Pokemon Link to May

It's hard not to get a sense of déjà vu when you read a Nintendo press release these days. "The wait for the interstellar bounty-hunters, and gaming's toughest heroine is finally over," the platform holder hurrahed yesterday, announcing a Metroid Prime: Hunters release date you've all known about since January. Sometimes though you can find a tiny scrap of news in one of them - and "tiny scrap" is certainly the operative in this here news item, which is telling you that Pokemon Link is due out on May 5th, not April 28th as previously stated. [That's "Journalist of the Year" in the bag then. - Ed]

That said, it's worth mentioning Nintendo's latest Pokemon outing for the DS on a couple of grounds: firstly, you might not realise that it's the game known to our American readers as "Pokemon Trozei"; second, it's out now in the US and has been picking up some fairly decent reviews. So if you fancy another sliding tiles puzzle game for the DS (albeit one featuring Pikachu and all his cuddly mates), it might be worth keeping an eye on.

In addition to a mode based around clearing Pokemon tiles before the play area fills up - by sliding them around to create groups of four or five - Pokemon Link will offer some sort of adventure mode, a trading cards bit, and various multiplayer options. On the latter note, there's a Link Battle Mode and a co-operative pair Link Mode, rankings and a download play option so that you can play limited versions of the above modes against pals who haven't bought it.

Anyway, we'll be bringing you our own take on Pokemon Link soon. In the meantime, we've got some screenshots elsewhere on the site.