is sending us down the midway with Carnival Games. Sure, that sounds like a lot for a system that's only six months old.But we can't help ourselves. The thought of playing "25 of the most popular games seen in midways and boardwalks throughout the world, including Clown Splash, Milk Can Toss, Nerves of Steel, Lucky Cups, Hoops, Day at the Races and the crowd-favorite Dunk Tank" has us all worked up. Announced at the Nintendo Media Summit, happening right now in Seattle, Carnival Games is due this summer for the reasonable price of $40. C'mon fella, it's just $40! Don't you wanna win a bear? Lookit' that, guy won't spend a couple bucks to win his special friend a teddy bear. I'll give ya 25 games for the price of one, just for you fella.
Rumor: Carnival Games
Here's a rumor that's easy to believe: Gamefly has a listing for an upcoming game called Carnival Games from budget publisher Global Star Software (Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Scaler). Carnival Games sounds like a collection of uncomplicated midway-style attractions like ring toss and a shooting gallery; in other words, more minigames. It's a pretty safe assumption, we think, that something called Carnival Games won't turn out to be an RPG or a fighting game, right?We don't necessarily blame Global Star for (allegedly) taking the easy way out, because they do budget games, but we feel like we should deliver the following message to publishers: stop making minigames. At least put a year-long moratorium on them. Let's try to diversify the Wii library a little.
