Pokémon Black and White were a breath of fresh air for a series that, while not exactly stagnant, was best known for incremental adjustments over dramatic changes. Restricting players to only the 150-ish brand new critters until they became Champion was like throwing even fifteen-year veteran trainers back to Red and Blue for the first time: everything was new, and nothing was certain. The comparison of Black and White to Red and Blue is fitting, as there are many parallels between the newest iterations, Black Version 2 and White Version 2, and the follow-ups to the originals, Gold and Silver. READ MORE

Since the very moment I was aware of both tactics games and Pokemon, I’ve wanted a Pokemon tactics game. It seemed like the perfect fit; while the series had all this fun customization and management, the real frustration was in the linearity and repetition of the one-on-one, menu-based battles. But despite the constant flow of spin-off titles, we weren’t getting it. Pokemon Dash, you guys? Really?

Apparently what it needed was some outside intervention. READ MORE

Since pretty much all of the Nintendo handheld attention for the last several months has been focused on the 3DS, those of us who have chosen to remain DS owners have felt somewhat ignored. Fortunately, a gentleman never abandons his fans unless he absolutely has to, and so Professor Layton has arrived once more to grace the puzzle-lovers among us with more brain burners. READ MORE

Solatorobo is definitely an oddball of a game to decipher. If you picked the box up at a game store and looked right at it, there are probably a couple things that go through your mind: “This game has furries.” “Aw sweet, it comes with a soundtrack.” “How in the world do you even pronounce this title?”

Most that we’ve mentioned this game to seemed to be turned off by that whole furry thing, and decided to just dismiss the game. StarFox had a cast of similarly anthropomorphic animals, though, and that seemed to go over pretty well, don’t you think? READ MORE