Nintendo’s New First Party Lineup Has Starfy, Introduces Excitebots

Nintendo of America got off to a slow start this year with no first party releases for the Wii until next month, but titles are trickling in. Spring is where Nintendo picks up the pace starting with Rhythm Heaven on April 5 and later a totally unexpected surprise — a Starfy game.

Stealth developer Tose started making Starfy games on the Game Boy Advance, but none of the games were published overseas. The first Starfy game comes to North America on June 5 under the name The Legend of Starfy. Given the description with a bunny eared visitor this sounds like the most recent Starfy game which lets players transform Starfy into a seal and other creatures with suits. If you haven’t heard about Starfy before take a look at the Legend of Starfy 4.

Wii owners have Donkey Kong: Jungle Beat with shaking instead of bongo beating, Punch Out, and Excitebots, a new intellectual property racing game, to look forward to.

Read more about the line up before and post a comment if you think Nintendo is or is not moving in the right direction.

Wii

Excitebots™: Trick Racing has elements that make it one of the more unique racing games on the market. It launches April 20 and lets everyone in the family use the Wii Wheel™ accessory in unique and changing environments, play fun minigames and perform crazy tricks in a game that builds on the Excitebike™ and Excite Truck™ franchises.

Donkey Kong® Jungle Beat™, originally made for the Nintendo GameCube™ system, launches May 4 with newly added motion controls. It’s the latest in Nintendo’s New Play Control! series of games.

Punch-Out!!™ launches May 18 and brings back all of the fun of the beloved, classic NES® game that thrilled players in the early 1990s. Boxers battle as iconic hero Little Mac as they fight their way through a cast of new and familiar boxing opponents on their quest to win the coveted WVBA (World Video Boxing Association) Championship Belt.

Nintendo DS

Rhythm Heaven™ is an infectious video game that has been a huge hit in Japan. Players tap and slide the stylus on the touch screen in time to the beat. This fun, stylized game launches April 5.

A new entry in the Personal Trainer series is Personal Trainer™: Walking, which launches May 25. Personal Trainer: Walking tracks users’ progress and makes going for a walk a little more fun. It comes with two pedometers that users can wirelessly connect to their Nintendo DS system when they return home.

In The Legendary Starfy™ game, which launches June 8, players dive into a spectacular undersea adventure with Starfy, the legendary hero of Pufftop. Players swoop into enemies like a shooting star, glide over bottomless chasms and transform into powerful creatures to help a mysterious, bunny-eared visitor find his lost memory.