Beastly: Frantic Foto for Nintendo DS: Release, Gameplay and Reviews

Beastly: Frantic Foto is a spot-the-difference puzzle game for the Nintendo DS, based on the 2011 romance Beastly. It reached North America in March 2011, around the time the film opened.

Overview

The film, from CBS Films, retells the Beauty and the Beast story in a high school. WorthPlaying’s summary of the premise is that a spoiled student named Kyle Kingson is changed into someone unattractive by a witch-like classmate and gets one year to find a person who can love him. Wikipedia’s page on the film adds that CBS Films planned games alongside clothing, puzzles and toys, and that video games for the release worldwide came from Storm City.

The DS game is the second in a short run of Frantic Foto titles. WorthPlaying says it works like the earlier Heathcliff: Frantic Foto on the same system, with a sliding puzzle swapped in where that game had whack-a-mole.

How it plays

Both DS screens show movie stills that look the same. The player has to find five differences before the timer expires. When time runs out a life is lost, and the puzzle returns later with different flaws. Power-ups can refill the timer, freeze it, reveal a single flaw or reveal all of them, and collected letters spell the word beastly for bonus points.

The screens are laid out horizontally, so the console is not turned between puzzles and menus.

Between rounds there is a sliding-tile minigame, which the reviewer thought belonged in the game. Dragging tiles felt slow to him, though. A two-player mode lets two people race to solve the same puzzle, but it needs two cartridges.

Reception

WorthPlaying published the only scored review found, written by Brian Dumlao on 18 March 2011. He gave the DS game 6.0 out of 10 and described it as good but not great. His praise covered the puzzle design, crisp images with edits that do not look like a sloppy digital patch, responsive tapping and a pleasant but forgettable soundtrack.

The criticism was about size. He counted about 90 stills, the slide puzzles reuse them, power-ups cannot be topped up and the whole game can be finished in an afternoon. He recommended it to fans of the film and suggested a rental to hidden-object fans, and called the DS edition the better of the two Beastly games, partly by default because of the Wii version.

Release and credits

WorthPlaying names 7 Raven Studios as developer and Storm City Entertainment as publisher, with 8 March 2011 as the release date. Wikipedia’s Nintendo DS list agrees on the developer but prints Storm City Games as publisher and 10 March 2011 for North America. Both dates are given as sourced here.

Wikipedia’s Wii list gives a separate Wii game with the same film name, developed by Visual Impact and published in North America by Storm City Games on 25 February 2011.

Can you still play it?

DS game cards run on the Nintendo DS, DS Lite and DSi, and the Nintendo 3DS family plays them in DS mode. The Wii U and Switch cannot read DS cards. Because this release is an ordinary cartridge and not DSiWare, it is not region-locked. Nintendo ended 3DS production on 16 September 2020, and the Wii U and 3DS eShop closed on 27 March 2023.