You might've seen a bit of news about this - Mattel is releasing a game console for "tweens," which merges both game and card scanning phenomena into one package. Certainly on paper that sounds like something born of a marketing orgy, but I went that extra step and requested images and additional info. Very interestingly, the sytem is CD-based, and boasts a 32 bit architecture. They haven't yet released the actual specs and chip manufacturers, but I'm promised that information once they're ready to reveal it. If you look at the system to the left (click for largeness!), it's got some curious design. It folds, but mostly for storage. You put the CD in the left, and cards are scanned over the red light on the righthand side. Two joypad ports come standard, but a second controller is extra, indicating that these games will actually feature AI, and not just be player vs player. It's a bit complicated how these games work, but rather interesting as well. The game is loaded via the CD, and during play, players can pause and scan upgrades/attribute changes for their character. Once they achieve victory, they can 'save' this upgraded character to a rewritable Intellicard (more on that in just a bit). The system is said to combine their rewritable card technology with "the fast-paced, button-mashing action of video games."
The first crop of games seems to include fighters, mostly. The console ships with X-Men, a controller (designed for tween-sized hands, but I'm sure we could manage), and 6 game cards, for $70. Additional controler is $20, additional game cards are 6 for $10 in randomized booster packs (aka, holy crap there's our money, as each game has 100 corresponding cards!), and there's also an Intellicard holder and console case available. I'm still a bit unclear about which cards are rewritable, all of them, or some of them? Interesting regardless.
Now let's take a look at a game shot (make click for large experience). Here you'll find an image from the X-Men game, which is quite revealing. Backgrounds and sprites are obviously prerendered, and the image sent to me was very high res (I actually shrank the supplied image by 50%). Not sure if the console itself will boast such a mighty resolution, but check out Wolverine's avatar on the left side. Pretty clean! Not sure what's up with the one on the right though. You can see each pixel in the dithering of the shadows. It looks a lot like early prerendered work on the Saturn, which is pretty intriguing. Aside from X-Men, there will be a game based on Cartoon Network's Ben 10, which I'd presume to be a side scroller, a game for Mattel's own Interstellar Wrestling League, and Marvel Heroes will be released in November, 2006. The console itself is scheduled to launch in October.
So they plan to hit the tween market which has graduated from plug and play systems, but isn't ready for dedicated consoles. I'm not entirely certain that such a demographic really exists, as a number of dedicated console games are aimed directly at the tween market, but that's neither here nor there. Here's the really odd thing though - this is Mattel - you might remember that they created the Intellivision, which sold over 3 million units in the early days of gaming (hey, I finally made good use of this!), which was an impressive number in those days, though the VCS did dominate the market. Nowhere in the press releases or literature are they hyping this fact, or their triumphant return to the games market. That's curious enough on its own, but that they decided to name their card technology Intellicard, and then ignore their own roots, well...it's unusual! They had a peripheral called the Intellivoice, after all. I suppose there could be licensing issues with the current Intellivision Lives company, but it's also possible that nobody at Mattel remembers the time when they were on top of the game industry. There's been very little press for this thing, they might've gotten a fair bit more if they'd leveraged that! At any rate, check out the official HyperScan site for more info. It's not got any content as of yet, but it should have some shortly. I can envision some seriously interesting applications of this, though I doubt its potential will be fully explored, as this is primarily to be a license-driven machine. Great possibility there though. Mattel should be sending me one of these things for review come august, so keep an ear open.
Somehow this hasn't gotten around the internet yet, it seems. The OneStation is a new Game Boy Micro-sized cartridge-based system by Jungletac, who also makes the VG pocket (NES romhack handheld), among other odd things, such as Disney's upcoming handhelds. It's increasingly easy to make this sort of thing, what with dropping technology prices, and Jungletac seems to be a real innovator here. The OneStation has embedded games like most other handhelds of its type, but as mentioned above, also takes cartridges of the '35-in-1' variety. The cartridges look like GBA carts, most of which are NES 8-bit games. Others are in a 16 bit-level grouping. Even more interesting, the unit appears to house both 8 bit and 16 bit architectures in a very small package, and it even comes with TV-out, like other Jungletac product.
The 16 bit games are all Jungletac hacks or 'originals', but there are adapters released that allow you to play megadrive games. Megadrive games come in 4-1n-1 packs. You can see some of their original games here - 'New concepts& Mary More...' it says! Mary had also watch that she doesn't get sued by Capcom for that Onimusha image down there.
Looking at the official Jungletac site, it seems they're planning to release a number of interesting functions for the OneStation, such as flash, JPEG viewer, MP3, and the very very exciting SD download cart. With that last one, you could likely load NES or MD roms straight onto the thing, though for MD you might need that adapter (which presumably contains an extra chip). Jungletac's systems have a nice and very interesting TFT screen, which Sweater Fish, who linked me to this in the first place, says is analog RGB, thus dots of red, green, and blue make up each pixel, as opposed to most systems which simply have a pixel represent a given color. This can be good or bad, depending on how you feel. The D-pad and buttons usually leave a bit to be desired on these systems, but I haven't tried this one. All in all a very intriguing grey market product from the people at Jungletac. And it comes in four colors - make mine Rose Pink, please! Oh and there's a hands on impressions feature in german, but my german's a bit rusty!
Game character designer tomoharu saito, known for his work in games such as Cave's Ketsui , Segagaga for DC, and the Culdcept series, passed away on july 29, due to a malignant tumor which metastasized in the lungs, even after the amputation of his leg. According to the thoughtful obituary on his site, upon removal of his leg, he simply said 'legs aren't necessary in the illustration industry.' During his cancer treatment, things seemed to be going well, and he was heard to say "I want to work." Unfortunately, it didn't work out that way, but he was able to complete work for two upcoming games, and indeed working on games was his true passion. Culdcept Saga and Sorcerian Online (currently in beta) will be the last games to feature his work. You can view his full portfolio of games here, which also includes Bare Knuckle 2, Treasure's Astro Boy for GBA, and Shubibiman 2 (for which he also did some game design). He was 38 years old.
According to an entry on 2ch, a new PSP Gundam game is in the works (scheduled for an October release). Apparently titled "Gundam Battle Royale" it will feature over 80 playable mobile suits from the Universal Century timeline.
It also appears to be based upon the Capcom arcade games and uses a similar system to that of Gundam SEED (arguably the best of the Capcom Gundam efforts, despite the anime being a bit shallow and derivative). Interestingly, it's also rumored to support infrastructure versus (so you too can now have your ass handed to you by an 8 year old Japanese kid).
This has been rumored for a couple of months now, and is official since yesterday, if we scrutinize Espgaluda II's just-released OST, which includes an announcement with brand-new Mushihime-sama-themed artwork. Thanks to Hamapika for letting us know. Not as certain, but Shikigami no Shiro III could be coming to PS2, according to Play-Asia shop, though we believe this could be some kind of error, since it's listing the game for the very same date as the recently announced Windows port from Cyber Front. On top of that, it mentions 'Alfa System' as the publisher, when this developer never publishes its own games. Here it is, anyway.
Update: As we thought, Play-Asia was in error. The page linked for the supposed "PS2 Shikigami no Shiro III" has been changed for the Windows version. Or they just read IC, that is.
Here's an interesting one-off site that links three consoles that many view as 'spiritual successors', the PC Engine, the Saturn, and the Dreamcast - and they all happen to have white hardware variants (not so much a variant in the DC's case). It's got a nice, simple design, and some decent text to it, and also references the popular disc-based visual medium of the era, so give it a look-see. There's a little diary that might continue to get updated, but who can say for sure. It's kind of nice to think of it as a little series of connections that will remain static in the internet, much like the consoles themselves.
So I was checking out this homebrew game for the PC Engine - it's basically a picross game, which isn't my cup of tea, but it's a homebrew PC Engine game, so that means I'm interested. Plus the guy has made lots of demos too. Anyway, I wound up being more interested in what was written below. Namely that the PC Engine was capable of displaying images at a rather high resolution - up to 512x240 - but apparently no emulators can match that. He's got screen by screen comparisons of TV versus emulator shots, and it's pretty striking - 8 pixels gone from the top and the bottom, 224 lines instead of 240! That's trouble, that is. I'd never noticed it before, but then I don't often play my PC Engine games on an emulator.
Oh, and that guy (he might want to be called chris covell) also bought the rare Devil Crash/Alien Crush arranged music CD, and you can check out some samples here. And while I'm talking about his stuff, check out his neat Sega hacking page. He's got a page about hacking Game Gear games to run on the SMS - quite interesting, if you look at the Aleste comparison shots, you'll see that bullets are still displayed outside the viewable area of the gamegear. Neat!
Update: Chris had this to say about the Aleste conversion: "When I hacked the game to run on the SMS, I extended the area that ships/bullets/enemies could be in, to fit the borders of the SMS screen. Otherwise, the bullets would disappear off the
sides of the GG screen, and the ship's movement would have been more
constrained." So there you go! Guess he had to do it himself.
News: Summon Night: Craft Sword Story, also maragos
In our continued effort to let you know every time anyone at Flight Plan sneezes or sits down somewhere funny, I figured I'd let you know that Summon Night: Craft Sword Story is out. It's a videogame made by Flight Plan, who made games you might remember not playing, such as Black Matrix, and uh...Summon Night (without the Craft Sword bits - oh and I see they've called it Swordcraft Story instead of Craft Sword. Whatever works!). Buy it at a retailer near you! Or kill yourself. So many options!
In other Atlus-related news (they published Summon Night: CSS, see), 4 Color Rebellion interviewed nich maragos, who works there now. He's finally admitted he likes new game journalism. Take that, former hater, who's now also our friend! Anyway, good interview, he's in localization at Atlus, and we saw him at the Minibosses show the saturday before last. End of newspost.
So Play Asia is having another one of those huge sales where if you buy enough crap you get entered into a drawing for fabulous prizes that some guy in Taiwan wins even though you bought like $300 worth of stuff. Oh my, where did that come from? (note: that comment is meant to indicate that my luck sucks, not that the contest is rigged) You could win a PS3, a Wii, a GP2X, or an affirming slap on the derriere! So many possibilities. Anyway, here's the full discount page, and I'll give you a rundown of some of the better stuff, in my tiny brain.
Toys: A lot of you folks have already been buying these Final Fantasy Arts figurines for $4, even though their Rikku figure didn't get the full treatment, so you might want to go take a look and follow your brethren/sistren. There are also these Biohazard 4 figures for $2. That's cheap. And don't forget to buy the urban/streetlife classic Wuz up b? Produce: Street Dancer for the original wonderswan! Sure to amaze your friends (that you spent the money on it). So that's that, go nuts.
It seems that the Japanese model kit and toy manufacturer Kotobukiya is planning on making a mini-statue of sorts for the First Colossus. It's set to stand 19.5 cm tall and weigh in at a good 10,429 yen.
While imposing, it does lack the gruff hairy nature of the original. For those interested in pre-ordering you're welcome to try here.
If you're like me, and didn't go to the new Makaimura website because you figured you'd know what was on there already, you're just as dumb as I am. Go check out the awesome promo video, complete with Arthur ironing his heart shorts, hiring a prostitute (it seems!), and wearing cardboard armor. Very nice stuff.
As a bonus for all of you who read this entry even though you're not an idiot and had already seen it (I suppose the smart people can download it too, but they're not allowed to like it), here's an mp3 from Makaimura for the Wonderswan. Listen to all of those sound channels! You can bet any sound effects cut out at least one of them. I'm guessing the cascading melody in the midrange (yes, shamefully I don't actually own this one). These Capcom games really made the WSC chip shine, somehow. Considering I'm pretty sure most of these were simply licensed to Bandai and developed by a third party *cough*, there shouldn't be an appreciable quality difference, but this and Rockman and Forte are two of the nicest sounding games on there.
Eric-Jon sent me an email with this link, saying 'you like Burger Time, right?' And that's a true statement. I like it more than a little! This Sushi Samurai thing is a little flash game in the Canadian Broadcasting uh...Corporation, or something, in their kids' section. How Eric-Jon found it is a mystery that will go down through the ages, but regardless, the game plays a lot like Burger Time (perhaps Data East's greatest triumph - if the rights weren't all still owned by a cantankerous old man, I think it'd be nice to see on Xbox Live Arcade), but it's missing one core gameplay mechanic. In the original, if you're walking across a piece of the food, and an enemy thingie is also treading upon it, if you make the food fall, the enemy falls too. That's not in this version, so don't bother trying to do it. Still fun, even if the music is a bit OOOOH, ASIA. I was going to say 'ME SO SOLLY', but decided that was probably going to far.
Remember that Nullsleep/Bitshifter show we attended last month? Well, it turns out some people liked the photo aaron meyers took of the performance. This fellow by the name of gregory k. serweta thought that the A and B buttons of an NES pad might look a bit like turntables (not that there are any turntables in the original, but hey, artistic license!), and regardless of whether he's right, he came up with a nice little photoshop piece. It's at 1024 right now, and should resize to your desktop ok since it's all bitmappy. Click the image on the left for Captain Largesize.
The Idolmaster, a Namco arcade game we first mentioned on april 4, 2004, is now coming to the 360. Check some screens and info here. You can check that old link of ours for more info, but it's basically an idol raising sim with toon shaded graphics. Now everyone in japan will buy a 360........right!?
Taito has a couple of interesting projects in the works for the DS. One is called Remindelight (their spelling - not sure if this is 'Reminde' Light, or Remin Delight?), developed by Japan Art Media, published by Taito. Check out some images at famitsu - for some reason you won't find them on the official site. It's a rather nice looking 2D RPG in which you attack enemies with the stylus.
Next, there's an updated New Zealand Story, which looks really nice. I can't find the original publisher's link, but Rising Star Games - Marvelous Entertainment's UK publishing arm - is bringing the game to europe. You can check out some screens here (beware of unintuitive site design!). Thanks to Arngrim on the MMC boards for the 2nd link. As an aside, Rising Star is also bringing out Ys Tactics in europe. September for that one.
Jeanne D'arc is the new game from Level 5, of Dark Cloud, Dragon Quest VIII and Rogue Galaxy fame. It seems to be a rather traditional SRPG, which suits me just fine. Very nice backgrounds, even though the 3D characters are a bit bland. Check out the game here, with system, story and character info. Click the bottom left of the main page for a movie. Also check out Level 5's official site, where you can find things like screenshots. Thanks to Iggy for the link.
Those happy mecha fiends at Sandlot are in the process of making another scale-based tastic game called Choushoujuu Mecha MG.
Whilst people will be more familiar with Sandlot's Chikyuu Boueigun games, the developer has historically made a varied cornucopia of mecha titles (most notably starting with the original Remote Control Dandy on the PSone way back in 1999).
Considering their vast experience with the genre hopefully the DS game will be as good as their previous offerings. The game will be released in Japan at the beginning of September.
Leona, of Ikari Warriors/KOF fame, is a playable character be in the recently released mobile Metal Slug, Metal Slug Survivors. Ralph and Clark are in there too. It's available for Foma 90x series phones, at 525 yen. More info here. It's getting near time for SNK to do a mobile game collection for the GBA, don't you think? Thanks to Arngrim for pointing it out.
Recap appended this at the end of his last post, but it probably warrants its own, in spite of the series' gradual decline. There's a new Raiden game coming, as we learn from this location test announcement on moss' official site. It's at HEY in akihabara next weekend.
It's thanks to Namae no Nai Heya that we realized this shop is announcing a Windows version of the recent Skonek/Alfa System/Taito game for September. Shikigami no Shiro III is the first Type-X game to ever get ported to PC before console.
Here we are once again to tell you the news you won't be finding on any other sites, especially if its arcade-related and involves historical arguments! It's quite interesting that Idea Factory recently formed up a brand-new group (yeah, yet another one) with the name 'Compile Heart', whose first work was the Japanese localization of the Korean RPG Astonishia Story, in its PSP incarnation.
More surprisingly, the company's logo bears a clear resemblance to that of the old Compile. Yesterday we learned that it's indeed related to the legendary Puyo Puyo maker (which, you can say, currently carries the name 'Aiky'), and is developing an arcade game (no less) called 'Takoron' which will be based on the Puyo Puyo formula and it's being supervised by Puyo Puyo's creator Moo Niitani. The company has signed an agreement with AMI to get its forthcoming arcade games distributed, much like AMI did for Idea Factory's only arcade game to date, Spectral vs. Generation. Let's see what happens this time since Aiky's own Puyo Puyo successor Pochi to Nyaa wasn't exactly a hit despite its quality. It seems, anyhow, that Takoron has already been confirmed for a PSP version via Famitsu's pages, along with a third PSP game called 'Vulcanus' classified as an 'action shooting game with robots'.
It seems a bunch of you weren't aware that the Advantage were in san francisco until it was too late. This time, I'm giving you 24 hours notice. The Minibosses are coming to sf tomorrow. They will be at the Hemlock. And you should probably go. It's a small space, and it starts at 6, so be ready!
Browsing Telnet Japan's site today (they of Valis and Cosmic Fantasy fame, among numerous other PC Engine and PC/Marty games), I found this. It appears to be a mobile phone conversion and update of the original Valis: The Fantasm Soldier, with quite decent looking graphics. They also introduced a costume system for the heroine. Shame they didn't bring it to GBA instead, but one never knows. The game was released on Vodafone Live! in may of last year.
Incidentally, it's quite sad to see a company go from making this many games in 1992 for PC Engine alone, many of which were quite good, to four PS2 games in nearly the full life of the console. Check out Telnet Japan's game library here. They're one step away from joining D3, like so many other excellent companies of the 16 bit era have. Those companies that could survive the transition to a 3D-dominated world in the first place, that is!
Although - christian nutt reminded me that Wolf Team split off from Telnet in the mid-90s, so that's probably what crippled them. Them's the breaks, I guess...
Australian blogger Jamie Sam (which is actually two people, but I digress), has put up a little expose of sorts. Seems there's a massive used game store in the gumyo area of togane, southeast of tokyo, off the togane or keiyoo lines. Images of the stops before and after right here. The store, the front of which you can see here, is massive. He claims it looks like an adult shop from the outside, but I say it looks more like a right-wing nationalist organization's headquarters - the type that rides around in vans yelling pro-japan slogans from the bullhorn on top.
Just look at all this famicom disc system software, or this older hardware. Trouble is, though this place is absolutely huge, and looks quite impressive, the hardware prices all look a bit high, which could bode ill for getting nice deals there. Though the SFC Square Enix RPG collection looks alright at 5,000 yen (bottom right, includes the FFs and DQs), round about here you'll feel you shouldn't be paying 2,480 yen for Tales of Phantasia. That said, there are simply rows and rows of the stuff, so this might well be a place to check out if you're in the area.
News: Everybody loves cavia: episode three: the day the world exploded
If you'll kindly click here, and then click on the "movie" tab, you will see a gameplay preview of cavia's new game, Bullet Witch. The preview alone has propelled the game to kamigee ("God-game") status on 2ch in record time. It shows things like the heroine fighting a dragon on the back of an airplane, and/or whole buildings exploding. It looks to contain the same level of ridiculous sensationalist B-movie violence as, say, Earth Defense Force 2.
The story is morbidly delicious schlock as well: IN THE YEAR 2013, a virus kills millions, leaving (according to the story trailer also located at the abovelinked page) ENTIRE NATIONS DEAD. This is when MAGIC IS REBORN, and you, the heroine, Alicia, have to defeat legions of dragon-bats and zombified ogres using only a machinegun shaped like a broom. You can also use magic to make things explode.
This will be the first game released by our darling cavia that actually contains the "cavia" logo on the box. It will also be the first "major" game released by AQ Interactive, the fledgling super-publisher headed up by Final Fantasy's Hironobu Sakaguchi.
The gameplay seems to blend the massive-scale sometimes-walking, sometimes-flying epic battles of Drag-on Dragoon 2 with the sharp polish and focus of Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex. It has running, gunning, strafing, truck-exploding -- it looks to be real classic action-game mayhem.
cavia has earned a reputation as a developer of action games with a workmanlike quality about them. Their first wave of fans (hidden in deep corners of the Japanese Internet) tend to be weirdly devoted. Bullet Witch will be their first chance to really make a mark on the world. If the game is actually good (unlike the rather drab, clearly "made-for-money" WinBack 2), cavia could finally make a name for themselves. Their next major work (also for Xbox 360), called Cry On, will feature a scenario written by Sakaguchi and epic production values. It will probably be critically lauded to high heaven. You will see, then, that cavia fans are not merely nuts and/or viral marketers!! We here at insertcredit.com wish cavia the best in the meantime.
Bullet Witch will be released on July 27th -- just two weeks from tomorrow -- for the Xbox 360, at the stately price of 7,300 yen. Pre-order it through Play-Asia here, if you're one of those lucky (smart) people who has a Japanese Xbox 360 (which can play the Asian versions of games, also available at Play-Asia, which all have English dubs if your 360 is set to English as the default language, and are about $20 cheaper than their American counterparts)!!
And UHO, it looks like cavia's other other Xbox 360 game, Zegapain, is also releasing on the 27th! My, what an epic day that will be!! Check out some of the updates on the official site here (including a surprisingly well-thought-out webcomic), or just buy it here.
Also, Senkou no ronde Rev.Xalso comes out for Xbox 360 on July 27th. It's not by cavia, though you can buy it here. It's highly recommended if you already like the game a great deal.
It's already a hot summer; on July 27th, Akihabara is going to burn.
News: Final Fantasy iii DS lite special edition pack
Nintendo and Square-Enix have done it again!! Or, well, someone's done something. The something in question this time is this Limited Edition Crystal White Nintendo DS Lite engraved with Final Fantasy III characters. The units will be serial numbered, ensuring maximum online auction prices, street violence, and toothy grins at used game shops!! The engraving is based on original drawings by artist Akihiko Yoshida!!
The picture almost makes it look silver. Unfortunately, no, it is not silver. That'd be fingerprint hell, anyway.
An interesting tidbit from the Famitsu story: "Though it has been confirmed the units will be individually numbered, Nintendo has yet to confirm quantities." Watch there be like fifty-two of them! I'm serious!
The game is also, incidentally, currently the number-eight top selling game on Amazon.co.jp. It was number one for a while. Japan is quite seriously looking forward to paying 5,980 yen for the game, a whole thousand-some more than the typical DS game. Squeenix, as has been observed many times over, just don't like releasing software for normal prices. They like to be able to count their customers' devotion in cash.
Final Fantasy III, for the unitiated, is the Final Fantasy game people who dislike Final Fantasy games are most likely to say is their favorite Final Fantasy game. It's also number two on insertcredit.com's hot list of "top eleven games to say you've played when really you haven't." Come the time of the North American release, you might find yourself backed into a corner by some friend who says, "Hey, that Final Fantasy III is coming out on DS today! You like it, right? You're buying it, right? Wanna go buy it together, celebrate the completion of the Final Fantasy series' releases in official English translations together?" If this happens, here is some basic advice for the after party:
1. It pioneered the job class system, making it more original than Final Fantasy V.
2. The story is better than Final Fantasy VI because it allows me to use my imagination. yes, i am messing with YOU
That should take care of you.
The special edition DS Lite will launch on August 24th, 2006, the same day as the game. It will cost 22,780 yen. Keep in mind that a normal DS Lite sells (if you can find one) for 16,980 yen. So yeah, the price of the limited edition console equals exactly the price of the game plus the price of the console. Of course, one could include the "engraving" as part of the package. Though for the sake of argument, let's just put it this way: in Japan, the cost of a six-pack of beer is precisely the price of a single can times six.
In other news related to Nintendo DS Lite in Japan, it seems that the popular black model, previously released only in Europe (and involved in a nasty international-espionage-ish hijack-theft), is coming to Japan on September 2nd.
Stay tuned to insertcredit.com for details as more colors emerge over the following weeks! We will officially change our page background to "Gorgeous Purple" for .108 seconds the day Nintendo announces a purple version. That's a promise!! no
Perhaps you've heard of Segagaga, a RPG/business sim in which the player must take control of Sega and prevent the company from going under. It was one of the final games released for the Dreamcast and appears to be a goodbye present of sorts to its loyal fans. The whole thing is jam-packed with references and nods to it's legacy, both obvious and obscure, but due to the nature of the gameplay, most have been unable to really get a proper taste of it all, or even get very far.
But at least now one can view the end sequences via YouTube. Check out part 1 and part 2 and see (and here) how many things you can recognize. Thanks to IC forum-ite "Dark Age Iron Savior" for passing along the links via this thread, which also explains and reveals a bit more about this gem of a game. The videos along are enough to put a tear in the eye to any Sega devotee.
Included is a look at the arcade scene that's pretty much dead these days (which is true for most parts of the country, but still), the best places to buy a game (outside of the major retail chains, of course), and gaming culture that persist in the Big Apple (yes, there is one).
I should perhaps note that a forum member at the IC boards helped a bit in the research department, when he reported the closure of an arcade not too long ago.
A California-based art student who goes by the moniker "pixel form" recently modifed an NES, transforming it into a visualizer for sound. Here's a page which details the process with plenty of pictures and videos.
A finely detailed and absolutely beautiful sculpted rendition of the first Colossi is coming this October in Japan. It's slated to be 195 mm tall and will cost 10,290 yen, or about $90 American. Start saving those pennies! Here's a nice montage pic.
If you were keeping up with that silly Monday column I used to have on NextGen, you might have noticed that I'm not doing it anymore! The reasons are varied, and mostly amount to not enough people reading it for all the weird pseudo-philosophical rants I wound around the week's hottest Yi-Gi-Oh card battle game.
Result: I now have a new and different column on Thursdays, that involves... long pseudo-philosophical rants, on whatever topic strikes me as important after I've written half a paragraph. And I get paid for this stuff! One of them I spent more money than I care to divulge rescuing from a prolapsed hard drive -- so I guess things even out in the end.
I keep getting mail from people who tell me how wonderful I am, so I guess maybe I'm not completely wasting my time. See what you think.
It's not very well known in the West, but Plus Alpha was one of the most successful shooting games from Jaleco in Japan until it released Game Tengoku (which also served as a tribute to the former game, among others). With an anime-esque girl as the protagonist and an airplane which could change its form during the battle, Plus Alpha's childish-looking premise is coming back in the form of a direct sequel with the name 'Plus Beta'. Sadly, much like the comeback of SNK's Athena or Cave/Hudson's Star Soldier vs. Do Donpachi Dai-Ou-Jou, this is aimed at Japanese FOMA 900 mobile phones. And, as you can see here, it's not the only recent renaissance of a Jaleco classic game... for the mobile phones. Famitsu's report here.
News: Robots in spaaaace (and in other places too)
As of the 26th of July, Gundam Online punters will be able to enter a comfortable LEO. This means that further feats of Newtype skill will be possible, in the MMO hammering stats kind of way.
In other news a rather bizzare singleplayer demo of Chrome Hounds was released last week. For those that were ninja enough to acquire the full Japanese release, let them assuage your fears that the multiplayer is fantabulous. No really, it is. Anyway, here's a nice video interview with the game's producer Toshifumi Nabeshima.
Here's a video on youtube that some might find interesting. It's a homebrew art project for the PC Engine, performed with two controllers and a soundtrack. Unfortunately the art isn't spectacular, and there's no cohesive theme, so this is another one of those 'great concept, poor execution' sort of things. Thanks to SignOfZeta.
Studio SiestA, doujin circle known for their Airraid shooters and Pocket Kanon games, has something new for us. It's a simple, but very nice vertically scrolling Star Soldier-influenced game (taking the latter part of Star Force and Star Soldier as its name), with rather nice graphics. dessgeega grabbed the screen to the left, and reviewed the game here.
Somehow this hasn't gotten around the internet yet, it seems. The OneStation is a new Game Boy Micro-sized cartridge-based system by 
The 16 bit games are all Jungletac hacks or 'originals', but there are 
With that last one, you could likely load NES or MD roms straight onto the thing, though for MD you might need that adapter (which presumably contains an extra chip). Jungletac's systems have a nice and very interesting TFT screen, which Sweater Fish, who linked me to this in the first place, says is analog RGB, thus dots of red, green, and blue make up each pixel, as opposed to most systems which simply have a pixel represent a given color. This can be good or bad, depending on how you feel. The D-pad and buttons usually leave a bit to be desired on these systems, but I haven't tried this one. All in all a very intriguing grey market product from the people at Jungletac. And it comes in four colors - make mine Rose Pink, please! Oh and there's a 
Game character designer 
Here's an interesting 
So I was checking out 
In our continued effort to let you know every time anyone at Flight Plan sneezes or sits down somewhere funny, I figured I'd let you know that 
The Idolmaster, a Namco arcade game we first mentioned on 
Taito has a couple of interesting projects in the works for the DS. One is called Remindelight (their spelling - not sure if this is 'Reminde' Light, or Remin Delight?), developed by Japan Art Media, published by Taito. Check out some images at 
Jeanne D'arc is the new game from Level 5, of Dark Cloud, Dragon Quest VIII and Rogue Galaxy fame. It seems to be a rather traditional SRPG, which suits me just fine. Very nice backgrounds, even though the 3D characters are a bit bland. Check out the game 
Those happy mecha fiends at 
Leona, of Ikari Warriors/KOF fame, is a playable character be in the recently released mobile Metal Slug, Metal Slug Survivors. Ralph and Clark are in there too. It's available for Foma 90x series phones, at 525 yen. More info 
Recap appended this at the end of his last post, but it probably warrants its own, in spite of the series' gradual decline. There's a new Raiden game coming, as we learn from this 
It's thanks to 
Here we are once again to tell you the news you won't be finding on any other sites, especially if its arcade-related and involves historical arguments! It's quite interesting that Idea Factory recently formed up a brand-new group (yeah, yet another one) with the name '
Browsing 
Australian blogger Jamie Sam (which is actually two people, but I digress), has put up a little 
If you'll kindly click 
Nintendo and Square-Enix have done it again!! Or, well, someone's done something. The something in question this time is this 
If you were keeping up with that silly Monday column I used to have on NextGen, you might have noticed that I'm not doing it anymore! The reasons are varied, and mostly amount to not enough people reading it for all the weird pseudo-philosophical rants I wound around the week's hottest Yi-Gi-Oh card battle game.
It's not very well known in the West, but 
As of the 
