The DS does have a few biggies coming next year, but not too many titles you’d really consider triple-A, must-own, magazine cover-worthy games. Unless you’re a regular buyer of Japanese Role-Playing Gamer Monthly, that is. GTA: Chinatown Wars is arguably the biggest third-party title on DS to date, will almost certainly create tabloid controversy around its release date - particularly when the moral majority hear about the drug-dealing minigame - and has every chance of topping the charts in its launch week. It might not have the legs of a Brain Training, or rebound back up the charts like a Professor Layton, but it’ll hopefully prove that the DS isn’t just for old dears and Imagine girlz.

Early impressions suggest Rockstar’s miniature opus has that kind of obsessive attention to detail of its console brethren, while the visual style offers something a little different from the N64-esque 3D or SNES-besting 2D sprite approach of most of the handheld’s games. It’ll have plenty of minigame diversions, sure, but the core of driving and shooting has been left intact. And GTA’s always been as much about the asides, anyway, so the more twenty second time-killers the better, as far as I’m concerned.

What’s perhaps most important about Chinatown Wars is that it represents a major publisher taking a bit of a gamble, and releasing IP solely aimed at adults on what’s traditionally a console for younger gamers and those unwilling to commit mass murder in a videogame - albeit on a comparatively Lilliputian scale. Put simply, the DS needs a GTA to encourage other publishers to commit time and effort into crafting hardcore games for the handheld. While DS’s dominance is already assured, that software attach rate can only rise with software of this quality being pumped out on a more regular basis. And it’s that potential legacy which makes Chinatown Wars such a significant release in 2009.

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An interesting piece up on the BBC (courtesy of GoNintendo) wherein various gaming luminaries briefly discuss their thoughts on gaming in 2008.

Peter Molyneux, creator of my personal game of the year - the majestic Fable II - seems impressed with Nintendo’s success: “2008 was the year that the Nintendo Wii got even better, more than anyone really thought possible when it first launched. The 360 did well, although it was put into the shade somewhat by the Wii.” Given that Lionhead is developing for Microsoft that’s perhaps a surprising thing for Molyneux to say, though he’s never been one to shy away from controversy. It hints that he’d be keen on developing for the console, though given the ambitious nature of Molyneux’s projects, it’s hard to imagine Wii being powerful enough to cope. That said, it’s clear from playing Fable II that Molyneux has been inspired by Wii’s accessibility - the game offering plentiful rewards, even to casual and inexperienced players. Those who’ve had their partners snatch the pad from them while exploring Albion will know exactly what I’m talking about, I’m sure. As the man himself says of Rockstar’s GTA IV - “only a few people actually saw all the cut sequences because the game was so tough to play. Are we making games too difficult? That’s a question the industry has been asking itself of late.”

He’s not the only one waxing lyrical about Nintendo’s console, with Spore creator Will Wright  suggesting that “the Wii took everyone by surprise - not for its looks, but its accessibility. Games like Guitar Hero attracted non-gamers and Sony and Microsoft are responding to that with things like the ‘Avatar’ system and Little Big Planet.” While Guitar Hero might not be the best example of an accessible Wii title (though it is selling better on Wii than any other console, which tells its own story) he’s certainly got a point. Of course, it was long rumoured that Wright was keen to bring Spore to Wii, more so than to other consoles. Will that still happen? It’s perhaps more likely that we’ll see a Wii Spore than an Xbox 360/PS3 version, but given that Spore ran on most reasonably capable PCs, it may be that Maxis feel it’s reached its core audience. And Wii’s online userbase is comparatively small, which would theoretically sour one of the key components of Spore.

It’s taken quite a while for Wii to really make waves among developers and publishers, but with such big names talking up the console and the userbase continuing to grow, surely it’s only a matter of time before we start seeing a wave of quality third-party software on Wii. I think late 2009 will see a raft of new titles which make the most of the console, and hopefully then Wii will be keeping core gamers happier than it has done this year.

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Given that Punch-Out!! was never about mad fist-flailing, instead relying on precision dodging and counter-punches, it might not necessarily be as good a fit for Wii as everyone seemingly thinks. Yet it’s equally inconceivable that Nintendo would release a boxing game that didn’t rely on motion controls. Which makes this new take on the much-loved pugilistic punch-fest something of an enigma.

It’s clear from the already-released shots of Everlast boxing gloves with slots for nunchuk and remote that Punch-Out!! will feature a control system not too far removed from the flawed implementation of Wii Sports boxing. MotionPlus-enhanced? Twin-remote support? It’s too early to know, but I’d put a strong bet on optional balance board support for bobbing and weaving.

So gameplay remains a slight worry, but the vids so far have tickled many a nostalgia gland - offering a similar approach to the original with plenty of cel-shaded character. Stereotypes abound - French boxers spitting croissants as they hit the canvas? - but that’s all part of the Punch-Out!! charm.

Presumably the stamina bar will prevent rapid-fire rabbit-punchers winning the day every time, and if Nintendo finds the right balance, this could be one of Wii’s biggest hits of 2009. Particularly if those boxing gloves are available at the right price. Us Wii owners do love our peripherals, after all.

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MaboShi’s Arcade

Finally! Four months on from its PAL release, MaBoShi finally makes it to the US WiiWare service. And it’s a strange one, for sure - neither as gloriously minimalist as Cubello or Orbient, nor as accessible and constantly restless as World of Goo, it’s a game which takes a while to get its hooks into you, but reveals itself to be quite an ingenious little puzzler.

I say it’s not that accessible, but its controls are - for two of the games you’ll need just the A button, while the third simply requires you to use the d-pad. The first game sees you trying to spin a ball around a circle, hitting nasties before they reach the edge. Should just one venture outside the circle, then it’s game over. Hitting A merely changes the direction your ball spins in, so it’s all about timing your presses, and making sure you take into account the obstacles in the ball’s path. The second game sees you holding A and releasing it to propel a spinning stick forward, demolishing blocks and hitting enemies. Should one of said beasties crash into the stick’s circular core - wallop, game over. Game three is like a slow-paced version of Snake, except here your trail sets blocks on fire, the idea being that they’re all destroyed before they reach the bottom of the screen, and that you don’t fence yourself in by slithering down a blind alley. Fail to leave yourself enough wiggle room and that’s it.

The stroke of genius here is that all three games fit together, affecting each other in different ways. When playing alone, the two other games will be taken up by computer-controlled players, and their performances affect yours. The stick can encroach on the circle’s game, whacking the ball or sending blocks to destroy monsters, while defeated foes often spiral off into the other displays, helping to pull off combos by killing multiple enemies in one go. You can even save your own replay data and play it in one window, using that to pull yourself out of a sticky spot in another game. It’s a concept that’s difficult to really get your head around at first, but once you’ve seen it in action, you’ll find it a useful tool to get closer to that elusive score of 1,000,000 points. I’ve not come anywhere near so far, needless to say.

It’s occasionally a little capricious, and its cause-and-effect mechanic is undoubtedly going to be too much for some people, but this is one seriously brain-twisting puzzler which deserves the plaudits its had so far from those who’ve bothered to play it. It’s generous too - offering DS owners the chance to download the game to their handheld for free. Brilliant. 

Pool Revolution: CueSports

A reduction in price (from 800 points to 500) makes Hudson’s ball-potter even more appealing on its US debut. It might not have the presentational razzmatazz of Gameloft’s Midnight Pool - nor that game’s amusing story mode - but it does play a slightly better game of pool (and snooker if you’re that way inclined) and even offers an online mode. Though the latter is marred by the fact that the game uses individual Friend Codes, and not your Wii’s own. Bah.

The cueing mechanics are solid, although it can take quite a while to adjust your aim, particularly when there are plenty of balls left, as the cursor moves much slower when a ball is targeted, allowing you to fine-tune your shot. Still, with several options to tweak your game - from rule adjustments to different ball sets, tables and arenas - as well as a (limited) replay function and a trickshot mode, this represents great value for money, and makes for a fairly enjoyable (if basic) multiplayer experience.

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It’s another of those please-let-this-get-a-western-release games that Japan teases us with every so often. I’ve talked about Fragile in the past, and its gameplay still remains something of an enigma - this trailer shows brief glimpses of melee combat, but it looks like an action-adventure with the emphasis on puzzle-solving and exploration to me - but by golly gosh, it looks really quite stunning in places. It has slight horror leanings, but the feel here is oddly melancholy, the gorgeous music accompanying this trailer suggests a story that could well be a bit of a tear-jerker.

Fragile is out in Japan on January 22nd. Let’s hope for a good Famitsu review and decent sales, as that would certainly make a western release that bit more likely. Alas, it seems to me that it’ll be one of those games that’s warmly embraced by a small niche audience, with only Japanese gamers and westerners fluent in the language able to really get the most out of it.

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It’s no exaggeration to say that Wii Sports is one of the most important videogame releases, not just of this generation, but of all time. It introduced a whole new way to play games, offered a way in to those who’d previously considered games too complex or inacccessible, and is one of the main reasons for the console’s unrivalled success in this generation. While Nintendo has built well on the foundations laid by Wii Sports, it’s arguably the launch title which has had the biggest impact on its host console. For a long time, Wii was a Wii Sports player. No pressure on the sequel, then…

Yet Wii Sports Resort has an ace up its sleeve too, in the form of MotionPlus, the peripheral that, when attached to the Wii remote, will allow it to more effectively recognise movement in 3D space, picking up the most delicate of motions far more accurately than ever before. Sure, it’s bound to lead to more than a few grunts of dissatisfaction at Nintendo bringing out another peripheral, and there will be several complaints that it’s only allowing the remote to do what we were all led to believe in the first place. But if there’s anything Nintendo’s expanded audience wants, it’s more Wii Sports. If it’s not massive, then something has gone seriously awry. It would take a screw-up of epic proportions to stop this being one of the biggest titles of 2009.

So what do we know about Wii Sports Resort so far? In truth, very little. We’ve seen three minigames, only two of which seem to use MotionPlus in any real meaningful way. The dog frisbee game will no doubt be skipped by most of the game’s male players, while it’s fair to say that Nintendo’s ever-growing female audience won’t necessarily be quite so taken with the Wave Race-esque jetskiing. More universally appealing is the sword fighting, with Miis swinging rubber weapons atop a high platform overlooking a pool of water - get knocked back once too often and you’re in for a dunking.

With a rumoured ten games featured this time, it should offer more variety and longevity than Wii Sports, while still providing the thrill of the new in terms of its control. One potential sticking point is that  - like its predecessor - it’s likely to be a more multiplayer focused title. In which case, shouldn’t Nintendo be bundling at least TWO MotionPlus add-ons with the game? Particularly if the rumoured retail price of £15 for the peripheral turns out to be accurate - we can’t see too many people wanting to shell out for four of these. It’ll be interesting to see just how Nintendo handles this - will the games require MotionPlus or simply be improved by the more flexible controls? Will all the minigames feature MotionPlus enhancements, or just a few? Nintendo has a tricky balancing act here - it needs to really sell MotionPlus as a key component to the game (and, indeed, something which future Wii titles will benefit from) while making sure that Wiimote-only players don’t feel left out. If it can somehow get that right, then Wii Sports Resort will be an unqualified success. As it is, it’ll be a big hit, but will that necessarily make for a good game?

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Earlier I discussed several reasons why existing DS owners should consider upgrading to next year’s model, but perhaps the most compelling of them all is the new DSiWare service.

Initially it’ll be the preserve of the real hardcore - those early adopters who’ve picked up a DSi just so their games look even better on those marginally larger screens and who know their way around wi-fi. (As an aside, it seriously concerns me just how many of these casual Wii owners take their console online - worryingly low, I fear.) But there should be plenty on offer which will tempt technophobes into braving online waters. There’s a new camera-based Wario Ware which uses your own shadow to manipulate the on-screen(s) action - after each set playing back the footage of you acting like a buffoon. There are two new Art Style titles - block-puzzling Aquario, and intriguing brain-cruncher Decode.

Perhaps most promisingly of all, there’s the entirely free Ugoku Memo Chou, which has already picked up quite the following in Japan, as it allows you to quickly create simple yet effective flip-book animations from your touchscreen scribbling. Already there are a few videos circling the darker recesses of the internet of fantastic anime-inspired nonsense, but the above example is a good demonstration of what the software is capable of. It could be one of the most essential pieces of software this year, and will (and likely already has) sell a good few DSi consoles on its own.

As long as enough gamers make use of the service, DSiWare could be one of the handheld’s biggest assets in 2009. Now let’s hope for a Spring release for the DSi so we don’t have to hang on to experience these quirky and unique titles which are currently wowing Japanese players.

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Five weeks on, and I’m already getting a little bored of Animal Crossing: City Folk. Sure, it’s a relaxing way to wile away half an hour every day, but the more I play, the stronger the sense of deja vu gets. And the stronger that gets, the more irritating the omissions from the GameCube original get. It’s in danger of turning my general apathy into a sense of total injustice.

I’ve spoken already about one of the most obvious omissions. In the GameCube version, you could download a tool to your GameBoy Advance, allowing you to design t-shirts on the move, bring them home and upload them to your console. Despite the DS being perfect for this sort of thing, this feature is not available in the Wii game. Moreover, tailor Mabel always used to recommend the must-have fashions when you ventured in. Now you’re not given the option to find out what the must-have threads of the season are. The latter might only be a small issue, but it’s symptomatic of the often bizarre tweaks to the template that make it probably the weakest Crossing yet for fans.

Take the house expansion, for example. In the DS game, you can have a back room, and rooms to the left and right as well as an upstairs room. Granted, if other players were sharing your copy of the game they’d have to live in the same house too, but how few people will that have affected? The Wii game offers a larger first room, a second floor and a basement and that’s your lot.

Then there’s the city - it offers a change of scenery but little else, and makes certain tasks more of a chore. Getting your hair done now requires you to leave your village (you could always just pop into the salon in Nookington’s in the DS game) while expressions require you to sit through a hopelessly unfunny thirty seconds of dialogue. With Lyle now fronting the Happy Room Academy, there’s none of that amusing insurance banter, and no reward for getting yourself stung by bees. That had always been a nice little earner in Wild World, but it’s also gone.

As for the decision to allow the ground to wear away where you’ve been walking - well, how silly. A lot of people spend significant amounts of time beautifying their village, and yet they’re more likely than anyone to suffer the problem of grass and snow being eroded into dirt pathways, with every step potentially leaving their town looking less attractive than before. A barren area where a villager’s house used to be is supposed to evoke sadness at their departure, but in reality you’re more annoyed that there’s a big messy-looking patch in its place.

Couple that with the load times as you enter and exit each building - astonishing in this day and age where consoles can stream huge open-world landscapes - and the laggy menus, the occasionally clunky and inconsistent mechanics (I can sell several items at once, but only order one item at a time from my catalogue?) and you’ve arguably got one of Nintendo’s laziest releases ever. What makes it worse is Reggie Fils-Aime’s insistence that this was Nintendo’s big ‘hardcore’ release this winter. The true hardcore will be the ones most ill at-ease with City Folk - it’s only those newcomers that are enjoying the Animal Crossing experience from the first time who won’t feel let down or cheapened by Nintendo’s penny-pinching approach to one of its most novel creations of the past ten years.

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Still no inkling as to when it might come out over here (with DS Lite still selling so well, it’s conceivable Nintendo could wait until around Christmas time) but DSi will almost certainly reach the west in 2009, and will perhaps surprise a few people when it does.

Initial reaction to the console was that it wasn’t really worth bothering with, most gamers seeming happy with their Lites, but once word gets out about the handheld’s new features, plenty will upgrade its status instantly to ‘must-have’.

Early evidence, for example, suggests the Photo Channel is a thing of wonder - allowing you to tweak your shots in numerous amusing (and frequently clever) ways simply by tapping and dragging with the stylus. Is a permanently grumpy relative spoiling your Christmas pics? Simply force a smile onto their sulky face. Mirror effects, morphs, colour bleeds, random doodlings and much more are possible and - more importantly - accessible. Amateur Photoshoppers will be in heaven.

The new channel setup when you boot the DSi up reeks of quality, too, making DS feel even less like a toy and, potentially crucially, less like just a games console. It’s not a portable Zelda/Mario/Brain Training player, but a must-have gadget. Sure, its sound player might be limited and its camera low-res, but Nintendo wasn’t going for a high-end all-singing all-dancing multimedia gadget so much as something which looks pretty damn cool that you can have a lot of fun with.

As if all that wasn’t enough, its matt finish means your console won’t look all horrible and smudgy under a certain light. And then there’s DSiWare to look forward to (more on that later). While it’s easy to see western audiences being slightly wary of upgrading compared with the gadget-obsessed Japanese, Nintendo’s current marketing clout is such that DSi will almost certainly be a massive hit when it, er, hits in 2009.

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Books - knowledge-enhancing, life-enriching, train-journey-killing books. They might make you look pretty clever if you’ve got a hundred of the buggers lined up on your shelves, but unless you’re some kind of neat-freak, they’re bound to gather a fair bit of dust. To save those of us with mite allergies, Nintendo has teamed up with publisher HarperCollins to bring us 100: Classic Book Collection - as its name suggests, a collection of 100 classic books, which are all stored on the one thumbnail-sized cartridge. Technology be a wonderful thing, arrr.

(Sorry, I’ve been reading Treasure Island all day.)

It’s certainly a space saver, but is the DS really well suited to this sort of thing? Well, yes and no. It’s undoubtedly more convenient than lugging around a hundred novels, but there’s no real substitute for paper and print, and the DS screens don’t offer too many words per page - on the smallest font setting, Les Miserables runs to a whopping 11,600 pages. Myopics can increase the text size, but that ups the page count to 17,938. It’s a good job Tolstoy isn’t represented, really.

Still, given the DS’s limitations, developer Genius Sonority has done a pretty good job here. You can simply rifle through the virtual bookshelf by swiping the stylus to either side, then tap to select the novel you want. If you’re unsure what to go for, then you can choose to be asked a series of questions to see which title suits your mood. If it suggests MacBeth, then your mates will know it’s probably not the best day to ask you for that fiver back.

From Adam Bede to Wuthering Heights, there’s a decent mix of genres covered, though the selection is fairly safe. You won’t find any Catcher In the Ryes, 1984s or Clockwork Oranges here, while Shakespeare seems a little over-represented. But then again, these are all titles where copyright has expired, so we were hardly going to get modern classics like The Road or Jordan: A Whole New World.

If you’ve got an iPhone, you might be better off with an e-reader, with which you can grab hold of a much larger selection of titles, with plenty available legitimately for download if you know where to look. But does that give you ambient background noise of parks and train journeys to listen to as you flick through hundreds of virtual pages with your stylus? Nope. There’s even a neat virtual bookmark which saves your place.

Once you’re done with each tome, you can review it with a star rating and pick from a series of words which best represent your feelings on what you just read. You can then upload your rankings via the Wi-Fi connection, which also allows you to download a further 10 novels to add to your already-impressive collection.

It’s certainly well-presented, and at around £19 is fairly attractively-priced. Libraryphobes will find this a worthwhile purchase - others might just prefer the pleasures of a well-thumbed, dog-eared paperback.

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