Media.Vision's awesome-looking and very Japanese Nintendo DS RPG based on the classic book The Wizard of Oz was released in North America today. Originally released on December 25th 2008 in Japan a RIZ-ZOAWD, the game has finally been brought to the West by publisher XSEED under the title The Wizard of Oz: Beyond the Yellow Brick Road.
gamrReview's Xavier Griffiths: "Movie tie-in games have a reputation for being notoriously bad and shoddy, doing both a disservice to the original film and videogames as a medium. More often than not the movies that get adapted into videogames are high octane, action-oriented summer blockbusters and the aim is simply to extract as much money from the market as possible. Realistically no one expects games based on trashy films such as Catwoman, The Cat in the Hat, or Eragon to be good in the first place, but what about games based on films that have garnered recognition for the highest award in cinema?"
A list saluting horribly wonderful movie games like Street Fighter: The Movie and The Wizard of Oz: Beyond the Yellow Brick Road.
In a cluttered RPG market on the DS there isn't any real reason to recommend The Wizard of Oz. The new story is generic, the exploration hampered by unnecessary backtracking and the dreaded locked door puzzles. An interesting combat system is ruined by the default party actions and clunky menu navigation. This certainly isn't what L. Frank Baum had in mind, there aren't even any flying monkeys.
To start reading some reviews, this is an interested title to say the least.