As if there weren't enough "gotta catch 'em all" games on the market, Nintendo is at work on the upcoming Fossil Fighters for the Nintendo DS in which players unearth dinosaur fossils, dust 'em off, and eventually revive long-dead thunder lizards in order to send them into combat against other revived thunder lizards. Here's the basic summary courtesy of Wikipedia:
The player plays as a young, nameable archaeologist, who must use a
fossil detector to track down locations of several fossils around the
island and dig them out. After finding them, they will be stuck inside
of rocks, making the player take them to the laboratory and use a
hammer and a laser to cautiously pick and drill the fossils out in
order to revive prehistoric animals. The less damage given to a fossil
piece, and when more fossil pieces are found, the more powerful the
resurrected prehistoric animal becomes. After reviving them, they can
be used to battle other prehistoric animals revived by other fossil
diggers.
I'm glad to see Nintendo planning a new core audience game for the DS (collecting dinosaurs and battling with them is a core concept, right?), but did it have to be such a blatant Pokémon clone? I know there's room in this world for many different platformers, RPGs, racing games, etc., but as someone who never really got into the catch-'em'all genre, this seems like a waste of a Nintendo-published core title. Oh well; can't win 'em all. Fossil Fighters arrives in North America on August 10, 2009.
