Dig deep for fun in Nintendo's 'Fossil Fighters'

— -- If resurrecting vicious dinosaurs, as in the film Jurassic Park, sounds like an exciting gaming concept, then you'll love Nintendo's new Fossil Fighters for the portable Nintendo DS and DSi.

The game invites you to visit a remote island to find buried fossils, carefully extract the fossilized skeletons from the rock and then revive the more than 100 dinosaur-like creatures (called "Vivosaurs") in order to battle them in an arena.

Throughout this pocket-sized adventure, you'll also roam vast environments, meet a handful of colorful characters (including an absent-minded scientist known as Dr. Diggins and a malevolent troupe of fighters known as the BB Bandits) and if you like, connect wirelessly with friends in the same room to trade fossils (as long as they also have a DS or DSi and the game).

After you've seen your hotel room on the isle, you'll want to venture out and find one of the five main dig sites to start searching for fossils. Using the game system's stylus or control pad for movement, you can follow the sonar reading shown on the top screen and dig using your pickax to find fossils embedded in rocks.

Once you bring these fossil rocks to the lab for extraction, you'll rely on your stylus skills to hammer and drill away at the rock to fully reveal the fossil inside — but you've only got a limited time to complete the task and if you're not careful you'll damage the fossilized bones. Coincidentally, this fossil excavation feature is nearly identical to one in Disney Interactive Studios' just-released Spectrobes: Origins for the Nintendo Wii.

Drilling will also cause some dirt to obscure your view of the bone, so you can blow on the game system's microphone to clear it away. The better you can clean the fossil before the time is up, the more powerful the beast will be.

So long as you've extracted a skull (you'll also find bodies, arms and legs, which make the creature stronger), you can bring the Vivosaur back to life and deploy it in strategic, turn-based battles. This portion of the game will be familiar to fans of Pokemon and other similar role-playing games. You can also create teams of three Vivosaurs, by balancing out each of their strengths, to take on another team.