Mitchell's PANG Returns on Nintendo DS

Rising Star Games has announced it will be bringing Mitchell's classic, PANG to Nintendo DS in Europe this year. This brand new version of the arcade smash hit from 1989 that US gamers will more likely know as Super Buster Bros. from the SNES will now go under the moniker of PANG: Magical Michael. The protagonist, Michael, is a skilled magician who was trying out a new experiment and accidentally ended up with a magical mishap, spreading balloons all around the world. Travelling on his magic carpet, he must use his enchanted staff to shoot down balloons of varying size at numerous locations, gathering various upgrades to increase his fire power and even briefly stop time to gain the upper hand.

As well as the standard PANG gameplay, new modes have been introduced, with Magical Michael able to take part in challenge stages where he has the ability to jump or use a special shield that balloons bounce off, whilst there is even an exclusive touch-screen mode where Michael remains in a central position and players must touch the screen in the correct place to fire off a magical beam to despatch the pesky bouncing balloons.

Mitchell Corporation has been churning out hits for decades now, but Nintendo fans will know the Japanese development team especially for its output in recent years, with high quality releases such as Polarium (DS), Polarium Advance (GBA), actionloop (DS), actionloop Twist (WiiWare), Sujin Taisen: Number Battles (DSiWare), and Wakugumi: Monochrome Puzzle (DSiWare). Now it is back with arguably its best effort yet, with PANG: Magical Michael, the game Cubed3 readers were first asked about back in 2006 and Senior Editor Adam Riley has even lent his voice to for the role of Magical Michael himself.

In addition to the news of PANG: Magical Michael, three other games were listed on Rising Star Games' Autumn schedule; the DS RPG duo of Rune Factory 2 and My World My Way, as well as Eldar Saga for Wii, dropping the Valhalla Knights name for unspecified reasons.


Sadly it appears that both Arc Rise Fantasia on Wii and Steal Princess for DS have been dropped from the schedule for the moment, although there is the promise of further announcements coming ahead of E3, so we shall have to wait and see...