NGamer Issue 20

Introduction

Issue 20 marked the departure of Mark and the arrival of new Editor Nick Ellis, who would stick around on and off until the very end of the magazine, and brought his own style of humour to the magazine. For this issue, Lego Batman starred on the cover as the Lego superhero takeover started in earnest. In the news this month they reported on Nintendo’s financial results for 2007, showcasing how well the Wii and DS had done as well as comparing the sales of each of the major games consoles - the Wii and DS unsurprisingly coming out on top. There was also the news that Goldeneye wasn’t going to be re-released on Virtual Console due to contractual disputes between Rare, Nintendo, Microsoft and Activision - it would take another 15 years for these disputes to lead to the game being released on Switch and Xbox.

As well as Batman, both Mario Kart Wii and Smash Bros Brawl were previewed once again, as the drip feed of regular Smash updates allowed them to give 31 new reasons why Brawl was going to be the biggest game of 2008. SEGA Superstars Tennis also got a preview, looking very much like a fan pleasing game. Third party games like Star Wars: The Force Unleashed and Worms were also previewed. Matthew also had a deep dive into Wii Fit, trying out all the games and looking very much like a dimwit doing it.

Nights: Journey into Dreams was the big review this month, with Matthew giving it 70%, calling it a fairly well structured game, but extremely short at only 5 hours long. There was plenty of praise for the audio especially, with a good mix of classic and new tracks. Zapper game Ghost Squad was also reviewed this month with Matthew scoring it 83% and Final Fantasy XII: Revenant Wings on DS scored 88%. The second Advance Wars game on DS, Dark Conflict was the highest scoring game though, scoring 93%, with heavy praise on the gameplay, Alex Dale calling it unparalleled. There were plenty of other reviews as usual, although many of them were shovelware and scoring low scores.

The feature this month looked at the top 20 Nintendo cameos - where other characters had sneaked into games. They looked at all sorts of cameos, from inclusions in Mario games, to Nintendo characters that  had sneaked into TV shows. In World of Nintendo, alongside the usual top moments of the month they showcased 10 reasons to buy No More Heroes, as well as comparing real world games to games on the Wii, with some surprising results. In download, the history lesson was on Namco, and they showcased  the entirety of Kanto  from Pokemon within the third classic level - looking at all the main areas of the world map.