DS - 2007's Most Wanted

Freshly-Picked Tingle's Rosy Rupeeland

• Release Date: 14th September
• Gamepage
• Screenshots

Developer Vanpool has, in its time, made music software, toys, and one or two extremely obscure videogames. Whether the fact this relatively obscure team has been trusted with a Zelda off-shoot action RPG says more about its latent potential or Nintendo's flippancy towards gaming's least-loved fairy is, as yet, unclear.

Few would argue that the eponymous hero from the Zelda series (he debuted in the N64's Majora's Mask) is one of the most annoying sidekicks to come out of Japan. But with Freshly-Picked Tingle's Rosy Rupeeland perhaps we might better come to understand the reasons behind his irritating demeanour.

The story begins when an ordinary middle aged man (named Tingle) is transformed by an ordinary old man with a rupee for a head (named Uncle Rupee) into a green-suited, moustachioed fairy who must throw rupees into a stream in order to find paradise.

That's quite the premise. Read it again and imagine what the childhood of the designer who came up with that idea must have been like.

Split between 11 islands, the aim of the game is to work your way through each one's Zelda-style dungeon, collecting as much money as possible, bargaining with NPCs for information and conversing with Pinkle, Tingle's very own assistant fairy (who will presumably enjoy her own spin-off series at some point in the future...)

Jam Sessions

• Release Date: September 2007
• Gamepage
• Screenshots

One of the most frustrating things about the rhythm action genre is that while they purport to be music games, they're really just Simon Says tests of hand-eye co-ordination. You trigger the samples that have been predetermined and there's no room for creativity, style, composition or much flair outside of Guitar Hero's pitch-shifting whammy bar.

Jam sessions, (the gentler moniker for Japanese dev Plato's Hiite Utaeru DS Guitar M-06) is looking to change all of that by providing a bona-fide composition tool for the handheld. Pitched as a kind of songwriter's portable notepad the 'game' allows users to simulate strumming on a real guitar (by striking the stylus back and forth over the touch screen) while selecting different chord permutations by using the d-pad. The DS can even be plugged into an amplifier, surely paving the way for the first DS-based battle of the bands.

Up to five different songs can be saved onto the cart and you can record a vocal track over your backing using the microphone, should you so desire. For users lacking in compositional creativity, the game will come with a number of well-known songs for you to play along to in Challenge or Freeplay modes.

In the States you can already pick up a set of plectrums that attach to the stylus for added authenticity. While that might be a gimmick too far, Jam Sessions looks to be a serious tool kit of use to commuting songwriters everywhere.