It’s just a shame that the levels all take place in typical platforming game environments that lack the necessary atmosphere to make them feel “alive”, despite being rather colourful and inviting.Īt its core, Giana Sisters DS is your run of the mill platformer. They also appear to be quite likeable characters (though we can only tell through facial expressions) and the enemies, while lacking the charm of the Goombas and Koopa Troopas we’re all used to, do the job of imitating typical platforming archetype rather well. The sisters themselves animate quite well with hair blowing in the wind and the sisters looking in the direction the camera is pointed. Probably one of the only things that impressed me with Giana Sisters DS was that the animation and art direction was actually quite bearable. You’re given hardly anything to work with and it seems that the whole point of the game’s story was to give an excuse for the Giana Sisters to be in a world other than their own. Upon falling asleep, the Giana Sisters fall into a vortex which rips open their treasure chest and scatters their gems throughout a mysterious new world (something like a creatively devoid Mushroom Kingdom). A young girl (presumable a Giana sister, it’s hard to tell, because there’s no dialogue at all) is hoarding lots of gems in a treasure chest, until she succumbs to biological requirements and falls asleep. There is apparently a story within Giana Sisters DS, but it’s rather simple. And while the original is revered by some (and we really don’t know why), this game does little to differentiate itself from any platformer, let alone Mario himself. Now, more than twenty years later, The Great Giana Sisters are making a return to, ironically, a Nintendo console. In fact, Nintendo saw so much similarity that they effectively barred the distribution of the original title. On that note, some people may remember the Great Giana Sisters, a shameless Commodore 64 rip off of everyone’s favourite Italian plumber brothers.

When you imitate something, it’s hard to NOT draw comparisons to the source material. While some might say that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, there is another side to it as well.

Giana sisters fan art