Atlus of Japan have been busy getting the word out about their upcoming, in-house-developed DS RPG Yggdrasil Labyrinth. Known as "Sekaiju no Meikyuu" in Japan but already announced for US release at E3 '06, YL is a 3D, dungeon-focused RPG that's set in a lush forest, yet seems to take heavy influence from the gameplay model that the first Wizardry games set forth (which still has a fanbase in Japan). It'll allow the player to fill a party of five slots with characters of either gender and any of nine classes.
Atlus are giving the game's creative staff extra lip service, and with good reason. Directing the game is Kazuya Niinou, who directed the well-received Trauma Center: Under the Knife. Shigeo Kobayashi, responsible for the story here, wrote the scenario for Devil Summoner: Kuzunoha Raidou and the cult 2D classic Princess Crown, and monster designer Shin Nagawawa worked on Bahamut Lagoon and Final Fantasy IX. The character designer, Yuji Himukai, is a professional manga author and has done oodles of 4-panel comic strips based on MMORPGs and Nippon Ichi games. And, finally, Yuzo Koshiro himself is composing the game's score.
The game's website is live, but it doesn't seem to be quite ready yet. Shake the letters off the tree, then click the hole they make when they hit the ground for a preview. The game's scheduled for a fall release in Japan, but Atlus USA haven't given the game a date yet (outside of a vague "2007"). Also, don't confuse this with Yggdra Union, which is also being published by Atlus USA, but was developed by Sting.
The official website for bit Generations, Nintendo's upcoming series of experimental GBA titles, has gone live. There you'll find new screenshots, play descriptions, and videos - along with some cracking good chiptunes - of both waves of titles, currently scheduled for release in Japan on July 13 and July 27 for 2000 yen apiece. All of the titles in this series feature abstract and colorful visuals meshed with simple, yet original, styles of play in an "attempt to reexamine the roots of gaming" (Gamespot).
Dotstream immediately brings to mind that family of scrolling-cave games made most famous by SFCave, only set up as a racing game. Boundish (formerly known as Neopong) presents several sorts of competitive ball-bouncing. Dialhex has you rotating pieces in a falling-triangle puzzle to match colors, and the goal seems to be making the triangles drain out the bottom of the stage. As for the other titles (Coloris, Digidrive, Orbital, and Sound Voyager)...who can say? Nintendo haven't made any noise about a possible US release, but most of the titles already have ESRB ratings assigned, so, we'll see. Earlier this month, Nintendo of Japan hired Club Nintendo members to playtest the games and offer feedback in exchange for free copies of the games. While it's said that most of the games are being developed by skip Ltd., who are best known for Giftpia and Chibi Robo, the developer responsible for Digidrive seems to be Q-Games, which was founded by Starfox's creator Dylan Cuthbert. For further reference, GAME Watch have many screenshots of the games up in a preview.
Ok, we missed a few things over the week, so let's try to catch up. First, KOF XI is out for PS2, and Melty Blood AC is up for preorder.
Next, Saint Seiya 2 has been announced for PS2, which is important if you're french. Ruliweb has some screens of what promises to be another sub-par 3D fighter. I think Saint Seiya is to france as Dragon Ball Z is to mexico.
freak tells us that there's another mobile game coming out from SNK, with Athena as the star. Unlike the ADV Athena on Stage, this will be a sidescroller. Athena Full Throttle is the name, and you can see some screens here. And yes, she's got the original design from the famicom days here. It'll be released on the first of july. Update: More screens here.
rid hershel mentioned that the Senko no Ronde Rev X website has been updating, and has several new sections. The game does seem to be slightly graphically improved for the 360.
Also from rid, check out this neat Sonic the Hedgehog green hill stage papercraft Sega's put up for download. Very nice looking!
Lastly, iggy says that there will be a Gyakuten Saiban manga in Young Magazine. Good stuff, that!
I hadn't seen this before - apparently Capcom has got a series for PSP called Finder Love, in which you date, talk to, and take photos of famous japanese idols. That all sounds rather creepy, when you put it together, but them's the breaks sometimes. Rather surprising this is coming from Capcom! There are some minigames you can also play with the idols, which is somewhat tempting, but not tempting enough. If you disagree, you can get them here. That's right, I said them - Capcom has released no less than four of these, limited editions notwithstanding. The newest appears to be aki hoshino, whoever that is. A visit to IGN (shock!) tells me that they actually included bikinis with some of the limited editions, photos of which you can see at game watch. They're apparently based on bikinis the girls actually wear in the game. Who are they expecting to wear them?
The Advantage played in san francisco a few nights back, and I was in attendance, as was the very tall substance j of sector: ngp, last updated in glorious 2002. The show was quite good, and the band played a mixture of their old and new albums, largely very precisely and with very few mistakes. You may recall that I wrote a feature about one of their first warehouse shows in oakland, where I first encoutered the guitar that had this on it. That belonged to guitarist ben milner, and after the show, I asked what became of it. In his own words: "oh man, I should've kept that guitar!" Apparently something (the bridge, was it?) needed changing, and the space invader would've been damaged in the process, so he put it out to pasture. A damn shame.
That aside, the show was good, and my friend matt ritona took some very nice stylized photos, as is his custom. If you're the type that likes making things bigger, click them there images.
There exists a man named harvey james, who reads websites on the internet. He's an animation student in england, and seems to enjoy drawing. Turns out two of his favorite sites are insert credit and the gamer's quarter (which has a new issue, by the way), and he became rather obsessed with some of the writers. As part of his obsession, he drew what he thought they might look like, then found real pictures, and drew again. The subjects of his study were our own eric-jon rossel waugh and tim rogers, as well as dessgeega, of the insert credit forums, and the gamer's quarter (and who has thankfully stopped using the word 'womyn'). Go check out the drawings and author impressions, they're all rather entertaining. That smashing fellow to the left is his mental image of eric-jon, for reference.
Just a minor update - one of the chalkboard fighting guys emailed me, giba from brazil. Apparently they've got a site with a number of other photos. They're third year students at franca university, it turns out. The main reason I bring it up though is because he told me this: "The Brazil loves Insert Credit!" which is the greatest thing I've been told in some time. Let me tell you something, brazil - we love you too. Also, anyone who thinks I'm making fun of this guy can go suck a nut. They can go suck THE nut, even.
Those nice people (or more accurately, person) at Gears Online have started a Quo Vadis section. It was a series of games on the Saturn and PlayStation respectively, featuring mecha by Kazumi Fujita and character designs by Haruhiko Mikimoto.
Fujita is mostly famous for his work on Zeta Gundam and the fact that some nutter reproduced his Hyper Zeta in suitably massive scale. Though, Optimus could probably take it down.
Hello, Insert Credit fans! Brandon has been called away to a new life as the King of Siam, and in the meantime, I'm here to point out a new feature about Sega GameWorks we posted over at Gamasutra, talking about the company's attempts to revitalize the U.S. arcades.
This actually includes neat stuff like bringing the card-heavy Sega Japan arcade hits Mushiking and Love & Berry over into GameWorks in due course, and also launching an American version of the All.net arcade network service (first game using it is, ahem, Extreme Hunting 2 - but still!) This all seems very IC-relevant, thus... this post!
The latest V-Jump issue has another scoop, besides the new 'Tales of' games from Namco (we learned today that the TOD remake is getting hi-res 2D graphics unlike we reported, by the way) - The first screens and details of the long-ago announced Summon Night 4. It will repeat almost the same formula and graphic style of its predecessor, which is not a bad thing, we believe, especially since it confirms Flight Plan as the developer. The formal announcement will take part tomorrow on the internet with Summon Night's official site renewal.
Tomorrow, Namco is planning to reveal the next 'Tales of' games for this year (after Tempest) via Tales Channel, but we can already tell you what they will be since the very latest V-Jump has the scoop - Tales of Destiny full remake for the PS2 (with 3D graphics, apparently), Tales of Phantasia for the PSP (a direct port of the PS version with full-voice speech this time) and a brand-new episode in the Tales of the World subseries, also for the PSP. In the meantime, you can check out the latest Tales of Mobile episode, just launched.
Update: As you see here, the TOD remake will be 2D, not 3D, while there's a fourth game coming - a PSP port of Tales of Destiny 2, though this is for 2007.
Remember that new arcade stripping fighter we talked about a bit ago? Well, we've got a bit more info. On the main page there's an illustration of some of the playable characters, and the girls that strip when you beat them. Given the site's tendency to take images down and replace them, we're hosting it.
Next, the professor tells us that the developer has been revealed - it's a small company called Atrativa. People previously assumed it was Yuki Enterprise, creator of Samurai Spirits V. Well - perhaps they weren't so far off. If you check the chairman of Yuki against the representative director of Atrativa, you'll find they're the same person, plus they worked together to create the mahjong game touryuumon. They do have different physical office locations, so they may not be one and the same, but there are certainly some direct links there. Very curious!
News: Night Creatures, Snatcher PSG, Lords of Awesome
I looked a little further into that superpcenginegrafx site that I linked in the previous post, and he's got some interesting stuff on there. The site's still under construction, but there's certainly enough content to browse. There are the usual scans and things, but what caught my eye was his direct playthrough of Night Creatures, a late-era, america-developed Turbo Grafx hucard. It's split into two parts, and I'll leave it to you to find it, as I don't want to kill his bandwidth with direct links, but suffice to say this is an awful game. I played my copy a bit, and can tell you it's not as easy as he makes it look, not least because it's horribly designed, and controls like an 80s Buick. It's not very easy to like, either.
You can apparently play through the game in under 20 minutes, after which the game tells you to go to bed, because you probably need some rest. If you ever want to have any kind of interaction with the game, this is the way to do it. Night Creatures was developed by Manley and Associates, which was acquired by EA in the 1990s, and apparently did work for The Minnesota Educational Computing Consortium in the earlier years. It was designed by this strapping young lad (Dave Albert), who went on to become the vice president of external development for Hasbro Interactive (now defunct, of course), and has a long line of special thanks, and little more. A lengthy career without lustre. Night Creatures had a nice concept - shape shifting, Megaman-like gaining of powers, but...well, you'll see.
Next, there's a nice mix of the PSG from Snatcher (PSG stands for Programmable Sound Generator, and refers to the proprietary PC Engine soundchip). It's not something you'll hear very often, as Snatcher was CD-based, yet used PSG for the music, meaning it was not redbook audio.
Assuming his bandwidth isn't dead by the time you've downloaded those things, there's also a really bizarre Lords of Thunder promo video. "I already have Sega, but I'd trade it in for this." *ahem* I suppose this was before the game got ported to the Sega CD. Gone are the days when a company could rely on a shooter to sell a system, eh? But that's what TTi did, bless their cold, dead hearts. They even talk to some sort of fisherman in this video, I think, and then film a car going over a dip in the road really fast. It's...very strange.
You might've noticed that the ultra-rare PC Engine arcade card game Ginga Fukei Densetsu Sapphire has been turning up on ebay at reasonable prices recently. The real deal quite often fetches upwards of $400, so these fakes can be rather enticing. Here's an example of one.
Luckily, the fellow who runs superpcenginegrafx.com has put together a rather extensive guide to determining what's real and what's false. Apparently these (rather high quality!) bootlegs were made through the Swiss company care4data, and are easiest to tell from the real deal by the fact that the tear strip goes across the middle of the logo, rather than much lower, where it'd usually be. This is a seriously detailed report. There are six pages of info here (navigate at the bottom), from manual scans to disc images. So now you know - one wonders if this will reduce the value of the original as well? Thanks to SignOfZeta for finding this, and Justin Cheer of superpcenginefx.com for putting the whole thing together.
If I haven't seen it, it's news to me! Someone over there in the far east has made a nice Mother 3 mockup for gamecube, taking the Wind Waker cell shaded approach. Ah, what might've been. Apparently the mockup was created by this fellow, though he didn't do the character designs. His original art is quite nice, and he's done some mother 2D art (with the mandatory yaranaika reference at the end) as well as some 4koma. As a bonus, there's a little behind the scenes look at the Mother 3 mockup creation. Thanks to tuberculosis for the link.
Our old pal/hated enemy chris kohler has done something rather interesting. A while ago, he found some Famicom->NES converters housed in some Nintendo launch titles that he purchased at a thrift store. Later, he bought a Famicom Final Fantasy III at the Goodwill store. The following is a photoessay in which he tries to put two and two together. An entertaining read, complete with the burning of plastic, the breaking of cartridges, and kohler's almost complete transformation into Teen Wolf.
rid pointed us to a new streaming trailer of Exelica, Warashi's new shooter (their newest since the PS2 Shienryu entry, which got into a D3 'shooting' two and one package some time ago). Admittedly, I hadn't seen the older ones either, so if you're the same, there are five movies for you to check out.
It's really nothing overly impressive, but Warashi generally does a solid job with whatever they undertake, and the oldschool character and ship design is rather nice. The capture and lock on modes are pretty unique in how they're used, though it looks like it would be a bit unwieldy in crowded levels. It's also rather interesting that Sega is publishing it. I wonder if that means a swifter port, or will it be relegated to D3 Publisher status again? If you still want more, check Warashi's Exelica page - they have some downloads too, in the form of wallpapers and flyers. The game is out in arcades now, on Naomi GD-rom.
The latest Famitsu issue revealed the next volume in the Sega Ages 2500 Series for the PS2 after Panzer Dragoon. No. 28 will be called 'Tetris Collection', which has a website since today. It'll include the earliest Tetris version from Sega for the arcades (co-licensed with Taito only for the Japanese market, since Atari got the rights for the Western arcades) as well as the derivative iterations Flash Point and Bloxeed. They will be packed along with an unreleased Tetris version for the Mega Drive, some superplays, and most likely some other nice extras. These days, Sega Ages 2500 Series is well known for being, presentation-wise as well as accuracy-wise, the best 'retro' series out there (Brandon says: as opposed to the early years, when it was more of a hack job).
This bright and happy chap is Japanese voice actor, or seiyuu, Toru Furuya. He's a wee bit famous for being the voice of Amuro Rei.
In true genius marketing fashion Bandai have managed to get Furuya playing their PC MMO Gundam Online, a rather impressive title and very popular with the Japanese laydeez it seems. He's also got a blog here about his various online escapdes.
It's safe to say though that Furuya is a bit of a don, after getting his ass handed to him at last year's TGS on the PlayStation 2 port of the Capcom Gundam SEED arcade game he retorted that "the Gundam didn't keep up with my reaction time", an Amuro quote if ever their was one.
The Way of the Rodent guys have done up another funny thing for us all to post about and point at instead of finishing magazines we're supposed to be working on. It's to go along with their new monthly column, see, which has other things you might like in it, such as features and reviews and sardonic wit. But what we'll talk about now is the Rodent World Cup stickers.
Apparently in the UK, people collected stickers of soccer players to stick in photo albums at one time. It's news to me, but it sounds like something people would do. The WotR has gone and made entertaining national squads with videogame characters in each position. japan's goalkeeper is E. Honda, for instance, and italy's got Mario and Luigi. So collect them all! Or just check out the lists and have a chuckle. Either way, you're suckered into reading their monthly webzine for jerks!
The perennially misunderstood Armored Core series is about to receive another Western localised iteration in the form of Armored Core Last Raven. This is an exceptionally good game however and for the few out there that already attained 136% completion on the original Japanese release (including yours truly), you will most probably find the following rather interesting.
Naochika Morishita is a rather talented illustrator and artist, with a unique washed out aesthetic. He's been pretty prolific too and many may be already familiar with his work on the Bloody Roar series. For Last Raven though he was comissioned to create a rather lovely wallpaper featuring a few ACs from the game. With any luck he'll be doing boxart for the subsequent games (like he did for Gundam Battle Tactics, which is a surprisingly good little action game, especially in multiplayer).
Finally, it also seems that Agetec aren't going to be publishing Armored Core 4 in the West. Apparently, SEGA have picked up the mechanical gauntlet. w00tage indeed.
Yet another S-RPG for the PS2 with bitmap-based graphics has just been revealed in the Japanese mags for this year. Curiously enough, it'll follow Namco X Capcom's steps by mixing up lots of characters from several games of different companies in SD form. Atlus, Aruze, Red and Idea Factory are the companies involved, though it's being developed and will be published by the latter using characters from Gungrave, Growlanser, Shadow Hearts and, how couldn't it, If's Neverland Series, just to name a few.
This fellow called Taizo runs a site called fuji something, which has some great resources for D3 Publisher fans out there. While the US offices of D3 fiddle around with Puffy Ami Yumi and Dead Head Fred (a Stubbs the Zombie clone? That was quick), 505 Gamestreet has been localizing the budget games D3 is so well known for. What 505 Gamestreet has done though, is renamed everything. That's where fuji something comes in. He's linked almost every 505 Gamestreet title to its original game and name. Keep in mind this stuff is largely EU only, which is a shame for those of us in the states. They brought out Grasshopper Manufacture's Michigan in english. Shame we can't buy it!
taizo also has lists of all the Simple series games, even if they didn't hit western shores. He's also got other random stuff if you check around. There's a menu translation of Snowboard Champion for the GBC, for instance. In all, it's a good resource, and if you live in the EU and aren't exploiting the ability to buy stupid yet excellent (yet stupid again) D3 games in your own language, you're the worst kind of fool.
We mentioned this international chiptunes dealy back in april, and it turns out insert credit photographer aaron meyers and I were able to attend a certain portion of it. Bit Shifter and Nullsleep played at Mighty in San Francisco, not a bad place on the whole, but one which sort of announced the wrong time for the show (doors OPEN at 8 never means show STARTS at 8, in my world). Thus, we only caught the last 30 minutes of Nullsleep's show, which was luckily quite nice. meyers captured a shot of the event from above. You can make out a bit of my hand and possibly a leg near the top left. I was sitting on a subwoofer for maximum experience-ing. It was a bit like Rez! Ah, near-humor. You can also see the game boys and famicom he used as instruments. You'll also notice there were even girls there, who didn't seem to be in the wrong place.
The event itself was just fine - nerds were flailing about, doing the dances they learned as five year olds, with just as little abandon. It was most excellent. This ICR thing might be coming to your town soon - keep an eye out! Boston and New York, I'm looking at you!
Dreamcast enthusiast Sweater Fish Deluxe has informed me of the goat store's plans for 2006/2007, with some 12 'official homebrew' releases lined up. As they've done in the past, these will include a game disc, manual and packaging (one would only assume), and be priced...rather reasonably. Here's the list (before it's even on the goat store front page, so keep that in mind...), with comments from mr. Sweater.
- Feet Of Fury 2
- Donk! (a Dreamcast port of an Amiga/CD32 platforming game)
- GOAT Games Vol.1 (a collection of mini-games based on classic game concepts with new twists - this should be the next release, out sometime this summer)
- DCastle (a visually impressive, but so far not entirely fun game that I previously thought was gonna be a part of GOAT Games, not a release of its own)
- Age Of The Beast S.E. (the next game from the people that made the original Beats Of Rage, I don't know what the S.E. will involve, but that's the Dreamcast version that's gonna be for sale, otherwise the game will be a normal freeware release)
- Amnesia Adventure Game (a graphical adventure something or other, I think the name is a placeholder)
- unknown adventure game from S+F Software
- R3K (an unreleased Lynx game based on the old game Ram It! - and Tempest 2000 - being re-written for the Dreamcast)
- Quake engine fighting game (apparently a 3D fighter made using the Quake engine; that has proven to be a pretty flexible engine, though I have to wonder...it'll probably be something more like Powerstone or Heavy Metal Geomatrix than a real 3D fighter)
- Samurai Warrior (a Beats Of Rage mod with all original graphics and a heavily customized BOR engine which some people say is really more advanced at this point than Age Of The Beast is gonna be)
- Feuer Frei! (I have no idea...apparently an action game based on a Rammstein song)
- BlockSquare (a Lumines clone previously released as freeware called Block Smash, but now featuring various enhancements and bonuses)
So there you have it. The Goat Store seems to be making a major push, having also recently become the official outlet for Songbird Productions, the wacky Jaguar and Lynx supporters from way back. I love Songbird for their sticktuitiveness, but can anyone really afford a $90 port of Total Carnage, nice game though it may be?
Some school kids put together this silly fight sequence using a chalkboard for the effects. Rather humorous! There's another image to be found here, by different people (I think?), with a concerned bespectacled teacher looking on from the sidelines. Done 10 months back, but news to me! Thanks to NeoGutsman for the link.
Frank showed me this just a bit ago, a site chock full of animated gifs of old sega genesis logos. Check the bottom of the page for links to several more archive pages, even a bunch of 32X ones. Apparently the site was featured on G4 at some point, so there you go. Can't say I'd heard of whipass gaming before, but it's not a bad website. It reminds me of the mid-90s, when the internet was young, and anyone who could slap some html onto a page seemed an authority to me. Memories!
I sat on this one for too long, and now scads of folks have talked about it. Such is life! Jingi Storm is a game the professor discovered a bit ago, a new stripping-based fighter. We still don't know who made it, but we know it's a quite poor quality 3D fighter in which you play as guys, and when you win a match the girl who's with the guy on the opposing side must strip a bit, ala classic mahjong games. Let's get some quotes from the prof (stolen from this thread.
The game is controlled with a joystick and three buttons (G,P,K). It plays with typical 3D game combination attacks (like ), and there's also a few command moves (like ). You can sway to the back or front of the stage by shortly tapping or . There were 7 characters at the time of beta testing and an additional 5 slots were hidden, so maybe there's one or two female fighters hidden there. Maybe.
The rumor is that it's done by Yuki Enterprise, of Samurai Shodown V fame, but nobody knows for sure. The cellphone shot to the left is the only known photo thus far, and it's of one of the girls in the very early stages of the strip. More on this as it breaks - or not, perhaps.
I haven't seen this around, but it may well be quite old. Ruliweb has an old vs new comparison of the Wiimote, with the TGS-announced controller on the left, and the current, supposedly final version on the right. The changes are subtle, but not to be underestimated. Thanks to Iggy for the news.
Several months have passed since we mentioned this game's development here, but things are going slowly. Last week the official site got an update where we could finally see some PS2 version screens. Quite nice hi-res 2D graphics, aren't they? It'll be out on August, 31st under the name of 'Utawareru Mono: Chiriyuku Mono he no Komoriuta'. Another successful 2D S-RPG is getting a re-release in August, by the way. Media Land shop has announced 'Phantom Brave: Nishuu Me Hajimemashita'. Much like it did with La Pucelle, Nippon Ichi is adding new content for this second edition of Phantom Brave for the PS2, which still will keep a budget price.
Looks like NG:Dev team is going forward with the home cart/AES release of Last Hope (inexplicably with japanese all over it, though the game's made in Germany). Banking, I'm sure, on the completist nature of Neo Geo collectors, the thing will cost a robust 550 euros, which is over $700 us. There are only 60, so if they sell all of them...yowza! Though I'm sure parts costs are somewhat expensive as well. Apparently if you send in your own cartridge and snap case, you save 120 euros, meaning you're paying 430 for...hmm. Those must be some expensive chips! Anyway, if you buy the thing, you also have the option of getting a free copy of the Neo Geo CD version. There's a Dreamcast version forthcoming as well, as I mentioned last time. The home cart version is planned for July 10th now, so start saving now!
For those of you who, like us, accidentally became friends with the stupid Behemoth guys (they made Alien Hominid, if you forgot), here's an update on basically everything.
First, famous guy Dan Paladin (artist), has a few things in the hopper. One is a children's book he's pitching to publishers, which I bet is totally not disturbing. Next is an upcoming CD - he makes music too, I guess! You can check out some samples, only to find out that unlike you were expecting, it's pretty good. Tracks 1 and 7 are my favorites. It's all rather chippy and kid-like.
Next, Tom Fulp's newgrounds.com has a PSP flash portal now. I can't view it from work, because it's apparently 'tasteless', but regardless, it's a great idea, and one I kept bothering him about at GDC.
Last but not least, John Baez, Behemoth boss, has actually built a vacuform machine in the office in order to package their figurines, in order to cut costs and continue their daily regimen of eating food and living in houses. They've got a little photo gallery and everything. Oh and their new game is re-debuting at the next Comic-Con, which we will probably attend, before throwing fruit at furries and running. In conclusion, hurrah!
After the sterling success of 2005’s One Switch competition, where the aim was to make an original game or remake playable with one button (creating some excellent titles such as Sky Puppy and Strange Attractors) there's a new Retro Remakes competition for 2006. This year’s competition has the request:
"Good remakes of good games that anyone can play, regardless of their ability"
That initially sounds simple, but becomes a bit more complex when you think of varying abilities of people who play games, but you’ll have to do your best if you want you win one of the amazing prizes (there’s a total prize fund over £4000). There’s a list of games already entered and a competiton forum, including an invaluable Top Ten Accessible Features Wish List which is something all developers should be forced to read, really.
Well, the Toronto Indie Game Development Jam, a competition to create a video game in three days, has been and gone (it was during the weekend before E3). The results are now online though, and my favourite by far is Bubble Thing by Jonathan Mak, a strange sort of reverse take on Asteroids. <Brandon's note: The official site for that game is here, and the author tells us there are mac and linux-x86 versions, too.>
If that's not your cup of (carbonated) tea, then you might fancy the bullet hell of Zi-Xiao Liang's Super Hamster Air Combat.
Just in time for the World Cup, Codemasters have released a PC demo of Sensible Soccer 2006, the much awaited return of the beloved Sensible Soccer franchise. Now in 3d with bobblehead technology, it’s worth a playthrough if you have any fond memories of the original. No confirmed u.s. release date, but the europeans are getting it in 7 days, the lucky so-and-sos. A direct download of the title is available here (requires registration) so you’re better off getting the torrent from the lovely chaps at eurogamer.net.
Top Tip: When installing, choose the language of the team that you want to play as. So french, if you want to see Zidane’s cute wee bald spot.
Atlus of Japan have been busy 
The 
Ok, we missed a few things over the week, so let's try to catch up. First, 
I hadn't seen this before - apparently Capcom has got a series for PSP called 
There exists a man named harvey james, who reads websites on the internet. He's an animation student in england, and seems to enjoy drawing. Turns out two of his favorite sites are insert credit and the 
Those nice people (or more accurately, person) at 
Hello, Insert Credit fans! Brandon has been called away to a new life as the King of Siam, and in the meantime, I'm here to point out a 
The latest V-Jump issue has another scoop, besides the new 'Tales of' games from Namco (we learned today that the 
I looked a little further into that 
Assuming his bandwidth isn't dead by the time you've downloaded those things, there's also a really bizarre Lords of Thunder promo video. "I already have Sega, but I'd trade it in for this." *ahem* I suppose this was before the game got ported to the Sega CD. Gone are the days when a company could rely on a shooter to sell a system, eh? But that's what TTi did, bless their cold, dead hearts. They even talk to some sort of fisherman in this video, I think, and then film a car going over a dip in the road really fast. It's...very strange. 
You might've noticed that the ultra-rare PC Engine arcade card game Ginga Fukei Densetsu Sapphire has been turning up on ebay at reasonable prices recently. The real deal quite often fetches upwards of $400, so these fakes can be rather enticing. 
If I haven't seen it, it's news to me! Someone over there in the far east has made a nice 
Our old pal/hated enemy chris kohler has done something rather interesting. A while ago, he 
It's really nothing overly impressive, but Warashi generally does a solid job with whatever they undertake, and the oldschool 
The latest Famitsu issue revealed the next volume in the Sega Ages 2500 Series for the PS2 after Panzer Dragoon. No. 28 will be called 'Tetris Collection', which has a 
This bright and happy chap is Japanese voice actor, or 
The 
The perennially misunderstood 
Yet another S-RPG for the PS2 with bitmap-based graphics has just been revealed in the Japanese mags for this year. Curiously enough, it'll follow Namco X Capcom's steps by mixing up lots of characters from several games of different companies in SD form. Atlus, Aruze, Red and Idea Factory are the companies involved, though it's being developed and will be published by 
This fellow called Taizo runs a site called 
We mentioned this international chiptunes dealy back in 
Some school kids put together this 
I sat on this one for too long, and now scads of folks have talked about it. Such is life! 
). You can sway to the back or front of the stage by shortly tapping 
or 
. There were 7 characters at the time of beta testing and an additional 5 slots were hidden, so maybe there's one or two female fighters hidden there. Maybe.
I haven't seen this around, but it may well be quite old. Ruliweb has an 
Several months have passed since 
Looks like 
For those of you who, like us, accidentally became friends with the stupid 
After the sterling success of 2005’s 
Well, the 
Just in time for the World Cup, Codemasters have released a PC demo of Sensible Soccer 2006, the much awaited return of the beloved Sensible Soccer franchise. Now in 3d with bobblehead technology, it’s worth a playthrough if you have any fond memories of the original. No confirmed u.s. release date, but the europeans are getting it in 7 days, the lucky so-and-sos. A direct download of the title is available 
