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 Advance Wars: Days of Ruin NintendoJanuary 2008 Professor Layton and the Curious Village Ninja Gaiden: Dragon Sword The World Ends With You Crosswords DS Guitar Hero: On Tour Final Fantasy IV Lock's Quest Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia Personal Trainer: Cooking |
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Midterm Corrections?
While we are usually quite adept at predicting the gaming future, occasionally our powers of conjecture experience some interference. Many of our 2008 predictions came true: we guessed the year would be 365 days long, for instance, and it looks like we're on target to meet that number. But let's take a look at a few of our guesses that turned out to be bunk.
First of all, we predicted a Final Fantasy XIII spin-off would arrive for the Nintendo DS. Spoiler alert: it didn't. We did receive three Final Fantasy DS games this year, but none of them had anything to do with the forever-in-development XIII. Our bad.
In January 2008, we picked a handful of upcoming games we thought would be highlights of the year. Many of these turned out to be correct (Advance Wars: Days of Ruin, Ninja Gaiden Dragon Sword, Bangai-O Spirits). But one of our picks, Super Dodgeball Brawlers, ended up being a bit of a disappointment. Receiving a 6.5, it wasn't quite the direct hit we had hoped for. We were also hoping for new Mario and Metroid games on the portable, but alas, 'twas not meant to be. For the most part, Nintendo's first-party DS offerings were strong this year, including Professor Layton, Personal Trainer: Cooking, Advance Wars: Days of Ruin, and even the out-of-nowhere Mystery Case Files.
We thought 2008 would see many more DS games supporting voice chat. Maybe not during gameplay, but at least in the lobby while we were waiting for a game to start, right? Turns out one of the year's earliest games, Advance Wars: Days of Ruin, was the only notable title to make use of this function.
In October 2008 Nintendo announced the DSi, which will be able to download games from an online store. We thought this feature might arrive on the current DS this year in the form of a cartridge peripheral with Flash memory. Oh well, at least we were right that Nintendo would announce a new DS system.
Guitar Hero: On Tour became the first third-party game to get a special edition DS bundle. We actually thought the year would see more third-party titles being selected for this great honor. It's very common to find these bundles in Japan.
Finally, we thought many more games would be played with the DS in book mode this year. There were a few high profile titles that turned the system on its end, like Ninja Gaiden Dragon Sword and Crosswords DS, but not as many as we expected (or Matt Casamassina hoped).
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