Shortly after March 12th this year, my entire world will grind to a complete halt. That date marks the release of Rittai Picross, Nintendo’s 3D take on the life-eatingly compulsive puzzler which enslaved my DS (and me) for several months in 2007.

It’s pretty much exactly the game you’d expect it to be - Picross but in 3D. You’re given a number of cubes with numbers on to chisel away at until you’re left with a vaguely recognisable (if blocky) rendition of a dog or a plane or a baseball player. It appears to be completely stylus controlled - using swipes to rotate the view and stabs to tap away any unwanted cubes, with an icon swapping between a hammer and a paintbrush, the latter to colour in areas which are part of the finished shape. Eventually you’re left with the solution, which then animates in a rudimentary but entirely charming way. And that’s about it, really.

Presentationally, it’s giant strides ahead of Picross DS and its peers (Hudson’s Illust Logic and Colorful Logic remains the best take, for my money) and it’s the logical next step for the game. One concern remains over how exactly the more complex puzzles will be presented - the official site merely offering a few examples of early brainteasers - but this is Nintendo, and I’m sure there’ll be an elegant solution to that particular problem.

It’s Wi-Fi compatible, too. Whether that will mean downloadable puzzles or online multiplayer I’m not too sure, but either way, I’ve cleared a couple of weeks’ worth of evenings in my diary already.

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Atlus, current holder of the World’s Busiest Developer title, has announced the forthcoming North American release of Knights in the Nightmare, a new pigeonhole-avoiding curio from the creator of unpronounceable GBA strategy-RPG Yggdra Union.

A pseudo-sequel to that underrated gem (which was a bit like Advance Wars only 87 times more complicated), Knights sees you controlling a wisp with your stylus, sliding it across the bottom screen to manouevre it on the top. It’s a bit strategy, a bit bullet-hell shooter, apparently - with you collecting items and having to dodge projectiles simultaneously. It sounds a bit tricky, and Atlus admits there’s a steep learning curve but that there’s a lengthy tutorial which guides you through the weirdness.

Once you’ve got your head around the idea, you’ll be dipping into item-management, troop levelling and strategic planning as well as fast-paced scrapping, bobbing, weaving and collecting. It’s making my head spin just thinking about it - and the video above didn’t really help any in explaining exactly what the chuff it is you’re supposed to be doing. But I digress. There’s a great reward when you finish the game - the chance to play it through again as the game’s antagonist. Nice.

It’s out in the US on June 2nd and has some pretty awesome boxart which can be seen below.  Another one to add to the ‘must import’ list, then…

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The hound that howled is set to get his own album - yep, the regular Saturday night visitor to your Animal Crossing village, the incomparable KK Slider, will be strumming his merry way through a selection of his greatest coffee shop hits, with a CD set for release in Japan this April.

You’ll get all of the background music from the game, along with that oh-so-hummable title tune, but the most important addition is the selection of tunes that KK bashes out on a weekly basis at his favourite haunt, The Roost. With such a vast repertoire to his name, it seems that the CD won’t feature all his songs - the music-loving mutt needs help to pick the best of his renditions for inclusion on the disc.

Aniplex.co.jp is where all Japanese Crosso fans will be going to lodge their votes - with a closing date of Monday March 2nd to get your choices in. The CD itself is launched on April 22nd, and retails for a price of 2310 yen (roughly £17.20).

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Japanese Wii owners were this week given the opportunity to purchase a digital representation of the manga comic, Princess Ai - available on the Wii Shop Channel for 500 points courtesy of publisher SunSoft Books. The software uses the Wii remote to scroll through the pages, and further paid downloadable content will be available - initially the manga came in three volumes, so presumably the initial outlay is for the first, with the second and third available for extra Wii points.

There are two particular points of interest here. The first is that English subtitles are available throughout, though perhaps that’s not such a surprise when you discover the second reason this is interesting - the manga itself was co-created by none other than mildly bonkers rock widow Courtney Love.

The manga has a few parallels to Love’s own life - ‘ai’ is Japanese for ‘love’, while the amnesiac protagonist has a boyfriend named Kent, reportedly based on Love’s late husband, Nirvana singer-songwriter Kurt Cobain. Ai also owns a heart-shaped box - clearly a reference to the Nirvana song of the same name.

While the manga itself has been published in other countries, this is likely to remain in Japan, though it’s nice to have the option of English subtitles for a change. If only more Japanese titles gave English speakers the opportunity to enjoy them, too. Nintendo, please take note - oh, and offer us poor, underserved westerners downloadable subtitle packs for Another Code: R and Captain Rainbow while you’re at it, please.

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Atlus, publisher of quirky (and often brilliant) Japanese games in the US, has picked up another title to localise. This time it’s one of Marvelous Entertainment’s games, a strange puzzle-platform hybrid named Steal Princess.

It looks as gloriously niche as most Atlus titles tend to do, with the titular heroine swinging, jumping and scrapping her way through the game’s 150-plus isometric levels. The Wi-Fi logo on the box refers to the ability to create your own levels and share them with other players.

Perhaps the most exciting thing about Steal Princess is that it comes from Climax Entertainment, who created rock-hard Genesis/MegaDrive platformer Landstalker - the sort of game which is spoken about in hushed tones by retro geeks, and which appeared on the Virtual Console in late 2007. This looks to feature even more intricate platforming, and should thus offer the kind of old-school challenge that people complain we don’t see enough of any more.

Steal Princess launches in North America on 24th March. No-one’s picked it up for a PAL release just yet, and this may well be one title us Europeans have to import if we want to experience its beautiful strangeness.

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The latest must-have non-game if you’re a Japanese DS owner is Minna de Jibun no Setsumeisho: B-Kata, A-Kata, AB-Kata, O-Kata. Instead of training your brain or body, or teaching you how to cook, this latest life-enhancer apparently offers help in solving identity crises by analysing your personality through your blood type.

Based on million-selling Japanese self-help book Jibun no Setsumeisho: B-Kata, this software works on the belief that a person’s blood type affects their behaviour and thought processes. Upon inputting your blood type, you’ll be asked a series of probing questions, which in turn will theoretically give you a better inkling about the underlying forces which drive you.

There are around 800 questions featured on the cartridge, covering all major blood types. Additional writings and pictures will apparently “make your journey to self-discovery as enjoyable as possible.”

Chances of a western release are somewhere between “none” and “are you kidding?”, so it looks as if us westerners are likely to remain maladjusted for the forseeable future, while our Japanese cousins walk around with a new sense of purpose.

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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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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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Sonic creator Yuji Naka has been a busy bunny of late - his new development team Prope, not satisfied with sweetly innocent throw-and-catch sim Let’s Catch, has crafted a game where you don’t have to pick up a controller at all. Because Let’s Tap is controlled by tapping on a cardboard box, with an upside-down remote positioned horizontally at the end of it.

Weird? Yep, very. But it works. The game comes with a box intended for this very purpose, though you can use pretty much any container of a similar size - the example shown when you’re learning the controls is a tissue box, so you’ve got an idea of the kind of proportions I’m talking about.

The first of five modes is named ‘running tap’ which sees you guiding a simplistic figure across a neon track against three other runners - tapping with your left and right hands helps you to run faster, and pressing down sharply executes a jump, allowing you to clear hurdles. Once I’d recalibrated the remote to a slightly more sensitive setting (I was really having to batter the box to action a leap) it worked just fine. There are plenty of levels, and it’s bound to be a hoot in multiplayer, assuming you’ve got a few small cardboard boxes lying around (a DS Lite box is just about perfect).

There’s a rhythm-action game which requires you to tap along with the beat - while the tunes are really quite catchy, it seemed quite hard to fail. It wasn’t entirely clear when I should have been tapping with my left hand and when with my right, but that’s the language barrier for you. With most of the menu options in English, it’s fairly import-friendly, but this was the one game where I wasn’t sure about what I was supposed to be doing.

The third mode tasks you with removing hexagonal tiles, which are stacked up with an item on top - the idea being that you remove them all without letting said object slip. You tap to select a block, tap again to stop a meter showing which direction you’ll be removing it in, and then gently tap to shake the tile free. It’s very tricky, but will undoubtedly be rewarding once you master it - I got down to two layers before losing out.

A strange Balloon Fight-esque game is the fourth option - instead of pressing buttons to keep your avatar afloat, you’re powering a strange creature by tapping, and destroying obstacles with missiles fired with a firmer whack on the box. I’ve not spent much time with this yet, but it looks like it could be addictive.

Finally, there are several visualisers - ranging from fireworks displays, with explosions triggered whenever you tap, to sumi-e paintings where your fingers daub splats of paint or longer brushstrokes for more vigorous taps. The fishtank one, where you’re presented with a series of koi carp, turtles and other fish as you create ripples in the water, is utterly gorgeous. One of these offers more of a game-like experience, rather akin to those bath toys where you press to squirt bubbles to manouevre balls into small containers - here you tap to guide spherical gems into jars of increasing height.

It’s all fairly slight, but it does offer a pretty unique experience (even if it could reasonably be replicated with the DK Bongos). Innovation for innovation’s sake? Perhaps, but then it’s nice to see someone trying something different on Wii, and it’s quite beautifully presented. It’s very Japanese, but let’s hope Let’s Tap makes it to Europe - though it would certainly benefit from a budget price. I’ll have a full review for you very soon.

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Let’s Catch comes from Yuji Naka’s Prope - it’s a WiiWare accompaniment to retail title Let’s Tap, though it bears absolutely no resemblance to the box-tapping weird-em-up. It’s available for a slightly-expensive 1000 points on the Japanese WiiWare service and takes up just 91 blocks of your Wii fridge.

It’s a game that’s about throwing a baseball to someone and catching it. And throwing it and catching it again. And again. And again. And…you get the picture, I’m sure.

It might not sound like the most compelling of concepts, but there’s something altogether charming about Let’s Catch - a gentle innocence that sucks you in. It’s oddly addictive, as you turn the remote perpendicular to the telly and gently lob the ball to your AI chum. You get points for each successful throw and catch - both you and your partner, so don’t give them any tough catches. Throwing requires you to hold A and B and flick the remote forward - naturally you can twist it to throw the ball to either side, while the speed of the flick affects the pace at which you throw the ball. Catching simply requires you to press A and B at the right time - but the timing for perfect catches is incredibly exacting, and you must press both buttons simultaneously. The more perfect catches you take, the more your points tally will rise - chain ‘perfect combos’ together and your tally will rise more rapidly (and you’ll usually be given an extra ball). You’re initially set a target of 400 points and given a certain number of balls to achieve that total. That then moves up to 1000, 1800, 2800 and 4000. Your AI partner levels up as you get better, eventually up to a maximum of three stars, whereupon you can swap to a new partner, who’ll either throw harder or faster, but who will often help you get more points once you get good. If you drop the ball, you have to go and fetch it (waggle the remote to run quicker) and will lose a ‘life’. Initially you’ll get five, but later partners only allow three mistakes. Though perfect catches cancel out a mistake each, so you can pull yourself out of trouble with some well-timed catching.

That’s about it for the main mode, save for a UFO that pops up every now and again, forcing you to time your throws a little more carefully. There are multiplayer variations on the same theme, and a couple of other games, one involving you knocking out numbers on a board (which is where your throw strength and direction plays a more significant part) and another where a bomb changes hands, its timer going down by 1, 2, or 3 for catches which are merely good, normal or bad as opposed to perfect. Whoever is holding the bomb when the timer ticks down to zero loses one of their three lives.

Let’s Catch looks like it could be a good laugh in multiplayer, but I enjoyed the hour or so I spent with it this afternoon on my own. The gently lilting background music is particularly praiseworthy - giving a sweetly relaxing feel to this innocent virtual pastime. At 1000 points it’s definitely overpriced, but would be worth a look should it make it to Europe at a lower price point.

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