Despite glossy trailers and the oft-epic power of nostalgia, the Speed Racer film seems firmly ensconced in the realm of box office bombs, drawing barely $30 million in its first two weekends (against a nine-figure budget) at North American theaters. Such dismal figures might dampen your enthusiasm for a $50 adaptation of the material, but shockingly, Speed Racer: The Videogame proves to be one of the most engaging racers on the ...

You may consider it strange for us to tell you that a small, downloadable 2D game is one of the most significant Wii releases of the year so far. And a strange statement it may well be, but it's also completely true. LostWinds is a game you need to own. ...
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Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: My Life as a King is about building a city (around the prerequisite FF crystal). When you start playing all four walls of the city are in place, which is all the play area you're ever going to need. After all, it's the job of the king to stay home and build his kingdom - not go out and adventure. But to acquire the resources to fuel your building, you'll need to send your teenage adventurers out to fight in ...

The Adonis-like figures bestowed by Wii Fit go someway toward justifying that hefty balance board start-up cost. But, for our money, it’s the strength of supporting third party software that will truly justify the purchase. ‘Babes’ digging our mad balancing skillz will only get it a free pass for so long; a sorry looking pile of sneered at DK Bongos reminding what fate befalls a library-less peripheral. ...

Deca Sports (Sports Island in the UK) has simple and genteel controls that mean you won’t be destroying any hardware - or indeed your wrists - and it’s a far less hectic proposition all round; ice skating, curling and badminton are hardly in the same adrenaline-pumping class as pole vaulting, hurdling and hammer-throwing. ...

The TurboGrafix-16, which once roamed prehistoric game stores, was the size of six double-decker buses but had a CPU the size of a pea. It could also eat its own weight in vertical-scrolling shoot-’em-ups, many of which are now available on Wii Virtual Console. Indeed, four titles from the Star Soldier lineage are already up on the Wii Shop for 600 points - the best of which (Super Star Soldier and Blazing Lazers) are a must for any ...

Pinball - dead easy to do in a videogame, right? Actually, not if you’re going to do it well. You can’t just stick a load of ramps and targets on an oblong playing area, whack a pair of flippers down the bottom and expect it to work like a proper table. When pinball was a big deal in the arcades, the best designers were revered among fans much like Miyamoto or Kojima are today, except without the internet to make global stars of ...

The credits list betrays their terrible secret. Many years from now, members of the Target: Terror development team will recount that fateful evening in the summer of 2004 when Target: Terror’s boss, Eugene Jarvis (of Narc and Cruis’n USA fame), sent down the order: Dave - bring in your bright red boiler suit; Gina - go get those PVC hotpants you wore to the Christmas party. And all of you - bring your sunglasses. The next day ...

Question: if Iron Man can fly, why has he stumbled into every pitfall of the superhero genre? His game is messy, confusing and, at best, about as good as Catwoman or Batman Begins. Which is not good at all.

In this game of the film of the comic, you are the titular Iron Man - disabled billionaire inventor Tony Stark - in his rocket-booted iron suit, out to thwart evildoers. At heart it’s a shoot-’em-up with a great deal of ...

The story behind this struck us as a tad unlikely - the game Steven Spielberg always wanted to play with his family? Wasn’t he a bit busy with some movie when it was being made? But however it came about, Boom Blox is far better than it has any right to be. While we’d normally file celebrity-endorsed casual games alongside the likes of Carol Vorderman’s Sudoku, this is in a different league. It’s brilliant! ...