For my second Nintendo Van Tour posting of the day I decided to include some pictures of the inside and outside of the van. Notice how very stealthy it is. You'd never realized it was a Nintendo Van of Fun if you didn't go in. I also be going over my quick impressions of Pac-Pix and Castlevania DS. Check back a little later today for my preview of GoldenEye: Rogue Agent DS.

The vanilla outside.

The creamy inside.

And now to some gaming goodness.

Pac-Pix

I don't know if I completely buy the line that Namco has always wanted to do a Pac-Man game that features drawing, but the end result is still gobs of fun. The all-stylus game basically has you drawing and then controlling a Pac-Man hopped up on perpetual power-pellets as he roams the screens eating frightened ghosts. What makes the game so much fun is that no matter how crappy your over-bite, deformed Pac-Man looks it still shudders to gruesome life and starts hobbling around the screen. It was sort of sad at times to watch my horrid creations jump to life and shuffle across the screen. The bigger you draw them the slower they move, which means if you draw a little, tiny Pac-Man it jets. You can also fill the screen with Pac-Men if you skilled enough at keeping them on screen. The thing is they move in straight lines until they disappear off screen or you draw a line to deflect them. You even have to be careful with the way you draw the line. If you draw it from the bottom of the screen up, then the Pac-Man will head up when it hits the line. If you draw from the top down, the Pac-Man will head south. The game mixes things up by limiting how many Pac-Man you can draw in a round, throwing in annoying little blocks to get in the way of your creations and eventually using the top screen. Once the second screen comes in to play, you have to draw arrows to knock the ghosts down into the feeding room filled with your hungry Pac-Men. It's a lot of fun, but not sure how long it would last before getting a little tired.

Castlevania

I love Konami. They're like having a best friend as a game publisher. They're totally about games and don't seem to worry so much about all of the other crap that can sometimes detract from game design. Case in point: When Konami heard Nintendo was doing their van tour they quickly mailed them a super-duper early build of Castlevania DS so they would have something to show off. I love that, what I hated was that it was maybe five minutes of game play and didn't yet have any of the touch screen stuff enabled. Damn you Konami, stop taunting me! From what I did see, it looks like Castlevania is going to be a sweet side-scroller. The game uses tiny, very detailed graphics that you will instantly love. The top screen was either a map or a sort of stats screen that showed a variety of items and your health and a magic of sort. The buttons allowed you to jump, crouch, use your sword and do some sort of power swing with the weapon. I quickly worked my way through the half-dozen screens or so, cutting through zombies in plumes of blood (Their bodies actually were cut into pieces and fell away, very nice animation.) killing off giant flame-spouting werewolves and talking out some bizarre Shogun looking guy. When I got to the end of the area I took down a dragon snake made of chain and hooked to a wall. Once it was defeated a message popped up on the screen saying that to destroy crystal blocks I had to tap them on the screen. Unfortunately, I couldn't go any further in the game and no manner of tapping destroyed anything. The Nintendo reps said that the game will also feature spells summoned up with specific swipes with the stylus, but I wasn't able to check that out either. I can't wait until this game comes out, it looks to have a lot of potential.

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