This Week in Games

Dolphin Tales, Gacha Whales, and FM Synth Beats To Pilot Jets To

Welcome back, folks! As usual, Free Comic Book Day crept up on me last week—I didn't even it was this past weekend in time to mention it in last week's column. I hope folks were able to pick up some free comics? I wanted that one Mega Man comic, but my local shop didn't carry it. Oh well. I had a nice day otherwise. It turns out, mochi doughnuts with ube icing are nice.

I've given Sega plenty of guff in the past for ignoring a lot of their older franchises. While Sonic the Hedgehog and Like A Dragon get the keys to the kingdom, older Sega IP like Ristar, Comix Zone and Afterburner are left in the dust. Well, I guess it's time for me to put my money where my mouth is—stars have aligned for a much-forgotten Sega hero to get their due. Grab a wetsuit, and put another one on the board—Ecco the Dolphin is coming back!

In an interview with Xbox Wire, Ecco the Dolphin creator Ed Annunziata announced remasters for the first two Ecco the Dolphin titles (the eponymous original and its sequel, subtitled Tides of Time). He also announced that a brand-new title was also in production, directing readers towards the official Ecco the Dolphin website, which currently features a countdown that's set to end sometime next year.

Ecco the Dolphin is a curious title from Sega's catalogue. While Sega's brand in the '90s was all about being brash, in-your-face and Blast Processing, Ecco was a much more off-beat experience: a series of minimalist platformers about the eponymous dolphin (who bears a star-like pattern on their head that resembles the Delphinus constellation) and their many adventures through space and time as they defend the oceans from a predatory alien species called the Vortex. While most Sega games used the Genesis' YM2612 sound chip for some extremely chunky-sounding techno or heavy metal, Ecco the Dolphin went for a much more moody Pink Floyd-inspired soundtrack. It's an audio experience like few other games.

Minimalist as it was, Ecco wasn't much like other games of the era. The games were told entirely from the dolphin-brained perspective of Ecco and his pod; they were sentient and intelligent, but viewed the world through their viewpoint. Echolocation (the real-life means by which dolphins navigate) was referred to by Ecco and company as "singing," and poetically described as "sight beyond your eyes." Humans, if they ever appeared, were a very minimal matter. For another, the games reached way out there; Ecco's journeys through the ocean would lead him to communicate with centuries-old whales, travel back in time millions of years to explore the ruins of Atlantis, and communicate with bizarre abstract life-forms.

Ecco was still just a dolphin; you attack things by dashing into them with your dolphin beak or "singing" at them with your echolocation. You could improve your echolocation to make it more of a magical attack, but Ecco was nevertheless limited by being a mammal: he had to breathe air regularly to stay alive, making certain stages an absolute challenge: you not only had to keep Ecco alive from all manner of undersea threats (sharks, urchins, giant seahorses, the Vortex) but also make sure Ecco didn't drown.

Besides the two mainline titles on Sega Genesis, Ecco also starred in three other games: Ecco Jr. (an edutainment game aimed at younger children from the Sega Club line), Ecco Jr. and the Great Ocean Treasure Hunt (another edutainment title, this one on the Sega Pico), and Ecco the Dolphin: Defender of the Future (a reboot of the series released on Sega Dreamcast). Sadly, that's been it for Ecco. Still, new remasters of the original Sega Genesis games, plus a brand new title? If that's not a tiny miracle, I don't know what is. Hopefully, the difficulty is toned down a wee bit—but most importantly, I hope the soundtrack is fittingly killer...

It had to happen; with Honkai Star Rail and Fate Grand Order being some of the biggest mobile games at the moment, it only makes sense for these games to collaborate. At last week's Honkai: Star Rail concert in Shanghai, miHoYo revealed new details about the collab, which had originally been announced last summer.

The collaboration is set to debut this July 11th, players will be able to roll for Saber—that is to say, the original Saber-face, Altria Pendragon—and Archer—that is to say, the original Archer from Fate/stay night. The characters received some updated duds for the collab that nevertheless maintain their general looks. And they managed to avoid whitewashing Archer!

While players will have to roll the gacha for Saber, they will be able to earn Archer for free by logging in. The collaboration will also last for the entire version 3.6, so players will have ample opportunity to roll for Saber. Details on the story for the collab are currently sparse, but more will surely follow.

It behooves me to say a few words about Honkai: Star Rail, but I don't have much. Sure, I love Kafka's design, but miHoYo's brand of mobile gaming isn't for me; the gacha rates are abysmal, there are way too many characters who feel more like they exist to satisfy doujinshi tags than anything else, and miHoYo pumps these games out with almost reckless abandon. : Honkai Impact Third and Genshin Impact are still around, and miHoYo also announced another new game at its concert last week, which is assumed to be titled Honkai: Nexus Anima.

And make no mistake, the miHoYo stable is fine, but they feel badly designed as mobile games; given how much the games revolve around you having the latest gacha darlings (an expensive proposition), things get grindy fast. Add to that how the games pad themselves out to feel like "proper" console game experiences and the result is, in my opinion, a game that is too full of busywork to be a decent mobile game but too insubstantial and grindy to compete with a mainline console game. I do think Honkai: Star Rail is the best of the bunch, featuring some ideas that would make it a rather memorable cult hit on the PS2—but all that goes flying out the window, what with having to roll the gacha for characters. Provided, I know people really love the miHoYo school of character design (I was singing praises for poor treatment of their vocal talent during the ongoing SAG-AFTRA strike.

I can't be grandstanding considering I'm still playing Nikke and Path to Nowhere, but I just don't vibe with miHoYo games. Still, fans of the games have plenty to look forward to this July 11th.

It's a bit disappointing that Yuzo Koshiro's name isn't more widespread among game fans. While the foundation of his work is mostly found in the 16-bit era (see: ActRaiser, the Streets of Rage games), Koshiro has nevertheless worked or collaborated on plenty of recent games like Etrian Odyssey and Metaphor: ReFantazio. His best work is on the FM Synthesizer, but his haunting melodies and heart-jolting beats have been some of the best parts of all kinds of games. His game studio, Ancient, might be best known for the Gotta Protectors! games, but he's got a new game coming out soon that'll blast your speakers out—on the Sega Genesis!

Earthion is done up in the style of old 16-bit shooters like the Thunder Force games (you might recognize the Fire LEO-04 "Rynex" from Thunder Force IV, a.k.a. Lightening Force: Quest for the Darkstar, in this column's banner) or the Darius games: hectic, pulse-pounding visual spectacles as you shot your way through waves of enemies and articulated screen-filling bosses, upgrading your weapons to bigger and bigger arsenals as the wildest rock music blared in your ears. This is specifically a horizontal shooter—faster-paced than R-Type, a bit less strategic than Gradius, if you need a reference. You play Azusa Takanashi, pilot of the YK-IIA (get it?) as you protect the remnants of humanity from alien invaders. You've got a variety of load-outs you can swap to at a moment's notice, each one with available upgrades unlocked by pick-ups gathered from dispatched enemies. Plus, you'll get ample opportunity to be wowed by attacks coming in from behind the foreground and background of the screen.

As part of Limited Run Games' cute promotion for the game, Earthion will get a Sega Genesis release—with a physical cartridge and everything. There's a new Sega Genesis game releasing in 2025. It's a thing I wish we saw more often, and not just from Limited Run Games: new games being developed for old hardware. I mean, the Steam. No word yet on a release date, but they'll keep us posted.

While plenty of smaller teams have kept up with releasing 2D shooters, the genre has largely died out. It's easy to see the appeal of these games: in arcades, the brief bursts of play were addicting, but the cool levels and the allure of getting good enough to beat the game on a single credit encouraged you to keep at it. There's a strategy to shooters, like methods for maximizing your score or ideal weapon loadouts for certain bosses. But I can understand why the genre lay fallow for a bit: graphical improvements meant that waves of enemies and curtains of colorful gunfire that tempted to slow down the rendering just weren't impressive anymore, and audiences demanded more sophisticated and demanding experiences—which you couldn't always do with shooters.

There's still a market for shooters, as can be seen with the fanbases for games like Deathsmiles or Mushihimesama, but the genre appears to mostly be carried by indie efforts these days—like with Blue Revolver (which I recommend). All the same, kudos to Koshiro and his team for busting their knuckles on Earthion; I'm sure the soundtrack will be absolutely killer! Also, consider following Yuzo Koshiro on their BlueSky , not just for Earthion updates but for some fascinating ruminations on older games.

in 2023 when Vanillaware's 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim finally broke 1 million units sold? It was likely helped by the Switch release the previous year (13 Sentinels originally released on the PS4 in 2019), but it was nevertheless a major win for Vanillaware. For a studio its size, a game selling a million units is a major accomplishment--, once upon a time a game needed sales of "only" Sony's "Greatest Hits" line of reprints on the PlayStation. It was a sign of games having a long tail, of success not being an overnight ordeal for games—and the need to allow games time to reach their audience.

Anyway, Killer Is Dead has that story beat with it having reached 1 million copies sold as of this week, after twelve years of being on the market.

Killer Is Dead comes from the mind of Quentin Tarantino. It never quite became as huge a cult hit as No More Heroes, sadly. Also, because this also stunned me: Killer Is Dead originally released in 2013... on the PS3 and Xbox 360. It's since been ported to Steam.

What can we take from this latter-day success story? First of all, a game's success really can't and shouldn't be determined in its original launch; twelve years is a heck of a long time to reach the 1 million mark, but Killer Is Dead crossed that line. It's also a sign that a game's age doesn't have a bearing on its marketability; if you make an older game available, folks will play it. You have to be willing to port your games for them to keep making money.

Provided, with how expensive your average AAA game is to produce (and the massive amount of investor money likely taken to subsidize its development), it's not like inflated development costs are a completely arbitrary matter. There's something to be said about a game that reviews rather poorly upon its original release, having extended sales years after the fact. Games don't stop existing after the year they're released, and we shouldn't behave as such. Games exist in conversation with each other, and can influence one another even years apart.

Congratulations to Grasshopper Manufacture, this is a heck of a notch on your belt. Here's hoping for more great news from those guys.

Yakuza 0: Director's Cut had some dub produced for the Switch port! Aside from confirmations for the English cast, we also have confirmation that "Bubble" is being brought back as the intro to Yakuza 0.

Trails in the Sky 1st Chapter has a release date! Look forward to it on Steam, Switch, and PlayStation 5 this September 19th—worldwide!

That'll do it for this week. Seems like an easy-going Spring so far; I'm hoping folks are taking time to enjoy the nice weather and smell the flowers. The nice weather is a waste if you don't enjoy it! Be good to each other, I'll see you in seven.

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This Week In Games! is written from idyllic Portland by Jean-Karlo Lemus. When not collaborating with Anime News Network, Jean-Karlo can be found playing Japanese RPGs, eating popcorn, watching v-tubers, and tokusatsu. You can keep up with him at @ventcard.bsky.social.

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