Why Viva Pinata is perfect for DS

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Six reasons why Rare's cuddly creation belongs on Nintendo

We love Viva Pinata at GamesRadar towers. It's just so serene, so adorable, so bright. But Viva Pinata's lack of success clearly highlights the tastes of the majority of 360 owners - alongside such manfests as GRAW2 and Gears of War, this light hearted, innocent game stuck out like a sore thumb at a fingers-only party. Shame on the ignorant, etc.

So, despite the troubles, we'reexcited to hear that Viva Pinata lives on. It'll be gracing Nintendo'shandheld at some unconfirmed point in the future, and here aresix reasons why we're convinced this zipped down version will be a smash hit...

Viva Pinata is, like, sooo Nintendo
Wonderful primary colors. Cute by the truck-load. Loveable characters with huge, blinking puppy-dog eyes. It might not have been created by Nintendo, but Viva Pinata is a Nintendo game - it's the nephew of Animal Crossing, it's Pokemon's second cousin.

We love Viva Pinata for the same reasons we love much of Nintendo's greatest hits, with their simple beauty and engrossing, addictive gameplay. Not to mention the nudge-nudge-wink-winkness giving the whole game its adult-entertaining mirthsome edge. With Viva Pinata DS, Rare is simply bringing Viva Pinata back to its spiritual home.

Enhanced interaction
The DS stylus is always most successful when it's being used to bring us closer to the games we play. Think writing notes in Hotel Dusk, digging holes in Animal Crossing or mixing up Poffins in Pokemon. The interaction the stylus can bring will be perfect for enhancing Viva Pinata's gameplay, and making us feel more connected with the animated multi-colored sweet baskets we've spent all our time breeding.

It hardly needs much imagination to come up with some ideas, either. What about poking, preening, stroking or otherwise interfering with the animals? Or we could use the microphone to wake them up, blow on their faces, or imitate their noises back to them. It'll make guiding them across the garden much easier too.

Ben_Richardson

Ben Richardson is a former Staff Writer for Official PlayStation 2 magazine and a former Content Editor of GamesRadar+. In the years since Ben left GR, he has worked as a columnist, communications officer, charity coach, and podcast host – but we still look back to his news stories from time to time, they are a window into a different era of video games.