Slow Week

Wow, it’s been a slow week for games and gaming in general. About the only thing that I’ve even seen that’s worth mentioning is the announcement by Nintendo of the dual screened handheld unit. Sure, it sounds like it could be something neat to fool around with, but really, I don’t see what kind of advantages that kind of setup would really give to a portable gamer. There just aren’t really that many games out there now that would benefit from a two screen setup. The only concievable thing that I can come up with is that it would be a good setup for RPGs. Action on one screen, menus full of your items and spells or whatever on the other screen… Kind of like Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles is reportedly going to do.

Final Fantasy Crystal Cronicles, I found out recently, has been bumped forward to February 10th, or somewhere therabouts. Maybe I never noticed it before, since I never owned a Playstation, but it seems like that ever since Square-Enix re-friended with Nintendo, they have been putting out lots of games in a large quivering mass. In the last couple of months we’ve seen Final Fantasy Tactics Advance, Final Fantasy 10-2, Sword of Mana, Final Fantasy 11, and Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles. I’m probably missing some, but that’s a lot of decent quality games in not a lot of time.

Since we’re on the Game Cube Connectivity Train, we have to stop for a rest stop at The Legend of Zelda Four Swords for the Game Cube. This is providing the competition for Crystal Chronicals, at least for my gaming dollar. Both games are (supposed to be) coming out at about the same time, and it looks like the Zelda game will be more like a party style game (kind of like Pac-Man Vs.) where you can just grab up to three of your friends and go for a round or two, whereas Cronicles seems like it almost is going to require you to set aside time with your gaming posse to complete the thing (sort of like an online RPG without the online part, I suppose). Now, I’ve never actually played Four Swords on the Game Boy, mostly because I didn’t want to buy a game I already had just to play the new multi-player version, although now I hear that the extra mode is entirely worth it, since Nintendo is bringing out an entire GameCube game based on the thing.

Gimmicky connectivity… I like it.