I found out that the Nintendo DS "Shiren The Wanderer Mystery Dungeon" game is being translated into English to be released in North America at the beginning of March, so I placed a preorder. ^__^
Shiren is a "graphical roguelike" game which I've heard a lot about but haven't actually played. I could have, since there's an English translation patch for the 2nd Shiren game on Super Famicon released by Aeon Genesis. But, I haven't gotten round to trying it. I'm fond of roguelikes like Angband and games like "Izuna: Legend Of The Unemployed Ninja" and "Azure Dreams" (and to a lesser extent, it's sequel Tao's Adventure for DS). My first was "Sword Of Fargoal" for the Commodore 64 - I think it was one of the best games out at the time! Randomly generated dungeons and the drive to fight all the way through, challenging and unforgiving, I like it.
I bought another 2nd hand Gameboy Advance SP over the weekend, a battered old 2nd hand Charizard flame red one, scuffed everywhere on the outside and with "KYLE" scratched into the back, presumably by its previous owner. Cute. But, it has a perfect screen and that's what's important. It came with a copy of Advance Wars, but I started playing my copy of Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Red Rescue Team instead. ^_^ I bought the game a few months ago (when I got into the Izuna game) but never tried it out. It's by Chunsoft, same as the Shiren games, and I have to say it's lots of fun, I'm really enjoying it. This game blends Pokemon and roguelike gaming together pretty well. You can recruit friendly Pokemon to join you on your quests, and I haven't played any roguelike where you take a party into the dungeon before; that's new to me. I also like that you can collect friend pokemon - I don't think there's an actual pokedex so you know how far through you are, though.
It's pretty easy compared to most of the roguelikes I've played, but it is a Pokemon game after all. There's a personality test to decide which Pokemon you will be throughout the game, and I turned out to be a Charmander. ^_^ I tend to be fire type in personality tests...
I haven't played any Shiren games before, but I've played "Izuna Legend Of The Unemployed Ninja" for DS, and I was amazed how much the Pokemon Mystery Dungeon game looks and plays like Izuna. The Izuna game looks graphically very similar (including the size of sprites how much you see of the map), plays almost the same way (just the weapon / armour / scroll powering up system is different), and even assigns the same buttons to commands - right trigger to easily maneuver diagonals, left trigger for easy access use your projectile/trap weapons, B button to dash in a direction until you bump into something interesting.... So I guess it's a complete rip-off of Shiren. But, at least that means it's a rip-off that's complete. ^_^
I also only found out today that a game I bought on Play Asia years ago super-cheap (like, a fiver or something) - Dragon Quest: Shonen Yangus to Fushigi no Dungeon - is another roguelike. I never even took it out of the box yet, though, hehe. You see, I heard that the Dragon Quest game it spins off from wasn't too great, so I didn't start that, so I never looked into the spinoff game...
I'm really looking forward to Shiren DS. Shiren is famously good and infamously difficult and unforgiving. There's a 50 second trailer for it here. It starts off "From the makers of Pokemon {R) Mystery Dungeon"... ^_^;;
