TGS 06: Fuzion Frenzy 2 Hands-On

TOKYO--When it comes to minigame collections and party games, Hudson is one of the top developers in the field. It's been developing the Mario Party series for Nintendo for years now. Now, the developer is working on an Xbox 360 follow-up to the long-forgotten Xbox minigame collection Fuzion Frenzy. The sequel maintains the metallic, futuristic look of the first game but brightens the atmosphere up a bit. The version being shown here at TGS 2006 only contains a fraction of what the final minigame total will be, but we were still able to jump in and give a few of them a try.

The menu appeared to list around 50 minigames, but many of them weren't selectable in this demo version of the game. One game has you controlling a forklift-like crate mover. Crates appear in the middle of the screen, and the four players have to struggle to get the crates into their corner of the screen to score points. Another is a game of space basketball. Players fight for control of a ball, then jump high into the air to slam dunk it. The third game we saw gives each player a set number of coins. One player gets a hammer, and hitting players makes coins come out. Control of the hammer changes automatically every few seconds, and the player with the most coins at the end wins.

Each minigame is playable by up to four local players. Presumably, the game will allow for this sort of minigame action over Xbox Live, as well, but we'll have to wait for the game's November release to see everything Fuzion Frenzy 2 has to offer.