New Zealand Story Revolution

Rating Everyone Genre action Publisher Ignition Entertainment/Marvelous External Links Official Ignition Entertainment Website

Old-school gamers will see the name New Zealand Story and immediately recollect kiwi chicks, spikes, scrolling dungeons, and spearing enemies. And these images from the original New Zealand Story arcade classic (or Kiwi Kraze, for those of us that had the NES release) and its zany premise remain. Players control a cute little kiwi bird as he battles baddies to save his kiwi friends from an evil leopard seal.

This new DS version is nearly a direct port of the 1988 original, barring a few noticeable improvements. The 2D, scrolling platformer levels remain intact, but are updated with better graphics and more color. The boss battles are quite unique; you can battle a whale from the inside out, and truly experience the horror of a double-screen filling spider. Tiki, your cute little Kiwi hero, can now double-jump, allowing for greater maneuvering around levels.

At this point I am forced to address the touch screen. I really wanted this port to find an intuitive way to use the stylus in gameplay, but someone really dropped the ball here. Because this is a port of an old classic, enemies continually respawn, thus making the levels quite hectic. Enter a message that says, “Touch the item that differs between the two screens!” So now I have to pull out the stylus that I’ve rarely used so far, fend off enemies, and tap a tiny little box? And not die? They might as well have just left the bottom screen as a map and let that be their new innovation. And this doesn’t even address the respawn issue. I thought we were done with the whole respawning baddies thing. You can sit in one location for over five minutes and feel like you’ve accomplished nothing.

When it comes to the more technical issues, Revolution is lackluster. The controls aren’t very tight, which makes big jumps frustrating and traps hard to avoid. The music is bouncy and fun, but doesn’t change much from location to location. The map-like feature on the bottom screen is great, but the locations of keys and cages are imprecise, making them easy to miss. As a result, you’ll inevitably have to backtrack and deal with annoying respawning enemies yet again. Some levels prevent backtracking, meaning you have to restart the level.

This isn’t to say that I didn’t like the game, because I thought it was cute and the updated graphics were fantastic. However, Marvelous and Ignition Entertainment could have done so much more to update this fun title. It may be worth the $19.99 MSRP if you’re dying for a new platformer, but if I were you I’d stick to the New Super Mario World and play the original arcade version of New Zealand Story for free on Gametap.