Microsoft may have been announcing Xbox 360 release dates for Too Human, showing off Gears of War 2, touting Fable 2 and providing details about the next Banjo Kazooie game today, but lo and behold, the company’s Viva Pinata series also was revealed to be coming to the Nintendo DS.
Viva Pinata: Pocket Paradise, which is based on Microsoft’s Viva Pinata game for Xbox 360, will appear on the Nintendo DS this fall, and it will do so courtesy of THQ, not Microsoft. This is particularly interesting considering Rare, a Microsoft-owned developer, is developing Viva Pinata: Pocket Paradise.
As a DS game, Viva Pinata: Pocket Paradise will include an array of DS-exclusive content in addition to the requisite stylus/touch-screen control scheme. The goal, of course, is to make it easier for kids to navigate through the garden by moving their pinatas around via the DS stylus.
In Viva Pinata: Pocket Paradise, players will inherit a neglected garden on Pinata Island and must tend to all aspects of cleaning the garden, growing and maintaining vegetation, caring for and breeding pinatas and attracting new species. To that end, the game will include seven new pinata species, each with new requirements, houses and unique cut scenes, and certain rare pinatas will only be available by using the Nintendo DS local wireless connection to transfer items and pinatas from their garden to their friends’, or vice versa.
Viva Pinata: Pocket Paradise will also include 12 full-motion video clips that serve as tutorial levels. These videos will naturally feature the stars of the Fox 4Kids Viva Pinata TV series.
