Hands on with the first DS-Wii connected game
Wii's Pokemon Battle Revolution meets DS' Pokemon Diamond & Pearl
In the big world of international databases and information silos, engineers swank around taking about 'interoperability'. In the fun world of Nintendo, however, the pips and cries of joy are more along the lines of "Look at Charmander on the plasma telly, dad!"
Ah, yes. Wii game, Pokémon Battle Revolution, is the first to use the Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection and hence provide a link to the world of handheld pokémon-wrangling as encapsulated in the forthcoming DS title, Pokémon Diamond & Pearl.
We got a quick taste of the process at the recent Game Developers Conference, where Nintendo had a two DSs and one Wii set up for punters to test out. Unfortunately, the screens were in Japanese, but a helpful English-speaking translator was on hand to guide us through the process.
The basics are pretty simple: you take the pokémon you've trained up in either Diamond or Pearl and import them into the Wii game (in full 3D model form) to fight it out within the ten available battle colosseums. You control their moves via your DS touchscreen, and because everything is turn-based, in due course they will act out your commands on the big screen.
At this point, we should point out that this demonstration didn't actually use the Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection; at GDC the DSs were directly wired into the Wii, so it was impossible to tell how the process would work in a real world online environment. This is important, as Nintendo has said you'll need to input Friends Codes both for the Wii and DS in order to synchronise the game – or to' interoperate them' as our hardcore engineers might say.
Still, at least the hook-up points the way we hope certain DS and Wii games will go in future. Obviously this sort of thing won't work for every game, but for certain high profile titles – think Mario, Final Fantasy, Sonic or Harry Potter – providing online and interconnected features will be increasingly important, whether it be Wii-to-DS, PSP-to-PS3 or Xbox Live-to-Windows Mobile phones.
"Sharing, it's the future" as our Web 2.0 guru Mr Bennallack might say.
At present neither Pokémon Battle Revolution or Pokémon Diamond and Pearl have an European release date. We expect both to be out by autumn. You can already read our review of the Japanese Pokémon Diamond.
