If you’re a fan of the music in Capcom’s superb Ace Attorney series, you’ll no doubt be disappointed to hear that you missed the chance to hear it performed live by a full orchestra at the Gyakuten Saiban Tokubetsu Hout Orchestra Concert 2008 in April of last year. Unless you were there, in which case well done you.

But if you’re prepared to accept second best, then you can now get your hands on a DVD of the concert from Play-Asia. Fully realising that watching an orchestra play on its own isn’t the most visually-exciting thing ever, the organisers projected images from the games on massive screens throughout, and these are all viewable on the DVD.

There’s also a booklet which accompanies the DVD as a digest of the concert, with commentaries from the producers involved. And it all comes in a fairly posh box with the Japanese Gyakuten Saiban logo adorning the front.

Bit of a collector’s item, then - be sure to get your order in at the not-entirely-OBJECTIONable price of $31.90/£22.46 while stocks last.

Bookmark It

Oh dear. Early reports are suggesting that gorgeous adventure Another Code: R has sold very poorly in Japan. The talky adventure sold a paltry 10,000 copies according to data from Famitsu. Meanwhile, Wii’s fortunes seem to have taken a turn for the worse, too - the console struggling to 21,000 units in the week ending 8th February, outselling PS3 by just 5,000 units.

It seems that home consoles in general are struggling, but Wii has always bucked that particular trend and it must be worrying for Nintendo to see that PS3 is starting to catch up. You could argue that Nintendo hasn’t released any brand new first-party titles since the disappointing Animal Crossing - the Wii de Asobu range barely having any noticeable effect on hardware sales - but it’s sad to see games like Another Code: R perform so poorly. Perhaps that kind of adventure is better suited to DS, but whichever way you slice it, 10,000 sales for a new first-party title is pretty bad.

My import copy of Another Code: R arrives tomorrow, and I’ll bring you some brief impressions of the game’s early stages shortly afterwards. In the meantime just keep your fingers crossed that this doesn’t affect its chances of reaching Europe, though surely the localisation effort is at the stage where it wouldn’t make sense to abandon the project.

Bookmark It

Defying the credit crunch once more, Nintendo has spent 12.8 billion yen on a site near to its headquarters. It plans to use the site for research and development of new software and hardware, with its existing R&D department likely to merge with the new place.

Many people have questioned Nintendo’s reluctance to expand further given how much money it has been making of late, and it finally seems that it’s spending a bit on making more games. How much of this new facility and its staff will be allocated to creating Wii’s successor isn’t known, but I’d wager that that is going to be highest on Nintendo’s agenda, as it attempts to figure out how exactly to follow two of its most successful consoles ever, while revolutionising gaming and simultaneously remaining accessible to its expanded audience. It’s a tough job, but somebody’s got to do it.

Alternatively, perhaps Nintendo has decided it doesn’t really need third-party support, and is just going to release more Wii and DS games to sate its loyal fans, who’ve been vocally complaining about its directional shift over the past few years.

Whatever it’s used for, the likely outcome is ‘more games’, and should that mean a worthy follow-up to Super Mario Galaxy, then I’ll be more than happy.

Thanks to Kotaku (via VG247)

Bookmark It

Nintendo’s official Japanese site for the Metroid franchise has an interesting little banner on its front page, which seems to suggest that the Metroid series is set to get a new side story, possibly based on the Space Pirates.

Spotted by an eagle-eyed NeoGAF forumite, the banner mentions ‘Another Side Story - coming soon’. Naturally, there’s much fevered speculation as to what it could be, but with strong rumours that Retro Studios isn’t currently working on a Metroid game, it’s unlikely to be a new 3D Metroid. A 2D outing on WiiWare, then? Perhaps, but I’d suggest it might be some kind of anime series, or maybe a manga comic. Or possibly even just a bit of background info on Samus’ enemies on the site, to tie-in with the Wii-releases of the first two Metroid Prime games in the Wii de Asobu/New Play Control range.

Still, there was that mention of Metroid Dread in Corruption…could it be that Wii’s Year of Hardcore brings us a new space adventure for everyone’s favourite bounty hunter?

Bookmark It

 

A top ten featuring precisely zero games on HD consoles, this week’s Japanese charts are dominated by PSP and to a lesser extent Wii, with an interesting story surrounding the two versions of Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Echoes of Time. The DS version of the multiplayer title outsold the Wii version by a ratio of almost 5:1 - hardly surprising given that the Wii game essentially looks worse than the DS one, by blowing up the DS graphics to fit your telly (and looking much blockier as a result). Echoes of Time DS sold a reasonable 102,000 copies, but that’s some way off the amount shipped - evidently Square-Enix was expecting much better, and the poor performance of the Wii game will undoubtedly lead once again to calls that it’s not suited to core games (people conveniently ignoring the small matter of the off-putting graphics).

Elsewhere, Taiko no Tatsujin Wii proves it has legs, while Mario Tennis doesn’t drop too many sales from last week, where it hit the top mainly by virtue of not having any real competition.Rhythm Tengoku Gold is still going strong, but sadly Namco-Bandai’s Fragile is nowhere to be seen in its second week on sale - whether that’s down to stores running out of stock isn’t entirely clear.

No hardware sales as yet - expect a rise for PSP, but whether that will nudge DSi off the top remains to be seen. But either way, Sony’s handheld is becoming a force to be reckoned with in the east.

01. [PSP] Tales of the World: Radiant Mythology 2 (Namco Bandai) 213,000 / NEW
02. [PSP] Pro Evolution Soccer 2009 (Konami) 109,000 / NEW
03. [PS2] Pro Evolution Soccer 2009 (Konami) 108,000 / NEW
04. [NDS] Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Echoes of Time (Square Enix) 102,000 / NEW
05. [PSP] Monster Hunter Portable 2nd G (PSP the Best) (Capcom) 23,000 / 380,000
06. [WII] Taiko no Tatsujin Wii (Namco Bandai) 22,000 / 339,000
07. [WII] Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Echoes of Time (Square Enix) 22,000 / NEW
08. [WII] Wii Play: Mario Tennis (Nintendo) 20,000 / 108,000
09. [NDS] Rhythm Tengoku Gold (Nintendo) 20,000 / 1,634,000
10. [WII] Wii Fit (Nintendo) 19,000 / 3,215,000

Bookmark It

CliffsNotes: Mario & Luigi good, Another Code: R not so good.

Yep, this week’s edition of gaming Koran Famitsu carries reviews of CiNG’s Wii adventure and the moustachioed brothers’ third handheld RPG outing. The latter proved to be more popular, nabbing 9s from three of Famitsu’s four-strong review team, and a comparatively stingy 8 from the other. Another Code: R garnered a comparatively low 28/40, with all four critics slapping down a score of 7/10.

The suggestion is that Another Code’s story is perhaps a little too intrusive, taking up a substantial portion of the game and slowing its pace, while there aren’t enough puzzles, hints one of Famitsu’s team. It all sounds a little more Hotel Dusk than the original, but I’m optimistic that a decent translation will help it fare better with western reviewers. Dusk was all about the chat, with precious little genuine puzzle-solving, but its noir-tinged script, brilliantly localised by Nintendo’s crack translation squad at Treehouse, managed to save the day, creating a thoroughly compelling adventure game/visual novel hybrid.

Meanwhile, Mario & Luigi scored the same as its immediate predecessor, Partners in Time. Which could be a good or a bad thing, depending on your standpoint. I’m firmly of the opinion that Partners was a great game, slightly less so than its GBA forebear, mainly thanks to its reduced runtime and more linear worlds. More of the same in those respects in the third game would be a little disappointing, but the early videos suggest it’s as gleefully inventive and amusing as Superstar Saga. Let’s hope that gets a Q2 European release, too.

Bookmark It

As remakes of classics go, Space Invaders Extreme was hard to beat. Yet Taito is determined to try, with its sequel coming to Japan in late March (and likely elsewhere courtesy of Square-Enix later in the year).

The official boxart has been unveiled, courtesy of Dengeki Online, and it’s a bit of a beaut (or it will be when it’s not quite as fuzzy and the watermark is removed), but most intriguing of all is the new game’s ‘bingo mode’.

The idea is that you need to hit invaders in different areas of the screen in order to create a horizontal, vertical or diagonal line. Whether or not you have to shout ‘house’ into the DS mic has yet to be revealed.

Taito has also confirmed there will be a new multiplayer mode - you’ll be you’ll be able to play anyone worldwide via Nintendo WFC, and their game will be displayed on the top screen while you zap away at the invaders on the bottom. You’ll also be able to send additional UFOs to your opponent’s game and presumably there will be other tactical options to consider.

Japan is getting this on March 26th. Fingers crossed we’ll hear news of a localisation very soon.

Bookmark It

Mario Tennis stays at the top while Namco-Bandai’s beautifully desolate adventure Fragile enters at number two. It’s a very slow week for sales, though, so whether the publisher is happy with that total is anyone’s guess. Reports suggest its initial shipment was just 30,000 and that some Japanese gamers have struggled to get their hands on a copy - hopefully it can hang around a little longer, as the Wii could do with a few third-party successes.

And that’s exactly what Taiko no Tatsujin Wii can be regarded as - the back-in-stock rhythm-actioner zooming back up the charts into third position, making it a rare Wii 1-2-3, with Wii Fit upping its Japanese tally to 3,196,000 units sold.  The remaining six positions are shared by the two handhelds, which shows how portable gaming has become the dominant force in the east.

Depressingly, only one of these games has thus far been released in the west, though we’re getting Mario Tennis soon and - hopefully - Rhythm Tengoku Gold. Fingers crossed someone picks up Fragile for Europe and the US, but I’m not getting my hopes up.The full top ten is below.

01. [WII] Wii Play: Mario Tennis (Nintendo) 31,000 / 88,000
02. [WII] Fragile (Namco Bandai) 26,000 / NEW
03. [WII] Taiko no Tatsujin Wii (Namco Bandai) 25,000 / 316,000
04. [PSP] Zill’O (KOEI) 25,000 / NEW
05. [PSP] Monster Hunter Portable 2nd G (PSP the Best) (Capcom) 25,000 / 357,000
06. [NDS] Rhythm Tengoku Gold (Nintendo) 20,000 / 1,614,000
07. [WII] Wii Fit (Nintendo) 19,000 / 3,196,000
08. [PSP] Dissidia Final Fantasy (Square Enix) 18,000 / 866,000
09. [NDS] Devil Survivor (Atlus) 18,000 / NEW
10. [NDS] Wagamama Fashion: Girl’s Mode (Nintendo) 17,000 / 684,000

Bookmark It

It looks like Nintendo is really going big on DSiWare, with eight new releases announced this week - could it yet become the DSi’s version of the iPhone’s AppStore?

Alongside a map of Japan’s train system, and 200-point treats like a DSi clock and a solitaire game are two more titles in the Art Style range - for my money one of the best things Nintendo’s done this generation - called Somnium and PicoPict. Somnium features in the video above, and looks like one of those games where you plan to have a quick five-minute go and wind up charging your DSi at 2 in the morning just so you can play some more.

Meanwhile, PicoPict is arguably an even more interesting proposition, blending a traditional tile-matching mechanic with Picross. The aim is to recreate famous Nintendo sprites from yesteryear by lining up tiles against falling blocks with the stylus to create four or more pixels, which disappear from the bottom screen to float up and fill in the picture on the top screen.

Take a look at some footage of PicoPict below, and pray that Nintendo announce a western release date for DSi soon, because this kind of simple but elegant idea is ideal for gaming on the move. The official mini-sites for both games can be found here and here.

Bookmark It

Nintendo reigns supreme at the top of both software and hardware charts once more, this time taking pole position with a remake of a GameCube game. The success of Wii Play: Mario Tennis proves Nintendo made a wise decision to revisit some of its old titles - in Japan, at least. Over here where the games are less well-known and well-publicised and the cost is higher, I’m not expecting them to do nearly as well. Of the range, I always thought Mario Tennis might be the most successful, and that looks like being the case, as it pips Atlus’ Devil Survivor to the top, selling just over 1000 copies more.

Elsewhere, evergreens like Rhythm Tengoku Gold, Wagamama Fashion and Wii Fit hang on to top ten positions in a slow week for sales, while Nintendo’s latest non-game, DS Uranai Seikatsu - some kind of fortune-telling software - enters in tenth spot.

In the hardware charts, DSi is once again comfortably on top - factor in DS Lite sales and it’s almost twice as many as PSP, while PS3 is ominously starting to catch up on Wii’s weekly sales, with over 20,000 units sold compared to 32,000 of Nintendo’s console. It’s not eating into Wii’s lead, but if those sales start to increase, Nintendo will be nervously looking over its shoulder. Full charts follow, courtesy of Media-Create.

01. [WII] Wii Play: Mario Tennis (Nintendo) 56,509 / NEW
02. [NDS] Megami Ibunroku: Devil Survivor (Atlas) 55,466 / NEW
03. [PS3] Naruto: Narutimate Storm (Namco Bandai) 44,065 / NEW
04. [PSP] Dissidia Final Fantasy (Square Enix) 29,355 / 848,000
05. [PSP] Monster Hunter Portable 2nd G (PSP the Best) (Capcom) 27,032 / 332,000
06. [NDS] Rhythm Tengoku Gold (Nintendo) 25,488 / 1,594,000
07. [PS3] Fallout 3 (Bethesda Softworks) 24,488 / NEW
08. [NDS] Wagamama Fashion: Girl’s Mode (Nintendo) 22,628 / 667,000
09. [WII] Wii Fit (Nintendo) 21,847 / 3,177,000
10. [NDS] DS Uranai Seikatsu (Nintendo) 19,881 / NEW

DSi 62525
PSP 42559
Wii 32333
PS3 20690
DSL 18809
360 9576
PS2 5760

Bookmark It