The X Button
Ultracity 2020
by Todd Ciolek,
In last month's ANNCast, I recommended that RPG fans import Xenoblade Chronicles from Europe, or something to that effect. I sure hope no one listened to me.
That's because Nintendo's website) and buy the game, all without ordering the PAL release or modding their Wii.
This comes after Nintendo's American branch spent months unmoved by Operation Rainfall, a relatively well-organized fan group that sought to swamp Nintendo with letters and trinkets asking for Xenoblade, The Last Story, and Pandora's Tower all to be released in North America. I sorta doubt that the whole of Nintendo's inner circle was instantly brought to tears and compliance by fans' e-mails, and I suspect that it was a combination of the game's sales in Europe and some cost/benefit measures that tipped the scales. But I'm sure Operation Rainfall helped an awful lot by keeping the games in the public eye, so congratulations are due to its organizers. They're the pride of every kid who sent off letters begging for translated versions of Japanese RPGs back in the day. And as a kid who played more RPGs than he should have, I sent a lot of those letters.
There's still a lingering problem, of course. Nintendo of America's silence prompted a bunch of fans to buy the European edition of Xenoblade Chronicles, and the U.S. version looks to be the same thing; the first Calling to be the best horror game on the Wii?
Anyway, I plan to pick up Xenoblade Chronicles again. I learned a long time ago that importing is a gamble. It carries the chance that the game you buy will come to your country at some point in the future. By grabbing it early, you might get a rare collectible like Radiant Silvergun, or you might end up with something made obsolete when the U.S. version is right there at the corner GameStop. Them's the breaks.
And when you see that game you imported sitting at GameStop like any other release, you may as well buy it. There's no better way of convincing American companies to release more games like it—thus saving you the trouble of importing stuff in the future. So it's a good idea in the long, vague run.
NEWS
Square Enix was awfully quiet about an American version of Final Fantasy Type-0, which hit the PSP in Japan this past October. Most Final Fantasy games are a lock for international markets, but the PSP's decline and the demands of Type-0 (it comes on two UMDs) apparently had Square Enix reconsidering.
Well, news of Type-0's English release squeaked out in the game's recently published Ultimania guide, wherein an interview mentions that Square is working on an English version of the game. On the one hand, that interview was likely conducted a while ago, so it's possible that Square's since abandoned plans to translate the game. Ultimania guides are Square products, however, so this news is technically official, no matter how vague it may be. There still remains the question of just how the game might come Westward. Will it be a UMD release, or will Square just throw it onto the PlayStation Network?
SQUARE ALSO HAS EMPEROR SAGA AND GALAXY DUNGEON, AND YOU CAN'T PLAY THEM JUST YET
If Final Fantasy Type-0 is coming here, other Square Enix RPGs might not. This includes Emperors SaGa and Galaxy Dungeon, two newly announced titles for the Gree social games service.
As the capitalization implies, Emperors SaGa signals the return of the SaGa series, an experimental line of RPGs that started back with a Game Boy title (known here as Final Fantasy Legend). The series was recently spurred on by DS remakes of SaGa 2 and 3, but Emperors SaGa is an all-new offering. Its focus differs from the quests of previous games, however. In this latest SaGa, players create a ruler (who can be a man or woman, judging by the artwork up there) and oversee a kingdom. Presumably they can annex and conquer neighboring lands, because that's what an empire is all about. No screens of the game were show, but at least it has art by Tomomi Kobayashi, who's drawn something for just about every SaGa game.
If the art in Emperors Saga recalls RPGs of the 1990s, Galaxy Dungeon is modern through and through. It's an RPG starring a quintet of young heroines, all decked out in bright hair colors and futuristic armor. The game's first-person battles are fought with cards depicting the characters, and the early screens show dungeons laid out like board games.
Emperors Saga arrives next summer, and Galaxy Dungeon hits in May. Both games are part of Gree's new social-game platform, which will also include Taito's card-game Period Zero and Gree's own RPG Cerberus Crusade. It's all planned only for Japan, but Gree's service is compatible with iOS and Droid systems.
GALGUN MANAGES MAKESHIFT MEGA MAN FOR MEDDLING MOMS
I thought I would never write about Gal*Gun again. It's a crude take on a novel idea, a light-gun shooter where players fend off lovestruck schoolgirls instead of zombies or terrorists. It also employed all of the tentacles, humiliation, and shrieking one associates with today's PlayStation 3, and aside from a few basic enhancements (Move , a lack of region locks, and no censorship) it has a new “mama kita” mode. “Mama kita” refers to innocuous screens that players can switch to at the press of a button, hiding whatever they were playing. That way, their parents don't walk in and find them pelting flighty cartoon girls with pheromone bullets.
And Gal*Gun's new parent-placating screen looks at lot like a Mega Man title—no accident, as Gal*Gun developer CAPCOM canceling two Mega Man games and not putting him in Marvel vs. CAPCOM 3, this is probably the closest we've come to a new Mega Man title all year. And now I have to move on to something else before I get depressed.
IMPORT ROUNDUP: NOVEMBER
7TH DRAGON 2020 |
| V Gundam's Gottlaran. There's a mission mode for unlocking other suits, but this is still a fighting game, and the best parts come from four-player online matches. Import Barrier: Nothing that an online fan-written guide won't fix. The PlayStation 3 is also region-free. Chances of a Domestic Release: Not all that poor. Three Dynasty Warriors Gundam games already made their way here, and Extreme Vs. is similar enough in style. |
| Knights of the Zodiac for North America, after all. It's a game for fans first and foremost, as the combat runs through the typical paces of a brawler. The characters also don't look nearly as complex as competing games in the genre, but that's likely part of the whole Araki imitation. Import Barrier: Nothing too challenging, and we'll remind you once again that Japanese PS3 games run fine on American systems. Chances of a Domestic Release: Slim. It'll show up in Europe next year (hence the Saint Seiya Sanctuary Battle title), but the anime was far more popular over there. Still, a Fist of the the North Star brawler made it to America last year, so a Saint Seiya game isn't shut out entirely. |
Developer: ALSO AVAILABLE
Arc System Works, makers of such fine anime brawls as BlazBlue and Guilty Gear. The game's levels are multi-tiered arenas, and everything's done up in spectacular animation and color; think Smash Bros. with the look of Vanillaware's Muramasa: The Demon Blade. That aside, it's a typical outing for fans of the anime and manga, and an online mode lets you collect and steal other players' yokai sidekicks.
If nothing else, Level-5's Studio Ghibli involved with video games. The first Ni no Kuni arrived on the DS in Japan last year, and it told of a young boy's journey through a fantasy realm of Ghibli creatures. The PlayStation 3 version, released in November, goes by Ni no Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch and offers a new version of the same story, and its Ghibli-styled graphics are much more vivid on the PlayStation 3. It's not going to stay in Japan, either, as it'll be out in the U.S. next year.
NEXT WEEK'S RELEASE
DOCTOR LAUTREC AND THE FORGOTTEN KNIGHTS  Developer: Nadia - The Secret of Blue Water…or whatever earlier series Nadia swiped from.Much of this adventure is interrupted by puzzles that feature all sorts of block arranging, color matching, and general challenges in logic. They're all in the way of the Doctor, Sophie, and a monkey as they tread through the catacombs below Paris and cross paths with various spectral foes, who are all dealt with in lightweight RPG battles. Not that this is any more violent than a Miyazaki film (or a Layton game)—the gun that Lautrec assembles in this scene is actually a projector. Lautrec also has Layton's decent production values, with animated story scenes and decent voice acting for the major characters. And let's face it: in the game industry, no one cares if you're a rip-off as long as you're a good one. |
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