Konami imports Hudson trio

Once known as the driving force behind the TurboGrafx-16, Hudson Entertainment has been enjoying a higher profile in the US of late with the aid of some larger companies. Nintendo has been releasing its old TG-16 games on the Virtual Console, and Konami today announced that it would be bringing a trio of new Hudson titles for Nintendo platforms to the US.

This spring, Konami plans to release Wing Island and Kororinpa Marble Mania for the Wii, as well as Honeycomb Beat for the DS. Already confirmed for release in Europe, Kororinpa requires players to tilt the Wii Remote in order to navigate marbles through more than 40 mazes in single-player, or race to a finish line while collecting crystals in head-to-head multiplayer action.

Wing Island is another inhabitant of the European Wii's first-quarter release schedule. As a young bird who flies planes for a living, players will have to show their proficiency at a number of tasks, from guiding a group of planes in formation to fighting fires and dusting crops. Over the course of 25 missions, players earn money to upgrade their aircraft, and will be given the opportunity to compete against one another in minigames meant to test piloting skills.

For portable players, Konami is preparing Honeycomb Beat, a DS puzzle game in which players touch hexagons on the screen in order to flip them and change both their color and the color of any adjacent hexagons. Using that gameplay mechanic, the game challenges players to clear puzzles by creating specific patterns on the game board or to clear rapidly rising lines by making all the hexagons on them the same color. In addition to more than 200 puzzles, Honeycomb Beat will include a number of unlockable customization features that let players change the game's colors, background images, and music.