Namco Bandai Roundup - Digimon, Naruto, And The Game That Never Ends

My very last E3 appointment was at Namco Bandai on Thursday afternoon, and while the majority of my time was spent getting my ass kicked at Soul Calibur IV, which I will handle in a separate post, they did have several interesting offerings on hand, from the girl-friendly We Cheer to the anime-friendly Naruto: Ultimate Ninja Storm to the most authentic Digimon experience for the Nintendo DS. Here's some of the titles that Namco Bandai has coming your way.

Digimon World: Championship: As mentioned above, this is the ultimate Digimon experience for the DS, bringing the game back to its handheld electronic pet roots. Use the stylus to capture Digimon in the wild, bring them back to your base to train, feed, and care for them, and then place then in the arena to battle. Includes cleaning up Digi-droppings - it doesn't get any better than that.

Either my teeth are rotting from the sugary, sugary visuals, or my heart is hurting because they went for the fat-headed cartoon look instead of the sweaty Eliza Dushku look. Either way, this trailer hurts.

When We Cheer first showed up on the screen during the main presentation, it was met with many derisive snickers behind hands. I will admit that I was one of those snickerers although I used a fan and not my hand. I mean a cheerleading rhythm game? And the commercial they showed showing a bunch of teenage girls giggling and flailing their Wii remotes around didn't help matters any.

Once we were allowed to go check out the games hands on however, I swallowed my pride and stepped up to test my cheering skilz. The game can be played single or multi-player and is controlled with the Wii remote and nunchuk combo. Up to four players can play on a team or if you only have two players, one can control the left hand and the other controls the right. As far as gameplay is concerned it plays somewhat like Ouendan and Elite Beat Agents with the player using the Wii remote to trace out various shapes at different speeds. it was really quite a lot of fun after I got over my initial embarrassment. Everyone I spoke to afterwards really enjoyed it as well and we all agreed that this would be the best drunk/guilty pleasure game of 2008. it is obviously aimed at the ten girl market but I'm sure a fair share of units will be sold to "hardcore" gamers who will no doubt pull it out when no one is looking.

Namco Bandai To Also Bring It On On Wii

Namco Bandai is planning to bring its own cheerleading title to the Wii, trademarking We Cheer with the US Patent and Trademark Office this week and issuing a challenge to rival Wii cheering game, All-Star Cheerleading from THQ.

No word on release date or how closely it will tie into Namco Bandai's other "We" game, We Ski. We certainly hope its more in line with iNiS's Ouendan than, well, anything really. If this doesn't convince little girls with dreams of pyramid forming to start gaming, we really don't know what will.