News: Namco oddities

August 12, 2006, 04:14 AM

by chazumaru, via BandaiNamco -
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Nice fanart. I heard the original charadesigner behind The Idolm@ster's girls was the same guy behind the Lunar series. He also worked on Gunbuster, apparently.Speaking of Namco fanboys, here are a few Namco-related curious tidbits. Ruliweb has pictures of the flashy advertisement campaign held by SCEK for the Korean release of Tekken: Dark Resurrection on PSP. Namco is quite active on Sony's handheld, and most of you certainly know that Ace Combat X and Ridge Racers 2 are on their way. There's not much to say about the new Ridge, into which Namco seems to have put minimal effort, but audiophiles can check what has been added in the soundtrack: more popular tunes from Type 4 and Rave, as well as Sanodg's remix version of paris which could be heard in the arranged soundtrack album Ridge Racer V Official Bootleg.

Ace Combat X seems much more convincing, and ITMedia has quite a big preview feature on the game where, we learn that Studio 4°C is producing the cutscenes. Now here is a weird anecdote: check this image. It depicts a fictional newspaper, La Société - based on the real world French newspaper Le Monde. Even the headline is in French. In fact, if you get a closer look at the snapshot, the whole article is in French (pic provided by Fabien again). The first line says: The Villepin Administration forced to face multiple difficulties simultaneously. The article even proceeds with Jacques Chirac as the subject of the opening sentence! We understood the current French Government wasn't exactly the one French people could be the most proud of, but little did we know they would end up being implicated in a large scale fictional war marred by loading times.

Meanwhile, Namco rides on the success of The Idolm@ster. After the surprising announcement of an upcoming adaptation on Xbox 360, Namco unveiled their plans for an anime version called Idolm@ster Xenoglossia. One would have thought the Xenosaga debacle would have turned Namco a bit cold about using the Xeno- prefix... And as Iggy noticed, we are only one step away from going full circle and witnessing a live version with real idols impersonating virtual idols.

The Idolm@ster also received a dedicated doujin game at Comiket 70 (I mentioned it in the big doujin post). AiMasu Champ! features the young idols in a fast paced mini-game compilation in the vein of Made in Wario and Rythm Tengoku (a fantastic game recently released on GBA). There is a free online trial version available.