The hardworking hustle-and-bustle lifestyle that citizens everywhere experience make it constantly harder to own a pet.  In fact, that’s one of the reasons virtual pets continue to remain popular worldwide, especially in places with large and condensed metropolitan areas.  With that in mind, what better game to include in the launch lineup for a developer and publisher that literally controls the handheld gaming market?

What Is It About?

“Nintendogs” has been one of Nintendo’s most popular and profitable collections of games ever ..read more

The Nintendo 3DS is upon us, and in somewhat of a surprise move, Street Fighter is along for the ride as the franchise makes only its second system launch appearance in history (Street Fighter EX3, PlayStation 2) in the form of Super Street Fighter IV: 3D Edition.

What’s it about?

Like pretty much every game in the series to come before it, 3D Edition is about two players picking characters from a larger roster and battling it out in a best-of-three-rounds match ..read more

After releasing Ghostbusters: The Video Game in June 2009, Atari is back with the follow-up effort Ghostbusters: Sanctum of Slime on the XBLA and PSN. An arcade “shooter”, it offers an original story. However, with no Ghostbusters movie release or anniversary to provide a reason for this game’s release, does it have enough to stand out on its own? What’s It About? Sanctum of Slime’s story follows a group of rookie Ghostbusters instead of the characters from the movies. So instead of ..read more

“Red, Blue, Green, Gold, Silver… Watch, I bet they’ll even come out with a Black and White version!”

Odds are that’s something you said in the cafeteria during your lunch in grade school.  Some fifteen years later, it actually happened. With the never-changing formula, one would think Pokemon would have gotten stale by now.  Sure, it’s no longer the fad that it was over a decade ago, but to this day, the flagship Pokemon games remain as solid as ever with ..read more

Across the world, everyone is mourning the tragedy in Japan. Maybe you’d like to help too, but you’re broke and not exactly in a position to lend a hand to the rescue efforts.

Well, Mastiff Games, a small niche-market publisher, wants to help you help Japan. For every 100 people that “Like” them on Facebook between today and the end of April, they will donate an additional $100 atop their already generous $25,000 to the Red Cross for Japan relief.

Call ..read more

With pitchers and catchers having reported in mid-February, we have baseball video games to help tide us over until the regular MLB season begins. Unfortunately, MLB 2K11 decided to release a game they should send back down to the minors.

What’s It About?

With the NFL and NBA both threatening lockouts, Major League Baseball felt jealous of the massive attention. So the league called upon All Star pitcher Roy Halladay to rally the players together and threaten their own strike. What the ..read more

eastasiasoft and SideQuest Studios, the publisher and developer of the Soldner-X games on PSN respectively, have announced a new game for PlayStation Network called Rainbow Moon. Rather than make another shooter, Rainbow Moon is instead a strategy RPG that is an interesting new project for a developer that’s known for quality shooters. The story stars a man named Baldren, who has been warped to a beautiful planet called Rainbow Room by his arch nemesis. The dimensional gate that brought ..read more

In 2009 a little PC game called Torchlight was released via various digital distribution outlets. The game had very low system requirements which allowed it to run on almost any PC. It became quite a popular game in the months since its release so developer Runic Games has decided to bring the game to a new audience.

What’s It About?

Torchlight is an action-RPG set in the town of the same name. The key fixture of the town is ..read more

Q-Games’ follow-up to their acclaimed 2009 shooter adds some new fluids, a light/dark mechanics, and multiplayer to the dynamic fluid action.

What’s It About?

This will be a spoiler since PixelJunk Shooter 2 begins right where the first game ended, which means that the game begins inside of the gigantic worm-like creature that has swallowed your ship whole. In addition to the water, magma, and magnetic fluids, Shooter 2 adds new obstacles to mess around with like stomach acid, an infestation-style fluid ..read more

The last time I played a new Contra game was Contra: Shattered Soldier on the PS2. Since then there have been Xbox Live Arcade releases of the original and Super Contra games. What we have not seen though is a true, new entry into the Contra franchise. Arc System Works and Konami are addressing this oversight with Hard Corps: Uprising. It may not be using the Contra name, but make no mistake, this is Contra through ..read more

To many fans of the epic genre, Japanese role-playing games have all but gone stale.  With the exception of Demon’s Souls, there really hasn’t been a single title that has unanimously pushed the genre forward.  Even Square’s behemoth Final Fantasy XIII couldn’t live up to its hype.  However, there is some hope, and master developer and publisher Atlus provides that glimmer of hope by moving forward through the past with its latest epic for the Nintendo DS–Radiant Historia.

What’s It About?

Radiant ..read more

This was the scene at RedOctane’s funeral for the Air Guitar at the European launch of Guitar Hero II. Irony has a nasty way of coming back to at you, no?

With the Guitar Hero series being nixed by Activision, it seemed like a good time to look back at the various titles in the franchise and figure out what worked and where it started to go wrong. This is by no means a scientific study of mechanics ..read more

The sequel to the acclaimed remake of Bionic Commando finally adds the ability to jump.

What’s It About?

While Grin’s 3D Bionic Commando may not have done well as Capcom would have liked, their 2.5D remake of the original NES Bionic Commando struck a chord with players the year before and sold really well as a result. Though Grin may be gone, a number of former Grin employees came to Fatshark to work on the follow-up that gives it some ..read more

Tales From Space: About A Blob combines Katamari Damacy with 2D platforming in the PlayStation Network debut for Drinkbox Studios.

What’s It About?

Tales From Space: About A Blob begins as a group of blobs launch themselves off of a planet into space towards the Earth. A mysterious scientist notices the group of blobs and fires some missiles to stop them, which results in knocking out a smaller orange blob that he captures and brings to the laboratory in his ..read more

EA’s latest downloadable title for XBLA and PSN takes the dual-stick shooter genre to some very tiny places that you haven’t seen before.

What’s It About?

MicroBot begins with the microscopic robot under your control being injected into a subject’s body at MicroHexen Research, where previous iterations of this revolutionary medical technology have turned against their makers and are working with the viruses they were created to fight. You’re tasked with ridding this body of those ..read more

This February, co-developer People Can Fly (Painkiller) is leveraging Epic’s Unreal Engine 3 for Bulletstorm, a FPS that makes other FPSes wet their pants and cry themselves to sleep. At least that’s the attitude this game brings to the table.

In reality, during our very short time with the Bulletstorm demo, we got the impression that while the game is delivering absolutely over-the-top action, it’s doing it all tongue-in-cheek. It’s as if Duke Nukem Forever is really releasing next ..read more

Atomic Games is bringing their expertise with wargames to Xbox Live Arcade with Breach, their new online multiplayer first-person shooter.

What’s It About?

With multiplayer first-person shooters being all the rage right now, it’s no surprise to see some of them coming to the downloadable realm. Breach attempts to differentiate itself from the Call of Duty and Battlefield games that dominate the genre by taking more of a realistic approach to the way you play the game. That approach includes ..read more

As our 2011 backlog is already starting to build up, everybody here at SmashPad has taken the opportunity to look back upon the games we enjoyed the most from 2010 for our annual The Year in Screenshots feature. Rather than go through the hassle of dwindling these games down to name a Game of the Year or come up with a ton of crazy categories to give many of these games some artificial sense of recognition, ..read more