The Asian Power Hour

While perusing through some fine toy establishments, I ran across some interesting little developments that I've posted below with a quick explanation. Blurry pics since I had to use my cell phone camera, so apologies there. Well, not really, just deal with it.

This one is interesting, apparently Tiger has decided to completely knockoff the Wiimote design, right down to the motion sensing and trigger button for a line of sports games. For instance, you swing the "Tigermote" like a bat to hit the ball in their baseball game. Question though. The screen is on the controller so it's gonna be a little hard to see...

And the back...notice the trigger button.

Square-Enix is continuing it's insane marketing synergy steamrolling with yet more merchandising on top of all their freaking remakes. I don't think I've ever seen so many Final Fantasy VII merchandise before. Original IP Please! On the bright side, some retro figures from the DS remake of FFIV:

And the DragonQuest IV remake:

Here's an interesting little Rubiks Cube variant I saw in San Diego, The "Tetris Cube". Over 1000 solutions. It's basically just a Tetris branded 3D puzzle:

Uh Oh, like I need more Pokemon stuff to obsess over..Looks like there's a new Heroclix like Pokemon game out. You get one trainer with powers that affect the pokemon and 3 pokemon to battle with your opponent. I'm not quite sure if there are any gameboard or terrain rules like Warhammer, but that would make this freaking sweet. Check out Chimchar:

Here's a biggie, you've probably already seen the Maple Story Card game for sale. Each booster pack has a card that gives you something in-game. While most of the time, it's a card for an meta card game in the actual Maple Story client, sometimes you get clothing or pets. Basically something you might get from the cash shop. No real power, just good looks. I bought a Starter Deck and learned to play recently with some young'uns, I'll post more later with better pics. The game is designed by Wizards of the Coast and while it has fairly generic and grindy feeling gameplay, it's kind of fun....kind of like Maple Story. Scary.

Here's a funny little Spider-Man LCD game where it's basically a shooting gallery game where the screen and buttons are on the web-shooter. Still a little hard to see the screen, but I bet if I was a kid and saw this I'd be all over it. Gimmicky but fun.

Continuing on with the Rubiks Cube Schtick, here comes "Rubik Revolution", a Rubiks Cube with 6 built in mini-games and multiplayer challenges (much like Simon Says). I'm not exactly sure how this one works, but it looks intriguing, anyone have one who can shed some more light on this?