Gorgeous. Just gorgeous. Capcom Japan certainly knows how to treat its fans, as proven by the truckload of extra goodies featured in the Special Edition version of forthcoming Miles Edgeworth adventure, Gyakuten Kenji - or Perfect Prosecutor as it’ll be known in the west.
The package contains a miniature version of the April ‘08 Gyakuten Saiban concert pamphlet, complete with a manga from character designer, Tatsuro Iwatmoto, portraits of Mitsurugi (Edgeworth), Mei (Franziska von Karma) and new rival prosecutor Mikumo, a DS card case, a collection of Kenji promotional videos, and a five-song mini-album containing orchestrated versions of tunes featured in the game.
This can be preordered from Capcom’s e-shop, and it looks like you’ll get a limited-time-only bonus of a Steel Samurai phone strap should you fancy shelling out 9490 yen (£67.26) for this corking collector’s item.
And no, we never get anything this good. And no, it really isn’t fair.
The official site for Wii de Asobu: Pikmin 2 (or New Play Control! Pikmin 2 as it’ll be known in the west) has opened, and is a pleasant reminder of what made the GameCube sequel so great, particularly the delicious visuals - there’s definitely a noticeable improvement in Olimar’s second trinket-hunting adventure.
Like the recent Wiimake of the original Pikmin, the new controls now make use of the Wii’s pointer capabilities, and there are a number of videos which show exactly how that works (clue: the same as New Play Control! Pikmin).
The hulking purples and poisonous, treasure-uncovering whites are detailed, as is the addition of Louie, Olimar’s dopey shipmate. The site’s two-player options remain off-duty for now, but we imagine they’ll play out similarly to the GameCube game. The addition of online co-op would be a most pleasant surprise, but I reckon Nintendo is saving that for Pikmin 3.
Let’s hope the March release of the second game means we’ll be hearing more about the new Wii version sooner rather than later. I’m expecting an E3 debut, though don’t rule out a mention during Iwata’s GDC keynote - particularly if he wants to sate the voracious appetite of Nintendo’s increasingly disillusioned core audience.
One more thing - as an added bonus, here’s a link to a rather excellent review of New Play Control! Pikmin - and there’s absolutely no bias in this recommendation at all.
As if to make up for the fact that the Japanese don’t have a new handheld launch to look forward to, Nintendo has announced the launch of three new DSi colours, which will join the white and black flavours on store shelves in Japan on March 20th.
There’s a lurid pink model, which I think is the least attractive of the three, while the lime green is suitably bright, but still not to my tastes. Much more pleasant is the metallic blue number - very reminiscent of the Enamel Navy DS Lite.
Watch-Impress has more pictures. Go and have a look and be envious of our eastern brothers and sisters. Still, we’ve not too much longer to wait - it’s around six weeks until DSi launches in Europe and the US.
It’s high time we heard a bit more about Sega’s forthcoming controversy-baiter MadWorld, and so its developer Platinum Games has launched its own site dedicated to that and its two other titles in the making - the bizarre and (potentially) brilliant Bayonetta for the HD consoles, and starship RPG Infinite Space.
Two out of three are obviously of interest to Nintendo fans, and that’s why this deserves a mention - plus the fact that Platinum Games created two of the very best games of the last generation in Okami and Viewtiful Joe as well as the fantastic (albeit divisive) God Hand, which MadWorld owes a small debt of gratitude to, by the looks of things.
The site has Flickr picture sets, blog entries, podcasts and video footage of the games in question, and is well worth checking out if you’re old enough. It had some problems with the age-gate when I looked earlier, but they seem to have been resolved now. Definitely worth a look.
It’s another of those please-let-this-get-a-western-release games that Japan teases us with every so often. I’ve talked about Fragile in the past, and its gameplay still remains something of an enigma - this trailer shows brief glimpses of melee combat, but it looks like an action-adventure with the emphasis on puzzle-solving and exploration to me - but by golly gosh, it looks really quite stunning in places. It has slight horror leanings, but the feel here is oddly melancholy, the gorgeous music accompanying this trailer suggests a story that could well be a bit of a tear-jerker.
Fragile is out in Japan on January 22nd. Let’s hope for a good Famitsu review and decent sales, as that would certainly make a western release that bit more likely. Alas, it seems to me that it’ll be one of those games that’s warmly embraced by a small niche audience, with only Japanese gamers and westerners fluent in the language able to really get the most out of it.
Awesome. If ever you’ve wondered what one of Nintendo’s best loved handhelds would look like mid-explosion then the folks at Gamepaused.net have your answer, in the form of this superb t-shirt.
It’s the first in a new line of clothing from the site, and it’s crafted from high-quality 100% cotton, printed in Panton Black and 021 Orange (it says here).
In the words of Gamepaused.net:
‘If you could measure the affect of a console on the future of games the GameBoy would probably be the most influential by a long way - the iconic handheld was the birthplace of many of our favourite games and their characters. We wondered what would happen if you exploded the GameBoy to find out what wonders were inside this magical console. We found out on the Exploded GameBoy T-Shirt.’
Lovely lovely lovely. Colourful boxarts ‘for the win’ as I believe current internet parlance would have it.
Anyway, Konami has released a boatload of info about the forthcoming Adventures of Kai & Zero, which make it a little clearer how the game is going to play. I’ll be posting some more about this tomorrow, but in the meantime, you can have some info about the game’s special Omega Elebits and what they can do.
The first one you’ll meet can be found right at the start of the game’s first world. Naturally, it can be used to burn stuff. Meanwhile, the ice Omega is used to freeze water - allowing protagonist Kai to cross rivers. Magnet Omega moves metal spheres, while the Melody Omega has “mysterious musical abilities”.
With Power Omega, Warp Omega, Water Omega and Speed Omega being pretty self-explanatory, that just leaves Mobius - the most powerful of all the Omegas who is apparently spiralling out of control, and causing all the chaos in the Elebits world in the first place.
Excitement +1. Sounds like a neat little puzzle-solver, which should hopefully garner the success that eluded its Wii predecessor. Oh, and should Konami be reading this - can we have Dewy (of Dewy’s Adventure fame) as an unlockable character, please?
One of the games of 2009 I’m looking forward to the most is Sega’s grindhouse treatment of its famous shooter franchise, House of the Dead: Overkill. Everything so far has pointed towards it being a hugely polished and enjoyable lightgun blastfest, and the publisher has really gone to town with the grindhouse theme, emphasised by this forthcoming PAL special edition, which will be available “through selected retailers as a pre-order bonus”. Excellent.
As well as a special collector’s slipcase, the game is packaged with an exclusive graphic novel, “illustrated by Steve Copter, of dissident punk band Black Mekon” says the press release.
HOTD: Overkill is released across PAL territories this coming February. Can’t wait.
Feast your eyes on that then, WiiWii.tv readers. This quite brilliant cover art belongs to forthcoming 2D beat-em-up Tatsunoko vs. Capcom, which is coming out in December on Wii…in Japan.
Sadly, it seems as if the game is destined to remain in its country of origin - which isn’t an issue to those of us fortunate enough to own Japanese consoles, but for everyone else is a bit of a bummer.
It was revealed the other day that Viewtiful Joe was to feature in the game, which the boxart conclusively proves beyond all reasonable doubt. If Phoenix Wright is in it as one of the unannounced secret characters, I might just wet myself.
Expect detailed impressions the second this slaps onto my doormat just in time for Christmas.
Typical. You wait ages for a new arcade stick for your Wii and then two of the bally things come along at once. Yeps, it’s the turn of peripheral lovelies Exar - creators of the Neo Geo Arcade stick which has pride of place on a shelf in my son’s bedroom and has been taken out of its box precisely twice. Clearly the Wii needs more 2D beat-em-ups.
Anyway, for those into their retro gaming, or who prefer using a genuinely classic - as opposed to Classic - controller for the few games which offer it as a potential control method and don’t require the right stick (still embarrassingly few; if you recall, neither the Neo Geo stick nor the Hori arcade stick worked with Mario Kart Wii and Super Smash Bros. Brawl) then you’ve come to the right place.
(Yes, that was a stupidly long sentence, for which I apologise.)
Pictured above is the special edition Tatsunoko vs. Capcom branded stick, which is entirely lovely, but I’m also rather enamoured with the one displayed below - it’s simple, but it’s gorgeously clean and unfussy, and stylish without being bland. It could potentially replace the Hori stick in my affections, actually. I’m such a controller slut.
The Tatsunoko stick will cost 6229 yen (£38.92) and launches on December 11th, the same day as the Wii beat-em-up hits Japan. Meanwhile, the plain - oh, but that’s so the wrong word - Exar stick will retail for 5229 yen (£32.42) and arrives a little earlier, on November 27th.
Sigh. Christmas is so expensive when you’re a fan of Nintendo and peripherals you’ll rarely use.
 
 
 
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