Alpha and Omega DS Game Review: Release Date, Gameplay and Reception

The Alpha and Omega DS game is a minigame collection for the Nintendo DS, built around the 2010 animated film of the same name. Sparkworkz developed it, and Storm City Games put it out in North America on 14 September 2010.

Overview

Alpha and Omega is a Lionsgate film about two Rocky Mountain wolves, Kate and Humphrey, who are relocated from Jasper National Park to Idaho and have to find their way home. It premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival on 8 September 2010 and opened in US cinemas on 17 September 2010. The Alpha and Omega Nintendo DS game arrived three days earlier than that wide release, by Wikipedia’s dates.

Sources say little about how closely the cartridge follows the film beyond its structure. WorthPlaying reports that a story mode walks through the events of the movie in order, with each chapter built from the same few minigames, and that a narrator links the chapters with voice samples. The Wikipedia article on the film is the main place that treats the film link at all, and it mentions the game only briefly among the merchandise: a few books, McDonald’s toys in the United Kingdom and two video games.

How the Alpha and Omega DS game plays

Four minigames make up the Alpha and Omega Nintendo DS game, and WorthPlaying describes them in some detail. Log riding is a sledding-style race against an opponent or the clock, with tricks, and the reviewer rates it the hardest of the set. Wolf running asks the player to jump chasms, rocks and trees while keeping as many pack members as possible alive to the end of the trail, and it is the easiest. Wolf howling is a rhythm game in the vein of Guitar Hero, with six songs in total, and the star power move is triggered by speaking into the DS microphone. Goose golf is a minigolf variant in which items are collected along the way.

Wikipedia lists the same four ideas under slightly different names: log boarding, an endless runner, a howling rhythm game and golf played with touch screen controls.

On control, WorthPlaying calls the mix of touch screen and buttons balanced and responsive, with no noticeable lag. The one trouble spot is the microphone step in the howling game, which the reviewer says picked up taps on the case more reliably than a voice.

Alpha and Omega DS review: how critics received it

Critical coverage of the Alpha and Omega DS game is thin. The clearest scored review is from WorthPlaying, where Brian Dumlao gave it 6.5 out of 10 on 12 February 2011. He called it a surprisingly decent licensed title and a recommended rental, with the advice that only dedicated fans of the film should consider buying it.

His praise went to the audio. The soundtrack is described as taken from the movie, which he found rare on a handheld, and the narrator samples as high quality. The log riding and howling games were singled out as the best of the four. His complaints were limited content, since the story mode repeats the same four activities, an upper screen with very little animation (birds in the howling game stand still, and the golfer’s swing has four frames), wolves that differ only by color, and note effects that drown the music.

The wider picture is harsher. Wikipedia states that the game was panned for poor graphics, bad controls and repetitive minigames, a verdict that does not match the milder tone of the WorthPlaying piece. Both can be true for different readers: a rental-worthy compilation for a young fan, and a thin one for anybody comparing it with other DS software. No Metacritic or GameRankings aggregate turned up in the sources checked.

The film itself had generally negative reviews according to Wikipedia, though it earned about 50.5 million dollars against a 20 million dollar budget.

Release and credits

Wikipedia credits Sparkworkz as developer and gives Storm City Games as publisher in the United States and Funbox Media as publisher in Europe and Australia. WorthPlaying prints the publisher as Storm City Entertainment and does not name a developer. The same Wikipedia passage says the card was exclusive to the Nintendo DS, and that some copies reached other countries as imports.

Alpha and Omega: Alpha Run is a separate mobile title from inXile Entertainment, released on 16 September 2010 for iPhone and iPod Touch. Wikipedia says it resembles the Alpha Run stages of the Alpha and Omega DS game.

Can you still play it?

A Nintendo DS cartridge runs on the Nintendo DS, DS Lite and DSi, and the Nintendo 3DS family plays it in DS mode. The Wii U and Switch do not read DS cards. The sources list only the cartridge release, so a physical card is what a player needs, and DS cards are not region-locked outside DSi-only software. Nintendo stopped making the 3DS family on 16 September 2020, and the Wii U and 3DS eShop closed on 27 March 2023, though neither matters for a boxed card.