The popular Japanese arcade game series finally crosses the Pacific and finds a home on the Nintendo Wii.

The rhythm games just keep on coming, but Pop ‘n Music isn’t exactly something new. This music series has been around in Japan since 1998 and will be appearing in North America for the first time on the Nintendo Wii. It’s like Dance Dance Revolution except with your hands (and your heart rate won’t go up that much), but Pop ‘n Music has a catchier set of songs to groove to.

(more…)

After the huge success and numerous million gross revenue from the Guitar Hero series made by Activision, they have decided to publish another Hero series feature, but this one is made more for R&B, rap and different types of dance music. It is Wii DJ hero for the Nintendo Wii, a turntable controller dependent, beat & music game from Activision. If you bought, seen or know the games from the Hero series like Guitar Hero, which made a tremendous success in gross sales, then this new DJ version game will be in the same quality standards that we got used to in the Hero series and will bring participants a feel of being a club DJ star.

That’s not the only DJ wannabe game to be released this year. Konami will be publishing the Beatmania game that is pretty close to the DJ Hero Wii game. But, the Activision game should give a near reality experience with a high quality mixing like music, that will give the dance floor music amateur their high BPM dosage. Other stimulating better features are the exclusive new songs from Eminem & Jay-Z that were made solely for this DJ Hero game

Activision claims that the game is about spinning, remixing and playing like a DJ as if you are making a gang of dance lovers, that enjoy that kind of music that you hear in a club and dance their brains out. The game will include song genres like Rap, R&B and hip-hop, different genres of dance music that usually will be preferred by the club goers and others that are partisans of this rhythm of sound.

Two other glamorous features are the freestyle mode that will bring you the opportunity of spinning and mixing that is just like the professionals. This is the chance to realize the dream of becoming a DJ.

The second exciting feature is 10 songs that are played both with the turntable controller of the DJ Hero game and with the guitar controller from the Guitar Hero game. This will permit the fans of rap, metal and rock metal to play dance style music with electric guitar tracks.

DJ Hero will be available for Nintendo Wii, PS2, playstation and Xbox 360 at the end of October 2009.

The latest rumors that are going around the net are that both the developers and the distribution companies want to have uniformed Hero gameplay experience by incorporating all the controls of old and upcoming Hero games in the future games. This means that you will be able to play with the guitar, turntable, drums and microphone.

Konami’s sing-along franchise is back!

Karaoke Revolution returns without its American Idol-license this year, but a few new features have been added to refresh this year’s installment. Revolution has always had a degree of cover artists, however, for the first time, Revolution has included master tracks for every song on disc. There are 50 songs and accompanying music videos in total, and with an eclectic mix of genres, there should be something for every karaoke fan. Konami is planning to release more than 200 DLC tracks for Revolution, and it will also be backwards-compatible with existing songs. Additionally, it will support a range of microphone peripherals, with Guitar Hero and Rock Band confirmed. However, we expect SingStar and Lips’ mics should also work.

(more…)

This game puts the “idea” in Vespoidea. We check out this bug-based real-time strategy game from Konami.

Konami’s fixation with bug torture isn’t limited to the Wii. After checking out the upcoming WiiWare game Ant Nation, we got some time in with the DS version of the game, which is quite a bit different from its console cousin. The premise revolves around the children’s pastime of torturing ants, but it puts a purpose behind it. Whereas the WiiWare game is a mellow, sandbox-like experience, the DS game is more along the lines of a real-time strategy game.

Where bugs and real-time strategy combine: It’s Ant Nation for the DS.

(more…)

Yu-Gi-Oh! gets its annual world championship update, and we check out the new role-playing game.

As long as the card game is still popular, Konami will continue to release Yu-Gi-Oh! World Championship games each year so that players from all over the world can duel against one another, thanks to the Wi-Fi capabilities of the Nintendo DS. We were able to get a brief look at the game during Konami’s press event last week in San Francisco. The 2009 version boasts an all-new role-playing game based on the animated 5D’s series, which launched on the 4Kids network last September. Characters from the new series will make an appearance in the game, where you play as a young man who has lost his memories.

(more…)