In some movie-to-game news, Codemasters Online has published Dirty Dancing the Video Game, the official interactive release paired with the title of the same name (minus the game part, obviously) to celebrate the film's 20th anniversary. Here's the word from Codemasters:

The game will include over 2,000 cards including ones from the new GX universe and the latest Structure decks. Each game upon release will also feature three limited edition trading cards from the GX universe.

World Championship Tournament 2006 will include a few new gameplay modes such as Duel Puzzle, Limited Duel, Theme Duel and Survival Duel. Duel Puzzle has players complete specific objectives per turn to win, while Limited Duel sets restrictions on the structure of each deck and moves available. Theme Duel forces players to accomplish certain conditions to win while Survival Duel has players taking on various opponents with a limited number of life points.

Yu-Gi-Oh! Ultimate Masters World Championship Tournament 2006 is scheduled to release in March.

The title puts players in the role of Dave the Digger who hunts for dinosaur fossils across the world. Once players are able to recover the bones, you are able to rebuild the prehistoric creatures and battle them against the computer or friends through wireless link. The game includes 100 various species of dinosaurs.

Apus Software actually released Astral Masters way back in February, according to the official website. Their card-based game serves as a follow up to Astral Tournament and blends elements of that game with influences from the card-based “Magic: The Gathering” genre. As it just recently arrived at the Gaming Horizon offices, we’ve finally had our chance to review this title, which proves easy to learn, but whose allure quickly fades.

There’s a good chance that you’ve never heard of Astral Masters, even though it has officially been available for over six months now. This game wasn’t graced with tons of page space on industry magazines or websites as insiders counted down the days to its release. In fact, it released under the radar, so to speak. Apus Software is no EA or Ubisoft, so it’s fair to consider Astral Masters a budget title. After all, you can download the entire 7 MB game from astralmasters.com and have the full version by entering a $20 purchase code.

But for such a small release it does an impressive job of basically cloning the Magic: The Gathering card game and translating it into an easy to play windows game. But if you’ve ever played a game like Magic, then you’re already equipped with a good foundation of what to expect from Astral Masters.

You play as a mage whose weapons are cards in a deck. The entire game is based around player vs. player or player vs. AI duels. One on one. You take turns with your opponent drawing and playing cards out of your own deck (which you can customize with your favorite cards) and casting them. The ultimate goal is to lower the hit points of the opposing mage down to zero. The cards, of course, range from monsters, to walls, to attack spells, or to buffs, each with their own ratings in attack, health, cost, and some special abilities. The strategy is in knowing which cards to burn in exchange for astral power, and which ones to actually play against your opponent.

While there is no real story whatsoever to speak of, you do get your choice between 20 – 30 pictures that represent your mage, and you can customize your own deck. You might choose to focus on fire, water, earth or air cards. Or you can arm yourself with a nice mixture of them all.

The developers actually crammed a surprising amount of presentation value into the tiny game in the form of graphics, sounds, and music. That’s not to say that there’s a ton of any of that, but even the simple 3D swirling background effect seems like it ought to be using up a little more space on your hard drive. The score is sufficiently ambient and pleasing. Rather than being some chirpy assault on your senses, it lulls on appropriately in the background.

This is a simple game. If you’ve never played a turn-based card game, it might take you a minute or two to get your bearings, but Astral Masters isn’t going to ask that you commit a ton of buttons or controls to memory. Everything can be done with the click of a mouse button and the ability to comprehend the English alphabet and numbers less than 40. This isn’t inherently a bad thing, but the game becomes rather tedious early on. There just isn’t much to think about after you’ve played it a few times, and I found myself resting my head, propped up on my left hand while my right hand clicked on cards. The monotony isn’t helped any by the relatively small selection of cards in the decks. If this were a real (rather than virtual) deck of cards it might stack as high as six inches. I haven’t played Magic: The Gathering in almost a decade, but I remember having an entire shoebox stuffed with cards and not even having 1/8 of the whole collection. After over two hours of playing with the same deck against the same AI wizard, I discovered that Astral Masters is a “you win some, you lose some” ordeal based on the luck of the draw, rather than real strategy. Either you catch the right cards or your opponent does, and you’ll probably win about half the time.

Even with the simplicity of the game, I did run across the same bug on more then one occasion. After the game would recommend that I reconsider a move and burn a card out of my hand before ending my turn, the game would stop responding although it was not exactly frozen. The background animations, cursor, and soundtrack would continue on, but the game wouldn’t respond to any input, whether I was trying to ignore the advice or heed it.

And while the presentation isn’t bad for a game less than 10 MB, it still suffers from being a bit of a “bare bones” affair. There are the menus and the game – nothing in between. No cutscenes, no story, no foreplay whatsoever. Think of it this way – Solitaire is to Windows Solitaire as Magic: The Gathering is to Astral Masters. It’s a virtual representation of a card game, with no extra frills save for some music and some swirly graphics. The object of each round is to beat your opponent. To win the game, simply climb the ladder of opponents until you place in the number one spot.

Astral Masters might not make sense to those of you with a real Magic deck in your possession. It seems pointless to make an exact translation of a real game into a virtual one with the exact same rules. But it is a respectable option for people out there who either can’t find anybody locally to play with and so a PC with the infinite power of the Internet is the only option, or those who have never played a turn-based card game before and don’t know where to begin to learn. At the budget price of $19.99, the verdict: It’s a viable option for some but not going to satiate experienced players.

Couldn’t be simpler, but there are some bugs to iron out.

Sharp and colorful images and animated backgrounds, but this ain’t Doom 3.

The limited effects and soundtrack are sufficient for the title.

It was actually easy to get lost in a two or three hour session…once.

It’s doubtful that you’ll be playing this for more than a week or two.

]]> Sat, 22 Oct 2005 12:03:00 -0500 The Gaming Horizon Archive http://www.gamebump.com/go/gh_review_shaman_king_master_of_spirits_2_game_boy_advance http://www.gamebump.com/go/gh_review_shaman_king_master_of_spirits_2_game_boy_advance http://www.gamebump.com/go/gh_review_shaman_king_master_of_spirits_2_game_boy_advance# This review was originally published on Gaming Horizon, GameBump's predecessor. Its format does not match our own but we support its content. It was written by Eric Dayday.

Deep Guardian ghost system. Castlevania-style gameplay is always a plus.

Bright colorful graphics and smooth animations complete the package.

Some tracks are nice, most are forgettable. Voices are used sparingly, but are loud and clear.

Again, you can’t go wrong by copying Castlevania.

Game is painfully short, and hunting for all the ghosts isn’t going to add more than 2 hours.

]]> Mon, 08 Aug 2005 19:09:00 -0500