The popularity of Etrian Odyssey, based on an absolutely dusty style of role-playing game, and the proliferation of other hardcore, gameplay-focused RPGs (like roguelikes) make the DS the go-to platform for punishing dungeon crawls. The suitability of the DS for this style of game has even attracted dungeon games from other platforms, as is the case with Starfish's Elminage DS REMIX.

Elminage DS REMIX, based on a PlayStation 2 game, runs a party of six adventurers, in professions chosen from a list of sixteen, through fifteen dungeons (plus a bonus dungeon). Our gallery features six screens, and more are available at Famitsu. Do not dare enter the dungeon gallery unless you have an affinity for van-worthy 2D fantasy art.


[Via Famitsu]

Since general cooking games aren't obscure enough already, Starfish is placing its development clout right in the middle of the bakery. With no messy Cooking Mama kitchen tomfoolery, Panpaka Panya-San lets you work the oven and bake like a madman. Or, in this case, baking like a cute little girl with pigtails.

The official website is ready for perusal, and it's stylish in a "brown crayon" kind of way. Along with the female hero Roux, the world of Panpaka is populated by a group of smiling pastries and cakes, blissfully unaware of their inevitable demise within the mouths of hungry gamers. Happy music accompanies this disturbing scenario.

Cooking fanatics can pick this pie up when it hits the shelves in Japan on July 3rd.

[Via Siliconera]

Daiseiou, which means "Great Sage King" or "Great Wise King" is a manga based on the Chinese Monkey King story that has been adapted and remade countless times, most recently in the game world as Starfish's The Monkey King: The Legend Begins.

It appears that the legend is continuing: Starfish is working on a game based on Daiseiou, which is also a 2D side-scrolling shooter with the player as the Monkey King flying on his cloud (though this one also features Space Harrier-style segments). For two games in the exact same genre about the same subject matter from the same developer, the styles couldn't be more different -- Daiseiou's detailed, painted-looking style is a sharp contrast from the colorful chibiness of The Monkey King. There's nothing but a single (but pretty excellent) piece of artwork on the official website right now, but you can see plenty of screens at Famitsu.

In late 2006, out of nowhere, Taito announced a PlayStation 2 sequel to their relatively obscure arcade game of twenty years earlier, Kiki KaiKai. The Western gamers who noticed, and who knew the game's SNES sequel as Pocky & Rocky, cheered, especially when the screenshots showed up, revealing a vivid 2D game that kept the same multidirectional shooting gameplay and top-down perspective as the original. And then Taito cancelled it.

Kiki KaiKai 2 resurfaced in September of last year, from publisher UFO Interactive, with altered character sprites and a new name to reflect the severed Taito relationship: Kiki Kai World. At this point a Wii version was revealed along with the PS2 version. We then had to worry about whether the Wii version would actually show up, since not even UFO's own website mentioned it.

In November, UFO changed the name again, to Heavenly Guardian, probably to remove any link to a property that Taito (or, rather, their parent company Square Enix) could aggressively protect.

The possibility of this game actually coming out seemed so remote that I never dared get my hopes up. It had already been cancelled once, and it had gone through two name changes and a publisher change. It seemed a lot more likely that Kiki KaiKai 2/Kiki Kai World/Heavenly Guardian would quietly disappear. I am happy to confirm that, after repeated near-death experiences, Heavenly Guardian is real and available. I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't played it myself.

Siliconera interviewed UFO Interactive's Michael Yum about their two Wii shooters, Heavenly Guardian and The Monkey King: The Legend Begins. We recently nailed down the release date for Heavenly Guardian (April 22nd!) and Spencer Yip tried to do the same for the horizontal shooter The Monkey King. Unfortunately, the release date is still somewhat in the air (and maybe being fired at by patterns of glowing bullets), with Yum able to specify only Q2, with a probable $19.99 price. The awesome news is that the U.S. version will get a "reverse mode" and a new exclusive stage!

Yum discussed the recent change in boxart for The Monkey King, from the colorful anime-style piece seen above to a cover with a less cartoony interpretation of the title character. He explained that "The American audience was just not aware of the Monkey King character so we felt that releasing the game after a new movie which I cannot say, would help people recognize the character." Presumably, then, the art was changed to resemble a live-action movie (probably The Forbidden Kingdom) a bit more.

When UFO Interactive told us that Heavenly Guardian would be out in "Q2," we had no idea it would be so soon in this particular Q. Gamestop now lists the shooter, which was once a sequel to Kiki Kaikai/Pocky & Rocky, with an April 22nd release date, at an excellent price of $19.99. UFO confirmed both the release date an the price to us.

Apparently, the PS2 version slipped out to a few retail outlets a while ago, and we didn't even notice -- and neither did other review outlets, it seems. The Wii release should be a bit more high-profile, if only because we're talking about it right now! It's an original, fully 2D action/shooter game; how could we not talk about it?

No, The Monkey King: The Legend Begins didn't come out this week. But, according to the UFO Interactive rep we contacted about the game, it'll be out in Q2, which is ... pretty soon! Even more exciting, we got confirmation that not only is Heavenly Guardian (once Kiki Kai World) indeed coming out for Wii, it's also coming out in Q2! That's two brightly-colored 2D shooters in one vaguely-defined period.

Along with this news, we got a bunch of awesome screenshots and art of both games, which we've put into screenshots for you. We've heard from players of the Japanese version that The Monkey King isn't so great, but we're still excited.

As if the PSP didn't need anymore puzzle games, UFO Interactive recently announced the company will be publishing Chameleon (Kuru Kuru Chameleon) for North America. Well it sure took long enough. It has been about two years since the Japanese version came out. Europe even got it more than a year ahead of us. Talk about being late to the party.

No matter, we've got ourselves another game. Yipee. So what's to look forward to? Chameleon is a puzzle game where players have to match up similar-colored hexagons on their playing field. Surreal, we know. Randomly generated puzzles also spice things up; it's a lot like life or a box of chocolates -- you never know what you're going to get. Look out for it, the NA version is set for a Q2 2008 release.

The fate of UFO Interactive's North American release of Kiki Kai World (now known as Heavenly Guardian) is up in the air. We aren't sure if it's coming out on Wii, or PS2, or anything. But UFO's other Starfish-developed 2D game, Monkey King: The Legend Begins, is still on the way -- this trailer says this month, but Amazon says April 15th.

We're continuing to be optimistic about this game, both in terms of its quality and the likelihood of its release, because we so desperately want to believe that it's possible to release an original 2D sidescrolling shooter in 2008, and that it's possible to subsequently enjoy that shooter. It's easy to be optimistic when the game is as pretty as this one is.

[Via NeoGAF]

The most recent screens of Starfish's Kiki Kai World are looking ... well, a little bit sparse. We're somewhat disappointed by the basically blank environments. It's quite a contrast from the lush graphics seen in earlier screenshots. The sprites look quite nice, but some of the screenshots seem a little low on detail, like the one above. Spamming the screen with a pile of identical enemies-- it's bizarre, but doesn't make for a super-impressive screenshot.

Of course, our impression could be a result of the snow level, which, for a game with this perspective, means pretty much solid white. We're just glad Famitsu is calling this a Wii game, because we had some doubts recently.

Yesterday we saw brain training for nonexistent puppies, and today it's for real toddlers. Companies are really struggling to find unexplored niches now! Next week: brain training for inanimate objects!

505 Games' preschool-age brain training game I Did It Mum! is, implausibly, coming to the U.S. It comes in separate "boy" and "girl" versions, and allows a parent to record encouraging messages, presumably to ensure that the child bonds to his or her DS. It also gives kids a happy message on their birthdays.

I Did It Mum comes from Starfish, who are gaining prominence for their Wii games Kiki Kai World and Monkey King: The Legend Begins. This is about as far as one could get from those two shooters, however.

The first real screens of Kiki Kai World-- as in, not screens of the cancelled Kiki KaiKai 2-- have been released, with the new character sprites. Since we're not heavily invested in the Kiki KaiKai universe, we couldn't care less that the characters look a little different. The gorgeous high-resolution 2D art and brilliant colors make us very happy that this game exists. The NeoGAF audience seems to be less impressed with these shots than the previous Kiki KaiKai 2 stuff (mostly for technical reasons: the images are resized and there's a bit of JPG artifacting), but we still like them.

What doesn't make us happy, however, is that Gamespot labels Kiki Kai World as a PS2 game only. And, to make things worse, publisher UFO Interactive only shows the PS2 version as "Coming Soon" on their website, with no mention of the Wii version at all. We may have just posted screens that have nothing to do with the Wii! We posted them out of faith.

[Via NeoGAF]

Cubed3 talked to Starfish's Chong Ahn, a producer on Kiki Kai World, and nailed down the question that all (three or so) of us wondered: Is Kiki Kai World based on the cancelled PS2 Kiki KaiKai 2, or did they start over? It is, as suspected, the cancelled game with new art, which means that Taito's cruel cancellation of Kiki KaiKai 2 will not deprive the world of that game. Ahn promises that Kiki KaiKai/Pocky and Rocky fans will be right at home playing World.

When asked about possible online features, Ahn responds in the negative, stating: "As for the WiiConnect24 service, we do not feel it is something that needs to be utilised for this title." We're pretty sure we didn't need online integration in Kiki Kai World, anyway. Starfish plans to release the game in the first quarter of 2008-- we're optimistic about the chances of this actually coming out.