A rundown of some of the more notable games hitting the streets this week.

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This Week's Games

(Week of September 11, 2006)

Lego Star Wars II: Original Trilogy

The second Lego Star Wars game is coming out on practically every platform, which makes sense considering the broad appeal this title has. The original game was simplistic but a lot of fun, so you can probably expect more of the same, except based on a better set of movies. The Xbox 360 version is one of those quick ports though, so it probably isn’t worth the extra $10.

Rule of Rose

There probably won’t be any Silent Hill or Fatal Frames for a little while, so Atlus is filling that with Rule of Rose. Although technically designed by Sony, SCEA passed on publishing it due to some controversial content, most involving creepy little girls. Still, even though it seems suitably dark, the gameplay - run around dark corridors, inspect objects - doesn’t seem to have changed much.

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Cooking Mama

(This is listed in Gamestop’s computers as coming out this week, although the release date has been shifting around a lot. Hopefully it’ll be out this week) After seeing lawyer and doctor sims to the DS, finally we get a cooking game, localized by Majesco. The buzz seems to point to this being a

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great concept but a bit repetitive in action, and really just like a series of mini-games. The original version also focused on a lot of Japanese dishes, so it’s still left to be seen how Majesco is localizing it. Anyway, it’s worth supporting the company that put out Psychonauts, and it’s only $20.

Mario 3 on 3 Hoops

Square making a basketball game? Yup, Mario 3 on 3 for the DS comes from the Final Fantasy house, complete with a few minor cameos from the old games. It’s weird that Nintendo chose to put their mascot basketball game on a portable rather than a console though.

Harvest Moon DS

There’s not much to say, except it’s another Harvest Moon, which appears to be the sole thing keeping Natsume alive at this point. Apparently the land is being spoiled by a witch princess, and only you can nurse it back to health.

Megaman ZX

My own pick of the week. It looks just like the Megaman Zero games, except it’s a bit more exploration focused, thereby making it closer to Metroid or the portable Castlevania games. In other words, awesome. Too bad Capcom decided to take out all of the voice acting instead of dubbing it, or just leaving it in. Pretty lazy, guys.

Kurt Kalata

(September 11, 2006)