Veteran Nintendo fans should also recognize the development studio Left Field Productions. The company is responsible for some of the great second-party N64 games, including Kobe Bryant and, best of all, Excitebike 64. On Wii, it recently delivered Nitrobike. And now it's taking a crack at WiiWare with its first project, Battle Poker.
Last week, Cubed3 posted the first look at the game. This week, Left Field head James Higgins chatted with IGN about the title. They have also posted some more screenshots.
IGN writes: "Battle Poker might be considered a useful training tool for priming the poker players of tomorrow. Even though it's nothing like playing an actual game of poker, it will teach kids about the hierarchy of hands to be made. But the games are pretty simple, and without any sort of persistent score tracking there isn't much to invest in. There also aren't any real "battles" here, making the title more than a little misleading. Younger gamers may find the fast-paced gameplay amusing but most of us will be cashing in our chips after just a few minutes".
Nintendo Life:
There are a few things about Battle Poker that you will notice as soon as you start playing the game, and one of them is that at no point do you actually play any poker.
Is this a bad thing? Absolutely not, but it does lead to a slightly schizophrenic experience.
Basically, Battle Poker is a collection of puzzle-based minigames (all but two of which are multiplayer) that use poker, in some way, as a core concept. But the relationship between actual poker and Battle Poker is akin to the relationship between actual boxing and Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!! There's a great deal of fun to be had, but the more faithful you expect the game to remain to its subject, the more disappointed you will be.
