The X Button
Nightmare Girls
by Todd Ciolek,
This past Sunday brought an unfortunate surprise: Chinatown Fair, the last arcade in Chinatown and the best arcade in New York City, shut down.
Chinatown Fair was in business for many years, and it saw the arcade boom of the 1980s, the fighting-game craze of the early 1990s, and the lean times of the past decade. Arcades grew less and less important to the game industry in the last ten years, with most small mom-and-pop operations giving way to franchises like Dave and Buster's and other attempts at grown-up versions of Chuck E. Cheese.
Yet Chinatown Fair stuck around, and it was a gathering point for anyone who was in New York with an interest in fighting games. To step into Chinatown Fair was to return to the 1990s, when arcades were full of kids getting upset and excited and savagely competitive over the latest fighting game. The Fair also kept up to date. In an age when most new arcade fighters are hard to find in the wild, you could count on Chinatown Fair to have BlazBlue and SNK's fortunes are true.
I enjoyed seeing big-name arcade fighters at Chinatown Fair, but my favorite thing about the place was the chance to play games I'd rarely see anywhere else. Few arcades outside of Japan would have Dimps-made fighter with a routine lineup of characters (except for the old guy in the Hawaiian shirt). It's the sort of standard fighter that I probably wouldn't give a second look in MAME, but I always dropped a buck into it when I visited Chinatown Fair. It's not every arcade that keeps The Rumble Fish 2 around. And it's not every arcade that's a genuine loss when it closes.
You can see photos from Chinatown Fair's last few hours here. You can also read a retrospective on the arcade from ANN's own David “Astro Toy” Cabrera, who went there much more often than I did.
NEWS
STING'S GUNGNIR DOESN'T WANT TO HURT YOU
You know Sting, right? They're the workhorse developer of both standard RPGs like Hexyz Force and strange experiments like Knights in the Nightmare. Well, their latest, Gungnir lands in somewhat familiar territory: it's a PSP strategy-RPG about a semi-average young warrior who wields a legendary weapon.
The warrior is Julio, and the weapon is an allegedly god-owned spear called Gungnir. In the game's world of class warfare, Julio's part of a rebel movement that opposes the Gargantia Empire, and he's nice enough to rescue a woman named Alyssa from a slave auction. Alyssa's one of the game's playable characters, along with revolutionary leader Rangus and self-proclaimed holy messenger Elise. And Julio, of course. Gungnir appears to be the ninth game in the Dept. Heaven series that also includes Riviera and Yggdra Union, so there might be some character crossovers.
Sting evidently doesn't want to tax players too heavily with Gungnir's story or its gameplay. The battle system is deliberately simple, and its strategy-RPG battles use a gauge that lets players change the turn order of allies and enemies. This opens up chances for combo attacks and, one assumes, last-second rescues of damaged characters. Gungnir's developers say the game is intended for those who aren't particularly good at strategy-RPGs, and their exercise in boosting player self-esteem comes out May 19 in Japan.
CAVE STORY SIMPLY CANNOT BE REMADE ENOUGH
Cave Story was first an indie PC game, then a PSP game, then a DSiWare game, and then a WiiWare game. Now it's headed for the one system that doesn't really emphasize old-fashioned, side-scrolling games: the Nintendo 3DS. Of course, this means that Cave Story must be remade entirely into a 3-D game, and that's what developer Nicalis aims to do.
The game's premise remains unchanged even in its 3-D revamp: a robot named Quote wakes up in the depths of a floating island. His memory wiped, he finds his way through a strange world of rabbit-eared mimiga creatures, human interlopers, and some dark secrets. It's all arranged in Metroid fashion, with Quote gaining access to new areas as he upgrades his weapons and abilities. The 3-D version promises a few new stages that the game's director/programmer/writer/artist/creator, Daisuke “Pixel” Amaya, cut from the original game.
Cave Story's NES-like looks and appealing characters earned the game plenty of fans when it was the PC-based creation of just one man. Yet the game didn't have the same impact when it arrived on handheld systems, and it's not clear if a 3-D remake will enrapture new followers. NIS America hopes to have the game out within the 3DS “launch window,” which could be any time between the system's March 27 debut and the E3 in June.
Atlus and NIS America proven that we enjoy throwing extra money at games just for some frivolous, closet-bound merchandise? I think they have.
This Complete Collection features visually enhanced versions of Final Fantasy IV and its After Years sequel, plus a bonus chapter that bridges the two games. In the Interlude, Cecil and his allies (including Rosa, Yang, Rydia, and twin mages Palom and Porom) ferret out an enemy threatening Castle Damcyan. The compilation arrives in North America this April 19 and hits Europe four days later.
But Square Enix is at least giving North America something that Europe has long enjoyed: Vagrant Story on the PlayStation games. The work of Final Fantasy Tactics writer-director Yasumi Matsuno, it's filled with medieval-fantasy backstabbery and complex gameplay. Perhaps it's a bit too complex in the myriad weapons that players have to customize and swap in and out, and perhaps the storyline's mixture of action-movie undertones and Ye Olde Englishe is a bit much. But I don't think so. Vagrant Story's great, and you should all try it.
IMPORT ROUNDUP: FEBRUARY
CATHERINE Why are people paying attention to Catherine? Is it the game's overt sexuality? Probably, but countless other Japanese games are just as suggestive and even more grotesque about it. Is it the bizarre psychological mixture of its main character's real-life problems and surreal nightmares? I think it is. Despite ad images of its succubus heroine lounging on pianos and messily devouring pizza, Catherine has an intriguing premise: a thirty-ish salaryman named Vincent faces his own bleak, directionless life and the prospect of cheating on his long-term, commitment-minded girlfriend Katherine. His turmoil results in bizarre visions and run-ins with an alluring blonde woman named Catherine. It's Silent Hill covered by the Persona developers, with mental breakdowns and subconscious horrors lurking beneath the placidity of urban youth. The actual gameplay is stripped down to simple challenges: Vincent climbs, jumps, runs, and occasionally screams his way through shadowed dreamscapes filled with grotesquely symbolic creatures, block-pushing puzzles, and sheep-people. As if to compensate for the basic nature of Vincent's dreams, Atlus made the game so difficult that Japanese players demanded (and will apparently get) a patch to make things easier. Catherine has the look of something cannily aimed at the modern crossbreed of game geek and anime fan, but it might dig deeper. |
GALGUN |
Robotech game if you like. |
MUCHI MUCHI PORK AND PINK SWEETS Muchi Muchi Pork and Pink Sweets show just how crafty Cave's grown with their shooters. Both are packed with modern otaku-magnet anime stylings, such as the voluptuous, pig-eared heroines of Muchi Muchi Pork and the roses and lingerie-wearing women of Pink Sweets. Most shooter fans don't care about that, though. They only care about how long they can dodge the game's fiendish volleys of enemy-spewed bullets, racking up a masterful score all the while. Muchi Muchi Pork carries its porcine theme into gameplay itself: the aircycle-riding stars destroy enemies to earn pig-shaped icons, which fill up a power meter (or a “lard meter,” a name that makes me dislike Muchi Muchi Pork a lot less) that in turn boosts the player's score. Pink Sweets features a bullet-canceling mechanic, a barrier system, and…well, lots of flower petals. The Xbox 360 package has the original arcade versions of both games, though fans will likely prefer the included “1.01” editions and their new features: for example, attacks are more powerful and last longer in Muchi Muchi Pork's case, while Pink Sweets 1.01 is more forgiving to players who happen to lose a ship. Not that any shooter fan would tolerate such weakness. Also enclosed are substantially remixed Arrange modes for each game, and there's a able “Matsuri” edition of Muchi Muchi Pork bundled free with the first print run. And so Cave's business plan is intact, appealing to both the shooter faithful and the man-child connoisseur of anime sex appeal. Those who prefer more conventional shooters can opt for Dodonpachi Dai-Fukkatsu Black Label, also available now on the Xbox 360. It puts its robot-schoolgirl heroines into a less frilly world of jet fighters and giant tanks. |
Developer: Atlus
Developer: 
Developer: CaveNEXT WEEK'S RELEASES
GAME FREAK Who re the MAD magazine parody of Pokémon? Unleashed in the late 1990s, it was called “Hokeycon” and proclaimed its target “the latest fad to take your cash.” This biting satire failed to dent the marketing façade of Pokémon, and so next week brings a new installment of this 13-year-long fad: Pokémon White and Black. They're rehashes of the Pokémon formula with slight enhancements, as players once again explore a non-threatening modern fantasyland to capture and train various creatures for battle. But now those players can do this during different seasons, as Black and White change terrain, features, and available Pokémon as the months . Greater innovations lie in multiplayer modes, where the C-Gear feature allows Pokémon Black and White games to communicate without players' direct input, and there's even a Feeling Check that grants special items based on how well two players get along. Black and White are also notable for not featuring iconic electric rat Pikachu as a prominent Pokémon. He/she/it is in the game somewhere, but Black and White de-emphasize Nintendo's little yellow goldmine after twelve years of kids recognizing Pikachu more often than the last three U.S. Vice Presidents. |
PHANTOM BRAVE: HEROES OF THE HERMUDA TRIANGLE |
Developer: Also Shipping: Dragon Age 2, the sequel to 2009's blood-drenched, grim 'n gritty medieval-fantasy RPG, arrives on the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360.
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