TPS now!

:(

Front Mission is getting turned into a third-person shooter by the assclowns that turned Silent Hill into shit. While on the surface running around wrecked cities, blasting other Wanzers sounds like a Good Idea, the choice of dev, as well as FM's prior history of spin-offs, sets the possible bar for this game frighteningly low. "Not offensively horrid" is the best this project can hope to be. Hence the sad face up top. I hope we at least get Border Of Madness on DS out of this deal. E3 claims it's first victim. Looks like that Zoids game is the closest we'll get to a true next-gen FM.

Nier and fahr

Square Enix will be showing a game called NIER at E3 next month. Nothing about it is very interesting, other then the developer. The press release mentions that Cavia is behind this one. You may remember Cavia as the dev behind such titles as Bulletwitch, and some other crap. I only cared about Bulletwitch. Will keep an eye on it now, maybe SE's money can help polish this into something impressive. (Probably not, if SE wanted to throw money at this, it would be an internal project.)

The God game, part 2

I realize that most of the stuff I talk about here is of dubious quality, at best. To remedy that, here's the only video game you'll need in 2010, and possibly beyond, No More Heroes 2. More weapons, more moves, more characters, more awesomeness. More belts? Ruh-roh...

Grindfest

Omega Force, the goons behind the Dynasty Warriors games we discussed yesterday, are developing a new "Fantasy RPG" for Koei, called Trinity Zill O'll Zero. Erm, what? Have they finally ran out of possible settings and characters for DW games? Do they feel that any further iterations would be too redundant? It is to laugh. Oh whatever, I'll take any PS3 stuff I can get.

Who shot J.R. The Game

Tomunobu Itagaki finally came out of the shadows to announce that he has formed a new studio with some of the other Team Ninja guys that split from Tecmo last year, and that they're working on a new project. No further details were divulged at the time. Glad to see the guy back, you can argue about the quality and substance of his games all you want, but you can't ever say he's not an entertaining personality. In the article he's quoted as saying he prefers the old American soap opera Dynasty, to Koei's Dynasty Warriors. That sentence right there is more fun then the entire DW line. Itagaki - 1, Koei - 0.

Face off

Due to non-existent demand, someone decided it would be a good idea to purchase the Face IP catalog, from whoever holds it at the moment. The only game of theirs I played was Money Idol Exchanger, which was pretty looking, but not very engaging. Still, I guess throwing that stuff up on cellphone game portals and the Virtual Console is better than letting it rot in some warehouse. I can think of a dozen companies from the late 80's to mid 90's whose stuff I'd rather see get picked up over this, though.

Hawt

One year to create a single character seems a little excessive, but it's nice to see SNK making a big deal out of their 2D sprite creation process. From closer "inspection" of the Athena sprite, it appears they're trying to make her the next Chun-Li.

The 10th yard

Despite my best efforts, Gaijin Entertainment/Ubisoft's craptacular X-Blades sold a decent amount in Japan. The "game's" success can be solely attributed to Ubisoft's marketing efforts. One of those efforts was to dub the game into the local language, always a nice touch whenever bringing foreign works into any country. They enlisted the talents of veteran voice actress Rie Kugimiya, whose vocal talents you would have herd in numerous video games, had they not been cut out and replaced by the publisher, as the voice of Ayumi. That essentially is adding value to a product that had none to begin with. I might import this out of curiosity, and spite, just to see if it helped any. The game shipped a month ago, and we're still talking about it, that right there is proof that Ubisoft Japan did something right.

Tough times

You know things are bad when X-Edge is the highest profile game this week. These are the times we live in, so we have no choice but to learn to deal with it. Japan has already survived it, but now they're in store for Claymore and Tactics Layer. Next week is the real deal, where we finally get Knights In the Nightmare, with all sorts of pack-in stuff that Japan never got. I guess I failed in my goal to finish the import before the localization hit. Not that I didn't try, though. The problem with rock-paper-scissors based battle systems is when you're forced to defeat a bunch of rocks with nothing but scissors.

We support payola

Microsoft's check to Enterbrain must have cleared, so Famitsu.com put up a "We Support Xbox 360" page to promote some upcoming titles. The selection is a little sketchy, due in part to the quality of the upcoming games, and also Microsoft's agenda in promoting their own properties. ADV game ports like Time Leap, Memories Off 6, and Tayutama make up the bulk of the titles featured. The sole RPG on the horizon, Magna Carta 2, getting-underaged-girls-drunk sim, Dream Club, and sore thumbs, Gears Of War 2 and Beyonetta make up the rest. You can say a lot of things about the Xbox, but you can't deny it's variety of titles available.

Spider VS Roach

It's like the epic battle between the original Xbox and the Wonderswan from last gen. The 360 sold 3k units vs the PS2's 4k last week.

On the software front, Bleach Heat The Soul 6 is number one, Growlanser PSP is number two, and that Rio Pachi-slot sim for PS2 was number 10. Oy vey.

Future software planning

Bandai Namco revealed a tie-in figurine of one of the new gals from the upcoming Queen's Blade Spiral Chaos PSP game. That's great and all, but it looks like it'll be the only thing from the game we'll get see for quite some time, since the it's scheduled for release in December. What the hell? Did they begin development when they announced this thing in March? Eight additional months is way too long for this game to be in development, after what has to have been at least a year of planning and production. At the point of its unveiling, the technical work should have been completed, and all that should have been left was the creation of scenario/story scenes, and implementation of the battle planning. Assuming it got off the ground at the same time as the anime, which itself took way too damn long to hit the air. Unless, of course, this is going to be some sort of high budget, innovative project, in which case it's wasted on a low-brow license. Bamco should save that for a Tales Of SRPG or some shit.

Artwork classics, vol.1

SNK Arcade Classics Vol. 1 was unfortunately a piece of crap port job. This makes the awesome cover art for the upcoming Japanese release the only redeeming factor of the whole thing. Now that SNK has made it available as wallpaper, one has no more reason buy the actual disc. SNK, saving you money. Now maybe they can get with the 20th century, and offer widescreen versions too?

Good sign

The official DoDonPachi Dai-Ou-Jou Black Lable Extra website was a huge binary blob of Flash(tm) animation. It was actually incorporated into the actual port as part of the title screen/initial menu, where it didn't help the title screen to load any quicker, much like the website itself. It would appear that 5pb has learned from their mistakes, at least when it comes to the official website, which opened on May 1st (fashionably late), for Ketsui Jigoku-tachi Extra. The game was supposed to come out next Thursday, but has been delayed indefinitely. Hopefully they'll use the time to polish the game, and fill the site with content, prior to release.

Late to the party

One of the nice things about being a late adopter: tons of cheap games. Me and Sony might have had out differences in the past, but I've always appreciated and respected their software support for their older systems. The PSX had games being reprinted and re-reprinted years after the PS2 was released, and now the PS2 itself is being treated similarly. When Sony says they have a "ten year plan" to support their platform, you can believe it.

Popped Final Fantasy XII in last Friday, and I've put about 10 hours into it already. I've gotta admit, I'm impressed. Single player MMO is 100% correct. Reminds me of Phantasy Star Universe or Infinite Undiscovery. Oh, and Gambits = awesome.

Steal this game

'Cause it ain't worth the money they're asking. Steal Princess is all we get this week. I like how every time I search for a game, Amazon.com throws up completely unrelated results that it thinks I might have meant. That way I have had Knights In the Nightmare taunting me with its lovely cover artwork every time I type in shit like "Super Robot Wars" into the search field. June 2nd can't come soon enough. Next week isn't much better, but at least it's next gen. Cross Edge was once assumed to be one of those games that will "never see the light of day in America," yet here it is, courtesy of Nippon Ichi Software America. Sign of the apocalypse, or tough economic times? Actually, when suits figure out that you can make a few extra bucks by giving a niche game, (no matter how obscure) a bare-bones translation and selling it in America/Europe, that WILL be the end of days.

Japan isn't much better of, thanks to a pair of budget developer, full priced DS games, Claymore and Tactics Layer. In the past, I would have picked up Claymore on day one, but I'm not so sure now. There's been zero hype/publicity for this game up to now, that usually spells trouble. Pre-release hype doesn't imply greatness by any means, but if the game is shit, it would be apparent very early on. Two more for the "on sale" pile.

There was supposed to be a real game coming out, but it got delayed. After the apparent mishandling of DoDonPachi DOJ BLEX by 5pb, and now the indefinite delay of Ketsui, I'm becoming concerned with their ability to make develop games that involve moving images. Drat.

Magical android

While a load of people already have games out for Apple's iPhone, no one is really falling over themselves to bring games to Google's Android platform. Maybe that's because there's only one phone on a single US carrier that runs the damn thing? That isn't stopping cellphone shovelware provider extraordinaire, G-Mode, from putting a Magical Drop game on the Android Marketplace. Say what you want about Android's market share, or the merits of Magical Drop, but $0.99 is a damn good price point.

Promotional merchandise: tasteful version

SNK will release a pillow with KOFXII character art as a promotional giveaway this May. Don't worry, it's not one of those "hugging" pillows with anime girls in underwear on them. It's an actual pillow, that one would use to lean against while playing some video games. Classy. Don't worry, SNK isn't about to give up exploitative merchandise any time soon. So you can also look forward to Mai Shiranui Wearing-Less-Clothes-Than-Usual-Version in June. For ¥16,800 it may actually look like those pics when you take it out of the box.

You ghosting us, motherfucker

At least it will help mask the low color depth of the Neo Geo MVS port. The original Strikers games were pixel perfection, reducing the original 24-bit color palette to fit into the Neo Geo's 16-bits made the original 1945 Plus a visual disappointment. The PSP iteration will add 4:3 stretched to 16:9, on top of the original's 3:4 mangled to fit into 4:3. Coat everything in slow refresh rate of the PSP's LCD and you get today's portable retro gaming. Arc System Works will publish the game on August 6th in Japan, for ¥3,990.

Well, I WAS looking forward to it

Then they had to go and shit up Arc Rise Fantasia by dropping Luminous Arc characters in there. The witches Vanessa and Lucha, and the ninja Saki will serve as a reminder of the drudgery found in Image Epoch previous offerings, in what should have been a refresh to clear the air of their stink. Looks like they'll be available in the hopefully optional Colosseum/arena. I always skip those anyway, so this shouldn't bother me. I would have preferred they not put out a press release with screenshots to advertise this though. Keep it a secret for "fans" to discover on their own.

Shin Gear Aces

A handful of stuff comes out this week, but none of it is worth getting excited over. I guess the biggest news is a new PS2 game, with production values. The US gets last year's Devil Summoner: Raido Kizunoha VS King Abaddon by way of Atlus. They really seem intent on immitating Working Designs' style of giving quality products a quality treatment. The pre-order bunus is a stuffed Jack Frost doll dressed up like the game's protagonist, the same bonus Japan got. I don't realy care for the game, but I appreciate the dedication. In second place is Raiden Fighters Aces, which has been bouncing from near-future date to further-and-further-away date for a few months now. It actually looks like it got pushed UP for a change, and will finally "ship" this week. That probably still means you're not gonna see a copy of it until next week anyway. Oh US distribution, you never fail to fail. Then Wii owners get a PS2 port of the latest Guilty Gear revision, Guilty Gear XX Accent Core Plus. I frankly can't wait for BlazBlue to finally get here, since it'll at least mean we get to see a "new," "original" work get expanded into a series over the next 10 years. Let GGXX end already. That said, this hopefully final, outting sounds like it's actually worth it, with an expansive "story" mode that tries to explain most of the GG nonsense the series is built upon, as well as a few new play modes, like a 3-on-3 KOF-style battle. That's it for America. Japan is still phoning it in this week, with a Growlanser PSP port being the most interesting. Only beacuse of Satoshi Urushihara's art though, which iteslf doesn't seem as interesting as his Langrisser work. Mild interest is the theme of the week.

Arcade dementia

After GameSpite, I decided to polish off another video game "book" which I had sitting on my shelf half finished, Arcade Mania, by Brian Ashcraft. More of a "mook," than a straight-up black-letters-on-white-paper joint, it outlines and highlights the unique aspects of arcade gaming in Japan. It's also a fraction of the length of any "real" book, clocking in at under 200 pages, most of which are largely made up of full-color photos, magazine style. The actual words within are also very brief, and punctuated with internet lingo and other slang. What else can you expect from a work by Kotaku and Wired contributors, though? It is very easy on the eyes, for lack of a better term, with plenty of blurbs and sidebars to distract from the (anemic) wall of text that makes up the main body of the work. It is entertaining to read and even just to look at, but while it does educate slightly, it really does just barely scratch the surface. One can very easily write volumes about the Japanese games industry, so to get such a tiny sample is a little frustrating, especially for someone like me, who holds great respect for this particular corner of video gaming. Thanks to the author's celebrity, he's able to get a lot of luminaries and insiders to talk about what it it's like (or was like) in the trenches, so to speak. From Street Fighter II World Champion, Daigo "The Beast" Umehara, to Cave President Tsuneki Ikeda, to the legendary Yu Suzuki, Ashcraft can get to talk to the people that most game fans would kill to get a chance to ask some questions. It's a shame to see such golden opportunities wasted by only printing one or two sentences worth of quotes from most of these guys. Hell, you can base a whole book about just the conversations you can have with Goichi Suda about video games, I'm sure. I hope the author can release, what I'm sure is quite a trove of material collected over during the research phase, even in an unsorted and unedited state, just for academic purposes at least. Just like the mundane letters home from American Civil War soldiers, this material can hold great meaning for those people who care. The book's content is broken up by category, the same way an actual Japanese game center is. A chapter about crane games, a chapter about photo booths, a chapter about fighting games, etc. I liked the parts that taught me something, the crane game, mahjong/pachinko, and photo booth chapters, as well as the positive reinforcement of reading through the fighting and shooting sections. Thanks to my own extensive exposure to those later two genres, however, it is possible to spot inaccuracies from the point of view of an obsessive fan, which unfortunately does taint the rest of the books' content to some degree. Not too surprising seeing as the book features a foreword written by Kevin "Stinger" Williams, the rumor monger and bullshit artist behind the early internet for-profit rag The Stinger Report. (Hey guy, I guess now that Street Fighter IV is finally out, you were right, those 10 years ago. Sorry for doubting you.) In the end, Arcade Mania performs much the same function as the game type it covers. It's easy to start, spend a few minutes with, put it down, and come back to it at a later time, and it never requires any more investment from the player, other than that. (The price is an issue, find one that's set to $12 or less. Not really worth the $19.95 IMHO)

Balls

According to Media Create's sales figures for the period of 4/27-5/3, my arch nemesis, X-Blades sold enough to place 19th and 21st on the Top 50 list. True to form, the PS3 version outsold the 360 as well. Too bad that M-Create doesn't provide actual numbers for the games out of the Top 10. The tenth place game sold ~16,500, so it was much less then that. That doesn't help me too much. I need it to be less then 1k total, or we all loose.

Hard numbers: 11,000 for the PS3, 8,900 for the 360. Almost 20,000 total. Sigh, X-Blades 2 confirmed then. Maybe they can put it on the Wii next time, with "waggle" controls to make it more "immersive."

Aw, fuck

And here we go. Bored American activists are taking it upon themselves to morally police the rest of the world. Good luck with that.

This doesn't quite make up for it

SNK also announced today that The King Of Fighters 2002 Unlimited Match will hit arcades later this year after all. (We were told not to hold our breaths for this earlier in the year.) The interesting bit is that it will run on SI Electronics' System Y2 board, which was unveiled at the AOU show in February. Neat.

ROYDS is not a good product name

Exar isn't a very good company name, while we're at it. Questionable grasp of English never stopped the Japanese corporations before, so it sure isn't going to stop Exar from releasing some questionable KOFXII tie-in merchandise in the form of official joysticks. The PS3 gets a reproduction of the Neo Geo Stick 2 (edit: featuring a USB interface, no adapter needed), on the same day as the game hits stores, for ¥5,229, or the officially licensed, native USB interfacing stick, identical to the Wii Exarstick licensed by Capcom for Tatsunoko VS Capcom, for ¥6,279. All the while the 360 gets Jack, and Shit on July 16. All I'm saying is that Hori better be busy at work placing KOF 15th Anniversary stickers on some fucking RAP EX2 SE's.

We got played

There sure will be new characters in the home port of The King Of Fighters XII. They ain't gonna be K' or Mai Shiranui though. The new characters revealed today are Elizabeth Brantorche (dur), and Mature (erm, ok), with an eye patch (erm, what?) and pants (what the fuck?). I, for one, am not amused. There better be at least three more characters included on the disc before July, and they better be K', Mai, and Vice, now that you've thrown Iori's KOF 96 team mate in there. Otherwise we need Eiji, to make up for all those times he's been screwed over out of appearances in canon KOF games. Or Billy Kane, so Eiji can at least make a cameo during his intro when fighting Iori.

The art of spite

To my surprise, I actually read through the entirety of GameSpite Year One, Vol. 1. It turned out to be a little bit more then just a handful of assorted reviews in the end. The most important thing to note of, after reading this book, is that the faint sparks of brilliance of what gaming print should be are there. The best pieces, by far, contained herein are The Cryptosafari Series, a collection of silly, pseudo-scientific essays about some assorted video game critters; and the Laputa Effect Part 1, an illustration of the borrowing from Hayao Miazaki's Laputa: Castle In the Sky anime by assorted video games over time. While entertaining, and educational, the pieces are vary short, and only take up a tiny fraction of the books 300+ pages. I'd love to see these articles expanded upon in the future. (As well as a conclusion to the Laputa Effect; Part 2 is not contained in this book.) The book also concludes with some bonus material, not found on the site; the sixth issue of the ToastyFrog Zine, which was editor/author's J. Parish's original gig. It's presented here in its original form, as it was written in circa 2003, and therefore is full of dated references, and frankly rambles on for no good reason. An analog blog of sorts (hey!). It reads like a Friars Club Roast of a slew of role-playing games and series. This shouldn't be surprising coming from a publication called GameSpite, after all. It does come with a foreword warning of as much, and is entertaining to read, whether you agree or not with the opinions contained within. That is a good description of the book in a nutshell actually, and should be the goal of any future print endeavors in the realm of game-fan-dom. Technically, it does have a few flaws, which are perfectly understandable considering the publisher simply opened GameSpite.net in a web browser and hit Ctrl+P.

This first volume of the GameSpite archive contains the articles sorted alphabetically from A through L. The letter F is contained within that set of letters, so reader beware: there is roughly 100 pages worth of Final Fantasy in here. There isn't anything wrong with lengthy articles discussing any and all of the FF games by themselves, and at-length discussion of older games is what gaming print should largely consist of in the first place. The haphazard nature of the selection is my gripe. Multiple articles about FFI and FFIV, discussing the original versions as well as some assorted ports, but a complete lack of FFII or X? Hell, there are even articles devoted to FF Mystic Quest, and Christal Chronicles in there. This is the sort of lopsided-ness that an editor should see to, before going to print. It doesn't help GSV1 that this discrepancy is probably due TO the editors personal prejudice, but this wasn't billed as The Gaming Bible Vol. 1, so I'll let it slide (this time). One thing that I personally found informative is the FFXII write-up. I never played it, so I appreciated the explanation from someone who felt similarly about the series as I do (FFVII was shit back in 1997 too. Surprise, kids). I'm definitely going to check it out after reading through the article, and the assorted references to it, in other, unrelated articles. There are plenty of those in here by the way. References to Final Fantasy games litter the majority of the content, and the ToastyFrog Zine section is completely dedicated to RPG's itself. It's sort of unavoidable when you get a bunch of like-minded folks who grew up playing Dragon Warrior on their NES'es in the 90's, but it does get a bit repetitive and monotonous at times. (Just like the genre. *rimshot*)

I would have liked to have a little bit more variety in the game selection. I can list the games I never heard of covered in this book on one hand, and that's only because I wasn't residing in a country of their release at the time, a technicality. I'd prefer a more cultural detective work from my video game books. Old Mac puzzle games are a good start. Dissenting opinions would also be welcome. Outside of Parish's opinion of Xenogears , or the general antipathy of the Breath Of Fire II article, there isn't a whole lot for me to disagree with in here. Most articles simply mirror my own opinions of the games discussed, good-not-great filler, over-rated trash, under-appreciated brilliance, etc. Preaching to the choir, while nice, doesn't foster much thoughtful discussion, however.

I give GameSpite Year One, Vol. 1, 8 out of 16-bits.

Not so flattering

Another cellphone game, another blatant rip-off. Another iPhone shooter. I wonder if these guys are aware that the original creators are not amused by this sort of thing. This does look like a better 1942 sequel then Joint Strike, though.

Fake band merch

Remember that real show by the "fake" band Phantasm? If you missed it you can pick up the CD/DVD set. That's not a very flattering photo of the lead singer they got on that cover, and the price is too steep, I'll pass. Perfect sale fodder, though.

O RLY?

What an interesting Deal Of the Week Play-Asia has. The bad news is that $19.90 is still too much money for Tales Of Hearts. For $9.90 I might care. For laughs, here's a link to the Anime version. I save $62.90 by not giving a damn, which I can put to use by getting a good fighting game to wash the awful taste of Arcana Heart 2 out of my mouth.

Fighting Spite

OK, here's the story. I decided to get the ASCII Pad FT2, since I don't have $150 to spend on the Saturn style PS2 pad. The ASCII pad is pretty rare to get a hold of on the 'net as well, and all the usual suspects for this sort of stuff have been picked clean long ago. It came down to two possible choices, eBay and a web shop called Toys n'Joys. Now, if the name wasn't bad enough, the place has a bad reputation with internet nerds for misrepresenting their merchandise, and being all around unscrupulous. Unscrupulousness lies in the eye of the beholder-nerd-collector, however, and so do unrealistic expectations, so I'm not ready to accept their opinions as the gospel truth any time soon. I've personally bought a hard to find item from them before, which arrived promptly, and was exactly what I wanted, so I had a positive impression of them. Their asking price was less then eBay's too, so I went for it.

After placing the order though, I was informed that the item was magically "backoredered," even though it clearly says "in stock" and the page and during checkout. No problem, that's a standard tactic with these import guys, easy to acquire stuff that is not vary high in demand, would be sold on the site, then picked up from some place in Japan by a local contact, and shipped out when the need arose. Been there, done that. The only question was, could they find the item they advertised as being in the possession of? My initial guess was, frankly, "no." Well, I was pleasantly surprised when the box arrived yesterday, a month later, ASCII Pad FT2 contained therein. With the box and everything too: Japanese used. So, Toys n'Joys is 2/2 so far with me. The only thing out of sorts seems to be a discrepancy in the "version" of the pad. The site lists the "SNK version" (these tie-in controllers were manufactured for the PS2 port of Capcom VS SNK 2), while the box and pad itself are clearly labeled "original." After a little bit of googling, however, I'm not so sure that an "SNK version" ever existed, and if it did, it was identical to the "original" version. The Capcom one you can't miss, it's bright red (huh?), while the original pad, and the alleged SNK one are both black. All three versions have gray buttons. That makes it red/gray, black/gray, and black/gray, for the Capcom, SNK, and Original respectively. Meaning the only distinguishing marks between the SNK and Original would be the CVS2 logo on the box (which I was not able to find using Google image search). That game sucks anyway, so I'm not going to miss it any. (Investigation result: I found a picture of the SNK Version box, and it clearly shows the Original black/gray pad on the front, making them the same thing. Therefore, I did receive the item I "paid for." Personally, I prefer the vanilla version to any tie-in merchandise, so I'm happier with the controller I got. I can see this being an issue for a collector though, so I guess individual mileage may vary when using TnJ.)

The pad feels quite nice to hold, and all around sturdier then the Dreamcast version. The buttons have more resistance and spring back with more force, and the d-pad is much tighter in response and feels more sturdy physically. The DC pad would wobble freely before even making a contact with the PCB underneath, providing a very loose control method, not ideal for twitch fighters. The pad is also a lot more ergonomically comfortable, thanks to the omission of the rumble motor "tumor" on the underside, and attaching the cord to the top of the pad, instead of the bottom, since there is no more need for a VMU slot. Much nicer to hold then the Dreamcast pad. The only downside is the cheap plastic ASCII used for the shell. It does hold together while in use though, so it accomplishes it's assigned task perfectly. Good controller all around. It is very much the same controller as the DC pad, so if you consistently missed moves on that one, you'll do so using this pad as well.

As I mentioned before, I picked up Arcana Heart 2 as a test for this controller, so I had to pull that wreck out and give it a spin one more time. Fuck me, that game sucks. After a few hours I was ready to smash my brand new controller to bits. Note to fighting game designers, a player can't effectively counter an attack when he can't see it coming because the frames of animation were dropped by the rendering engine. This makes your game unplayable. Fix it or don't port. Thank you.

I also got my copy of GameSpite Vol. 1. I was a little disappointed to find that the book contained just by-the-numbers reviews of assorted games. In this day and age, if I wanted to read a review of Assassin's Creed, followed by Battletoads I can go to Gamespot, not to mention the thousands of blogs out there. The writing in the book definitely beats out those places, but it ain't no Shakespeare either. What we have here then is simply a website's content printed in a book. An interesting concept, but not that entertaining in the end. If I read this like I do any other website, and skip over the crap I don't want to read about, I probably would only read the Breath Of Fire articles (a few dozen pages total out of hundreds). Not exactly getting my money's worth. With a clear editorial vision, as well as a more interesting topic, this "book" business can really take off. I remain optimistic for the first issue on the GS magazine.

Dreary

Klonoa Wii-make this week, Devil Summoner 2 next week, Japan is still on vacation. Back to playing Breath Of Fire II on my MacBook.

They really are giving them away

Another Japanese release, another one of those pre-order bonuses. I didn't even pre-order this one. I guess my fears have been alleviated, although, to be honest I had completely forgotten about this, and had to re-read my old posts to remind myself. I don't think I'll even use the damn thing in the end. I don't play shooting games for the story, and I'll be skipping the cut scenes the second time around, so this is actually a useless feature in the long run. Nice to have around in case I ever need to eBay the game off in a few months. (Double the price, six months later, what the hell is wrong with you people?)

On a related note, Deathsmiles sold a ton of copies during its release week. Somewhere in the neighborhood of 20,000, landing it at number six on the weekly sales charts. This is both good and bad for Cave fans, and shooting game fans in general. On the one hand a niche developer made nice money on a niche console. Profitability confirmed. On the other, we can pretty much kiss any hopes of a return to gritty military/space based shooters goodbye. Anime lolitas equal sales. Mushihime-sama Futari will only reinforce this theory. Only stellar sales of Ketsui can alter it, but given that Ketsui is from 5pb, which fans regard less than favorably, that won't happen.

Impress Watch: Played a little bit of this last night. Holy crap! This game rocks. Leave it to Cave to create the perfect horizontal shooter. First and foremost, no environmental hazards. You can touch all the floors and walls you want without taking damage. Hell yes, thank you Cave. Second, always visible hitbox. So I can actually dodge the bullet sprays effectively. Variable difficulty levels means that the game remains challenging despite these "training wheels." Maybe something good actually came out of making the same game over and over for the past 13 years.

(You may have noticed a slow down in updates over the past week. It's Golden Week in Japan, so the entire country basically shuts down. It's back to business Monday morning, so hopefully I'll have something to write about.)