I have a stupidly long list of article idea and as usual, not enough time to get them all written, but every so often I’m going to post the occasional test article for your perusal. Here’s one goofy idea I had ages ago while writing for another site about games that made for a terrible time when played alone. I thought about reviving the idea recently while listening to some folks in a game shop arguing about what was the worst game to play alone and getting a chuckle that every game mentioned in their discussion revolved around survival horror, MMORPGs or assorted shooters (with every game mentioned in the latter two genres geared for multiplayer gaming). The first game I thought of was Atlus’ 2008 US release of Sting’s 2007 hybrid board game/RPG, which some have very incorrectly labeled a straight Mario Party clone. The Dokapon series was around a bit longer than Mario Party and Dokapon Kingdom is more or less a polygon-based reworking of a Super Famicom game from 1994 called Dokapon 3-2-1: Arashi o Yobu Yuujou, which is equally challenging as a solo play experience. Now, neither are anything resembling “bad” games at all. They’re fun to play and funny, but are both just designed to work better with more than one person playing them…
Continue reading
Tag Archives: Sting
Preview: Knights in the Nightmare PSP
“Are You READY…?” For those of you who missed it, 2009's Knights in the Nightmare on the Nintendo DS was an innovative mix of isometric tactical JRPG, RTS, a bit of chess and fast-paced stylus driven “bullet hell” style shooting with a deep, complex (and often quite dramatic) storyline. The often brutal level of difficulty in the game thanks to many factors that required actual thought pre-battle and deft dancing of the stylus hand in battle made KITN a bit of a sleeper for the handheld (and a slightly expensive collectible these days). Developer Sting has taken the game and reworked it for the PSP into what's looking like one of those truly hardcore experiences for those that love their games to bite back hard.
Knights in the Nightmare PSP Trailer
Atlus does it again, bringing the unique SRPG/bullet hell sleeper hit from the Nintendo DS onto the PSP this October. Check out the first PSP game trailer below. The original was indeed a ton of fun and quite challenging, so it’ll be interesting to see how it plays sans stylus action with the analog stick on the PSP wide screen.
Hmmm… I wonder if we’ll ever see the Wizardry-inspired DS sleeper The Dark Spire get the PSP upgrade treatment? Now there’s a really underrated gem of a game!

