Land of the Rising Thumb

Have you missed me? It's been awhile since the last Land of the Rising Thumb column but don't worry. I've been busy, not least with Bangai-O Spirits, the best game I've played so far this year, by a distance of about 300 sprites. Granted, it's only available in Japan at the moment but Treasure's latest contains everything that I (and so many others) love about the little team from Tokyo.

It stars, in order of appearance: exploding footballs; space fruit; homage to Mr Driller, R-Type, Super Mario Bros and Pac-Man; baseball bats for weapons; levels full of bosses; 100-missile homing attacks; and massive, haemorrhaging slowdown.

Treasure has always pushed the 2D capabilities of consoles (Gunstar Heroes expanded the Mega Drive, Radiant Silvergun nutted the Saturn, Gradius V detonated the PS2, etc), and Bangai-O Spirits does the same thing with Nintendo's relatively puny DS hardware, pushing it beyond its limits (that's where the crippling slowdown kicks in) in a glorious fireworks display.

I could go on and, if you don't mind, I will, because Bangai-O Spirits deserves some hype. It has the key ingredients, as outlined above, but it also has features such as a comprehensive level editor and an ingenious method of uploading/downloading/exchanging original designs in MP3 format, as well as a kicking multiplayer mode and a main game consisting of 160 Treasure-designed levels to play through in any order. In short, the works. A full Japanese breakfast, with all the trimmings.

Bangai-O Spirits won't be out in the States until August, so it's likely to be autumn by the time a publisher brings it to Blighty. I'd urge you not to wait. If there's one essential Japanese DS import, Bangai-O Spirits is it. Even if you've never imported before, go for it! There isn't much in the way of story here (fans of the original Bangai-O take note) and the options are pretty simple, so the Japanese text shouldn't really be much of a reason not to import.

Seriously, do it.

Okay. Now that you've placed your order, we can continue!

Sega's two The House of the Dead sequels have just been revived on the Wii – where lightgun games are being given an extra credit – and you're probably familiar with the deadly QWERTY thrills of the Typing of the Dead spin-off games, so what's next? The answer is a bizarre DS game due in Japan at the end of May: English of the Dead. Yes, English of the Dead – as in, Zombie Style English Ability Revival, which is a rough translation of the game's subtitle.

English of the Dead uses the DS's touchscreen as a quick input device, and English ability tests take various forms, including quickfire sentence construction scenes and multiple-choice definition challenges. For example, the phrase "She's always cold to me" might appear on the top screen, and the player would then have to select "She's just a little shy" as the corresponding definition in order to, um, kill a hideous monster. (English of the Dead will be used in Japanese schools in no time.)

Another type of test uses a blank touchscreen, where you (probably not you, but someone whose first language isn't English) will need to quickly scribble the English term for a Japanese word that appears next to a zombie. And there's no time for hesitation or conferring (Paxman would so approve), because if you do, you'll end up in a bloody mess on the floor.

I'd like to see Sega's 'learning with attitude and zombies' concept achieve massive popularity, but it's probably a little too far down the madhouse line even for Japanese tastes. So no, I'm not going to pressure you into importing English of the Dead. Instead I'll leave you with this inspirational English of the Dead promo movie instead.