Wednesday, June 9, 2010

Touchmaster 3

Developer: Midway Games
Publisher: Warner Bros. Interactive
Release Date: Oct. 27, 2009
System: Nintendo DS
ESRB Rating: E
Official Web site

In a nutshell: All the fun of the bar, with less beer spilling.

0:00 I remember occasionally playing Midway's Touchmaster bar games at some restaurants in my youth, and even wrote about the similar games it inspired for a 2007 Escapist story. The touch-based controls and simple, time-wasting gameplay seems perfectly suited for the DS. I'm kind of surprised this game has a "3" in it, though, as I've never even heard of the first two.

0:01 Funky, SNES-style MIDI music plays as a simple title appears on the top screen. I start a new file and we're off.

0:02 In the options screen I can turn the music on or off, but I can't control their relative volume of each. This smacks of a rush job already.

0:03 Let's get to the games. There are 17 spread across Card, Strategy, Action, Puzzle and Word categories. Funny, I vaguely remember the box saying there were 40 games.

0:04 Let's start with the first card game, Target Royale. Small white text describes how the game will work: I have to arrange cards as their dealt into three five-card poker hands, making the best hands possible. Clicking a shield icon brings up achievements such as "Dead Man's Hand" (A's and 8's) and "The Big Fish" (scoring zero points in a round).

***-->CONTINUE READING AT<--*** ***-->JOYSTICK DIVISION<-*** ___________________________________________________

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