Halloween might be long gone for 2009, but Japanese horror is fashionable all year round. Or at least Hudson hopes to make it so with Calling.

As the name suggests, there’s an awful lot of cell phone usage in the horror/adventure game. During a demo given to games journalists by the Japanese director, a poor woman finds a haunted mobile phone that just wouldn’t stop ringing. Even worse, she keeps answering it and the ghost on the other end keeps giving her updates on its progress (e.g. “I’m on the second floor landing…”). I imagine it would have been scarier in context, but at the time, it was downright funny. Especially because I had no idea which floor the girl started on, so I wasn’t sure if the ghost was really close or just taking forever to climb the freaking stairs.

Also, if that haunted phone was the ghost’s phone — and she said it was — what phone was the ghost calling from to provide the status updates?

What Is It?
Calling is a horror/adventure game with four main characters for the player to guide through a branching storyline. There are multiple endings, ghostly encounters and creepy environments to explore and hopefully survive.

What We Saw
After watching the demo, games journalists were given the chance to play through a single level starring a male character trapped in the empty apartment of a traditional Japanese doll maker.

How Far Along Is It?
Still in alpha — the game isn’t due out ’til some unspecified time in 2010.

What Needs Improvement?
A Little Bit Waggly: For the most part, the Wiimote’s motion controls are limited to gentle flicks to open doors or slide screens aside. However, there were two instances in the level where a ghost got the jump on the player and to get free you either had to mash the A button with perfect timing (like a quick time event), or just waggle furiously until the ghost let go. Guess which method is easier?

What Should Stay The Same?
It’s Actually Kind of Scary: There was a part in the game where a guy comes upon a room where the sliding doors only open partway. Looking through the door and down, you can see the dead body of the doll maker. After sighting this grisly thing, I turned the character around to go into another room — but I stopped because I heard shuffling and giggling behind me. So I turned the character back around and — gah! — there were dozens of the creepy little dolls filling the slit of the partly-opened doors. Their hair fluttered and their eyes blinked and they were tittering at me in the creepiest way. It was genuinely upsetting.

Movement Is Controlled With The analogue Stick: This is the best possible way to control motion from the first person perspective, I think.

Final Thoughts
I came down pretty hard on Ju-on not because it was a nuanced Japanese horror experience (which Calling also strives to be), but because it fell flat on its face in the scary department. I realise minimalist storytelling is a big part of Japanese horror films — but I think this cost Ju-on dearly in the gameplay department. So already, Calling is a cut above where Ju-on wound up even in this early stage of development. Here’s hoping the final product goes even farther toward that ideal scary experience.

In this moody puzzle game, players take the role of a mysterious person invited to a mysterious birthday party in a mysterious building. Sensing a theme here?

What Is It?
Rooms is a puzzle game where players navigate each room of a hotel by completing a sliding panel puzzle. The player’s character can only occupy one panel at a time and can only move between panels that are connected by ladders, teleporting phone boxes or doors. Each sliding panel puzzle has one gold-lined door within it that you’re trying to move your character to.

What We Saw
I played three intermediate-level puzzles.

How Far Along Is It?
Crazy early days. The game isn’t due out on Wii or DS until some unspecified point in 2010 and the developer is still making gameplay related decisions about what should be in the game.

What Needs Improvement?
Move Tracker: At present, the game doesn’t seem to know or care how many moves it takes you to slide all the panels where they need to be. It’s something the developer might consider adding — and I really hope they do, or else the game will be missing out on a basic layer of skill tracking that games like Professor Layton and the Diabolical Box appeal to.

It’s SO Small: Currently, the puzzle plane on the lower screen has a thick border around it and the individual panels of puzzles are barely bigger than a thumb print. This makes it really hard to see your brown-clad character in the sepia toned rooms and robs Rooms of some of its noir charm by limiting what you can see.

What Should Stay The Same?
Challenging: I didn’t get stuck in any of the three sliding puzzles, but I definitely got confused or turned around a few times. To me, this proves the concept of the game as something I want to take with me on public transit.

The Puzzles Scale Up: The intermediate puzzles were only on a 3×2 grid or a 3×3 grid — but harder levels can scale up to 8×8 girds which will probably take an awful lot of time to sort out.

Platform-Specific Features: The Wii version will have a two-player versus mode where you race each other to complete the puzzle (I assume in shortest amount of time as opposed to least number of moves). Meanwhile, the DS version will let you create your own levels to upload using Wifi for other players to try.

Final Thoughts
I really liked what I saw of Rooms. If it keeps developing along the lines its been using, it’ll shape up into a proper love-child of Professor Layton and Hotel Dusk.

My fondness for baldness has faded since that idyllic time (thanks, puberty) and I no longer need a babysitter to supply my Nintendo fix. However, that feeling of being young and unreasonably anxious about jumping puzzles we gamers call nostalgia never gets old when you see a classic game resurrected on the consoles of today.

What Is It?
Bonk: Brink of Extinction is a brand new adventure for the classic prehistoric character on Xbox Live Arcade, PlayStation Network and WiiWare. There are three worlds with 30 levels total and while the gameplay stays classic (side-scrolling action), everything is rendered in lush 3D.

What We Saw
I played through area 5-1, a verdant jungle level fraught with peril and fruit pickups.

How Far Along Is It?
Still in alpha. The title is due out in spring 2010.

What Needs Improvement?
Ack! 2.5D! I’ve already expressed my distaste for games with fake 2D platforming glued onto 3D environments. However, I admit it’s only really a problem when you either can’t see something in a level or struggle with a jump that looks easy, but actually isn’t because you’re in the wrong plane of depth. Fortunately, Bonk didn’t suffer from the former — just a little bit of the latter in areas where you had to turn around, find a ledge inside a tree and somehow jump up to it. At least there were no cliffs to fall off of…

What Should Stay The Same?
Loving The Power-up Helmets: I only vaguely remember Bonk’s “bonk” powers changing based on which types of meat he ate. I do not have any memory of a Fire Bonk that lets Bonk shoot fireballs or a triceratops skull that both looks neat and does more damage during the bonk attack. Lacking nostalgia or not, though, the different Bonk power-ups keep things interesting and look ridiculously cute.

Gorgeous Graphics: The 3D rendering might cause some clunky platforming, but man does it look pretty.

Yay! It’s Bonk: Bonk rides mighty high on the nostalgia cloud, so high that not even new stuff is likely to bring him down. So if you’re a fan of the classic game, I’m actually not sure why you’re still reading this preview. You’ve already decided to buy it, right?

Final Thoughts
I’m not sure whatever happened to the cool babysitter with the Nintendo. But, Daniel, if you’re out there, don’t worry! I totally grew out of throwing controllers in frustration.

Loosely translated to Deca Sporta Ten Sporting Events On The DS, the game features ten games on, well, the Nintendo DS. Those games feature ping pong, clay pigeon shooting, arm wrestling, golf, skydiving, climbing, bobsledding, rugby, kick volleyball and cheerleading. There are plans for future download updates as well.

Deca Sporta on the DS supports up to six players by wireless connection and will be out this December in Japan.

今度はDSで登場！『DECA SPORTA（デカスポルタ） DSでスポーツ”10″種目!』2009年12月発売！ | インサイド [Inside Games] [Pic]

• Mega Bomberman
• Adventure Island
• Sengoku Mahjong
• Devil Crash

All of these titles are already available on Nintendo’s Virtual Console. They’re priced at ¥600 (SU$6.40) each on the PSN. Look forward to more TurboGrafx-16 games on the PlayStation Network in the future.

[Pic]

Miami Law is a game that wants to be a police drama, balancing action-packed shoot-outs, car chases, crime scene investigation, and detective work in order to create the ultimate cop show for the Nintendo DS. Play as Law Martin from the Miami P.D. or FBI agent Sara Starling as you struggle through mini-game challenges on your quest to uncover a criminal conspiracy.

The DS demo contains two mini-games, “Confirmation of Guard” and “Car Support”, the former being a guard counting game and the latter a high-speed chase with gun play. It’s available right now on the Nintendo Channel of your friendly neighbourhood Wii.

DECA SPORTS, Hudson’s take on Wii Sports with added Adidas advertising, may not be a very good game, but since when does that matter.

The game is a hit! Developer Hudson Soft has announced that it has shipped 2 million copies of the game worldwide since it launched last spring.

Like Wii Sports, the game has players compete in various sporting activities by swinging the Wii Remote around and whatnot. However, it includes many sports not featured in Wii Sports such as archery, badminton, basketball, beach volleyball, curling, figure skating and super-cross.

I don’t use “button masher” as a cheap label for an antiquated genre. I use it in the most literal sense, because this is an iPhone port of Hudson’s famous Shooting Watches.

History lesson: Hudson talisman Takahashi Meijin (aka Master Higgins) got kinda famous in the 80’s for being able to press a button 16 times a second. Which is pretty awesome. Anyway, to cash in on this, in 1987 Hudson released something called the “Shooting Watch”, which let you try and match/beat Meijin’s score by calculating how quickly you could press its buttons.

It’s this Shooting Watch that’s been ported to the iPhone (and is going for $0.99). It’s not going to work anywhere near as well as the real deal – no way the iPhone’s screen can register that kind of frenzied button mashing – but that doesn’t matter. It’s a crazy port of a crazy game-related thing invented by a crazy man, and fully-functional or not, that should bring joy to your life, if only for a day.

[Image: Gpara]

Yes, there are nine exclamation points in the title of Nippon Ichi’s new WiiWare game, a currently Japan-only title that captures the raw thrill of hitchhiking without the murderous side effects.

Let’s Zenryoku Hitchhike!!!!!!!!! focuses on the more attractive aspects of hitchhiking—thumbing efficiently for free rides on cows, tractors and rickshaws—with none of the negatives—having your corpse dumped behind the brush of an interstate rest area.

Even if the hitchhiking gameplay doesn’t immediately appeal to you, we’re certain the bright pompadours and masculine jumpsuits will. We haven’t heard yet of a publisher picking this guaranteed cash cow here in North America, but if someone signs on for Let’s Zenryoku Hitchhike!!!!!!!!! publishing duties, we’ll give ‘em the thumbs up.

Paper thin walls? No worries, microphone peripheral “Urusakunai Kara OK!” (Not Noisy Kara OK!) lets Wii owners sing their hearts in Hudson’s Karaoke JOYSOUND Wii.

The Wii title, released last December in Japan, comes packaged with a mic and is a collaboration with karaoke chain JOYSOUND.

Thin apartment walls and concern for disturbing the neighbours is one reason why singing-based games like Karaoke JOYSOUND Wii have a hard time in Japan — not to mention prevalent karaoke parlors.

The Urusakunai Kara OK! mic isn’t exactly brand new, but the Wii-USB-capabilities are. You’ll be glad to know that it’s possible to wash the mute mic shell out with soap and water.

うるさくないカラOK！ミュートマイクUSB [JTT via Game Watch Impress]