Nintendo Publishing: Slower than ever

We all know that when it comes to publish games, Nintendo of Europe has the habit of being kind of slow. And by "kind of slow" I mean seriously slow. Metroid Prime Pinball is an excellent example since this game came out in 2007 here. As far as I remember, the American version was released in 2005. But now I stumbled across this:

Naruto: Ninja Council 2 - European Version is coming out on October 2nd over here.

Now don't make the mistake and mix it up with the American Ninja Council 2. That was a GBA game. This one here is for the DS. The first title of the series we got here was the US version of Ninja Council 3. Confusing? Maybe a little. But it gets even better: The second European installment ist actually the third Naruto: Saikyo Ninja Daikesshu (=Ninja Council) in Japan. Keeping in mind that Ninja Council 3/Ninja Council Europe was an edited version of the Japanese Saikyo Ninja Daikesshu 4, the announcement of the European Ninja Council 2 is actually a step back.

(Quick question: Who is confused by now? Yeah, they really messed up the numbering...)

And on top of that: I already own that game.



I got it in December 2005 thanks to a friend who bought it in Japan. It was originally released in April 2005, I think. So, Nintendo, you are about THREE YEARS too late with this game. Not only this but it's also actually not worth owning. Just seven levels short and sometimes downright frustrating because of the fact that you fall back every time you get hit. If you try to climb a high building in the game (and you have to at least once) and get hit, you fall down the entire building without being able to steer your character.

My guess is that most of you don't care about the Naruto games for DS anyway. But I was seriously surprised when I saw that Nintendo is actually going to release a title in Europe that A) has been released in another country for such a long time and B) is actually the predecessor of a game that they already have released here.

Oh, wait...



False alarm, guys. It's not so much of a surprise.