Nintendo's Magnetica Helps Those Who Have Lost Their Marbles

REDMOND, Wash., June 1, 2006 - Scientists say magnets provide no real medical benefits, but Nintendo begs to differ. Magnetica is the perfect prescription to combat boredom during long summer travel. This new puzzle game, made exclusively for Nintendo DS, involves much more than bashing aggies in a marble ring on the playground blacktop. Magnetica lures players in with a simple premise, then challenges them to keep their cool through frenzied rounds of marble elimination. Magnetica, Rated E for Everyone, launches on June 5.

"Magnetica is the perfect game to kick off our new Touch Generations brand of casual games," says George Harrison, Nintendo of America's senior vice president of marketing and corporate communications. "It's a game that anyone can pick up and play, whether for a few minutes or a few hours."

Magnetica is the hand-held version of the popular arcade game Puzz Loop, with a few twists that could only be possible using the abilities of Nintendo DS. Players use the touch screen to flick marbles one by one at an ever-growing spiral chain of marbles. Like-colored marbles attract one another. Whenever three marbles of the same color connect, they vanish, sometimes setting off massive chain reactions.

In single-player modes, players can find bonus items that can slow or stop time, or even reverse the course of the marbles. Challenge mode features 99 levels on four difficulty settings, Quest mode offers players a variety of missions and Puzzle mode requires players to eliminate all marbles on the screen using a limited supply of their own. Players must deal with marble-stymieing obstacles like wind, water, switches and multiple launchers. In the two-player Versus mode, players can frustrate their opponents with an array of diabolical weapons: Ion Clouds create smoke screens, Recoils block an opponent's marbles, Black Holes devour marbles and Gravitons alter the path of launched marbles.

For more information about Magnetica, visit www.magnetica.nintendods.com.

The new Touch Generations brand includes titles like Magnetica that anyone can pick up and play, even with little or no experience with video games. It represents one of the many ways that Nintendo is making it easy for new demographics of people to be introduced to video games.

The worldwide innovator in the creation of interactive entertainment, Nintendo Co., Ltd., of Kyoto, Japan, manufactures and markets hardware and software for its Nintendo DS, Game Boy® Advance and Nintendo GameCube systems, and upcoming Wii console. Since 1983, Nintendo has sold nearly 2.2 billion video games and more than 375 million hardware units globally, and has created industry icons like Mario, Donkey Kong®, Metroid®, Zelda and Pokémon®. A wholly owned subsidiary, Nintendo of America Inc., based in Redmond, Wash., serves as headquarters for Nintendo's operations in the Western Hemisphere. For more information about Nintendo, visit the company's Web site at www.nintendo.com.