Couldn't be further from the truth

Operation Darkness is hitting Games On Demand on March 23rd. I'll bet you 2,000 MSP it'll be IP blocked. I really wish getting the G.O.D. treatment meant that retail prices would fall to match the download price. Or at least for import websites to put it on sale. Shooting Love 200X, Guilty Gear 2 Overture, and Operation Darkness are not games one should be paying $70 for.

Resonance of cash

2010 has been pretty good so far. Three months in, and a handful of worthwhile games have dropped already. Now comes the other handful, within a single week, all for America. Resonance Of Fate is the most interesting to me. This has to be the most low profile "hardcore" game I've ever seen, even in japan. Other than upskirt screen caps of the sole female party member, I've never seen or heard anything about this game, good, bad, or indifferent. Therefore, I have no choice but to buy it and make up my own damn mind. Then the game that wasn't going to ever come over, was announced for localization with an ambiguous release date, which just happened to get finalized as the same day as ROF. God damn it, Xseed. Not only is your company name stupid, but do you realize how expensive video games are these days? Between your Fragile Into Dreams (or whatever the fuck the name wound up being) and ROF, I'm shelling out over $100. Not to be out done in the bonehead decision department, SEGA decided this Tuesday would be a great time to "release" Infinite Space, also known as Infinite Line (I knew I wasn't crazy). The word "release" is in quotes because unlike a regular game release backed up with press releases, reviews and advertising, the recent trend seems to be to just ship boxes of the things to amazon.com and hope that they get impulsively thrown into the cart during checkout. I'd be shocked if this one sells over 500 copies. Japan is also playing catchup, with Konami's Darksiders ～審判の時～ across both PS3 and 360, while the J-360 finally, maybe gets that Moe-moe 2-ji Taisen(ryaku) Ultra Deluxe.

Next week I have Red Steel 2 with Motion +, which I actually have a use for now, and Hokuto Musou, which costs like $90 for no fucking good reason. The video game industry is out to get me.

Upgrade path

I broke the bank on a MyTouch 3G and all the bells and whistles one needs to take full advantage of it, and this is the thanks I get? A real arcade game gets ported over, and I can only look at YouTube clips of it. THIS is exactly why cellphone gaming always sucked. Nice to see some things never change? Oh well, back to Climbing Hippy for me.

Think tank

My favorite game related event is taking place out in dreary San Francisco this week, Game Developer's Conference. I appreciate the fact that it can encompass incredibly technical presentations on 3D camera systems used in modern games, or a talk about how audio can be used to elicit an emotional response from the payer, by Akira Yamaoka, complete with a live demonstration. Bonus points for Metroid co-creator Yoshio Sakamoto's talk about story telling, where he name drops Dario Argento's Deep Red, and Luc Beson's Leon. I'm not worried about Metroid Other M's story component anymore.

Ruh-roh: Now I'm worried about the music.

Foxy white

I got this yesterday, but wanted to try to scan some of the images before making a post. My scanner sucks balls, though, so no high-res Yuzuruha assets for you. We all loose :(

In all seriousness, this is much more than a simple art collectible. After playing through the game, and having "examined" this foldout in "detail," it feels more like a design document. Muramasa is a very simple game, comprised of pretty much only the art pieces found on this scroll. I'm very glad I could get my hands on it, and am surprised that it was originally given away as a free gift. I don't mind having paid money for this.

ELMM

A company called PMOA (Pro Mold Office A?) just put out a bunch of figures and models, which they call PLUM's (Petty Lovely Unique Mechanism). One of those is the SA-77 Silpheed from the Mega CD game of the same name. Silpheed is awesome. By extension, PMOA is now awesome too. They also have plans to put out the Silver Hawk from Darius. I hope this means they'll commit to modeling shooting game ships, with the detail and scale they deserve. To date, other than one-off models, the only shooting line has been a series of gachapon toys. This needs to change. Bookmarked.

Three's a crowd

The original Reviera ~The Promised Land~ on Wonderswan was notable primarily for looking damn fine on the anemic hardware. Unfortunately, the game was technically similarly underdeveloped, a sort of RPG-lite. The follow-up, Yggdra Union ~We'll Never Fight Alone~ on GameBoy Advance was a much more interesting affair. The game was still pretty much just a battle engine, and not much else. Thankfully, it was an awesome battle engine. The third in the "series," the DS' Knights In the Nightmare was even less of a game, and sadly not very entertaining in the end, but by far the most aesthetically impressive. Here's to hoping for a second dose of that Yggdra magic on PSP. The PSP ports of past Dept. Heaven games have been a little dodgy, though. Hopefully Blaze Union ~Story To Reach the Future~, being a PSP game from the start, will shine technically in a similar way to its predecessors.