Majesco
Latest
Majesco makes a Humongous deal for Wii games
Majesco has announced a deal to bring Humongous Entertainment's venerable series of kids' games to the Wii this year. Freddi Fish, Pajama Sam and SPY Fox will make their first appearances on the Wii in "mid-2008" in a series of point-and-click adventure games developed by Interactive Game Group.Pajama Sam in Don't Fear the Dark, Freddi Fish in Kelp Seed Mystery, and SPY Fox in Dry Cereai will all retail for $19.99. These are all the first titles in their respective series, and it is currently unclear whether any changes have been made other than Wiimote integration. This may not be of huge interest to adult gamers, but parents will be happy to have some proven games for kids on the Wii. At the very least, having three more adventure games on the Wii may raise the system's profile as a destination for point-and-click.[Via press release]
Wonderworld Amusement Park more amusing than we thought
Majesco's theme park ... themed minigame collection, Wonderworld Amusement Park, makes no effort to limit itself to games that are actually played in theme parks. IGN has described a selection of minigames found in the park's five zones. Surprisingly, they exceed the expected level of weirdness by a wide margin. For example, Sky Cannon involves shooting your avatar out of a cannon and flying through objects (which are no doubt ring-shaped). Even the most carnival-game-like minigames have bizarre twists -- the "Tunnel of Love" is about Cupid protecting couples from zombies.In fact, one of the zones is "Spooky" in nature, which lends itself nicely to zombie hijinks. One of the other described games, for example, and the one that's going to sell copies, is Brain Dump, in which you toss brains into zombies' heads. Once again, Majesco has taken something that should be forgettable, low-budget dross and forced us to be interested.
Blast Works media reveals more of editor, underwhelming boxart
For a game as inventive and unique as Budcat's Blast Works, that sure is some vanilla boxart. Okay, so it's functional in a Ronseal-kinda way, but it's also far from pretty or imaginative (like the game itself). Then again, sporting the kind of cover you'd expect to see on the blandest of Wii budget shovelware didn't harm Game Party's chances, so perhaps this will do the trick, and millions will get to sample Blast Works' original premise and amazing item editor. We can but hope.Speaking of the item editor, it's the center of attention in the fifteen new Blast Works shots in the gallery below. It looks as deep and as engrossing as ever, and there's some encouragingly weird ships being created in those screens.%Gallery-4821%
Cooking Mama still fueling Majesco profits
The new casual approach for Majesco is working wonders for the company, as the latest sales stats pouring in show the company's profits are up. In fact, the company saw a profit of $2.7 million during Q1, doing a total of $18.7 million in sales. The majority of their profit comes courtesy of the Mama herself, as the company reports 77% of their sales came from handheld titles.Jesse Sutton, CEO of Majesco, commented that the company "benefited from a strong domestic sales performance, driven by sales of our Cooking Mama games, which delivered a revenue increase of 47 percent versus the same period last year." Sutton added that Majesco is "focused on expanding the number of titles we publish and strengthening our retail distribution."Majesco also announced that Cooking Mama 8: Mama Bakes in Space is due for a summer 2027 release.
Metareview: Nanostray 2
Despite the incredibly varied critical reaction to Nanostray, we know the shmup was popular with many of the readers, and that means there's a lot of concern over the recently-released sequel. So how's it looking? So far, on par with the first, though we're not seeing any of the high-scoring reviews the original garnered ... at least, not yet. Games Radar: 80% -- Sometimes, it's okay to just be what you are. "Nanostray 2 doesn't try to re-invent the genre, and that's totally fine. The no-nonsense weapons and controls are easy to get the hang of, each stage has its own unique collection of enemies and environmental gotchas, and there's rarely a moment when the screen isn't flush with bullets, ships, and explosions. Detailed 3D graphics give the two-dimensional action plenty of depth, while the soundtrack consists of a manly mix of lasers, explosions, and trippy rock-trance music."Nintendo Power: 60% -- Nintendo Power's negatives sound like positives to us! "Nanostray 2 is an odd mix of old and new; it looks and plays better than any of those old games, and it has the polish of a fresh title, but its brand of twitchy, frenetic action and on-hit deaths is so 1985." (Feb. 08, p. 89)GamePro: 80% -- GamePro had praise for the new controls. "What Nanostray fans won't find are the much-maligned touch controls, which Shin'en rightly decided to deep-six. The D-pad controls your ship's movement, while the A and B buttons pull main and secondary weapons duty. The L and R buttons shift the position of satellites, floating Gradius-like orbs that supplement your main blasters. The touch controls do make a cameo, however, as alternate control settings, but we'd steer clear, anyway."
Joystiq impressions: Blast Works (Wii)
User-generated gaming is all the rage these days. PS3 has LittleBigPlanet and Unreal Tournament III; Xbox 360 has Xbox Live Community Games; Wii has Super Smash Bros. Brawl, Boom Blox, and now Blast Works.This upcoming Wii-exclusive shooter from Majesco is based on Kenta Cho's Tumiki Fighters. With your mega-powered spaceship, you can blast away at polygonal enemies, and incorporate them into your ship, Katamari-style. Fifteen levels are promised to ship in the final retail game, and each promises to be a unique experience. One level we saw on display had players taking control of a paper airplane, fighting other paper airplanes and origami enemies. The entire world was rendered in black and white, with the environment seemingly made of paper. Another level we saw featured a barrage of colorful, wacky enemies: ducks, frogs, bees, boats. The eclectic mix of enemies all had one purpose: to destroy us.While romping through the included stages may be fun, the most appealing aspect of the game had to be its creation content system. All the levels in Blast Works were created using the in-game tools. Players can create their own ships, enemies, bullets, levels -- and if they so choose, can create their own bullet and AI patterns as well.%Gallery-18355%
Eco-Creatures to clean up Europe this May
Europeans who have sat patiently awaiting their chance to check out the eco-friendly Eco-Creatures can now get in on the action. The title has just been announced for the European territory, arriving on store shelves this May. We wish we could provide you with an actual day during that month, but that information isn't available.Any of our European readers excited about this? Could you care less?%Gallery-4106%See also: 2008's Biggest Blips: Part III[Via Go Nintendo]
Babysitting Mania exactly the kind of mania we don't need
Babysitting: now there's an easy gig. As a young teenager, yours truly would regularly make good money for simply idling about on a neighbor's sofa, periodically raiding the fridge, and playing Super Mario Kart.Whether such fond memories will be revived by Majesco's latest "Mania" title, Babysitting Mania, is debatable. Promising "100 levels of fast-paced, overlapping tasks," players are expected to clean, feed and entertain gurgling sprogs of all ages across 20 different households. There's even "bonus" birthday party levels, where the brats from neighboring houses make an appearance. "Only the ultimate babysitter," blares the press release, "will survive the frenzy!"In other words, it's all the hellish bits of babysitting (arguing about bedtimes, cooking for others, cleaning up after kids), with absolutely none of the fun bits (the aforementioned raiding of fridges, lounging on sofas, payment). Bet you can't wait.[Via press release]
Premotional Consideration: Eco-Creatures
We usually wait until Sunday to post our Promotional Consideration pieces, but we already have something very special planned for tomorrow's column and we didn't didn't want to hold onto this Eco-Creatures: Save the Forest ad for too long lest you completely forget about the colorful game. The environment-conscious RTS's release went mostly ignored around these parts -- blame it on the rain Shiren the Wanderer. To make up for it, we've torn out and scanned a page advertising Eco-Creatures from this month's issue of Nintendo Power. Hit the "read" link or the image above for the full piece. The recycling arrows integrated into the screenshots are a nice touch!%Gallery-4106%
New Blast Works trailer highlights bonus games, creative design
Of all the neat stuff about Blast Works: Build, Trade, Destroy, the free bonus games get the least attention. Even if they are freeware, it's awesome that Majesco is putting four extra shooters on the disc, all of which are great. This latest trailer confirms that in addition to the original TUMIKI Fighters, Kenta Cho's rRootage, Gunroar, and Torus Trooper will be unlockable.Other awesome things in this trailer include: a very quick shot of a vertically-scrolling level, which would seem to indicate that it's possible to make vertical shooters in the game, and the black-and-white paper-airplane game. If that were a standalone game, we'd buy it. But it isn't. It's just something somebody put together in Blast Works.[Via NeoGAF]
Wild Earth: Trailer Safari
Wild Earth: African Safari continues to keep us entertained for totally unintentional reasons. At first it was some of the absolutely loopy minigames, but now it's this terrible advert for the game, which depicts Mum and the kids getting their safari on, and falls in the "so-bad-it's-kinda-good" category. Frankly, we can smell the cheese from here.Fortunately (and more importantly), the game itself continues to show promise. Some of the animation on display here is very decent, and the multiplayer sections, where one player steers the jeep or helicopter and the others snap the wildlife, actually look pretty exciting. There's even a brief glimpse of Whac-A-Meerkat!%Gallery-15460%
Blast Works: it's also a shooter
Gametap's latest preview of Majesco's Blast Works focuses on the part of the game that has previously received the least attention: the game. A lot has been said about the editor, but, of course, building objects isn't all that much fun without anything to do with them. Luckily, Blast Works, like no other shooter, puts objects to great use.This is because the powerup system from TUMIKI Fighters is still present. When you shoot an enemy, it falls out of the sky. If it lands on you, it sticks to your ship, firing its own projectiles and acting as armor -- though, according to the preview, "because you're trying to quickly catch them any way and with any part of your ship you can, you wind up having little control over the actual direction that captured guns fire." If you take a hit, a piece of this "armor" falls off. It's quite easy to build up a giant Katamari-like clump of junk around your ship, but you then lose maneuverability and even start to have a hard time figuring out what's going on onscreen.
Majesco announces new Nancy Drew for the DS
Following up previous title Nancy Drew: The Deadly Secret of Olde World Park, Majesco has announced a new game called Nancy Drew: The Mystery of the Clue Bender Society is in the works. Developed by Gorilla Systems, the game will feature nine different chapters of play, tasking players with following suspects and other things, such as taking fingerprints, The majority of the game will be played through the touch-screen, as you might imagine.As of now, the game is currently slated for a summer release. And, while we'd like to present you with some screens, there isn't anything other than the announcement at this time. You can't imagine how bad we feel about that. We like visual aids!To make it up to you, we've embedded a little something-something past the break. And, per our usual method of tucking things past the break, you will not be able to predict how awesome it is.
Masaya Matsuura on Majesco's Major Minor's Majestic March
Newsweek's N'Gai Croal interviewed Masaya Matsuura about his upcoming Wii music game Major Minor's Majestic March, allowing us to learn a bit more about the game. Apparently, the tempo of the songs will actually change in real time with your waggling, and not always to the best effect. "We have a situation where if you shake the remote to quickly switch from faster tempos to slower tempos or vice versa, the music goes very strange. Everybody plays a very strange sound. Those kind of things are very interesting for me. It really sounds like original tracks."The licensed marching band music has been "aggressively arranged" such that it will seem original to players. And, of course, the sound will change dynamically as you attract people into your band. "At the start of the stage you will not yet have a gorgeous orchestration. Maybe it will be a very simple and monophonic type of music coming from the speakers. But if you get a new member, one part will be played by that new member. If you can keep going and recruiting new members, the music grows bigger and more gorgeous."While we suspected that marching band music may have fallen into the public domain and that this was the motivation for making a band-based game, it doesn't sound like that's the case. For one, the music has apparently been licensed. But most importantly, Matsuura seems to have been inspired by personal exposure to marching band music.Was he also inspired by that other conducting game? Not so much: "We are just a third-party, and at this moment, I shouldn't have any detailed information about Wii Music. Maybe that would make me confused a little about what I'm trying to do."%Gallery-15020%[Via Joystiq]
More mini-game hilarity in Wild Earth: African Safari
Not content with giving us the chance to wash other animals with an elephant, the most recent screens of Wild Earth: African Safari released by Majesco reveal a host of other zany mini-games. Apparently, we'll be able to fly through hoops as a vulture, or dodge yawning hippopotamuses as we negotiate whitewater rapids.Best of all, there's a variation on fairground favorite Whac-A-Mole, only with what appear to be meerkats. That's right: Wild Earth: African Safari is a game that encourages players to bash nature with a huge mallet. Where the hell is FOX News?!%Gallery-15460%
Develop Magazine: Iwata is a 'Game Changer'
Develop magazine's "Game Changers" is a list of 25 gaming industry luminaries who are "reshaping the games development business as we know it." At the top of the list: the lovable Satoru Iwata. The Nintendo president was cited as an influential figure due to his instrumentality in the creation of the DS and Wii, which have then led to a massive influx of new console gamers.Other notable Nintendo-related names on the list include: Mistwalker's Hironobu Sakaguchi, who is creating more titles simultaneously in less time than he ever did at Square, by combining a core creative team with outsourced technical development; and Majesco's Jesse Sutton, who has turned a failing major publisher around with a casual-inclusive, Nintendo-friendly lineup.
Wild Earth: Elephant Washing Safari
As casual Pokémon Snap/rail shooter aficionados, we find ourselves a bit interested in Wild Earth: African Safari. Photographic shooting games are generally a good time, and we're keen to use the Wiimote's pointer for more shooting games. Now that we know that there's a minigame in which, as an elephant, you wash passing animals, the deal is sealed. We're actually not kidding, either -- we're quite impressed by the weirdly creative thinking required to get minigames into a safari game and have them make some sense. It's becoming increasingly difficult to come up with unusual minigames as the Wii's minigame density increases.Something that more people are going to find neat is the multiplayer. Four people can go on safari together, with one directing the movement of the party (either by leading on foot or by driving the jeep or helicopter) and the other three snapping photos. We (try desperately hard at all times to) see shades of Lucky & Wild!
Don't want to grow up? Read this Toy Shop preview!
This small preview of the gameplay in Majesco's Toy Shop makes the game sound ... well, oddly compelling. 1UP's Emily Balistrieri sums it up as a "Harvest Moon for those more interested in dolls and train sets than cows and corn."In the game, two siblings are given three years to restore an inherited toy shop to a profitable state. Each day (five to ten minutes), you talk to the customers, meet the townspeople, fix up your store (including appropriate seasonal decorations) and -- most importantly -- make toys. The appropriate stock of toys will make customers happy, and they'll come back and spend more money.The Harvest Moon comparison makes the game sound especially interesting. Why don't more companies make that kind of game? And why not move it off the farm? We like toys, much more than we like farming.%Gallery-14107%
Parappa creators' Major Minor's Majestic March revealed
We hope you don't mind trading a rapping puppy for a tuba-playing pig. The first information and character art from Majesco's new collaboration between Parappa creators Masaya Matsuura and Rodney Alan Greenblat has been released. The game is called Major Minor's Majestic March and takes place in a town full of marching bands. As Major Mike Minor, your job is to use your "special" bandleader's baton (the Wiimote, obviously) not only to keep the rhythm of your marching band, but to attract new players into it, and even pick up items.The sound of your band (as it plays new arrangements of over 30 well-known marches) changes as the instrumentalists following you change. Oh, and of course the game is, in true Greenblat style, really cute. We'd like to direct you to our gallery featuring the first character art!%Gallery-15020%[Via GamesPress]
Parappa creators bringing 'Major Minor's Majestic March' to Wii
Yeah, yeah, we're intrigued by the possibilities of Wii Music but, like you, we're disappointed by that game's apparent lack of marching! Someone at Majesco apparently feels the same way, because the company today announced Major Minor's Majestic March for the Wii.Featuring the talents of Parappa the Rapper designer Masaya Matsuura and artist Rodney Greenblat, the game will ask players to use the Wii remote to "keep tempo, recruit new band members and pick up valuable items." The release promises eight "whimsical" locations, a "dynamic procession" of up to 15 instruments and 25 "popular marching band songs." We hope they can secure the rights to some of the hits from Sousaphone Hero. The promise of conducting our own version of "Stars and Stripes Forever" by Holiday 2008 is just too delicious to contemplate.%Gallery-15021%
