air-traffic-chaos
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New Nintendo Channel DS demos feature Arkanoid
While it's likely to be the same demo featured before (meaning there's no paddle support), it doesn't deserve to be ignored. Those of you who didn't check out Taito's revival of the classic on the DS should be heading over to your Wii (or, if you fail to own one, a friend's house) to give the demo a download now. Seriously, we thought it was a pretty decent game.Head past the break for the details on all of the demos available this week.%Gallery-19376%
Practice crashing planes in latest downloadable demos
DS demo updates on the Nintendo Channel often get a disappointed reaction from us, but this week's batch does contain at least one interesting addition: Sonic Powered's Air Traffic Chaos, as localized (complete with generic and terrible boxart) by Majesco. At the very least, we're hopeful that the game can replicate the frenzied, panicked pace of a Trauma Center game.The rest of this week's update is fairly humdrum, consisting of a Crosswords DS wordsearch, a Pictoimage demo, and a chance to try out Carnival Games, which has stuck around like a bad smell. The full list of both old and new demos is past the break!%Gallery-20691%
I am a preview of Air Traffic Chaos!
IGN's hands-on of Sonic Powered's Air Traffic Chaos reveals crucial information about the simulation game -- is the guy on the cover an air traffic controller how do you simulate air traffic control in a game? We had a general idea, but it's an uncommon subject for games. Players tap on planes to see their status and options, and issue commands related to flight speed and choice of landing lane. In this way, monitoring the planes' status on the bottom screen, you guide planes taking off and landing. Each successful move awards points, and each level has a score quota to meet.Chaos also features a glossary of air traffic control terms, in case you want to write angry comments about what the game does wrong, using accurate language.
Boxart battle: Air Traffic Chaos U.S. vs. Japan
We happened across the American boxart for Air Traffic Chaos, and we couldn't help but notice the speech bubble. "I am an air traffic controller!" the character (who looks a lot like one of those "premium" (pay) emoticons, whose pop-up ads we see occasionally) exclaims, confirming the theory that a game called Air Traffic Chaos is about air traffic control. What we thought at first to be simply a banal explanation of the game is a little more: we remembered that the Japanese name of the same game was Boku wa Kuukou Kanseikan DS, which translates to ... "I Am an Air Traffic Controller DS." We don't understand why the Japanese title had to be plastered across the box like that, but at least it seems slightly less random. Speaking of that Japanese boxart, it's interesting to see the differences in marketing strategy evident from the contrast between the two. Majesco's box is very kid-friendly and cartoony, suggesting a casual, simplistic experience. But the Japanese box is all business: stock photos of airplanes and air traffic controllers hard at work, with a text bar at the bottom stating "You also become an air traffic controller on the DS!" It looks more like a training game than anything.Taxi past the post break for larger images of both boxarts, as well as a couple of examples of what other boxes would look like with the Air Traffic Chaos exposition.
New screens help make sense of Air Traffic Chaos
Work on Air Traffic Chaos seems to be flying along -- according to the latest screenshots, Majesco has got the whole English-text thing going now, which we find important in games like this. That's not to say we'll have any better luck understanding how to play this game in English than we would in Japanese; from the appearance and genre of the game (and the nature of the profession on which it's based), we're expecting a level of complexity beyond pure button-mashing.The bottom screen shows all of the planes in the air under your guidance, with little icons showing whether they're taking off, midflight, coming in to land or on the ground, along with the gate to which they're headed. There's also a text crawl under each plane's information bar that writes out your directions.It appears that the Japanese airports in which the original version of the game took place will return, or at least Nagoya will; but it looks like other airports (Honolulu and Seattle, that we can see) will also appear -- though they may just be renamed versions of the original levels. %Gallery-20691%
Air Traffic Chaos flying to western skies
Attention, passengers! Majesco has announced that Air Traffic Chaos (Japanese site here) will be making a haphazard landing in the west at some point this summer, a fortnight after retailer Gamefly first listed the title as a U.S. release. The title tasks players with managing takeoffs, gate assignments and landings for all incoming and outgoing airport traffic in an assortment of airports.Going by the press release, it sounds reasonably sim-like and serious (as we, erm, suppose air traffic control should be), taking into account factors such as wind speed/direction, weather conditions, and pilot stress levels. Oh yes, and whether or not your runway is empty. We bet that is pretty important. There's also Rumble Pack support (because the impact of a plane crash can be imitated through the DS Rumble Pack -- it's that powerful), and 16 different merit badges to win, depending on how many planes you successfully land/people you kill in the process.We've heard nothing about which real-life airports will be represented in the western edition (the Japanese game had Fukuoka, Kansai, Nagoya, Tokyo and Sapporo), or whether we'll be getting the awesome plane keyring that shipped with all orders in Japan (though we bet we won't).Naturally, as with all flight games, we'll spend our first half-hour with the game steering planes into the biggest damn structures we can find. We suspect we're not alone.%Gallery-20691%[Via press release]
Majesco's Air Traffic Chaos to pull up to DS terminal this summer
Majesco, obviously annoyed with being told to put away approved portable electronic devices until after take off, has announced that its next game for the Nintendo DS will put controlling air traffic in players' hands. The aptly titled Air Traffic Chaos will allow players to direct numerous aircraft takeoffs and landings as an air traffic controller. The game marks the second DS release from Japanese studio Sonic Powered, a primarily mobile phone game developer behind From the Abyss for the DS and MiniCopter for the Wii.Details are few and far between, though Majesco notes that the game will include Rumble Pack support and describes the gameplay as "frantic" as players "safely manage takeoffs, gate assignments and landings for all incoming and outgoing airport traffic for 14 different airlines in varying weather conditions." While we're sure safety is the goal, the urge to play chicken in the not-so-friendly skies might just be too much to resist when Air Traffic Chaos takes off this summer.
Air Traffic Chaos promises all the fun of the world's most stressful job
According to Gamefly's all-seeing eye, Majesco is planning to release a DS game called Air Traffic Chaos on July 30th. Siliconera's Spencer Yip thinks it may be a localization of Boku wa Kuukou Kanseikan DS (I am an Air Traffic Controller DS, pictured) which simulates traffic control from Japan's major airports, requiring players to direct planes' flight paths via the touch screen.Whatever it turns out to be, one thing is clear: Air Traffic Chaos would be the least relaxing game ever to play during a flight. Or, really, anywhere. We don't mind killing dudes or whatever in games, but even pretending to direct air traffic sounds like a nightmare!
