The X Button

Pirate License

The new year calls for resolutions, and I'm going to list some here. It may seem silly to focus efforts of self-improvement around something like video games, but I've always felt that every little bit helps. So here's what I hope to do in 2013.

STOP COMPLAINING SO MUCH ABOUT MEGA MAN LEGENDS 3
Yes, it's been about 18 months since CAPCOM killed Mega Man Legends 3, and I should probably get over it. The whole affair deserves plenty of criticism, of course, and the game's demise is made all the harsher by the transparent manner in which CAPCOM chronicled the development of this long-awaited sequel. Yet it's not coming back no matter how much we complain, and perhaps it's time to move on and hope that CAPCOM has better things in store for Mega Man. They probably don't, but dwelling on the past won't help.

ORIGINAL IDEAS MORE OFTEN
We critics do like to commend imaginative games and spur the public to buy them, but sometimes we forget to spend our own money on them. And sometimes we don't notice them and all. Then we go back to griping about how nobody appreciated the unique and wonderful games that we didn't actually buy. I've done this, and I'd rather not mention which games I ignored. Well, no more of that.

IMPROVE THIS HERE COLUMN
I tried a few new things here in 2012. Some of them (like the artbook section) will stick around, and others (like the screenshot-of-the-week thing) probably won't. As I look for ways to improve this weekly disgorging of my game nerdery, I'd like to hear from you, the reader. What do you like about the X Button? What do you want from it in the year to come?

NEWS

TRAILS IN THE FLASH IS ANOTHER LEGEND OF HEROES GAME THAT PROBABLY WON'T COME HERE
The announcement of Trails in the Flash is both good news and bad news for fans of Falcom's The Legend of Heroes series. A lot of them enjoyed Trails in the Sky, and Trails in the Flash continues the series-within-a-series. On the other hand, the odds of seeing it in English are slim at best. We still haven't seen translations of the second and third Trails in the Sky games, and there's no word on the follow-ups Trails of Zero and Trails of Blue. So XSEED Games and other localization outfits probably aren't lining up for Trails in the Flash.

Opening prior to the events of other Trails games, Flash is set in the Erebonian Empire, source of an invasion in the broader Trails storyline. Falcom claims it's the lengthiest Legend of Heroes yet in of cast size and overall text (which would be both impressive and discouraging to potential translators). The game's also heavier on Active Voice Events and other opportunities for characters to strengthen relationships.

Trails in the Flash speeds up the battle system used in previous games, as players can plot out their combat actions while characters mill around the field. Other moves involve two characters attacking in unison, which happens a lot in modern RPGs. Trails in the Flash is also playable across platforms; while it's hitting both the PlayStation 3 and the Vita in Japan this year, save files are compatible between the two versions.

PLAYSTATION 2 ENDS PRODUCTION
This holiday season brought a milestone in Japan's game market. On December 28, Sony announced that it would stop manufacturing the PlayStation 2, ending a 12-year production run. There's still an awful lot of stock sitting around, of course, but that'll be the last retail supply of the PS2 in Japan.

The PlayStation 2 is still being made for other markets, but this is as good a time as any to look back on the system. It's led a remarkable life, going from an over-hyped DVD player at launch to the strongest console of the past decade. And what was the final game anyone actually bought for the PS2? Sakura Wars: So Long, My Love? Mercenaries 2? The latest FIFA?

COOL NEW Macross Frontier, and it finds S.M.S. pilots Leon and Aisha downed on a mysterious world called Ouroboros. Upon awakening a girl named Mina in some ancient ruins, the pair find themselves at the heart of a Macross crossover, as major characters from previous series are time-warped to the planet.

The game picks out the key characters and dub it a “flight action RPG.”

As for new mecha, Macross 30 features the YF-Chronos (above), a Valkyrie fighter designed by longtime Macross designer and mad overlord Shōji Kawamori. First-run copies of the game include a YF-29 with a “Marking” design, and a special edition has similar paint jobs for the VF-1S and VF-25F. The Marking pattern is apparently the Macross version of those race cars decorated with anime-girl artwork.

Tacky designs and all, Macross 30 is due out at the end of February. That's in Japan, of course. Several obstacles still keep new Macross outings from North America (the shadow of Robotech largest among them), and none of them will bend for a 30th-anniversary video game.

IMPORT ROUNDUP: DECEMBER

FANTASY LIFE Developer: Brownie Brown Publisher: Level-5 Platform: Nobuo Uematsu music. Fantasy Life mixes the familiar pursuits of a video game with more intriguingly mundane ideas. Taking on the role of a warrior leads to relatively simple quests and battles with monsters, while adopting a farming life results in a Harvest Moon experience. Yet Fantasy Life isn't about the complex mechanics so much as it is the little details: customizing an avatar, raising pets, and building up “Happiness Points” while gaining rank and money. The game also allows four-player quests, bringing to mind Dragon Quest IX more than anything. Despite all of the comparisons, however, Fantasy Life has its own little style, and open-world experiments in games rarely come cuter. Import Barrier: There's a good deal of Japanese text to get through, and then there's that region-lock that the 3DS has going. Chances of a Domestic Release: Despite Level-5 promoting the game with English press releases, there's no sign of a North American version of Fantasy Life.

The Age of Dinosaurs. Import Barrier: Relatively high, considering all the text-intensive commands and customization. Oh yeah, and the 3DS region lock. Chances of a Domestic Release: Slim. None of the previous Inazuma Eleven games was released here (though the first made it to Europe), and Chrono Stone probably won't go against that trend.

Eiichiro Oda called Romance Dawn. This would've been an interesting concept and a first among anime-derived games, but such was not to be. Romance Dawn is just another One Piece game. Well, let's be fair. Most One Piece games are action-adventure titles, while Romance Dawn frames the manga's earliest story arcs as an RPG. It's also voluminous in its scope, apparently using the lengthy genre-favored format to include every One Piece plotline from the East Blue Saga to the Paramount War. That's about sixty volumes of manga and several hundred anime episodes. The game opens with Monkey D. Luffy's first steps as a pirate, and his party grows to include Nami, Usopp, Franky, Zoro, Sanji, Nico Robin, Brook, and the various forms of Tony Tony Chopper. Their story is accompanied by half an hour of new animation, and much of it involves characters crying, from a young Luffy to a slightly older Nami. Romance Dawn follows modern conceits in turning One Piece into an RPG. Enemies are visible outside of combat, negating any random encounters. The game's battles are turn-based and menu-driven, with an understandably heavy emphasis on special attacks that recreate characters' signature moves. So it follows that the game's character models all look fairly sharp. Romance Dawn is a basic attraction as far as RPGs go, but it may well be one of the longest One Piece games on record. Import Barrier: There's no region lock on PSP games, and I'm confident in saying that anyone who brings a copy West already knows the One Piece story by heart. Chances of a Domestic Release: Minimal. The game's done well in Japan, but there's little interest in late-stage PSP/Vita games based on anime. We might well see the One Piece: Pirate Warriors 2 over here, but not Romance Dawn.

NEXT WEEK'S RELEASES

ANARCHY REIGNS Developer:Fei swings a trident, and her younger sister Ai packs electric nunchucks. Bayonetta's witch-gunner heroine also appears, though she's initially available only with GameStop reservations.