Brave explorers of the Fossil Fighters: Frontier game will discover a huge 3D world filled with fossils to excavate, prehistoric creatures to revive and primeval battles to conquer. The new portable game, launching for the Nintendo 3DS family of systems on March 20, has players grabbing their excavation tools, hopping in fully customizable vehicles and heading out into the wild world to dig up fossils and revive them into vivosaurs (think of them as extra powerful, extra colorful and extra awesome dinosaurs). These collectible vivosaurs can then be trained and sent into turn-based battles with other mighty beasts. Fossil Fighters: Frontier also lets friends explore and excavate together, fight as a team against rogue vivosaurs and battle in six-player multiplayer reptilian rumbles.

“Video game fans are about to get an adventure of prehistoric proportions,” said Scott Moffitt, Nintendo of America’s executive vice president of Sales & Marketing. “Between Fossil Fighters: Frontier, Code Name: S.T.E.A.M. and the upcoming Puzzle & Dragons Z + Puzzle & Dragons: Super Mario Bros. Edition games, it’s a great time to be a Nintendo 3DS owner.”

The expansive world of Fossil Fighters: Frontier is rich with things to discover. By hopping behind the wheel of a customizable Bone Buggy, players can explore to excavate fossils that can transform into a wide variety of different vivosaurs. After unearthing fossils, players place them in the back of their Bone Buggies to carefully clean and revive them using the touch screen of the Nintendo 3DS family of systems. Various upgradeable tools like drills and hammers can be found in the game and used in the fun and intuitive excavation process. Select dig sites might even host puzzle- or speed-based challenges, which can be completed to earn valuable and power-enhancing rare fossils.

Finding fossils and collecting resurrected vivosaurs is only part of the fun, as these prehistoric creatures can be sent into truly epic battles that pit vivosaur versus vivosaur. All vivosaurs fall into one of five elemental categories – Water, Fire, Air, Earth and Neutral – and possess a special ability that will assist them in battle. Players will encounter many different types of battles in the game, whether a story-based battle that takes place in the main campaign, daily tournaments or even StreetPass battles that let players train against other vivosaurs they pick up while using the StreetPass feature.

And the robust multiplayer options in the game don’t end there. In co-op local wireless, friends who each own a Nintendo 3DS system and the Fossil Fighters: Frontier game can team up and visit dig sites together. Each player travels in his or her own Bone Buggy and can work together to excavate the same fossils or work together to dig out hard to excavate fossils more effectively. Fossil Fighters: Frontier even features local wireless battles with up to six players or tournaments with up to two friends! Players who want to take their battles online using broadband Internet access can compete in one-on-one battles against random players to fight to the top of monthly online leaderboards.

For more information about Fossil Fighters: Frontier, visit http://fossilfighters.nintendo.com. Excavators-in-training that visit the game’s website will also have the ability to search for hidden fossils. These five fossils are hidden all over the site, and each time one is found, a new bonus, like wallpapers, game tips and exclusive activity, is unlocked. The site can be browsed right now, but the fossil hunt unlocks on March 20, the same day the game launches in stores and in the Nintendo eShop on Nintendo 3DS at a suggested retail price of $29.99.

Remember that Nintendo 3DS features parental controls that let adults manage the content their children can access. For more information about this and other features, visit http://www.nintendo.com/3ds.

About Nintendo: The worldwide pioneer in the creation of interactive entertainment, Nintendo Co., Ltd., of Kyoto, Japan, manufactures and markets hardware and software for its Wii U^™ and Wii^™ home consoles, and Nintendo 3DS^™ and Nintendo DS^™ families of portable systems. Since 1983, when it launched the Nintendo Entertainment System^™, Nintendo has sold more than 4.3 billion video games and more than 680 million hardware units globally, including the current-generation Wii U, Nintendo 3DS and Nintendo 3DS XL, as well as the Game Boy^™, Game Boy Advance, Nintendo DS, Nintendo DSi^™ and Nintendo DSi XL^™, Super NES^™, Nintendo 64^™, Nintendo GameCube^™ and Wii systems. It has also created industry icons that have become well-known, household names such as Mario^™, Donkey Kong^™, Metroid^™, Zelda^™ and Pokémon^™. A wholly owned subsidiary, Nintendo of America Inc., based in Redmond, Wash., serves as headquarters for Nintendo’s operations in the Western Hemisphere. For more information about Nintendo, please visit the company’s website at http://www.nintendo.com.