Viva Piņata heading to DS

By Tom Bramwell Published 30 July, 2007

Details expected soon.

Rare has told an audience at Comic-Con that Viva Piņata is coming to Nintendo DS!

Details are a bit scarce, so presumably we can expect a press release shortly, but a photograph on Kotaku and official word on the Pinata Island forums add up to confirmation.

What's more, it sounds as though VP DS will be closer to its Xbox 360 counterpart than the recently unveiled Viva Piņata: Party Animals title for its mother-platform, with one Rare employee responding to concerns that the DS would struggle to handle the original's freeform gardening thus: "You'll be pleasantly surprised."

Not that we need much prompting, as you'll know if you've read our Viva Piņata Xbox 360 review or our exclusive Rare studio tour feature. The original game tasked you with cleaning up and cultivating a garden so that lots of papery animals would visit and make it their home.

Viva Piņata is also due out on PC later this year.

Picture of Tom.

About Tom Bramwell

Tom is Operations director of Eurogamer Network and Editor-at-Large of Eurogamer.net. He joined the company in February 2000. Follow him on Twitter.

Read more articles from Tom by visiting the Tom Bramwell archive page.

You may also like...

Comments (25) Latest comment 5 years ago

Comments for this article are now closed, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • bengray66 #1 5 years ago

    First!
    i was just thinking this would be a great idea not to long ago.....

  • MadMirko #2 5 years ago

    Hm. Who did see that one coming? :)

  • Fernando #3 5 years ago

    nice, i might get this if its a good conversion

  • Britesparc Verified Creative, ITV #4 5 years ago

    Awesome, awesome, awesome! What with this and Indy Lego (which I predicted ages ago), this is a cracking day for new game announcements! :-D

  • Les #5 5 years ago

    They have to try something to get some return on their investment in the franchise. This might be it. On 360 it just doesn't work (wrong demographic).

  • Fernando #6 5 years ago

    its also coming to PC (announced @ E3) wonder if that'll sell any good.

  • Xerx3s #7 5 years ago

    Hm. Who didn't see that one coming? :)

    fixed.

  • dirigiblebill #8 5 years ago

    Zomg and presumably teh awesome. Lawks a-mercy. Boo-yah.

    :D

  • chrisjm #9 5 years ago

    if they have a koala it should be caramel koala as thats a real chocolate bar in Oz :)

  • Tweakmonkey #10 5 years ago

    360 is d00med!

  • smoothn00dle #11 5 years ago

    an Xbox360 first party game come to Nintendo DS? M$ whether DS win than PSP dominate mobile console.

  • bdgr #12 5 years ago

    Nice, but party animals must surely be put on the wii?!

  • Monkey_Puncher #13 5 years ago

    Rare are only releasing this on DS because it's not in direct competition with Microsoft, so nope there won't be any Wii games.
    Edited by Monkey_Puncher at 30/07/07 @ 12:53

  • Arcadiian #14 5 years ago

    I can't help but find it really weird when first party Microsoft games are released on the DS. o_O

    Still, probably another great DS game to buy.

  • ShekkyBoy #15 5 years ago

    It's sound business sense and a good fit really. The key is that Viva Piņata was more popular around female gamers than its intended audience of children, and the DS has the fastest growing female fanbase around. Remember - there've always been persistent rumours that Halo DS was in development.

  • ghearoid #16 5 years ago

    fabulous!

    viva pinata was the only game that would've tempted me to buy a 360 so i'm well chuffed it's coming to DS

    \o/

  • GreasyWeasel #17 5 years ago

    No real surprise, I'm sure the orignal concept for this game from Rare was originally intended for the DS anyway. The game simply got refocused to the 360 when Microsoft bought them.

  • Skywise #18 5 years ago

    @GreayWeasel: although I have lots of respect for Rare I doubt that they had plans for DS development at the time they were bought by MS, the DS wasn't even announced yet for some years!

  • chrisjm #19 5 years ago

    the original concept was running on an xbox i thought, but it wasnt powerful enough to handle the graphical effects + number of critters etc.

    like the DS is?.... cashcow says 'moo'

  • Les #20 5 years ago

    "it's getting less likely that Microsoft will ever release a handheld console until they've won the home console market. "

    Which isn't really a problem is it, given their crap hardware designs? ;)

  • orakio #21 5 years ago

    Excellent! I just bought a DS \o/

  • Junglist95 #22 5 years ago

    My 2 daugthers are gonna go crazy for this, hard enough to keep em off the 360 version never mind a portable one

  • TRUTH #23 5 years ago

    The 360 game was a excellent game though sadly ignored by 360 gamers. The sales have picked up since word of mouth and reviews got to people. I'm glad to see it come to the DS. It probably won't be the same, but also new in ways due to DS control and twin screens.

  • BadBoyBonner #24 5 years ago

    ChrisJM

    the original concept was running on an xbox i thought, but it wasnt powerful enough to handle the graphical effects + number of critters etc.

    like the DS is?.... cashcow says 'moo'


    "That vision of sending Piņata to each other was around before Xbox Live even existed. That's why [VIVA PIŅATA] BEGAN LIFE ON A HANDHELD PDA DEVICE [in 2002] because we wanted one machine that could communicate with another," revealed Mayles.
    Edited by BadBoyBonner at 31/07/07 @ 08:38

  • GreasyWeasel #25 5 years ago

    Cheers BadBoyBonner,

    "That vision of sending Piņata to each other was around before Xbox Live even existed. That's why [VIVA PIŅATA] BEGAN LIFE ON A HANDHELD PDA DEVICE [in 2002] because we wanted one machine that could communicate with another," revealed Mayles.

    Ok so I was wrong that it was originally intended for the DS but I knew the original idea was for a handheld and not the xbox.