Some have been calling this forthcoming PS2 version of the classic Neo-Geo game 'Twinkle Star Sprites' a sequel more than a proper port, and they may be right after all. Today the official site has been revealed, and the first actual details have been unveiled along with it. There will be several new characters (some of them still under wraps), new stages and it seems that the graphics are being redrawn in full high resolution, with some 3D enemies. Thanks to Lech from Click-Stick boards.
It's out now - and lawrence is not a fan. Should sell anyway though, being Space Invaders. This is likely what Mastiff is banking on, as they will be bringing the game to the US, presumably this year (they also did the Space Raiders GC port, incidentally - a game worth buying for the intro alone).
More Namco Cross Capcom info - this is the SRPG crossover developed by Monolith (Xenosaga), if you're not yet aware. the game will have 200+ characters, roughly 100 from each side. The characters are designed by the guy from Tekken 4, and the game will come with a soundtrack CD when it's released on the 26th of may, for PS2. It's really looking nice - there's a 3 minute movie of it on the latest Famitsu Wave disc. Check out the official site, and view the commercial.
Strange. Just this month at GDC, someone asked Keita Takashi, KD director, if he would be interested in porting the game to handhelds. He said, in a word "No." Maybe it's not him that's doing it then. Katamari Damashii is announced for Nintendo DS.
[edit] - missed the boat on this by about 10 days. But hey, maybe someone else did too?
Odd to be posting about a kids title, but the visual quality of Maya the Bee - Sweet Gold warrants a note - add to this the fact that the developer is Shin'en, of Iridion/Nanostray fame, and voila - the pieces fall into place. The game was released on march 18th in germany, for GBA.
Noticed this a bit ago, neglected to mention it - Naps Team has announced that they will be developing a new handheld title: Gekido the Dark Angel, for PSP. Unfortunately their last in-development game, Dark Night (screens at IGN)
, was never released. In typical Naps Team style, no other information is available at this time.
So Square-Enix' 'megaton game announcement' for this week isn't about a proper Square-Enix game after all. Famitsu magazine has published a huge preview of Game Arts' Grandia III in its latest issue. The game will be published for the PS2 by Square-Enix this year and is counting on You 'Valkyrie Profile' Yoshinari to do the character creation. The 'semi realtime' combat system will be back again and Game Arts is putting special care into the location designs and background graphics. All that remains is to find out if Iwadare is in charge of the BGM again.
Time for a quick round-up of some of the fun alt.goings-on this week, perhaps, from endearing Nintendogs movies, through sexy indie gamers, all the way to surreal text adventures:
- Touch-ds.jp has a bunch of new Nintendogs movies, including a photo diary of 'My Life With Nintendogs' from some representative and puppy-hungry Japanese girls.
- Missed this one from a while back, but NewGrounds.com has a nice Alien Hominid-related photo report on visiting the Independent Games Festival and Game Developers Conference. We love teh (fiendishly difficult) Hominid.
- A report from the Taiwanese Digitimes site revealed that Iron Phoenix developers InterServ, the only official Xbox developers from Taiwan, are working on a game called Condor Trilogy Online for Xbox 2. In addition, it claims: 'The development costs of an Xbox2 game is estimated to exceed US$ 1 million.' No wonder outsourcing is so popular.
- The overall winners for the 2004 XYZZY Awards for interactive fiction (that's text adventures, if you prefer) have been announced. Looks like the 'surreal' Blue Chairs cleaned up, and may be well worth checking out.
Shortly after the release of Japanese PSP launch title Shiroki Majo, Bandai is preparing the launch of its follow-up, the fourth episode in Falcom's well known 'Eiyuu Densetsu' ('The Legend of Heroes') RPG series. 'Eiyuu Densetsu: Gagharv Trilogy ~Akai Shizuku~' has now an official site and a new release date: June 2nd. The remake will again consist of a whole new graphic design, with new character sprites in 3D backgrounds and the assistance of Falcom's original illustrator.
A few days ago, with a nice flash animation Banpresto revealed the next title in Flight-Plan-developed 'Summon Night' series: Summon Night Exthesis. In a not-too-surprising move (seems that the latest, 'Tales of'-inspired, 'Craft Sword Monogatari' game is still one of the best loved GBA titles in Japan), 'Exthesis' will adopt a 2D action RPG formula this time, not unlike 'Zelda: Kamigami no Triforce'. The official site also shows some tiny screenshots and artwork pieces. Check them out; a quality sprite-based, PS2 action RPG is something you don't see every day. Planned for a spring '05 release.
Adventure Player is an upcoming PSP title from From Software, which just might push a few of the hardcore types over the edge towards a purchase. It's an adventure game making utility/game, which will allow the creation of ADV, puzzle and quiz games, which can then be uploaded and distributed to others. Likewise, content can be downloaded, to be saved on the memory stick. The games are developed on the PC via a program called Adventure Player Studio, which will be downloadable when the game is released. Three game scripts will be available upon release, including Echo Night - and more scripts will be made available by From as time wears on. They hope to partner with other companies to make adventure games downloadable in this way. The patching and fan translation potential is huge here. The game will hit retail in June for only 3,990 yen. Thanks to GS, presumably our pal hiro, for the news.
More info and imagery for SvG - the Idea Factory crossover fighter being developed by IGS. There's an official site, and some extra images over at Game Watch. The game has fared decently in location test, according to chupiler - as yet unsure of two things: how the 'slow'/chaos break system works, and what board it's on. Anyone with the info, give me a mail.
According to the UK's Develop Magazine (Feb. Issue), Polygon Magic, creators of Slap Happy Rhythm Busters among other things (tondemo crisis!), is entering the european market. Their first steps will simply be assisting with graphics (ala their work with Rumble Roses), but who knows what the future may bring? They are represented at this point by Hairymoose.
Thanks to reader Aron for pointing out this interesting almost IC-wolf-ish game: odd man in. Created by an acoustic folk singer, the game is described as a combination of Survivor and Reservoir Dogs - it's essentially an interactive mystery played on the web, with eliminations. You can currently sign up for the newest game: All's Well That Odds Well.
News: Conspiracy conspiracy / Generation of Chaos 4
Conspiracy Entertainment, long considered dead by nearly everyone (and who released Bangaioh in the west), has announced that they will be publishing a game from Cyberfront for the PSP. Read the GamesIndustry.biz story, and marvel at the jargon. Cyberfront has been painted by Conspiracy as some sort of supergroup, responsible for such titles as puzzle bobble 2, fatal fury 3, raiden II, when in fact they just published PC ports. Next, the article mentions Conspiracy's previous deal with the 'japanese' company Hyper Devbox, which is actually based in france, but has an 'available office' in japan.
All jargon and misinformation aside, Hyper Devbox is bringing Idea Factory's Generation of Chaos 4 to western PSP audiences, so that can't be anything but good.
Starting April 19th, and going through May 18th (to coincide with E3), there will be an 'i am 8-bit' art show in hollywood. Here's a description from the curator, Jon Gibson: "Basically, the core concept is about 100 artists
painting their videogame memories, be it "Mario Bros." to "Dig Dug" to
"Galaga." Basically, anything old-school goes (absolutely nothing modern).
We've got lots of talent involved, including Gary Baseman, Daniel Peacock,
Gary Taxali, Ashley Wood, Luke Chueh, Joe Ledbetter, Thomas Han, and a slew
of other great guys. Even veterans of the gaming scene like Doug TenNapel
(creator of "Earthworm Jim") and Steve Purcell (creator of "Sam & Max")."
The official site is here. There's plenty of pixel art, plush work, and other oddities - take the image to the left, for example, titled "Duck Hunter S. Thompson."
Wataru Maruyama, who edited my work at the now-defunkt Gamestar (interestingly, it started out as a much different concept...), has a series of blogs now. For some reason he's decided to break them into three parts. Here's the main one, with splinters The Game Stylist, about game design, and costume get!, about fashion in games. Curious internet destinations, all.
Linklog style, a bunch of stuff I've missed over the last several weeks...or more.
The PS2 version of The RumbleFish will have a new character - Hazama, a secretary.
French site Dream Storming has a G.Rev interview which is rather interesting, if only for the revelation that the company consists of a whole five people.
The rumored Native (canceled Jaguar game) port to Dreamcast, is not actually to be a port at all, but something very similar to Native. That this rumor got started by someone working on the project is rather confusing, but this latest word comes from Duranik, the fellow actually doing the coding.
Some Famitsu bits - According to some who have seen the Twinkle Star Sprites screens, there are some new enemies. At the very least, this should be a remix of the original, if not a proper sequel. Namco is releasing a PS2 classics collection, but it's a bit more modern this time, including Tekken, Klonoa, Ace Combat 2, Ridge Racer, and Mr. Driller. Thanks to Riskbreaker.
Soul Calibur III is apparently going to be PS2 exclusive, in a rather unfortunate move. Hopefully it will only remain exclusive for a short time, as it would be nice to see them push the graphics forward a bit.
Holiday mentions that Makai Kingdom's US trailer is up at Game Trailers.
You've all surely heard it, but Sega renewed the Gunstar Heroes license on the 10th or March. Maybe they'll just make it into a pachinko game for cellphones, who knows.
Tokimeki Memorial Online videos are now available. Lock up your daughters!
Sengoku Basara, Capcom's Dynasty Warriors-like game has an official site. Fewer characters, more specials.
For those interested in Toshio Iwai (Electroplankton, SimTunes), his personal website can be found here. Thanks to Tobias for that.
To correct a previous error, Rajiurgi is on Naomi board, not the Type-X as previously reported.
I mention this because I doubt anyone else will. Cold Fear, mediocre survival horror game from Darkworks, the french developer of Alone in the Dark 4, bears a striking resemblance to Deep Fear, the mediocre AM7-developed game for the Saturn, released towards the end of its lifecycle.
Naturally, the name is the first similarity, but so too is the setting - experimental underwater/seafaring (russian?) science vessel, home to all sorts of mutated creatures. Creatures which also look very similar. DF - CF. Unfortunately you can't really tell with the CF screen, but the skin tone on the zombies is incredibly familiar - check the March issue of game informer for better shots. Also, the characters are similar as well - blue shirt, blonde hair: DF - CF (gamespot img links). Note the similar backgrounds. Likely this is all just a big coincidence, but it's certainly an odd one, and worthy of our attention.
Taito and their famous musical branch Zuntata announced the upcoming release of Darius Premium Box Rebirth for 12,800 yen. The whole set, which is pretty much die-hard Darius fans oriented, includes the (already released but remastered) soundtracks of Darius, Darius II, Darius Gaiden and G Darius plus various goodies such as a DVD with (at least) some exclusive interviews, a "super special gimmick" (sic) and a "secret must-have item". More will soon be revealed on their website, or so they say.
GDC'05: impressive physics engine for Duke Nukem Forever
Realizing that some young players of Half Life 2 and Halo 2 might not even have been born when the acclaimed Duke Nukem 3D was released, considering that it's long-awaited sequel has been fluctuating for years between the running gag and the urban legend, realizing that Duke Nukem Forever has been allegedly restarted from scratch numerous times, little was expected from it by disenchanted fans. Then came the Game Developers Conference 2005.
3DRealms decided last year to stick with Meqon for Duke Nukem Forever's physics engine, a promising young Swedish company which already impressed observers when they displayed some of their abilities at the time of the announcement. Well Meqon just made another appearance at GDC'05. According to GIbiz, their engine presentation "far surpasses Half-Life 2's physics". That alone doesn't make a good game, but knowing where 3DRealms comes from, it's a relief to know they didn't spend the last decade digging their own grave helplessly.
Check out extended coverage on the GDC'05 on Gamasutra from Simoniker, Brandon and other IC regulars such as Eric-Jon, Vincent and Frank of LostLevels fame.
North American chiptune music enthusiasts shouldn't miss the Data Destruction Tour 2005 which begun last Friday in New York and will visit Boston (3/14), Detroit (3/15), Chicago (3/17), Philly (3/19) then end up in New York (3/20) again. Artists Covox, Nullsleep and Bit Shifter from 8bit peoples are announced, but judging from the first concert, a few guests are to be expected. Click-Stick's Click posted his impressions on their premiere here and there (including neat videos).
Rasterwerks released a premier Shockwave3D first-person shooter demo which contains most features present in commercial FPS games. The whole thing was mostly programmed to display their talents more than for the player to have fun, but the result is impressive enough to entertain for a while. A better AI and a network mutliplayer mode are in the works.
Editor's note: Looks like you'll have to wait a month for the new version as they incorporate the data garnered by their test demo...
Two studios communicated today about games they unveiled at last AOU. Milestone offers lurkers of Rajirugi's official website a video digest of its first and second stages (scroll down to download). Another star of the annual Japanese arcade show, Skonec's Homura now has an official website too, although there's not much to see there yet. Yes, we know they were both welcomed quite suspiciously by the shooting community, but let's not ruin the moment. Both games run on Taito's recent Windows-based Type-X board.
Editor's note: Thank you to the dozens of people who pointed out that Rajirugi is actually a Naomi title...
Charles Forman wrote an interesting article for The Independent Gaming Source on Korean suscribe-free MMO titles, explaining why these are always ripping-off famous japanese games and how their creators still intend to make money with them. This might answer a few questions adventurous western players ask themselves on the business models of highly popular "free" internet games such as PangYa! or BnB.
News: Slowbeef's Strategy Guide to MG2:SS Completed
Slowbeef's hilarious strategy guide to Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake for the MSX is finally completed. This html masterpiece, which has been entertaining (Metal Gear series-focused) masses for months, drew to a conclusion last february 25th when Slowbeef finally found the courage to reach the ending of the interactive madness that is Kojima's second attempt at tactical espionage and infiltration. Be careful though, as this work of comedic relief remains a real (and actually quite valuable) strategy guide and walkthrough, therefore tactlessly spoiling Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake to whoever didn't play the game beforehand. Now remember: just pretend they're not *really* hamsters.
With all the hubbub about the "NGJ", leave it to the folks at UK Resistance to champion the ways of Old Games Journalism. A bit focused in its attack, but they reference some... interesting examples of pieces from games journalism past and current...
This year is going to be recalled as the year of Ys. Falcom's acclaimed action RPG series has never been so popular, at least with publishers. The recent PS2 port of the sixth episode ('Napishtim no Hako') by Konami is the first Ys game published outside of Japan in many years (and it is the first Ys game ever developed outside of Japan, too), and, while the game seems to have been severly downgraded with the port job, it's being well received by the public. As we've recently mentioned, there's been an on-line announcement of the seventh chapter, called 'Ys: Felghana no Chikai', which presumably will be developed for Windows and will use Napishtim no Hako's graphic engine. But that's not all. We did mention here some months ago that Taito got the licence to remake the third, fourth and fifth episodes in the series for the PS2. The former, 'Ys III: Wanderers from Ys', will be released in less than three weeks, with high resolution graphics and art by Akira Yasuda, AKA 'Akiman'. In the meantime, Ys IV: Mask of the Sun ~a New Theory~ (originally for the Super Famicom) has been given a release date (May, 26th) and the first screens and details (it'll have some gameplay and story tweaks) have appeared, thanks to Rakuten. As you can see, real-time 3D backgrounds are been added for this remake.
Nanostray's official site opened today. This is the new shooter for the DS, coming from Shin'en, makers of the Iridion series. It's looking quite nice, with plenty of videos and screens to be had. Coming summer 2005, apparently.
Retrogaming is becoming one of the most important segments in the whole Japanese video-game scene, and Capcom is probably the company which has made the best of its own legacy since the 32-bit era. Persisting on the 'we WERE this good' track, they recently announced a compilation of 20 classic arcade games for one of the current 128 bits systems, a 'Vampire Darkstalkers Collection' (with 'perfect translations' of all the Vampire arcade games - they actually are including first and final revisions of every game, since Capcom used to 'bugfix' their arcade titles with several different releases of the same game.) That title is scheduled for this spring for the PS2, and also announced is the 'Capcom Retro Game Collection' for the PS One, which happens to be the re-edition of the Capcom Generation series from 1998, but this time with a history booklet and a reduced price of 2,100 yen. The first two volumes will be released on March, 30th.
Nintendo will release a new game by Toshio Iwai called Electroplankton on the Nintendo DS, and for the occasion, an hypnotizing official website has been lauched. Check both the gameplay and history videos - it's pretty interesting. Toshio Iwai is a multimedia artist responsible for one of the very first efforts in mixing electronic music composition and videogames via his Famicom offbeat hit Otocky. He also produced various animations, music creation programs, artistic performances, museum exhibits et al for more than 20 years. His own website is down, but you can find more information in English right here. Electroplankton is scheduled to be released in Japan on April 7th for 4800yen.
Game Tunnel has a fresh interview with the creators of n, to celebrate its first anniversary. You can download the game here, in case you missed the 2004 freeware bandwagon.
What is it with simple flash games being more addictive than most commercial titles recently? The Bounce recently arrived on Newgrounds, and it's about three minutes of Orisinal-like happiness, provided you have nothing against gravity-defying giraffes and a cutesy French ballad that anime fans will recognize as being taken from the Gankutsuou original soundtrack.
You probably already got to see the new Nintendo DS colors which will soon be available in Japan, including some flashy turquoise and daring pink skins. Matt astutely noticed that there was likelyinspiration from somewhere... The next major releases on the system in Japan are Meteos, which received outstanding "lets-hope-it-wasnt-bought" praise from Famitsu last week, and Pac Pix, including its neat exclusive stylus for people who pre-ordered the game.
Nintendo also revealed that Nintendogs (still scheduled as Puppy Times in the western world ,since we apparently are not worthy of the neatest game-related pun in years) will be released in three versions, each handling five different dogs. This is a real bind, since popular choices such as labrador-kun, beagle-chan, german-nyan, dachs-pon and shiba-tan were cleverly spread throughout the version. Do not spam Nintendo's mailbox with furious protests just yet, though, as it appears that missing dogs will be unlockable on every cartridge provided that you communicate with the other versions of the game thanks to your DS WiFi service. And in case you wonder why chihuahuas are the craze in Japan these days, Fabien might have an explanation.
Meanwhile, Nintendo claims that its DS is the most successful debut in the history of Australian videogames. And to be more complete than any other website on the subject for once, we'll end this newspost with an absolutely meaningless trivia : this is the first time ever that Nintendo has chosen to use a feminine gender when talking about one of their systems in France. Although virtually unknown by local gamers and quite specific to this company, the proper usage when refering to a Nintendo system until today was to mention them as masculine : le NES (hell! they even say le Famicom), le GameBoy, le Super Nintendo, le Nintendo 64 and le GameCube. La DS will be launched in Europe in just a few days.
There's a scarily growing trend invading videogame-related editors, publications and professionals : they all have to start their own weblogs. And those of quality remain scarce. Ste Curran, sometimes writing as Edge Magazine's RedEye, recently launched his own page, and so far it looks as one of the most promising gameblog-related spots on the web. Among other, newer things, his main intention is to post a bunch of articles he wrote for Edge in the last five years. His columns are allegedly hit or miss, but he sometimes makes his point quite accurately, as Lawrence already spotted.
Another newcomer is Yukio Futatsugi. He worked on the first three Panzer Dragoon games for the SegaSaturn, then designed Phantom Dust on the Xbox, way before developing games for Microsoft was the new cool thing in Japan.
It's out now - and 
More Namco Cross Capcom info - this is the SRPG crossover developed by Monolith (Xenosaga), if you're not yet aware. the game will have 200+ characters, roughly 100 from each side. The characters are designed by the guy from Tekken 4, and the game will come with a 
Odd to be posting about a kids title, but the visual quality of 
Noticed this a bit ago, neglected to mention it - 
So Square-Enix' 'megaton game announcement' for this week isn't about a proper Square-Enix game after all. Famitsu magazine has published a huge preview of Game Arts' Grandia III in its latest issue. The game will be published for the PS2 by Square-Enix this year and is counting on You 'Valkyrie Profile' Yoshinari to do the character creation. The 'semi realtime' combat system will be back again and Game Arts is putting special care into the location designs and background graphics. All that remains is to find out if Iwadare is in charge of the BGM again. 
The 
Shortly after the release of Japanese PSP launch title 
Game Watch has a new 
A few days ago, with a nice flash animation Banpresto revealed the next title in Flight-Plan-developed 'Summon Night' series: 
More info and imagery for SvG - the Idea Factory crossover fighter being developed by IGS. There's an 
According to the UK's Develop Magazine (Feb. Issue), Polygon Magic, creators of 
Starting April 19th, and going through May 18th (to coincide with E3), there will be an 'i am 8-bit' art show in hollywood. Here's a description from the curator, Jon Gibson: "Basically, the core concept is about 100 artists
painting their videogame memories, be it "Mario Bros." to "Dig Dug" to
"Galaga." Basically, anything old-school goes (absolutely nothing modern).
We've got lots of talent involved, including Gary Baseman, Daniel Peacock,
Gary Taxali, Ashley Wood, Luke Chueh, Joe Ledbetter, Thomas Han, and a slew
of other great guys. Even veterans of the gaming scene like Doug TenNapel
(creator of "Earthworm Jim") and Steve Purcell (creator of "Sam & Max")."
Linklog style, a bunch of stuff I've missed over the last several weeks...or more.
I mention this because I doubt anyone else will. 
This year is going to be recalled as the year of Ys. Falcom's acclaimed action RPG series has never been so popular, at least with publishers. The recent 
Nanostray's 
Retrogaming is becoming one of the most important segments in the whole Japanese video-game scene, and Capcom is probably the company which has made the best of its own legacy since the 32-bit era. Persisting on the 'we WERE this good' track, they recently announced a compilation of 20 classic arcade games for one of the current 128 bits systems, a 
Nintendo will release a new game by Toshio Iwai called Electroplankton on the Nintendo DS, and for the occasion, an hypnotizing 
You probably already got to see the 
