The Wonderful Touch-Screen of Oz

You may or may not be familiar with the developer Media Vision. They got their break in the game industry by developing a quirky RPG series for Sony called Wild ARMs. Maybe you've heard of it?

Well, Media Vision is leaving the Wild West and heading somewhere over the rainbow with their new Nintendo DS game, RIZ-ZOAWD. RIZ-ZOAWD (pronounced in Japanese something like Ree-zode) appears to be a re-telling of L. Frank Baum's famous children's novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, bringing back the well-known characters of Dorothy, Toto, the Lion, the Scarecrow, and the Tinman.

The game is completely 3D (and for crappy DS graphics, it looks pretty good) and can be completely controlled via the stylus. Battles appear to be based on a simplistic turn-based system reminscent of Dragon Quest, albeit (again) controlled by the stylus.

For exploration, both screens appear to be used to display the world, giving the player a much further and more detailed view of the Kingdom of Oz. Battles will use the touch screen for player input, while the top screen will be used to display the action.

Though details are scarce at the moment, this definitely looks like a title to keep an eye on for me, as I've really enjoyed a lot of Media Vision's previous work, and the game's style looks very appealing. Also, I've always really enjoyed the world around the Wizard of Oz since I was little (not that crappy old film that everyone has seen, I'm talking about the actual book now).

I've included the (admittedly small) Famitsu scans below for your viewing pleasure.

RIZ-ZOAWD is reportedly set to be published by D3 in Japan sometime this year. We'll keep you posted.

P.S. Anyone else remember the old Wizard of Oz anime? I loved that show!