(Here are the rest of the notable North American game releases between July 2006 and September 2006!)
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Nintendo Wave:
Fortnight
Fortnight, not to be confused with the OTL game Fortnite, is an adventure title reminiscent of the 3-D Zelda games. It features a warrior protagonist exploring a series of ruins in order to save his world from a terrible curse. Apart from a somewhat unique mechanic in which the warrior is able to transform into a wolf to attack his foes and reach different areas, it's fairly generic game mostly praised for its dungeon design and art direction. It achieves limited commercial success.
Foxhole
Foxhole is a third person shooting title about an anthropomorphic fox who arms himself with a variety of increasingly ludicrous weapons. The game parodies action movies and action games in general, and sort of plays like a mix of OTL's Ratchet and Clank and TTL's Commander Keen games. While it's a fun game and arguably a great one, featuring gorgeous animation, outstanding voice acting, and creative weapons, it does get accusations of being a bit of a copycat due to the existence of titles like Star Fox and Outfoxed on the market, limiting this game's commercial potential.
Ridge Racer Retro
An arcade-styled racer made to play like the original games, Ridge Racer Retro is a fun little arcade throwback that essentially serves as an enhanced remake of the original with a new graphical presentation, enhanced sound, and some new tracks and cars. A fun game that averages around an 8/10 amongst reviewers, the lack of features such as online play does draw some criticism.
Star Wars: Rebel Legends
An action-based Star Wars title that features four different quests and then a fifth one after beating the first four that ties the others together, the game features four rebel heroes, including a young Han Solo, giving each of them their own quest and then having them all come together at the end to take down a Super Star Destroyer. While fairly hyped before its release due to being a Star Wars game, it's ultimately a disappointment. The four heroes all play very similarly, making the quests seem like a repetitive slog, and then the final quest, meant to be a spectacular conclusion, ends up being a bit of a dud. It's seen as one of the more disappointing games of the year, and the sales figures reflect this.
Contra: Suicide Mission
A top-down Contra game featuring the traditional run and gun gameplay translated into a 3-D style, this is a decent enough run and gun. Its protagonist is a soldier who takes on an impossible mission, going by himself to battle an entire alien army as the human race evacuates the planet. However, the soldier discovers a secret superweapon that might just give humanity a chance to save its home. It's meant to return to the traditional Contra difficulty, and it's definitely one of the Wave's hardest games, with more than a dozen blistering missions where the player finds themselves surrounded by deadly foes. The game gets mixed praise from critics: the gameplay and weapon selection are praised, but the game's difficulty is obviously a mixed bag for some, and the camera can be tricky as well, as when it's zoomed in it's hard to see what's surrounding the player. It's clear that Contra isn't a premiere game franchise anymore, but Suicide Mission is still a solid game that gives fans of the classic series an updated take on one of the original Nintendo Hard franchises.
Doom 3
The massively hyped PC hit finally comes to the Nintendo Wave in a port that features all the levels, gameplay, and content of the original, at the cost of a massive hit to the game's graphics. It's still one of the best looking Wave titles, but looks nowhere near as good as it did on PC. As for the game itself, it's fairly similar to OTL's title, featuring a more story-based quest and featuring a lot of horror. The plot has changed fairly significantly from OTL's game, depicting a squad of futuristic space marines taking the fight to a demonic invasion of Jupiter's moon Io, battling aliens on both the volcanic surface of the planet and in the depths of a massive base underneath that the demons have ransacked. It's as brutal and terrifying as OTL's game, and while the graphics have taken a hit, it's still an outstanding FPS with a similar reception to the OTL Xbox port. The long delay between the release of the PC game (which itself was heavily delayed) and the Wave port does kill some of the hype, but sales are still quite good, making it one of the top selling Wave FPS games of the year.
Impact
Impact is a 3-D fighting game with an emphasis on powerful strikes. It features a realistic graphical style and somewhat down to earth characters, with a realistic tournament setting without some of the more fantastical storylines seen in other fighting games. It's sort of hybrid of a Tekken style game and a UFC match, and is considered one of the better fighting games of the year, with decent sales and an eventual sequel on the seventh generation consoles.
Okami
Okami is an adventure title published by Capcom exclusively for the Nintendo Wave. Like IOTL, Okami features a wolf protagonist named Amaterasu, but the game's graphical style is vastly different from OTL's game. Because the Nintendo Wave is significantly more powerful than the OTL PS2, a more realistic 3-D graphical style is utilized, and the Celestial Brush system from OTL is butterflied away. This does make for a significantly different experience, and the game feels more like a mix between a hack-and-slash and a Zelda-like title, playing almost like a proto-Bayonetta or a Devil May Cry type of game. Despite the change in graphical style, Okami still takes place in a beautiful world with some of the best graphical rendering on the Wave. Amatarasu's quest still focuses on ridding the land of a great curse brought on by Orochi, and must explore the realm, assisting people and finding ancient treasures throughout, growing gradually stronger as the player solves puzzles, fights enemies, and gains Praise by completing various tasks. There are a number of differences in TTL's plot, including the introduction of a powerful and vengeful warrior god who obstructs Amaterasu's quest, and the goddess of moonlight, Tsuki-Yomi, who serves as a rival of sorts to Amaterasu. Both of them, however, eventually come to respect Amaterasu and aid her in her quest. Ultimately, Okami is seen as a fantastic adventure game, though not quite the distinct or unique game it was IOTL, due to the loss of the unique cel shaded style. Because of Capcom's ongoing relationship with Apple, Nintendo doesn't hype Okami as much as it probably deserves to be, resulting in the game selling poorly, similarly to IOTL, and because of the lack of a distinct art style, the game becomes somewhat forgotten compared to what it was IOTL. While OTL's game would have been perfect for an iTwin part, Apple doesn't take much interest in the game ITTL, so it never gets a rerelease to a new console, becoming instead a relatively obscure and forgotten classic that's mostly remembered as a game that would be the bridge between Devil May Cry and Hideki Kamiya's successor series.
The Containers 2
The sequel to the 2003 game The Containers, The Containers 2 sees Carter and Julie return to capture and absorb mysterious energy that pops up all over the world, gaining superpowers that they use to battle strange creatures and malevolent people. This sequel features similar gameplay to the original, but has more of a horror motif, with horror-themed paranormal occurrences such as skeletons, witches, ghosts, and vampires. While there are a few scary moments, there's nothing too gory or over the top, and this remains a mostly lighthearted game in the vein of the Martin Mystery series. Capcom hypes this one a lot more than Okami, and it performs rather well, selling around the same number of copies as the first game. It's this franchise that Apple is really interested in for the iTwin, and the third Containers game would appear on that console in 2009.
Microsoft Xbox:
Dungeon Siege II
Released to the Xbox about a year after its release on PC, this game features similar action RPG gameplay to the original and a much wider skill and class tree than its predecessor. The player must team up with a group of ragtag misfits and battle against a powerful coven of dark wizards, scouring dungeons for treasure along the way. A fairly straightforward RPG, it's still more positively received than the original, though the Xbox version features significantly worse graphics than the PC version and doesn't feature that game's add-on content either. Reviews for the Xbox version range from mediocre to good, and sales are rather poor.
Enchanted Arms
A Japanese SRPG that was released for the PS3 and Xbox IOTL, it's an Xbox exclusive in North America ITTL (though it does get a Wave release in Japan). Notable for its large cast of playable characters and multitude of anime cutscenes, it's considered one of the best JRPGs on the Xbox, though that doesn't say very much.
Myst: Excavation
The last Myst game released on the Xbox, this is an adventure/puzzle game that features old-school Myst gameplay with a 3-D interface, allowing the player to explore various areas and uncover the mysteries found there. It takes place in modern times, the protagonist is a young man helping to excavate an ancient ruin, who stumbles upon an artifact that causes him to fall into an ancient city ruin, where he must learn what happened to the city in order to escape. Like the previous Myst game for the Xbox, Excavation gets strong critical reviews. It looks beautiful while capturing the mystery and isolation of the earliest games in the series, and is ultimately a financial success, if not a very big seller. The game does do quite well on the PC as well, selling over a million copies there. Myst has quietly kept a strong following over the years and is still known as one of the premier PC game franchises with a quiet but surprisingly large following, and has mostly kept gameplay fairly true to the original, not mixing things up or overhauling its formula too much.
Rooms Of Doom
Rooms Of Doom is a wacky third person shooter title built for multiplayer play, with lots of traps, very agile characters, and strange arenas. It's actually more fun as a local multiplayer party/LAN game than an online title, and makes some waves even if it's not an extremely popular game. It would later resurface on the Xbox 2 to a bit more success.
Warcraft: The Unwavering Horde
A spinoff title of the Warcraft series, this combines RTS gameplay with action RPG gameplay, featuring smaller scale battles than the main PC game, and also incorporating some of the storylines from World Of Warcraft. Its storyline depicts a powerful Horde general raising a massive army to invade Azeroth, and the protagonist must unify a squad of heroic soldiers to stop their advance. It's hyped up as a decently good Warcraft spinoff, and gets solid reviews and decent sales. It's obviously not a console adaptation of World Of Warcraft, but it's quite fun regardless, and Blizzard would continue putting out Warcraft games for Xbox systems for the time being.
Pariah
An FPS for the Microsoft Xbox, Pariah is similar to the OTL game which sees a solider named Jack Mason fighting an invading horde of creatures from another world. Unlike OTL's game, TTL's game has a much more robust plot (and doesn't have Mason sacrificing himself to save Karina at the end, instead having the two of them fight their way out of the Shroud HQ together and defeating the final boss, a massive fusion between a Shroud bioweapon and a traitorous human soldier) and is a lot less buggy, due to the increased development type from OTL's game. Because of this, the critical reception is significantly better, making Pariah one of the more popular FPS titles of the year on the Xbox.
Game Boy Supernova:
Battle: March Across History
A hybrid RTS/air combat/tank/FPS game, this game sees players fighting out battles Advance Wars style and then going into a brief combat mode to play out the battle, with numerous historical battles included. It's an innovative game, and well reviewed, but because it's on a handheld it can't have nearly the scale that other games have. The aerial combat is nice but not on the scale that Ace Combat is, the infantry battles aren't done as well as Call of Duty, etc. Many reviewers point out how much of a shame it is that this game isn't on a next-generation system, but it does sell well enough to make that a possibility down the road.
Fairytale Untold
Fairytale Untold is a Squaresoft SRPG and the direct sequel to the 1998 RPG Fairytale, picking up a few years after that game leaves off. It features the powerful fairy warrior Claris, the kind fairy mage Virtuosa, and the brave fairy queen Ashlyn leading an army against a powerful dark force causing the undead to rise all over the world. The heroes are divided into three different armies, with Claris leading one army, Virtuosa leading the second army, and Ashlyn leading the third. Each character has their own separate campaign, not fighting together until the three armies finally come together toward the end of the game. The three armies have separate recruits and a separate inventory, though there are points in the game where the three women communicate with each other and can trade certain items through the aether. The battle system is party-based, somewhat like the combat system in the Devil Survivor games: each army has eighteen units that fight in groups of three, with one character assigned as the leader. The combat system is a streamlined version of the combat system from the Ultra Nintendo games: when a party meets the enemy on the field, they enter a separate battle screen and fight utilizing an ATB combat system where the battle lasts a certain period of time, with the attacking party gaining tempo and going first. Each party of three has a leader, and when the leader is killed, that unit can no longer act until the leader is revived. If Claris, Virtuosa, or Ashlyn are killed in combat, it's an automatic Game Over. Each army has its own different quirks in both combat and recruitment: Virtuosa is a kind and lenient leader and showers her army with praise. This causes them to gain experience faster, but their skills level up more slowly, and certain units are unable to be recruited or will be disobedient. Claris is a strict leader and her army will level up more slowly, but will gain skills faster: however, certain classes will see their morale drop. Ashlyn is better at recruiting allies to her army, but her units critical hit less often and also use combo attacks less. Recruits can either be named characters or generic ones: though generic characters are much more common, named recruits have special skills and are more powerful, and it's encouraged to recruit as many of them as possible. As for the other characters from the original Fairytale, it's a while before any of them become available for the party, but eventually, Claris can recruit Ephret, Virtuosa can recruit Finn, and Ashlyn can recruit Remia. Pauldron and Schrall aren't playable. The game features stylized graphics rendered in a beautiful artistic style that looks good on the Game Boy Supernova, and features voice acting from the cast of the original game, though there's not a lot of it: voice acting is limited to a little bit in cutscenes and various lines during battle, with most dialogue scenes rendered using text and characters' faces, and not voiced.
The plot of the game sees the peace from the end of the original game shattered when the dead begin to rise up and attack the living. The dead, along with their monster allies, begin to form a powerful army, that divides into three columns and attacks a number of human settlements. Ashlyn and Claris decide to form their own armies to take on the threat, and Virtuosa gathers up her numerous fairy friends to help. The three each engage in their own campaigns, which players can switch between (though they can't advance too far in one without advancing the other two). Each campaign has four chapters with at least one mission in each chapter (there are a total of 38 missions in all, along with side missions along the way). Eventually, the three armies unite for one final grand campaign, in which the player can put their best 18 characters in an army to take on the final missions (Claris, Virtuosa, and Ashlyn are required for these missions, and they can even be in the same party, though it's not recommended since it's still game over if one of them dies). The main villain of the game is the Revenant Witch, a powerful undead sorceress with immense power, who seeks to slaughter the creatures of the world so that they may become dead and come under her control. The heroes unite to defeat the witch, and the world is saved once again. Fairytale Untold is one of the more hyped Supernova games of the year when it's released, and reviews for the game are quite good, with most of the criticism directed toward quality of life issues (including the fact that if one of the main girls dies, it's game over). The game's music (penned by Yasunori Mitsuda), graphics, and gameplay are all highly praised, and it's one of the year's best reviewed SRPGs and considered an excellent continuation of the original Fairytale game and of the series itself.
Severscape
Severscape is a strange RPG, notable for being an ambitious 3-D RPG on the Supernova. It features a relatively emotionless protagonist who gains power from forming emotional bonds with other characters and then severing those bonds, causing what's known as a “severance in the soul realm”. At first, the people the protagonist bonds with don't know of this special power, but later as the protagonist makes stronger connections with people, they are informed of this bond and know that eventually this person they care about will be forced to betray them in order to gain enough power to battle the threats to their world. The game utilizes a turn-based combat system with parties of three, in which the protagonist's emotional bonds build over the course of many battles. The main villain is a similar character who also severs his bonds to gain power, though the villain does this by killing his loved ones while the protagonist simply does it by betraying them emotionally. It's an intriguing and unique game, but a repetitive battle system and fairly boring characters ultimately make this game a critical disappointment, and it doesn't sell very well, either in North America or Japan.
Soulblazer: Heavenly Host
Enix's sequel to Soulblazer, the classic SNES adventure game, this is a dungeon crawler/adventure title with similar gameplay and enhanced graphics, featuring the same protagonist from the original game. The player can use sword thrusts and magic in combat, though the battle system has seen some upgrades, allowing three spells at once and featuring somewhat more complex sword combat as well. The plot sees the Master once again calling his divine hero to battle after a tyrannical king once again takes hold of the land. This time, rather than making a deal with the devil, the king, known as Fourcant, has found three ancient treasures of evil and is using their powers to enforce his will over the land. The hero, who has been living a peaceful life with his bride Lisa who has just given birth to their child, reluctantly returns to battle. The Master grants the hero a new body, that of a mighty angelic warrior, in order to battle Fourcant's evil forces. The hero battles his way through a total of eight dungeons, defeating deadly enemies and bosses at each turn, before finally reaching Fourcant and defeating him. Considered a fun throwback to classic adventure games on the SNES and SNES-CD, Soulblazer: Heavenly Host gets generally positive reviews, though it doesn't sell nearly as well as Quintet's last big project, Fullmetal Alchemist, and is considered somewhat of a commercial failure, nixing plans for a follow-up game to Illusion Of Gaia or Terranigma, and convincing Quintet to focus their efforts on Fullmetal Alchemist and a possible ActRaiser continuation.
Thrillseekers: Extreme Adventures
In a departure from other games in the series, Thrillseekers: Extreme Adventures is an action platformer, featuring Alex, Stacy, Vivian, Elissa, Kirsten, and Marina as playable characters who use their extreme sports skills to clear obstacles and battle a variety of enemies across five worlds and 30 stages. The plot is that an earthquake near San Francisco unleashed a strange gas that has turned people into monsters and villains, and the girls, who are mysteriously immune, are the only ones who can solve the mystery of the gas and save everyone. It's a highly experimental game for the franchise, meant to promote a line of action “hero” toys, and non-canon to the series timeline (the framing device is a really weird dream Alex has after gorging on pizza). Each of the girls has their own separate skills, with Alex's skateboard able to cause earth-based combo damage, Stacy able to use her science to create tools to blast her enemies away, Marina able to use water powers and summon aquatic animals, Vivian able to perform insane bike stunts and light herself on fire like Ghost Rider, Elissa utilizing the wind and gaining the ability to fly, and Kirsten freezing her enemies and snowboarding off of them. The game features a decent amount of voice acting, but not as much as in previous titles, and cutscenes (which are animated and not 3-D rendered) are fairly short. While the game doesn't enjoy the excellent reception of previous titles in the series, it's still a fun platformer that combines Mario-style platforming with extreme sports gameplay and even a bit of beat-em-up action. It's mostly geared toward young fans, who buy enough copies of the game to make it successful, albeit not a massive hit like the main console games. It would get at least one sequel.
Battletoads in Beatdown City
The return of traditional-style Battletoads, this game is a Rare-developed beat 'em up sidescroller for the Game Boy Supernova, featuring Rash, Zitz, and Pimple doing battle in a massive city full of bad guys and fighters known as Beatdown City. Beatdown City is ruled by its evil mayor, Mayor Romplestomper, an evil anthropomorphic tiger with massive boots and a massive criminal empire. Of course, as it turns out, the mayor is being manipulated by the Dark Queen, using her powers of seduction to control Romplestomper into recruiting an army to help her take over the world. The Battletoads must fight their way through the city, defeating the various street gangs along the way. The game features some fairly punishing difficulty, but nothing quite on the level of the NES or SNES games, and the difficulty mostly comes from some really tough boss fights. The Battletoads eventually make it to Romplestomper, and after defeating him, are forced to take on the Dark Queen and an army of gangsters to save the day. Hailed as a return to old school Battletoads, Beatdown City is considered a fairly successful game both critically and commercially, and Rare is forced to ponder a return to consoles for the IP, but first, they decide to make a dream crossover follow-up for the Supernova in 2008...
iPod Play:
Aerio: Find The World
The first handheld installment in the Aerio series, Find The World takes place after Aerio 4: Sacrifice, and sees the titular heroine trapped in a world between life and death, a world of darkness populated by lost souls and frightful horrors, where she has to fight her way out. The gameplay is similar to the console Aerio titles, though Aerio lacks most of her wind powers and has to use light powers instead, which she gains by freeing trapped souls and finding light in treasure boxes. The game features a more enclosed, scaled down world from previous titles in the series, and has more dungeon crawling and close-quarters combat, with some puzzles in the mix as well. The game ends with Aerio still trapped outside the world of the living, but now hopeful, filled with light with most of her old powers restored. The game proves both commercially and critically successful, though not quite to the degree of the last couple of console games. It would ultimately set up the Aerio games that would see release on the iTwin down the road.
Starcraft
A port of the 1998 PC RTS classic, Starcraft features enhanced graphics, an expanded campaign, and a control scheme designed to allow a similar degree of micromanagement to the PC version of the game. The controls are a bit clunky to get used to at first, but the game is a decent fit for the iPod Play, and it features both local and online gameplay, which functions decently, albeit a lot slower than the PC version. It's a decent port, but only for people who absolutely need Starcraft on the go, and sales are a bit lacking, with mostly empty online lobbies.
The Raid 2
The sequel to the iPod Play's launch FPS hit, The Raid 2 sees the protagonist of the previous game return, now as a sergeant leading a squad of troops. The campaign has been expanded from the original game, and the multiplayer is much more robust, and overall the game is significantly more complete than the original. One of the iPod Play's best FPS titles to date, it averages a solid 8/10 and scores decent sales.
Stank
Stank is an urban-themed beat-em-up title in the tradition of Toejam and Earl and Z-Stomper. It features a hip-hop based soundtrack and has some really fun combo moves, though the combat and levels are somewhat repetitive. It does have a lot of attitude and humor, and overall is considered a decent game, performing fairly average in sales, maybe a bit moreso thanks to extensive promotion.
Star Wars Heroes
A port of the hit 2002 beat 'em up for the Ultra Nintendo/Katana/Xbox, Star Wars Heroes is a perfect port of the Katana version, but with more playable characters and levels. It's considered probably the best version of the game, and is also the only version to have online co-op multiplayer. While sales are solid, it doesn't do quite as well as the console versions of the game.
Multiplatform:
Alien Lancer: Dual Wielder
The Alien Lancer Jane returns in the third installment of this action packed and humorous FPS series. This game, as the title implies, focuses on dual wielded weaponry, with Jane packing a pair of powerful alien laser pistols as she once again battles the warlord Morgath, who's hired a deadly female assassin named Marvela to hunt down our heroine. Marvela has a pair of dual pistols of her own, and she and Jane will lock horns numerous times over the course of the game. Apart from the focus on dual wielding and some quality of life improvements, not much has changed from the last game in the series, and the review scores reflect that, dropping slightly from those received by The Rise Of Morgath. Despite this, the game is still a commercial hit, probably the biggest in the series to date after it's released for the Wave and the Xbox, and sends the series out of the sixth generation in style.
DJ Jambot
A very arcade-y rhythm title similar to games like Guitar Hero and Frequency, DJ Jambot comes with a futuristic looking turntable accessory (similar to the OTL DJ Hero, but a bit more simplistic) and focuses on hip hop and techno music. The game's snazzy interface makes it a visual treat, and it's highly accessible to fans of all ages and skill levels, making it one of the more well received rhythm games of its day and an instant hit. It's released on both the Wave and the Xbox, but also sees versions for the Supernova and iPod Play, which have controller inputs rather than the turntable accessory but are still quite fun and sell decently.
Kill Your Childhood
(Authors' Note: The summary for Kill Your Childhood was sent to us by the reader Coiler! He sent us the first two paragraphs with the gameplay/story details, and we added the release information, including critical and commercial reception, in the final paragraph.)
Kill Your Childhood started off as the product of Owen "Oscar Lima" Lloyd, a developer original TTL. At first, it was just a one-note 'lolgame' of the soldier fighting a few cartoon animals, but he decided to make it deeper after reading the story of a psychologist who helped Yugoslav War refugees. Floating around the internet as a PC download, it then gets a polished release for the Xbox and Wave. Lloyd remains adamantly tight-lipped about any interpretation of the plot or the "connection", saying that it's "up to the players to decide". Some of the future games by Oscar Lima will make Kill Your Childhood look positively straightforward in comparison. Kill Your Childhood starts off with a group of cute cartoon animals prancing around a field before a masked, camo-clad super-soldier shoots and slashes them to pieces. The first few levels are the soldier fighting the cartoon creatures (the gameplay with him is reminiscent of early Zeldas or Metal Gears), before an angelic valkyrie-figure arrives and subjects him to an unwinnable boss fight. Then, a girl named Kit goes around her fairy-tale palace, and the next few are mostly nonviolent open-world puzzle solvings. Occasionally Kit will be subject to a trap or surprise attack, but for the most part it's intellectual. The soldier is seen as having survived the fight, and prepares to return with more weapons, with the intention of destroying "Kit's parody world". From this point on the soldier's missions involve stealth and planting explosives. Enemies are still there and some fights unavoidable, but staying noticed too long means that the valkyrie shows up and kills the soldier. Kit's missions also involve puzzles and exploration amongst the cartoonish palace, although there's one scene where she walks down a hallway full of nightmarish scares and must take food from a monstrous, giant version of the soldier. Through found-texts, the full story is indeed revealed. The soldier was the veteran of a real war (left deliberately vague), and Kit is his daughter from a previous relationship, who lost her mother in said war. The war is over and father, daughter, and stepmother now live comfortably, but Kit's scarring has left her a hopeless shut-in, staying in her room and retreating into a fairy tale fantasy. (The food scene is representative of her leaving her room just to eat) Using some 'connection' (whether it's mystical, sci-fi, or just symbolic is also deliberately left unclear), the soldier is diving into Kit's dream-world to 'free' her.
The game's climax is when the soldier sets up a Davy Crockett-style nuclear bazooka and aims it at the palace. If the player fires it, Kit is blasted out of a window to her death (all-but stated that she jumped in the real world because the soldier tried too hard). If the player doesn't and simply moves off the screen, then the game can progress farther. In Kit's world, more enemies, including other armed humans appear, and she gets a smashed bottle to defend herself. The 'real' endings are based on how many secrets are found and how many objectives the soldier has destroyed. Destroying all the objectives leads to a bad ending with Kit dying from the explosion similar to the bazooka. Finding all the secrets as Kit but not the soldier leads to a confrontation between the two in the final level, and a very difficult boss fight against the soldier as Kit where 'winning' heavily implies she killed her father with the bottle in the real world. Finding all the secrets as the soldier but not Kit leads to him believing she's beyond help and abandoning the connection (and with it the implication of sending her away). However, getting all the secrets as both while holding back on the soldier's objectives leads to a scene where they finally encounter each other. Kit reflexively sends out the valkyrie, who the soldier must defeat in another challenging boss fight. Once the valkyrie is beaten, there's a period of nervous silence where the player must unequip the weapons on both of them (otherwise the soldier kills Kit with both armed, or else the armed one wins) and move each one in turn towards the center podium. The two then hug, and the game cuts to one final playable scene, a repeat of the nightmare hallway, only at the end, there's not a monster, but a normal table with the soldier (unmasked and dressed in civilian clothes for the the first time) and his second wife. The game's best ending concludes with hopeful music as Kit has a normal dinner and shows her family the drawings of the in-game fantasy creatures. The game boasts an excellent soundtrack that ranges from a winking homage to "At Dooms Gate" for the first soldier stage, simultaneously sachharine and ethereal music that plays in most of Kit's areas, dissonant shrieks for horrible moments like the nightmare hallway and horror-themed areas, and a catchy final boss tune known as "Maximum Effort".
Kill Your Childhood is quite well received by critics, with review scores averaging in the mid to high 8s. While initial sales would be slow, good word of mouth would ensure the game's eventual financial success, becoming one of the first majorly successful indie games, in the vein of OTL's Alien Hominid and Cave Story. It would later be released as a digital download on the seventh generation systems, including the handhelds (particularly the iPod Play, which would get a digital version of the game in 2006) and the consoles.
Princess Rescue Squad
A game about a group of princesses who rescue each other from villains, this game's development was funded by Apple and hits both the Katana and the iPod Play. The princesses are fairly basic characters at first, parodying classic tropes, but later as the game progresses, they're revealed to have hidden depths. It's a sort of beat 'em up platformer hybrid, with up to four playable characters at once (local multiplayer only) and while it's not a great game, its cheeky humor and fun characters make it a definite niche hit.
Rising Tides
Rising Tides is an adventure/strategy game about raiders on the open seas in a world slowly falling apart due to rapid ocean level rise. Players will need to chart a course and head to different locations in search of supplies or simply a place to live, then, once they disembark, the game enters a 3-D adventure mode where the characters explore and sometimes do battle. Somewhat based on the real life climate change issue, it's compared to the film Waterworld, though the plot isn't quite as convoluted and dumb and the game is actually quite good, with comparisons to a more dark Tales Of The Seven Seas type of game. The strong reviews ensure that the game sees decent sales on the Wave (though it's a flop on the Xbox), and a sequel for the seventh generation consoles eventually does go into development.
Street Fighter: Clash Of Rivals
A spinoff of Street Fighter IV for the two handhelds of the time, Clash of Rivals focuses on 20 characters, each with their own rival. The “Story Mode” is replaced by “Rival Mode”, in which the selected character battles their rival at the end. Other than those changes, it's essentially a portable Street Fighter IV, with most of that game's graphical and gameplay innovations, and is released on the same day as Street Fighter IV itself. It does fairly well on both handhelds, but surprisingly so on the iPod Play, which has a fairly robust online community for the game. It helps to push even more iPod Play systems in Japan, and Steve Jobs puts pressure on Capcom to begin pushing more Street Fighter for Apple consoles.
Apocalypse 7
A JRPG for both the iPod Play and the Supernova, Apocalypse 7 is about a group of young heroes with a limited amount of time to stop the impending end of the world. A time management game, it can be somewhat difficult and frustrating, but features very interesting characters and high quality visuals. Developed by Gust Corporation, it's one of the company's first big budget forays into handheld RPG making, and it's financially successful for them in Japan, while becoming a bit of a niche hit in America.
Dead Midnight: Undaunted
The latest game in Capcom's Dead Midnight series, which has gone from perennial best seller to annualized cookie cutter franchise, Undaunted attempts to mix things up again by focusing on a single hero: the series' main character, Steve Sheckert. In this game, Sheckert is sent on a mission to hunt down a dealer of blood diamonds who in reality deals in far more dangerous objects. The singular focus on Sheckert meant that developers could focus on enhancing the gameplay, and it has evolved from games such as Fade, with Sheckert able to perform more melee moves in combat, an improved cover, stealth, and enemy AI system, and a compelling villain who's more than just a cackling caricature. All in all, Undaunted is seen as a significant improvement over the previous two games, though it doesn't quite reach the quality of the first few games that made the franchise so successful. It sees slightly improved sales over Bloodlines, but the franchise's future in the seventh generation is uncertain.
Prince Of Persia: The Shimmering Khopesh
The sequel to Activision's 2004 Prince Of Persia reboot, this game picks up largely where the previous title left off, with the Prince and his beautiful new bride Shana thrust into another world-spanning adventure. This game introduces wall-running to the series, though it's done a bit different from Ubisoft's OTL Prince Of Persia games, taking place across more of a vertical dimension than a horizontal one. The game also introduces RPG-like elements to the series such as forging weaponry and searching for treasures which can then be converted into character advancement for the Prince (and later for Shana). Shana follows the Prince much more closely in this game, and takes on a more active role, rarely (if ever) becoming a damsel in distress (she does fall into a couple of traps and is grabbed by a bad guy once or twice, but most of the time she gets out on her own, in addition, the Prince actually finds himself in more trouble than Shana in this game, getting full-on captured for a sequence that introduces the player to Shana's controls and abilities). Sword fighting plays a major role in this game, with both the Prince and Shana receiving their own sacred swords, and the villain, Araq-Metash, wielding a mighty weapon known as the Shimmering Khopesh.
The plot of the game revolves around an ancient war between the Prince's kingdom and a neighboring kingdom (based on ancient Egypt), ruled by the God Pharaoh Etern-Metash. Etern-Metash set forth on a great war of conquest, using his magic and his armies to turn the conquered into slaves, before being defeated by the Prince's ancestor, who became the very first Prince of Persia. The God Pharaoh's weapon, the Shimmering Khopesh, was sealed into an ancient pyramid, never to be awakened, at least until Araq-Metash, descendent of the God Pharaoh, stumbled upon it and was immediately beholden to its power. Using the might of the Khopesh, Araq-Metash transforms the Prince's land into a wasteland, causing hordes of the undead and of pestilent animals to sweep over the realm. The Prince, accompanied by Shana, must venture forth to purify the realm, battling evil at every turn. Eventually, the two do battle with Araq-Metash himself, defeating the evil ruler and stopping the Shimmering Khopesh and its evil magic for good.
Released on the Wave, Katana, and Xbox, Prince Of Persia: The Shimmering Khopesh sees strong reviews and good sales, though it's released in the very crowded month of August and thus isn't as big of a hit as it could've been. The game would ultimately turn a profit, and would set the stage for the series to continue into the next generation.
Starlet: Savior Of The City
A game about a female superhero who's somewhat of a cross between Catwoman and Spider-Man, this game is an attempt to cash in on female players, and is also seen as a more serious alternative to Star Siren. The premise is that a woman named Elena is transformed into a superhero after being stabbed with a knife that, unbeknownst to her assailant, is made of an ancient meteorite that gives Elena strange alien powers. Elena becomes the superheroine Starlet and embarks on a crusade to rid the city of crime. While praised for its presentation and graphics, the combat is somewhat sketchy and the game is a bit glitchy, harming its commercial potential somewhat. It's released on the Wave and the Xbox, and would sell a decent amount of copies, but not enough to guarantee a sequel.
The Transporter 2
The sequel to 2004's The Transporter video game, based on the 2002 film (which as mentioned before, starred Vin Diesel as Frank Martin rather than Jason Statham), this game takes place after the original film but before the TTL film sequel. It's an open world game like the previous game, and once again stars Vin Diesel as the voice of Frank Martin. Martin is hired by a criminal gang to transport stolen property through the territory of a hostile criminal gang, and becomes embroiled in underworld intrigue after Lai (who ITTL was a much more active character, an assassin rather than the daughter of a criminal boss, and was played by Ziyi Zhang) assassinates the leader of the gang that Martin is working for. Once again, Martin doesn't know whether Lai is friend or foe, and is gradually pulled into a love triangle between himself, Lai, and the daughter of the assassinated criminal (who becomes Martin's main employer but has extremely shady motivations of her own). This game improves the combat from the previous title significantly, with Diesel (who had a major hand in the development of both Transporter games, similar to the role he played in the OTL Butcher Bay game) stating that he thought the combat in the first Transporter game “kind of sucked”, and wanted it to be the main focus of improvement for the sequel. Seeing as how the original Transporter game was heavily lauded by critics anyway, this makes Transporter 2 one of the best received open world titles of the year. It's the first title in the series to see a multiplatform release (for the Wave and the Xbox) and would be brought to the Xbox 2 in 2007. Despite the improvements from the first game, it would see slightly lower review scores because of a fairly convoluted plot and a lack of improvements apart from the combat system, but is still a big critical and commercial success.
Grand Theft Auto: London Stories
Grand Theft Auto: London Stories is a portable Grand Theft Auto game for the Supernova and the iPod Play. Taking place in London in the 1960s, it revolves around a skinhead criminal who starts out as a minor drug dealer but ends up doing jobs for numerous powerful gangs within London as the city descends into gang violence and anarchy. Featuring lots of British music from that time period, from mod to punk, along with a very period appropriate motif, London Stories is both a nostalgic blast from the past and a classic Grand Theft Auto title, featuring a fully 3-D environment and a fairly large city to explore. While the game doesn't quite distinguish itself in the same way that Liberty City Stories did, featuring a fairly bland protagonist (when compared to LCS' Catalina), it's still a fun game and has a similar critical reception to the OTL Vice City Stories. It does garner some controversy for its skinhead protagonist, though the game tries as best as it can to distance “skinhead” from any fascist/neo-Nazi imagery or connotations. Grand Theft Auto: London Stories would be decently successful, and Rockstar would heavily consider a San Andreas Stories, though it would take more time to make than the previous two games had.
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Top Selling New Console Games In North America (in terms of sales over the first four weeks of release):
July 2006:
1. Tom Clancy's Spartan (Microsoft Xbox)
2. Street Fighter IV (Nintendo Wave)
3. Alien Lancer: Dual Wielder (Nintendo Wave)
4. Alien Lancer: Dual Wielder (Microsoft Xbox)
5. DJ Jambot (Nintendo Wave)
August 2006:
1. Amok (Microsoft Xbox)
2. Madden NFL 2007 (Microsoft Xbox)
3. Tom Clancy's Delta Force 2 (Microsoft Xbox)
4. Madden NFL 2007 (Nintendo Wave)
5. Tom Clancy's Delta Force 2 (Nintendo Wave)
September 2006:
1. Star Fox: Heroic Universe (Nintendo Wave)
2. Encounter 2 (Nintendo Wave)
3. Encounter 2 (Microsoft Xbox)
4. Bully (Nintendo Wave)
5. Doom 3 (Nintendo Wave)