Everyone must be familiar with the million selling Pokemon and the series of similar games that try to capture its success by now. All take place in an RPG world where the player takes command over a group of creatures to do battle with others. Even now, more continue to appear even though they were getting kind of tiresome so it was good news to hear that Nintendo was trying something new. Bacteria is everywhere around us and is considered to be the earliest single cell forms of life to appear on Earth. Now what if you could control them to do battle with each other? That’s what Nintendo and MediaKite’s “Kirin Nano Island Story” is all about but it’s not turn based.

The story takes place as you take on the role of a transfer student who is arriving on Nano Island to study “Kin”, the living micro-organisms that exists everywhere. They’re used to make buildings, cook, grow flowers, keep blackboards black and many other things you wouldn’t have imagined. After setting up your profile, you get introduced to your new classmates at Nano Academy and you go about your task of collecting new Kin. The main map which asks for your location features Japan but for some reason they actually cover overseas players too!


Welcome to Nano Academy Meet Noriko.

Navigating around Nano Island is very much the same as Trauma Centre. You’re presented with a map of icons on the touch screen and double-tapping one of them takes you to your destination. Events take place as you speak to characters, make a few choices and are given tasks to carry out. The game spends a good few chapters easing you into the world of Kin battles.

The highlight of the game is of course about collecting Kin and you can do this everywhere. After receiving your NDS tool, which looks like the original DS console and stands for “Nano Data Sampler”, you can tap anywhere on the 2D environments to try and find those Kin. Once you’ve found a spot, you tap the screen to drip some droplet onto the NDS and Kin appears after a few seconds. It’s simple and maybe a little too simple. The few seconds of waiting becomes tedious after a while because you’ll often find yourself ending up with the same Kin. Maybe they should have made it into a mini game where you have to focus something similar to a microscope on the Kin instead. Kin can also evolve by letting them battle a different Kin but this means you have to find the right opponent.


Bacteria “Kin” like this are everywhere.Find them with your NDS.

Once you’ve collected your Kin, you’re ready to do battle and just like in the Pokemon world, people don’t fight. They settle arguments and any other quarrels with Kin battles. There are no random battles and if you just want to have a match, you can visit the Battle Arena to choose an opponent. Much of the story involves finding a certain Kin as part of a homework assignment or some other task and since you’re new, it obviously means you’ll have to ask around. Your classmates don’t let you know anything until you beat them at a battle.