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Majesco Goes Portable
Product: Majesco Lineup
Company: Majesco
Date: 05/12/2006
Avaliable On:

Because of the console transition this year, Majesco made a point to take a safe track and stick with known systems. All of the games that the publisher featured at E3 were on either the Nintendo DS or the PlayStation Portable.

Guilty Gear Judgment not only has almost the entire version of the recently released Guilty Gear Reload game that came out for the Xbox, but it has a second game built in. The Judgment version of the game is a side-scrolling action title that follows five different characters' story lines. As you go through each character's game, you will run into the others and in order to find out the entire story behind Judgment, you must play through all Story Modes and see how the overall tale weaves together. Reload mode is, like I said above, the fighter game ported to the PSP. The system's bright screen really handles the anime-style characters and moves well. Reload supports 2 player competition while Judgment has a 2 player co-op feature.

Cooking Mama is a game from Japanese developers Taito. This unusual game is just one of the many odd titles to come from the island country. In Cooking Mama, you will use your stylus to do pretty much everything you could imagine in a kitchen. Mini-games include cutting fruits and vegetables, stirring ingredients, kneading dough, flipping fried rice, cracking eggs and much more. The basic premise is to ... well, cook. The game also has you using the DS' built in mic in order to cool off hot foods before you serve them up. Mama gives you basic instructions on the top screen and you use the bottom screen to perform whatever feat you need. The game takes on a Wario-Ware feel, just not quite as rushed.

In the end, you are trying to unlock all 76 recipes (you start off with 15). One of the interesting aspects of Cooking Mama is that all of these recipes are real and can be used to make actual dishes. The game lets you created everything from dumplings, to rice, to pizza, to squid. Cooking Mama has a nice, low price-point of $19.99. As an added bonus, it also allows you to share recipes that you have unlocked in the game's limited single-card multiplayer system.

Monster Bomber is another title from Taito. This game is a mix of Bust-a-Move and Space Invaders. Here you will use the bottom screen to collect balls of color, power them up and shoot them at a series of monsters slowly falling on the top screen. The balls can only destroy monsters of similar color, but if you have enough power behind the miscolored ball, then it can push the targeted monster up a bit. Early levels have you just destroying a set number of monsters, while other ones won't end until you have created a chain of 15, 20 or more monsters. Monster Bomber supports a four-player game that will see which of your friends can last the longest.

Majesco's last handheld title was the game of the new Jack Black movie Nacho Libre. This game is slated to come out with the release of the DVD in November. Nacho Libre was more of a proof-of-concept showing quick matches and movies. Majesco said that the game will be more of an over-the-top, crazy, stylized form of wrestling, similar to the more classic games. The company decided to go this route over the ultra-realistic form found in most modern wrestling games in order to bring out the movie's comical nature. Majesco is currently in negotiations with Jack Black in order to get his likeness and some sound-clips for use in the game.

J.R. Nip aka Chris Meyer

GameVortex PSIllustrated TeamPS2