The Feb. 2009 Nintendo Power has a small bit about the Black Knight in it. A couple interesting facts from it:

It uses woodcut-esque cut-scenes aside from the opening movie (like Sonic and the Secret Rings did with storybook scenes).

Shadow is Sir Lancelot, Knuckles is Sir Gawain, and Amy Rose is the Lady of the Lake.

Shadow and Knuckles are playable in the multiplayer battles after you’ve defeated them in the one-on-one duels in single player mode.

The multiplayer mode lets you either go sword-to-sword against up to three others in a free-for-all or you team up together to defeat a giant baddie as quickly as possible.

This time around I’ve scanned the entire article instead of just the images for you guys. Aren’t I nice? I suggest you still go out and buy the Feb 2009 issue of Nintendo Power to see the article for yourselves. It also has an interesting reader question. The reader mentions that Sonic X-Treme (the cancelled Sega Saturn game) kind of has a Super Mario Galaxy feeling to it. Chris Slate responds saying that he wrote a cover story on Sonic X-Treme for Game Players back in the day and does see a small resemblence now that he looks back. I wonder if Chris has any other inside info about the game from the press side of things…

Source Nintendo Power #238, February 2009

Nothing spectacular that we didn’t already know was revealed in the article for Sonic Unleashed except various controls for the Wii version.

• You move Sonic with the Nunchuk’s Control Stick and Jump with A.
• You do a quick side-step by holding B and moving the Control Stick in the desired direction (left or right).
• The new drift mechanism let’s you earn bonuses by holding B or Z to whip around tight turns.
• You use Sonic’s Homing Attack by shaking the Wii Remote
• Shaking the Wii Remote also lets you use a speed boost that’s filled from a guage at the bottom of the screen.
• While being the Werehog where you have a damage guage, you swing the Wii Remote for Sonic’s right hand and the Nunchuk for Sonic’s left hand.
• Pressing Z lets you block and by chaining together combos and mixing in advanced moves by swinging the remote and nunchuk up, down, or toward each other you can really dish out the pain on enemies.
• You can also use B to grab and toss the enemies.
• Pressing C let’s you activate Unleashed Mode; a powered-up state during which you gain new attacks and take less damage from your enemies.
• If you’re danging off an enemy, you can wave the Wii Remote to swing back and forth.
• You can climb poles by lifting the remote and nunchuk alternately, or raise a heavy gate by yanking up with both controllers.

Look for this game to arrive on November 18th in the US for the Wii, PS3, PS2, and 360.

As for the Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood review, it received an 8.0. The game was praised for the Elite Beat Agents style of attacks, the whitty dialogue, the great cast of characters each with an important role, how benched characters also level-up, equiping Chao to characters to boost their abilities, a series of Chrono Trigger inspired Team POW movies makes every new combination of fighters interesting, and the option to choose between lengthy chats or straight-to-business conversations. Some of the downsides being that the EBA sytles of attacks starts to get annoying after a while and some enemies being strong enough that you need to use POW attacks. Normal attacks do no damage to them. The game will take you about 15-20 hour to beat, but it will be well worth it. Look for it next week on the 30th for the US, or the 28th if you happen to be near the Nintendo World Store in New York City and wish to get the game a couple days early and an exclusive Chao.

Go out to a newsstand somewhere and buy issue 234 of Nintendo Power, which is November 2008. One other thing that I noticed about these two items is that the Unleashed articles was done by Chris Hoffman and the Chronicles review was by Casey L. Why didn’t Steve Thomason do them? He had always been the one writing anything related to Sonic in Nintendo Power. I would always check for his name, knowing he was a Sonic fan like us.

Source Nintendo Power #234