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New Nintendo eShop releases: Yoshi's New Island, Super Mario Bros - The Lost Levels
There are plenty of new releases to dig into on the eShop this week, including the return of everyone's favorite sneaker-wearing dino-thing in 3DS platformer Yoshi's New Island. All but one of the games out this week are for the Nintendo handheld; the only new release on Wii U is a retro release, and that's Super Mario Bros: The Lost Levels. The Lost Levels is the true sequel to the original Super Mario Bros. - SMB2 is awesome, we know, but facts are facts. The game famously didn't make it out of Japan until it was re-released in the SNES compilation Super Mario All-Stars, and finally Western players got to grips with some really challenging Mario. Not that the first SMB isn't tricky because it is, especially if you don't use warp pipes, but The Lost Levels is, er, another level. Anyway, the Virtual Console version is the NES game rather than the SNES re-release, and it's priced at $5. Finally, look out for discounts on Steamworld Dig on 3DS, which should be going down from $9 to $4.50 - that sale ends 9AM PT/12PM ET on March 16 - and on Zen's collection of 3DS pinball games, which will all be half-off between March 17-31.
Out today: Super Stickman Golf 2, The Croods by Rovio, Danger Boat and more
The biggest (and best) iOS release today is probably Ridiculous Fishing, but there were quite a few really good games hitting the App Store this week. First up, Super Stickman Golf has earned itself a sequel called Super Stickman Golf 2, and it features the excellent 2D golf game that made the first game so great and then some: More courses, more powerups, more achievements, new customizable characters and a new race-based multiplayer mode. Super Stickman Golf is excellent, and the sequel is even better, available now for US$0.99. Rovio's The Croods is now available, and sure enough, it's a freemium Farmville-style game featuring the characters from the upcoming movie. It'll be very interesting to see how this one does as compared to the studio's other big franchise, a little game you may not have heard of called Angry Birds. I was a huge fan of Pixelocity's great Disc Drivin' multiplayer turn-based racing game, and the studio has now released a new title called Danger Boat. It's not too closely related to Disc Drivin' (it's more like "Temple Run in a Boat," I'd say), except that it's very well-polished and a whole lot of fun. Both this and The Croods are completely free. And finally, I haven't heard much about Stargate: SG-1 Unleashed, but it's apparently an episodic adventure game featuring the characters and settings of the famous sci-fi franchise. It's a little pricey, at $4.99, but it looks pretty solid, and if you're a Stargate fan you've probably already gone to check it out. Some very excellent releases on the App Store this week -- we iOS gamers continue to be really lucky.
Rovio releasing a game based on The Croods movie
Rovio has announced another game, and it's yet another surprising title from the Finish developer of Angry Birds. Rovio's first non-Angry Birds game was Amazing Alex (which was a rebranding of another developer's game), its second was the spinoff Bad Piggies, and now they're making: The Croods, a licensed title from the upcoming Dreamworks film. As you can see from the official gameplay trailer, it looks like a Farmville-style townbuilding title, though of course everything is styled after the movie (with some fun Rovio touches in the nonsensical language and a really elegant hand-drawn style). It looks like players will be able to catch pets, grow crops, and develop their own little Croods homestead, similar to a lot of other freemium management games. Rovio continues to make really interesting choices in its game development -- the company has definitely exploited the Angry Birds brand as far as it could go and then some, and Amazing Alex, while definitely not a failure, wasn't nearly as big a success as the birds and the pigs. Rovio's teamed up with a movie studio before (Twentieth Century Fox) in making Angry Birds Rio, so it's not uncommon for them to be talking to a movie studio like Dreamworks. It's worth noting, too, that while most of Rovio's big titles have been physics puzzlers, The Croods looks to be very different. We'll keep an eye out for the game on the App Store. It certainly seems like a strange next choice for Rovio to make, but given the vast success of Angry Birds, I think the company can afford to experiment a little more. Update: A previous version of this post stated Dreamworks had made the movie Rio, but that movie was produced by Twentieth Century Fox instead. The error's been fixed.
Angry Birds dev Rovio making tie-in game for DreamWorks' The Croods
DreamWorks' latest animated blockbuster, The Croods, is getting a tie-in iOS and Android game courtesy of Angry Birds developer Rovio. The game, due March 14, takes the film's prehistoric family and throws them into a caveman sim, apparently. You can hunt and gather, catch weird creatures, and cultivate your own little patch of the Paleolithic Age.The Croods isn't Rovio's first movie tie-in, but it is the studio's first one outside of Angry Birds. Commercially speaking, that makes this game a whole different kettle of fish - or birds - or cave-birds. Maybe they should've gone with cave-birds.
