[Update: Majesco sent out a press release with a real release date on it! June 10. This release went out mere hours after our email to Majesco. Coincidence? Most likely.]
We don't know if this is official (but then no Blast Worksdate has ever been official), but Gamestop's release date for Blast Works: Build, Trade, and Destroy has moved from May 20 to June 3. If we weren't looking forward to playing the game, this carrot-and-stick routine would be comical, but really we're just angry. This was originally supposed to come out in October.
Amazon still says May 27. Best Buy says May 29. Were we regular shoppers and not game bloggers (which requires us to try to keep up with release dates and such), we would definitely have given up on following Blast Works by now. We'd just buy it whenever we happened to see it in a store.
Posted May 14th 2008 8:45AM by JC Fletcher Filed under: News
Blast Works Depot, the official site for uploading and trading user-created Blast Works content, is now online (despite the game's current lack of availability). Rather than creating a fancy new corporate-designed website, Majesco worked with an existing Wii community website, Wii FanboyMii Plaza.
It's kind of a brilliant idea -- (some) Wii owners are already used to sharing content on Mii Plaza, and Blast Works content now uses the same interface for trading levels, enemies, ships, bullets, and shapes. Oh, except you can upload and download directly from inside the game. Now all we need is for the game to come out, and for other people to buy it and create interesting things!
Posted May 12th 2008 1:15PM by JC Fletcher Filed under: News
Sandlot Games' Cake Mania franchise is coming to the Wii for the first time via Majesco, as Cake Mania: In the Mix! The new Wii game combines the time-management-based gameplay of the first Cake Mania with the storyline of the sequel, and adds waggle to the baking and serving action in new minigames.
Other new features include an unspecified "Shop Rating" feature that enables unlocks and a phone system that enables even more orders to come in.
Majesco expects to release Cake Mania: In the Mix during this holiday season. It will be distributed by Codemasters in Europe for an early 2009 release. We're always interested in seeing how the PC casual games audience crosses over with the Wii casual games audence, and this is a perfect test case.
If you thought that Trauma Center'sreturn to the DS would mean the end of medical games on the Wii, you were wrong. Zoo Hospital isn't just about normal doctoring, though -- as you can probably figure out from the game's title, you'll be a veterinarian (or, straight out of vet school, at least) that works on curing exotic animals from sicknesses.
Surgeries won't be the only tasks you'll be performing in Zoo Hospital. You'll also do X-Ray and dentistry related tasks to soothe the forty-eight ailing animals. But even if you find the premise interesting, you might not want to get your hopes too high, as the DS version off the game (also developed by Torus) was apparently not that good.
Zoo Hospital is planned to launch in European and PAL territories during Q4, 2008.
It was no mistake that Blast Works: Build, Trade, & Destroy didn't show up on our weekly releases list. We were sure that it was really going to come out this week, but just like every other time we thought Majesco would release the game, Blast Works has been pushed back. The new release date is still within the month, for now, so at least Majesco doesn't have very long to decide to delay it again.
According to Gamestop, Blast Works will be out on the 20th. Amazon says the 27th. We don't know if it'll really be out on either of those dates, but we will still want to buy it whenever.
Majesco's Wonderworld Amusement Park seems to be ... more than the standard many game collection in a number of ways. First, the selection of minigames in the title seems larger than those of its contemporaries. And they seem more creative -- there's a game based on unwrapping mummies, for example, and a number of competitive minigames based on rides like ... the Tunnel of Love and "Castle Terror."
There also seems to be a strong undercurrent of creepiness present in Wonderworld, which the game does by itself just fine. What we're saying is that the character models (for one) are off-putting enough that we think populating screenshots with groups of identical-looking blonde characters is overkill.
Well, someone had to step in and tell Nintendo that they're doing a good job with their online platform (even though, and let's face reality here folks, they aren't right now, but we're hoping WiiWare can help change that). Majesco sees Nintendo as doing okay with the online content in titles such as Super Smash Bros. Brawl and Mario Kart Wii, but sees the system as able to do more elaborate and better things. Majesco is planning to make this leap into a bigger world with the release of Blast Works for the Wii.
So what is so envelope-pushing about Blast Works's online functionality? Well, players will be able to create and trade content online. On top of that, players will also be able to head on over to a special website set up by Majesco, where they can browse other content made by users and, through the power of a mouse click, send that content to their own Wii. The best part? No Friend Codes necessary.
Majesco said that Nintendo has helped them make this leap into a world full of more rich and dynamic online content on a console that hasn't had it yet and sees the future as very exciting regarding Wii and the online space. You can read all about how in the MTV Multiplayer interview here.
Posted Mar 25th 2008 3:00PM by JC Fletcher Filed under: News
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.
Posted Mar 20th 2008 9:45AM by JC Fletcher Filed under: News
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. Onceagain, Majesco has taken something that should be forgettable, low-budget dross and forced us to be interested.
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.
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, andTorus 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.
Wild Earth: African Safari continues to keep us entertained for totally unintentional reasons. At first it was some of the absolutelyloopy 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!
Posted Feb 16th 2008 12:00PM by JC Fletcher Filed under: News
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.
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."
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?!
[Update: Majesco sent out a press release with a real release date on it! June 10. This release went out mere hours after our email to Majesco. Coincidence? Most likely.]
Majesco has announced a deal to bring Humongous Entertainment's venerable series of kids' games to the Wii this year. 
