New Professor Layton, its 100-Hour RPG, and Tetris: Axis All Dated

A pair of games headed to Nintendo handhelds this year have been dated today, one of which brings a very nice surprise with it.

Professor Layton and the Last Specter is the fourth game in the Layton series and has already been available in Japan for almost two years now. It's a prequel that kicks off a new trilogy and will finally be coming out on DS in North America on October 17. That's all well and good, but the best bit of information lies with Professor Layton's London Life.

We've heard from some time now about an RPG included with Specter that had you running around London as Layton himself. It's being developed by Mother 3 developer Brownie Brown and is said to last more than 100 hours, which is a hell of a lot for a bonus feature in a Layton game. It's nice to see that it won't be left out of the the North American release, but what's even better is that you won't have to first unlock it as you do in the Japanese game -- it can be played right out of the box.

London Life was originally announced as coming to the ROID game service in Japan. The somewhat dark video above shows off some gameplay footage of walking around London and then playing a juggling minigame.

As the 3DS is backwards compatible with DS games, you'll be able to enjoy Specter and the bonus London Life on 3DS in addition to DS. If you're looking for something specifically tailored for the newer platform, Nintendo also announced today an October 2 release date for Tetris: Axis. There are over 20 modes in all and it features eight-player multiplayer support that requires only one person to have a game card. SpotPass and augmented reality support are also promised, the latter of which can be seen here.

In a rather unfortunate bit of timing, though, EA made a Tetris-related announcement today as well; it's released a free version of Tetris on Android. EA claims this is the first time the game has been released for free.

This highlights the challenge Nintendo faces in trying to compete with the mobile games space: EA is releasing a free version of Tetris you can play on your phone while Nintendo is trying to sell you a game that GameStop lists for $34.99 on a dedicated gaming device. Axis does sound as if it's got a lot more content, but enough to justify $34.99?

Tetris DS sold quite well, with two million units being sold in just over a year. That was at a different time, though, so it should be interesting to see how well Axis manages to do when it has to compete with a free Android game and a $2.99 iOS game.

history of video games new video games online games pc game reviews pc games download