Genre: Mini-Games
Publisher: Majesco
Developer: Taito Corporation / 505 Games
Release Date: August 27, 2007

It's official, gamers: A war is on, and we are under attack. It's not being waged by the sensationalist media who lash out in search of a news story (I'm looking at you, Fox) or even by Jack Thompson, who seems so bound and determined to self-destruct in an amusing blaze of glory that I'm buying stock in marshmallow companies. No, this enemy is much more insidious because, as Pogo once remarked, "We have met the enemy, and he is us." Taito has apparently decided that it hates gamers and wants to hurt us because after releasing the failure that was Furu Furu Park (which I also reviewed), they apparently realized that there were still some gamers who weren't waking up bathed in sweat from Taito-induced nightmares, so they decided to bludgeon the handheld market like a baby seal with an even more disappointing and inadequate assault and call it Turn It Around.

Graphically, Turn It Around is less of a work of art and more of a cry for help; even the more sophisticated pixelated dreck could have easily been summoned forth on a Super Nintendo. That means that they would have been forgivable for an early-generation Game Boy Advance title, but as a game for the Nintendo DS, it's truly sub-par; everything from the in-game graphics with their blocky and often incomprehensible motions to the Technicolor wash-out through which one chooses one of the many disappointing games is sorely lacking and could have benefited from a few more minutes of production time. The sound is little better; again, the Super Nintendo could have churned out less repetitive garbage, as could anyone with a few minutes of free time and a marginal talent for musical composition. Listening to Turn It Around with the volume anywhere above "absolute minimum" for more than five minutes at a time actually gave me a headache.

The games themselves are uninspired and pathetic. There are really only three types of mini-games stuffed into this cartridge: Power means that you are supposed to draw circles with your stylus as fast as you can, Technique means that you have to be a little more careful with the circles you draw, and Brain means that you have to think a little bit in addition to spinning your stylus. That really is all there is to this title; 24 mini-games, each one lasting for a few seconds at most and ostensibly varied by the backgrounds and themes. The trouble is that no matter what you call it, "spin the stylus as fast as you can" is what it is. Changing the label on a jug of expired milk doesn't make it stink any less, and that's basically what's being done here. I can honestly say that I enjoyed both Arkanoid and Cameltry in their original forms, and it's impressive in a mind-boggling, depressing sort of way that Taito actually managed to find a way to take its two best properties and sap every last ounce of enjoyment from them.

If you're looking for a sense of accomplishment, you're looking at the wrong game. Mini-games are completed on a pass-fail basis, with high scores proving essentially meaningless; you can get the top score in a game and still be a "zero" according to the game, or you can fail to make the top five and still be considered a "Village Uncle." (Apparently, this means you can change the traffic lights. I have absolutely no idea what that has to do with anything, but considering how random the rest of this title is, it fits right in.) Unlockables exist, but strictly on a technicality; once you complete Challenge mode by playing through and passing all 24 mini-games, you get treated to an ending with the main character running through a field, essentially. About half an hour will pass between taking the game out of the box and having done everything that the game can offer; I know because it happened to me. The fact that the games are dull as dishwater did nothing to increase its replay value, which proved itself to be basically nonexistent.

Turn It Around is nothing less than a slap in the face to Nintendo DS owners everywhere, a spiritual successor to Furu Furu Park in that it combines uninteresting and often non-functional games with painful audio/visual elements and a lack of replayability to drain every ounce of value from the purchase. This title has a singular distinction in that I am going to say something about it that I have never said about a game before: I do not recommend this title at any price. If you find it for a dollar, go buy a pack of playing cards instead; you'll have a lot more fun, and you won't give yourself carpal tunnel syndrome in the process. This is definitely the worst DS game I've ever played, and that's really saying something.

Score: 3.5/10