Viva Pinata DS!!!
The Comicon 07 announcement of Viva Pinata for the DS. Good to see such a great game reaching a wider audience. The 360 version is fantastic and the developer remarked on how they were able to fit everything onto the DS. They also announced a PC version of Viva Pinata that would be coming out as a Game for Windows. They stated that the garden part of the game will be played from a top down view and the interface will be made easier through the use of the stylus. The developer noted that he was very happy with the DS ports of Simcity and Theme Park since they were so much easier to play and that this more user friendly interface would now be available for Viva Pinata.
Could this mean other Microsoft properties on the DS such as the often rumored Halo DS?
Here's the video of the announcement:
Above is the panel consisted of 4Kids Entertainment, Microsoft Game Studios and Rare Ltd. The conference was moderated by video games and comics writer Joshua Ortega.
They discussed Viva Pinata Party Animals and said that you could play as the characters themselves for the first time. The developer pointed out that the animals actually are seen running as opposed to being on a kart or in a vehicle.
The graphics look fantastic again. With the Wii doing so well with its party games, its no surprise Microsoft is attempting to land a title in the same vein.
They also listed some links for more info.
I was lucky enough to be the one to send this announcement into Kotaku.com:
http://kotaku.com/gaming/comic-con-07/viva-pinata-ds-announced-283699.php
[Updates]: Thanks for the mention MundoRare!! http://www.mundorare.com/
For 8/1/07, the video of the Viva Pinata announcement got the YouTube.com honor of 47th most linked Entertainment video!
Aussie-Nintendo.Com linked the announcement video - http://www.aussie-nintendo.com/?v=news&p=15672 and have a rather interesting story on the Rare on Nintendo news: http://www.aussie-nintendo.com/index.php?v=article&p=15691
Here is another link with a few factual errors (such as Comicon was in San Francisco??? and a blogger on their site broke the news, when in actuality they just took the story and photo from the original Kotaku post - http://ds.qj.net/Video-Microsoft-s-Viva-Pinata-DS-announcement-at-Comic-Con-2007/pg/49/aid/98930
And another fine link: http://gonintendo.com/?p=22155
On the Pinataisland Forums, this site actually got a thanks from a Rare employee!
As for a release date, this really is a tbc. A lot of factors are in play at the moment and despite the speed at