The website for Sega and Platinum Games' Infinite Line is already up, with little more than teaser content at the moment. There are a few paragraphs explaining what we already know about the game (150 crew members to choose from) along with some PR-type text about how deep the story is. But there are also three new screenshots, which we've added to our gallery.
They're a bit confusing to look at out of context, but we can at least tell that one is a spaceship selection menu, and one shows more of the Tetris-like upgrading. Parts take up varying amounts of a 3-by-3 square, and there seem to be many of each type of part to choose from (the screenshot shows Type-A through Type-K of some part). The last screenshot, as far as we can tell, shows a ship flying toward some kind of portal structure, maybe. Some kind of pretty, futury space stuff.
A few weeks ago, we saw concept art of the promotional stuff SNK's using to try to trick Japanese otaku into dropping $91 for the "Special Box" edition of Doki Doki Majo Shinpan Duo, including two Nendoroid figurines. Now pictures of the real materials are online to look at, in case you would like to see what people are going to be waiting nervously in front of Akihabara electronics stores for.
In addition to the Maho Akai and Seika Koron figurines and Lulu and Kuro phone strap, the set comes with a guidebook to the students in the game's schools, and a color-changing card that allows you to rub the image of a sweater off of a picture of Haori Kureha. And shame. Shame is in the box.
Abandoned buildings (in this case a hospital), spooky little child spirits -- sometimes the most popular horror clichés can still be highly effective. D3 clearly thinks so, anyway, because it's included both of the above in its latest Simple game, Simple DS Series: Vol. 42 - The Abandoned Building.
From what we could gather from machine translation, you play as journalist Akira Kashiwagi, who sets out to an old, closed-down hospital to investigate the murder of four youngsters twenty years ago. It's played from a first-person perspective, you can hide in various spots throughout the hospital (lockers, for example), and it looks scary.
Needless to say, that first shot past the break (of the little girl peering through the elevator doors) will stay with us for our next few sleepless nights.
We totally knew it was coming, but Sega announced their partnership with the Platinum Games supergroup last night, officially revealing the three games in development from the former Clover staff. Of interest to us: Infinite Line, the sci-fi RPG codeveloped by Platinum and Nude Maker and directed by the latter company's Hifumi Kouno.
Along with the announcement, three pieces of spaceship concept art were released, which you can be totally impressed by in our gallery. They all show dates from early 2007, so this thing's been in the works for a while.
In addition, Famitsu has posted some very confusing-looking screenshots, which reveal the process of arranging ship parts as some kind of Tetris puzzle-type thing, a matter of fitting parts composed of differing numbers and configurations of blocks onto your ship.
We're sure that some of you will be buying Pokémon Platinum (whenever it ends up coming out here) just for this thing, so here's a nice clear picture of it. This is the new form of Giratina, Platinum's cover Pokeman. Dengeki labels it the "Origin" form, and it's pretty clear that this is some kind of larval stage in the Ghost/Dragon Legendary Pokémon's development, with spikes sticking out where its legs go.
The screen shown in the CoroCoro scan, with the male trainer's new jacket, is also available in higher quality at the link, along with another screen featuring some mysterious shadow thing.
Developer CyberStep has announced a DS version of their online 3D fighter, GetAmped. The PC version allows online play with totally customizable (for money) avatars, in both fighting and sporting competitions. CyberStep plans to include 4-player wireless play in the DS version, as well, though we aren't sure if anything online will be included.
We don't know much about all these pay-for-items online games (except for the excellent Gunbound, which we enjoyed a few years back), but we can't help but feel a little bit yay at the prospect of a cute new fighting game on the DS. And unlike the other DS game based on an Asian MMO, Ragnarok Online DS, this actually has a rough release window -- this winter. CyberStep is looking to cooperate with companies in the U.S. and Europe to get the game out in those regions.
Herakles no Eikou (Glory of Herakles/Hercules) comes out in Japan on the 22nd, and Nintendo and Paon are taking the traditional RPG-promotion tactic of displaying some gorgeous cinematics. We tend to enjoy the anime-style promo scenes more than the high-res CG stuff that Square Enix tends to use, so we were very pleased to watch the animated half of this trailer, which we suspect is the opening scene of the game. It's enjoyable both on its own and as a look at a parallel universe in which Greek mythology developed in Japan.
Though it's an obvious step down in visual fidelity from the high-quality animation, the gameplay footage that follows looks pretty spectacular as well, and enough of the feeling carries over from the intro to temporarily convince us that RPGs can be exciting. We'd love for this to be the first Herakles no Eikou game to escape Japan.
Infinite Line, the rumored Platinum Games sci-fi RPG published by Sega, is totally a real game and not something made up by jerks to hurt us. These Famitsu scans reveal the Platinum Games/Nudemaker (Steel Battalion) co-production as pretty much what we heard, only awesome.
You'll have over 150 ship parts from which you can build your ship, and over 200 crew members. Infinite Line uses a sort of Final Fantasy-like active-time system, in which each character has an individual wait between turns, but those count down in real time. The interesting wrinkle with Infinite Line's system is that a full ATB gauge enables more options.
In what seems like a very appropriate promotion, Namco Bandai will offer a specially-labeled wine to tie in with 99 no Namida, the game featuring short stories designed to elicit tears. Go ahead and start crying now unless you'll be in Tokyo between June 5 (the game's release date) and June 30, because the 99 no Namida wine will only be available in the Vinoteca wine bar located in the Tokyo Midtown area.
Banamco also announced that soccer star Naohiro Takahara had contributed a story to the game based on his own experiences. Short story writer Yasushi Akimoto also revealed that he had written one of the game's tales. Is this the first original short fiction anthology video game?
Level 5's Inazuma Eleven looks utterly fantastic. Combining a sports title with RPG themes, that alone was enough to sell us on the game. Of course, it also doesn't hurt that Level-5 is developing it. Looks like Japan will find out how awesome Inazuma Eleven is this August.
For those of you who're as intrigued by this title as we are, know there is some new media around the net. First up, Game Watch has some lovely screens for you to check out. After that, get some full-motion excitement from the extended trailer up at GameSpot Japan. After that, we'd suggest changing your pants. We had to.
Read - Inazuma Eleven trailer at GameSpot Japan
Read - Inazuma Eleven screens at Game Watch
If you already read Japanese really well, that is -- because Touch de Nihao is a Chinese language-learning program for Japan.
Touch de Nihao is a utility program designed to help Japanese people get around in Chinese (Mandarin, we assume). It features a translation function that translates words written on the screen, as well as subway maps of Shanghai and Beijing.
The screenshots seem to show some sort of lessons, as well, or a dictionary organized by subject. The screen here, with the, uh, thing enjoying a beverage, is titled Nomimono (drinks) -- indicating some kind of subject page.
We probably won't see an English-Chinese version of Touch de Nihao, but we'd like to. We're fans of DS language learning.
The first (less convincing) sign is that Apollo Justice's (loud) Nintendo Europe webpage has the string "AceAttorney3" in its URL. That doesn't really mean that the third Ace Attorney game isn't happening, rather that Apollo Justice is the third Ace Attorney game to be released, and that whoever created the URL didn't save a space for the realAA3.
More troubling is the fact that there is a site for Trials and Tribulations, but there are no longer any links to it. Could this point to a cancellation? Court Records members speculate that T&T would get a higher PEGI content rating than the other Ace Attorney games, and because of that, Capcom wouldn't benefit from releasing it. In any case, both the U.S. and Japan have cheap and plentiful Trials and Tribulationses. Feel free to partake!
Komaneko is a stop-motion cartoon about a cat -- who creates stop-motion cartoons. What started as a five-minute short became a full-length film starring the cute orange cat. And this strangely self-referential character is now the subject of a DS game, Komaneko DS.
The communication game or ("Koma 'nya' -cation game" as the website puts it) is a virtual picture book, with text descriptions on the top screen of what is happening on the bottom screen. Koma chats with her friends, exchanges items, and plays minigames for a chance at more items. Koma can also take pictures, which players can trade wirelessly with their friends. We aren't sure if you're able to animate the photos, but we would expect some explicit reference to be made to the animation hobby.
Praised by almost everyone who's played the freeware PC title, Cave Story is considered by many to be the pinnacle of the "Metroidvania" genre, a polished action platformer embellished with endearing characters and a catchy soundtrack. No matter how many times we're reminded of the fact, it always astounds us that the game was designed and developed by a single programmer, Daisuke Amaya, or Pixel, as he's more commonly known.
As you might should know, homebrew developer Ravenworks has been working on a DS port for Cave Story. As it turns out, however, Pixel doesn't own a Nintendo DS, so it would be unlikely that he'd be able to play the port once it's completed. In fact, he hasn't owned a handheld or home console since the Nintendo 64! Isn't it a crime nowadays for gamers in Japan to not own a Nintendo DS?
To keep Pixel out of jail, Ravenworks and the rest of the "All Things Studio Pixel (ATSP)" LiveJournal community raised $410 and put together a care package of handheld treats as a "thank you" for the DS-less developer's work. Here's everything the group purchased and sent:
Onyx Nintendo DS Lite system (laser engraved with Cave Story characters and a message that reads, "Thank you")
R4 cart with 2 GB microSD (for playing Cave Story DS! and perhaps DS development one day?)
So, how did Pixel take to the package? You can read his reaction, as well as the community's reasons for picking those two particular games for their offering, past the post break! We also used this effort as an excuse to catch up with Ravenworks on Cave Story DS's progress.
New screens of SNK's awkward adventure sequel Doki Doki Majo Shinpan Duo have revealed three new characters: another angel who will compel Akuji to annoy and prod girls in his ongoing witch hunt, and ... another girl, no doubt to be annoyed and prodded. Also some guy!
The bespectacled angel Senome comes from the same angel world as Lulu and the demonic-looking Kuro, and keeps up on the latest angel-world news via "Angelnet." Which sounds rather like SNK is portraying her as an angel Internet nerd. Cute!
Seiji is a school friend of Akuji's who is, for some reason, unpopular. Also he may be a girl, because we can't tell sometimes.
The (obvious) girl, Himeki, is a self-styled reporter who carries a camera around to document everything she sees. She becomes interested in the reports of supernatural activity on campus, though something tells us she will soon wish she had not investigated it.
The website for Sega and Platinum Games' Infinite Line is already up, with little more than teaser content at the moment. There are a few paragraphs explaining what we already know about the game (150 crew members to choose from) along with some PR-type text about how deep the story is. But there are also three new screenshots, which we've added to our gallery.
Abandoned buildings (in this case a hospital), spooky little child spirits -- sometimes the most popular horror clichés can still be highly effective. D3 clearly thinks so, anyway, because it's included both of the above in its latest 
We totally 
Developer CyberStep has announced a DS version of their online 3D fighter, GetAmped. The PC version allows online play with totally customizable (for money) avatars, in both fighting and sporting competitions. CyberStep plans to include 4-player wireless play in the DS version, as well, though we aren't sure if anything online will be included.
In what seems like a very appropriate promotion, 
Level 5's 
If you already read Japanese really well, that is -- because Touch de Nihao is a Chinese language-learning program for Japan.
Capcom released 
Komaneko is a stop-motion cartoon about a cat -- who creates stop-motion cartoons. What started as a five-minute short became a full-length film starring the cute orange cat. And this strangely self-referential character is now the subject of a DS game, Komaneko DS.
New screens of SNK's awkward adventure sequel 
