Plenty of DS goodies

With over half the games sold every year snapped up in the busy Christmas period, Nintendo has revealed its DS release schedule for the end of the year. And there’s good news and there’s bad news.

Clearing the air of negatives first, key games Metroid Prime Hunters and Animal Crossing DS have both fallen off the radar despite Nintendo initially expecting to release them in 2005. Now it seems, it will be start of next year for Metroid, with the Internet connectivity of Animal Crossing DS perhaps pushing its release back even further. Nintendo still has to announce which companies will be providing its online infrastructure in Europe and that’s a major part of the swapping and collecting gameplay for Animal Crossing DS.

On the positive side though, there are plenty of other exciting releases to snap up.

Nintendogs will be leaping out of the kennels on 7 October

Mario Kart DS will be revving over the start line on 11 November

Touch Golf will be teeing off on 18 November

Kirby: Power Paintbrush will be easing out its easel on 25 November

...and that’s not to forget ace-space puzzler Meteos due on 23 September and Advance Wars: Dual Strike on 30 September.

And DS games from other publishers include:

Konami’s Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow

EA’s FIFA 06, Need for Speed Most Wanted and Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

Activision’s Tony Hawk’s American Wasteland and Ultimate Spider-Man

Sega’s Sonic Rush

THQ’s Spongebob Squarepants and The Incredibles

as well as Ubisoft’s Battle of Prince of Persia and King Kong

(phew!)