Last september, XSEED released in NA the lastest Media Vision game for the NDS, known as RIZ-ZOAWD in Japan. Named The Wizard of Oz: Beyond The Yellow Brick Road for its US release, the game has all the charm of the original story, with well written text and a good localization, while also making for a decent and quite innovative RPG experience.
gamrReview's Xavier Griffiths: "Movie tie-in games have a reputation for being notoriously bad and shoddy, doing both a disservice to the original film and videogames as a medium. More often than not the movies that get adapted into videogames are high octane, action-oriented summer blockbusters and the aim is simply to extract as much money from the market as possible. Realistically no one expects games based on trashy films such as Catwoman, The Cat in the Hat, or Eragon to be good in the first place, but what about games based on films that have garnered recognition for the highest award in cinema?"
A list saluting horribly wonderful movie games like Street Fighter: The Movie and The Wizard of Oz: Beyond the Yellow Brick Road.
In a cluttered RPG market on the DS there isn't any real reason to recommend The Wizard of Oz. The new story is generic, the exploration hampered by unnecessary backtracking and the dreaded locked door puzzles. An interesting combat system is ruined by the default party actions and clunky menu navigation. This certainly isn't what L. Frank Baum had in mind, there aren't even any flying monkeys.
