Konami brings GoPets to DS

It may sound like a cross between two of Nintendo's favourite DS games, but Konami's new pet community game GoPets has actually been available on the Internet since 2004. First launched in South Korea, the social networking/ virtual pet game enables you to create your own weird-looking cat or dog, which inhabits your PC, developing a personality, hobbies and learning tricks the more time you spend with it. As is the way of such beings however, their main reason to live is to be lavished with gifts from their supposed masters, so you'll spend your time (and in-game cash – in this case is based around coloured shells), kitting your pet out with everything from clothes to cars, planes and bathtubs. Still, they are sociable beings and will happily interact with other GoPets, using their special IKU picture language to talk and dancing their funny little dances. Users can also communicate via email and instant messaging services within the game. Perhaps the most significant thing about the GoPets is that they love to explore and visit like-minded people's computers. It's also something that happens regularly if you don't give your pet the proper care and attention (although technically, you can't kill them off with neglect). Konami plans to bring all these features within the purview of its DS version of the PC game, (called GoPets: Vacation Island), with the Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection providing the backbone communications network for swapping GoPets and socialising with other DS pet owners around the world. A travel journal will be included so you can keep track of all your new chums, too. For those without regular access to wi-fi, GoPets: Vacation Island will also have a single player mode that will feature one-of-a-kind pets that can only be created within its island environment, as well as various mini-games. One of Konami's most ambitious DS games of 2007, GoPets: Vacation Island won't be available until the autumn.

Horse & Pony: My Stud Farm

Format: J2ME

You wait ages for a horse game, then two trot along at once.

Gameloft's Pippa Funnell Horse Riding Academy was a decent attempt at an equine sim, albeit one that didn't last very long. Now HandyGames has stepped up with its own horsey title, based on a popular range of German PC and console games.

The two games are good news for the mobile games industry, showing that publishers are keen to appeal to new groups of gamers (that is, girls), but which one's best? Because here the whinny takes it all. Or something.

Horse & Pony follows a different tack to Gameloft's game. You're not a fresh-faced equestrian student: instead, you run your own stud farm. Your aim is to breed a bunch of champion nags by feeding them, grooming then, training them up and then entering them in competitions.

Bizarrely, it works a lot like HandyGames' existing Porn Manager game, with the same blend of wandering around a cartoony environment, choosing what to do, and watching quick animations showing your actions. (It must be an interesting pitch to the mobile operators: "It's like Porn Manager, except with horses, and aimed at teenage girls...")

Anyway, you spend the game pootling between your stables, warehouse, training yard and pasture, ensuring your horses are sufficiently well-fed and groomed.

The training yard can be used to school up your nags in a series of skills, from racing and vaulting through to polo, dressage and formation riding. Meanwhile, you have to keep an eye on ratings like sociability and health to make sure they're in tip-top condition.

All this food and training costs money, of course, so you'll need to earn a few bob by entering your horses in competitions based around their skills. The tournaments can be local through to international level, and provide the all-important source of income for your farm – aided by other people's horses coming to visit.

Finally, of course, this is a stud farm you're running, so you have to breed new horses – although understandably this process isn't dealt with in quite the same way as Porn Manager...

There's bags of depth to Horse & Pony, and you do get caught up in the intricacies of breeding that perfect polo champion. However, the game is frustrating in the lack of stuff to actually do with your horse.

See, while Pippa Funnell Horse Riding Academy was based entirely around riding your horse, the only time you get on the saddle in Horse & Pony is for a basic exercise minigame that involves galloping in a straight line and jumping the occasional obstacle.

When you train one of your horses, it just stays in the training paddock for two days. Register it for a tournament, and it disappears for three days, before coming back with a message saying how well it did. Both of these sections would be an ideal opportunity for some cool mini-games. And even if the lack of any is down to space restrictions on mobile, it still makes for a less satisfying experience.

There's also a question over whether Horse & Pony's target audience want to play a stud-farm management game, as opposed to just ride horses as in Gameloft's rival. Finally, the instructions and tutorial could do a better job of explaining the relatively complex game workings.

Horse & Pony isn't, well, pony, but it could be much more of a thoroughbred. Still, if the ups and downs of the equine breeding world (easy at the back there) appeal, there's enough in here to make it worth a whirl.

Final Fantasy III figures on the way

It doubtless has more to do with commerce than anything else, but at least Square Enix can argue its solid little Final Fantasy III figures tie in with the newly-3D status of the DS game. The DS overhaul saw designer Akihiko Yoshida reworking the game's originally 2D playable characters into a volumeric form, and now, in turn, that's resulted in the Trading Arts Mini set. It consists of five figures. You get Luneth in his initial freelance outfit, Arc decked out as a red mage � that's a low level job type that can use white and black magic � and Ingus in his knight armour. Refia, however, comes in two advanced job costumes � well she is the only lady in the group. There's the cute Devout cape (check out those big ears), and our favourite, the spiky Dragoon. For some reason Square Enix has dropped two figures � Refia as magus and dark knight � from the set that will be available in Europe.