Itadaki Street DS (Nintendo DS) Preview

The question is what exactly is Itadaki Street anyway? Well, many have described it as the videogaming equivalent of the immensely popular family board-game Monopoly, whilst others have stated that from the screens show so far it might as well be deemed as the next outing in the multi-million selling Mario Party series. Both views are not entirely wrong, but the game is rather unique in its own right because of a few extra additions, and has been developed over many years, dating as far back as 1991 when it made its d

Itadaki Street, for those unaware of its origins, is a product of the genius mind of Yuji Horii, the man that created the ever-popular Dragon Quest series and has now become legendary in status because of the sheer quality of the games he is involved in. The series is a computer-based board-game that was originally published under the Enix label before the company merged with Squaresoft. It all has a party feeling to it, and really does play like an amended version of Monopoly. The way the game itself plays is as follows: each of the players involved in the game must first of all roll their dice to determine their number, which is then translated into the amount of places they can move around one of the many boards included. Whilst on their travels, players can use their assets to make wise purchases of property currently not owned by others. Just as with Monopoly, once another player moving round the board by chance lands on one of the properties you now own, you will be able to charge them a set fee, thus boosting your overall finances. Of course, the same ruling applies to you, therefore you can lose muchos dineros by straying onto a competitor's land.

What makes this slightly better than standard Monopoly, though, is that you can actually buy and sell stocks related to certain blocks. This means that the value of properties related to that particular block will be affected by your decisions and ultimately turn the tables depending on how wise your choices are. Another feature is that players are able to level-up as they play by collecting special icons. Although not announced yet, it would seem an obvious option for Square Enix to include traditional icons from the Mario world, as it did with Mario Basket 3-on-3. The same goes for boards; Square Enix has so far announced that there will be themed boards based upon Dragon Quest IV and V, but if there are none from the Mushroom Kingdom then it will be a shocking omission. Other than that, previous games have allowed up to four players per board, so that should be a definite, plus this version will make use of the Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection so you can play against online opponents. Finally, characters that have been confirmed so far are: Mario, Luigi, Yoshi and Peach from the Mario series, as well as Slime, Jessica and Angelo from Dragon Quest games.