Here are this week's releases on WiiWare, DSiWare, and Virtual Console!

Nintendo DSiWare

Gangstar 2: Kings of L.A.
Publisher: Gameloft
Players: 1
ESRB Rating: T (Teen) - Suggestive Themes, Tobacco Reference, Violence
Price: 500 Nintendo DSi Points
Description: Move to the West Coast and immerse yourself in Los Angeles gang life with Gangstar 2: Kings of L.A. Complete 75 different missions that combine the best of action games and driving games.

* Explore Los Angeles and its famous neighborhoods, including Hollywood, Beverly Hills, downtown, the suburbs and the harbor.
* A unique feeling of freedom: Drive or walk anywhere in massive, open environments. Feel free to complete missions at your own pace, or just do absolutely anything you want.
* A thrilling storyline with flashbacks and unexpected developments: Go from rags to riches, connect with relatives and help out their gang until you're living the golden life.
* Improved driving experience: Drive cars, quads, motorcycles and use the environment to perform unbelievable stunts.
* Use the inner camera or outer camera to decrease your wanted status, take a new photo of your face and fake your ID card to remain incognito.

AlphaBounce™
Publisher: Mad Monkey Studios
Players: 1
ESRB Rating: T (Teen) - Drug Reference, Violent References
Price: 500 Nintendo DSi Points
Description: AlphaBounce combines the classical brick-breaking concept with strong RPG features, offering you the chance to explore an endless universe with millions of levels. Discover items hidden in the deepest corners of the galaxy. Use these items to modify your spaceship and improve your firepower. You have been taken prisoner by an evil intergalactic mining corporation and exiled to outer space. With the help of your spaceship, your mission is to blast your way through the bricks in order to find a way back to Earth.

7 Card Games
Publisher: cerasus.media
Players: 1
ESRB Rating: T (Teen) - Simulated Gambling
Price: 500 Nintendo DSi Points
Description: Who has the best hand? Take a seat, have a drink and get started: Keep a straight face during poker while you wager the bluff of your life. Put it all on one hit in Black Jack - and take the jackpot. You choose the number of opponents. Prefer something quieter? Then try a Solitaire game like Freecell or Klondike. Whether you prefer a quick round here and there or fun for the entire evening, now you can always have your favorite card games right at your fingertips. The detailed graphics and authentic atmosphere will wow you.

AiRace
Publisher: QubicGames
Players: 1-6
ESRB Rating: E (Everyone) - Mild Fantasy Violence
Price: 800 Nintendo DSi Points
Description: AiRace is a high-octane, adrenaline-fueled air, speed and stunt game for the Nintendo DSi and Nintendo DSi XL™ systems. AiRace is not your typical hand-held racing - it's high-sky racing at its best. There are no limits to your flight with 360° movement and unique steering with the Nintendo DSi stylus. AiRace offers you a chance to control one of nine planes and compete against AI or human opponents in six exotic locations. With great physics, plane upgrades, on-the-track power-ups and unique maps, AiRace offers a little bit more than your average racing. Now it's time to leave your cars and switch to airplanes.

WiiWare

Military Madness: Nectaris
Publisher: Hudson Entertainment
Players: 1-4
ESRB Rating: E 10+ (Everyone 10 and Older) - Mild Fantasy Violence
Price: 1,000 Wii Points™
Description: The Military is back for a new generation of recruits. The classic turn-based strategy series Military Madness, aka Nectaris, is exploding onto the WiiWare service. With a new graphical barrage, a new commander unit, online team and vs. multiplayer modes, and a platoon of other new features, this is the maddest game in the series yet.

* 4-Person Online Multiplayer: Coordinate strategies or taunt foes in team or vs. multiplayer modes for up to four people.
* A new unit - Commanders: Choose a commander to lead your forces in multiplayer and choose from 20 unique abilities.
* Multiple command views: Plan out strategy in the overhead map view and watch glorious battles unfold with cinematic camera action.
* Detailed stat-tracking leaderboards: Increase your rank as you march up the leaderboards on your mission to prove you're the top general around.

Virtual Console

Zaxxon
Original platform: Arcade
Publisher: SEGA
Players: 1
ESRB Rating: E (Everyone) - Mild Fantasy Violence
Price: 800 Wii Points
Description: Travel back to a time when a lovable alien phoned home, gas cost a mere 90 cents a gallon and everyone was wearing high-tops, leg warmers and had big hair. This was the early '80s, and this was when video gamers nationwide were wowed by the cutting-edge graphics and sound effects of the first three-dimensional-like intergalactic arcade shooter: Zaxxon. Touted as the first game to put video display in perspective, Zaxxon featured "looks" and "sounds" like actual aircraft flight, allowing players to command their ship just like a real fighter pilot. Dive, bank, fly left and right, and up and down - Zaxxon had it all. Fly through heavily armored space fortresses while strafing fuel tanks, dodging walls and blowing up enemy missiles and gunnery. This game is littered with explosions. Then take the fight to the enemy fighter fleet and destroy the aggressor ships with extreme prejudice. Blasting pixels has never been so fun.

Source.

URL to share (right click and copy)

People thought Zaxxon was 3D? Times have changed!

Posted by

GameDadGrant

on: 04/12/10, 16:29

AlphaBounce sounds like a great idea.

It's pretty weird Nectaris took so long to come to Wiiware, especially since the original is on the VC. It's been on PSN for ages, and on Live for even longer. Oh well, it's not supposed to be that good anyway, but now I'm reminded I should check out the original.

Posted by

Pandareus

on: 04/12/10, 16:43

I've played the ColecoVision port of Zaxxon quite a bit and it's not bad. Kinda disappointed in this week, I really wanted a new Art Style WiiWare game.

Posted by

anon_mastermind

on: 04/12/10, 16:53

Looks decent

Posted by

Pandareus

on: 04/12/10, 17:02

Even I don't care about anything this week. Maybe Zaxxon, but I have it on the Genesis collection.

Posted by

Anand

on: 04/12/10, 17:28

Pandareus said:

Looks decent

I didn't check the link, but when I saw that text, I'm reminded of anandxxx's Sonic and the Black Knight thread back on the IGN board. Does anyone still have that boxart that we modified? Because that quickly became hilarious!

Posted by

ludist210

on: 04/12/10, 17:33

Yeah, we should dig that up. The best part of that thread was that I didn't have to do any of the work. I love the internet. It allows people to be free-riders on a cosmic scale.

Posted by

Anand

on: 04/12/10, 18:33

@anandxxx

Without further adieu...



EDIT: The original thread, just for kicks.

Posted by

ludist210

on: 04/12/10, 23:09

Edited:

04/12/10, 23:11

lol, good stuff. Well worth a free week-long rental got me

Posted by

anon_mastermind

on: 04/12/10, 23:41

Hm.... no Bit.Trip Runner yet... :C

I'm holding onto my remaining 600 points for that...

Posted by

Paleo_Orca

on: 04/13/10, 00:08

I have Zaxxon on the Colecovision, but never played it. I also have Sonic's Ultimate Genesis Collection though, but I don't think I've unlocked it in there yet. It requires me to get a ton of points in Super Thunder Blade, which is totally lame

Military Madness: Nectaris sounds interesting. I've never played the series, nor have I read much about it, but I sometimes like to play turn-based strategy games.

Posted by

X-pert74

on: 04/13/10, 00:50

Paleo_Orca said:

Hm.... no Bit.Trip Runner yet... :C

I'm holding onto my remaining 600 points for that...

It's 800 brorca.

Posted by

Secret_Tunnel

on: 04/13/10, 01:34

I love the Play logo in that boxart. That's actually pretty low for them. Must have been their anti-Wii bias.

@X-pert74
Super Thunder Blade suuuuucks. A lot of those games are almost painful to play, Super Thunder Blade chief among them. Sonic's Genesis Collection is the only 360 game that I've 1000'd. I was going to write a review of the entire Genesis first-party library, as filtered through Sonic's Genesis Collection. But then I forgot about it.

Posted by

Anand

on: 04/13/10, 02:52

Edited:

04/13/10, 02:55

GameDadGrant said:

People thought Zaxxon was 3D? Times have changed!

Oh I hate Sega's pseudo 3D era.. though Zaxxon was ok but man good reason why SG-1000 died quick.

Posted by

littledeadmonkey

on: 04/13/10, 03:02

Man, I was always a big fan of Zaxxon! Only thing is, I sucked majorly at the game. Back in the day, it did look cutting edge. I remember having the game for an atari system, not sure. But the graphics were really disappointing. I dont think I remember any home versions that was even close to the arcade.

Im thinking about downloading it just for the fact that the game always picqued my intersest, and where I lived it was hard to find the game. When the Balley arcades was here in town and one or two other major arcades had the game.

Plus, I want to have another go at the game and see if I can become better at the game that always taunted me, that is when I had the chance to be around one.

Oh memories....how they can deceive tho...

It will probably be a like crystle castles. Another game I thought was really cool. Not too many places had the game. And a few years ago I finally got the chance to play the arcade version as much as I like and when I started playing the game, Im like...WTF?! Is this really the game Ive been longing to play all these years, only to find out that its not nearly cool as I remember. And what sucks about these memories, even though I think the game is just ho-hum now, I still get these warm waves of nostagila that comes over me, fully knowing if I boot the game up, Im going to quit playing within minutes.

Oh well. Such is life. (I have a feeling Im going to regret blowing $8. But hey, its only $8. And who knows, maybe I will enjoy the game and master it!!

Posted by

gamewizard65

on: 04/13/10, 05:46