Likely surprising no one considering the popularity of the Bleach manga/anime series, Sega announced its plans to publish Bleach: Dark Souls (or Bleach DS: 2nd Kokui Hirameku Requiem, as it's known in Japan), the follow-up to Bleach: The Blade of Fate, this summer in North America.
The Treasure-developed 2D fighter features a number of improvements on the original:
an exclusive storyline that takes place in between the series's first and second season
44 playable characters (The Blade of Fate has 26)
30 new Power-up Cards and Power Crystals
Bleach encyclopedia containing "fun and interesting facts about the entire Bleach universe"
All that comes on top of the game's four-player online battles and multi-plane stages. Hit the gallery below for English-translated screenshots from Dark Souls, or check past the break for a two-minute trailer from the Japanese release.
Capcom's anime adventure game Rosario + Vampire will include a very cool preorder bonus: a pair of reversible replacement boxarts, for a total of four possible boxart choices. Each one focuses on one of the game's female characters, of course. The second reversible cover can be seen after the break.
We aren't really that taken with the Rosario + Vampire cast -- they seem like pretty standard anime characters, who no doubt confound the hapless protagonist with their one personality quirk each -- and we don't care much about anime in the first place. However, the idea of alternate boxarts as a bonus appeals to us. We don't really see our DS boxes all that often, but we find the idea of customizing them fun.
Just when we thought we had played the last great GBA game, Siliconera pointed us towards Samurai Deeper Kyo, a slick action title recently brought to the US by Destineer. Marvelous Interactive published it in Japan back in 2002, but that doesn't take away from how fun it looks! The game only comes packed as a bonus with the Samurai Deeper Kyoanime series DVD set, so you'll find it difficult to acquire a copy.
Anyway, the idea of having another GBA release to look forward to finding and playing reminded us how long it's been since we tapped that bottom box on the DS's initial menu screen. Months! How long has it been for you? And what was the last GBA game you loaded up?
This Petit Eva screen takes a bit of explaining, and we admit that we don't exactly know how it works logistically. Misato, the teacher, has lost all of her students' report cards, so Shinji and the rest of the class go to her home to help her look for them. But Misato's apartment is such a mess that it is deemed expedient to turn on fans and blow the clutter out of the way in the search for the missing report cards.
You see now why Neon Genesis Evangelion is one of the greatest dramas in anime. In addition to "Touch Puzzles" like these, there will also be "Touch Action" segments which seem to involve clearing a path for a running Rei Ayanami clone, and "Heart Touch" segments in which Shinji must answer characters' questions correctly in order to boost relationships.
Really, it's just like the original series: synchronizing brain function with a giant biomechanical robot in order to defeat supernatural monsters is roughly equivalent to moving the soccer ball.
We generally approach anime and manga games hesitantly, much like one would approach a bear trap surrounded by a moat. But Namco Bandai's latest Sgt. Frog(Keroro Gunso) game, Super Movie Version Sgt. Frog 3: It's an Adventure in the Sky! looks not only really dang cute but also very clear and colorful.
As the title suggests, this game ties into an upcoming theatrical release, meaning that it is not only an anime license, but a movie license as well. If more movies would do things like completely changing the genre for a boss battle (like the shmup seen in Dengeki's screens), we might not be so harsh on licenses. Also if they weren't terrible all the time.
Capcom has released a trailer of their game adaptation of the conceptually wacky manga series Rosario + Vampire (Rosario and the Vampire). As you'd expect for a game based on manga and anime, the trailer spends most of its time showing some anime footage, then fits some actual gameplay in at the end.
Past the adventure-game-style location searching, past the cutscene of the poor protagonist being bitten by his vampire girlfriend (what did he expect?) and past the clicking-on-floating-hearts minigame, you can catch a glimpse of the unusual touchscreen-based combat. On the bottom screen, it looks just like an Ouendan-type thing. On the top, it's a 2D fighting game!
In our enthusiasm to learn more about Namco Bandai's latest 2D platformers, Kekkaishi: Kokubourou Shuurai and GeGeGe no Kitarou: Youkai Daigekisen, both based on anime licenses, we came across this screenshot for the latter (minus the picard-wtf.jpg photoshop, of course).
Sure, Touch Detective introduced phallic creatures to the DS years ago, but that mushroom thing was cartoonish and nonthreatening. As for this thing? This wrinkled beast? We imagine that if Picard and crew were to ever bump heads with this walking willy, screens would be off-ed, shields would be raised, and photon torpedoes would be fired. "Ensign, get us out of here! Maximum warp!"
Deformed wang monster aside, GeGeGe no Kitarou looks to be a tame platformer with some gliding portions to keep things interesting. Float past the break for a few more of the screenshots we grabbed from Famitsu.
Good news, Gundam fans! (And we know you must be out there, or else there wouldn't be so many games based on this anime franchise.) Namco Bandai just announced a new title for the DS that's scheduled for release in March 2008. The game will be based on the most recent Gundam series, Gundam OO. Of course, like the G Generation games, these probably won't be released outside of Japan (blame your respective countries for not loving anime enough, the fools), but we're sure hardcores won't mind importing.
Also, if you love a good dose of mech porn giant gun-toting robots, Famitsu scans of the game are sitting pretty after the break.
These two games are almost intolerably cute -- our internal cute-ometers are spinning out of control, having long since passed "awwww". The first, Yes! PreCure 5, is an isometric 2D action game from Bandai based on a magical girl anime. The premise of the anime involves, according to Wikipedia, a girl named Nozomi receiving a "Pinky Catch" from a pink butterfly, thus enabling her to transform into "Cure Dream", at which point she begins assembling a team of young girls as "Pretty Cure." Each member of Pretty Cure has her own special attacks, like "Mint Protection!" and "Cure Lemonade!"
Hapi Hapi Clover is too cute to be the work of humans. We assume that some cuteness-making computer is working night and day churning out dangerous levels of cute, stopping only for Mallomars and hugs. The game is an adventure game with included minigames (an adorable Breakout-type game is shown in the link); the anime and manga seem to be about rabbits having cute adventures in the woods -- and learning.
Fullmetal Alchemist: Trading Card Game on the DS suffers from its source material on two different levels. First, the original property, Fullmetal Alchemist, doesn't really lend itself to a card game. Fullmetal Alchemist, for the uninitiated, is a show about two brothers who attempt to use alchemy to revive their dead mother, but fail and accidentally maim one brother and trap the other brother's soul in a suit of armor. Then they have adventures!
The card game, then, revolves not around simple competition with adversaries, as would be expected of card games; or rather, it does, but altercations are treated in the card game's "storyline" as ancillary to the goal of locating the powerful alchemical relic, the Philosopher's Stone, and fixing their bodies. Perhaps, then, FMA was not the ideal choice of properties to translate into cards.
Second, the DS game suffers by being such a faithful translation of said card game, which, to be blunt, is far too complicated to be worth attempting. The DS game makes valiant attempts to streamline the process and teach the game, but every person on Earth who has a strong enough interest in Fullmetal Alchemist to learn the card game has done so, and nobody else has any reason to try.
Since we talked a little about import games here this morning, showing off a trailer for a game often mentioned in the same breath as "if only" seemed appropriate for our video spotlight. If you're one of the four people around who isn't familiar with Jump Ultimate Stars, let us enlighten you. Jump Ultimate Stars is a fighting game packed with hundreds of manga characters. Yes, hundreds, from dozens of series ... and it also happens to be a great fighting game on the DS. Check out one of the trailers for the game after the jump.
Posted May 2nd 2007 10:40AM by James Konik
Filed under: News
Popular Japanese anime series Pururun!Shizuka-chan is about to make a splash on the DS, courtesy of developer Open Sesame.
Shizuka is a raindrop sprite, and is joined by a selection of liquid chums. These include a milk sprite, various tea sprites and, our favourite, an aftershave sprite.
The story centres around the adventures of Shizuka, and his attempts to rescue animals lost around the forest. The action moves through five different themed areas: ranch, cave, forest, flower garden, and fruit field.
The stylus is used to drop water onto the animals. Wrapping the animals in water makes them rise up into the clouds, and judging from the screenshots they look perfectly happy. This is perhaps due to the calming effects of the magic fruits.
Pururun! Shizuka-chan hits Japanese shelves on July 12th; fingers crossed for a western release after that.
Mega Man series fans have something else to look forward to in the near future, besides the never-ending stream of spinoffs and sequels. Viz Media has licensed the anime adaptation of the latest spinoff, Mega Man Star Force (Ryuusei no Rockman in Japan) for US audiences.
The story is some baffling thing about a human kid merging with an alien entity called Omega-Xis to become Mega Man, which we're sure will make more sense after we play the game. It makes us a little nostalgic for the sparse robot vs. robot storyline of the original Mega Man series, but not the original Mega Man cartoon. Do you think the cartoon will be good enough to promote a game with three versions? We make fun of Capcom for all the Mega Man overload, but we're huge fans and will no doubt fill our TiVos with episodes of this series.
We were all set to make fun of Cosmetic Paradise, but then we thought about it and realized that a makeup game on the DS will probably be something of a hit in Japan. Here's our reasoning:
All people in Japan have at least one DS-- including little girls.
This may be marketed as a "training" game for cosmetics, and the word "training" opens the sales floodgates.
Using the stylus to apply makeup is probably a lot of fun for people who like dolls and stuff.
We admit, then, that this game is a good idea, from a business perspective, at least. And it does seem to have some adventure game elements, which we support. What do you think? Are there any little DS fans in your family that would enjoy this kind of thing?
This news manages to be both supremely weird and completely banal at the same time. It's interesting conceptually, but mechanically, it's another licensed minigame set. Demashita! Powerpuff Girls Z is the made-for-Japan adaptation of the Cartoon Network show, which was itself inspired by anime.
And just like you would expect for any anime, or, for that matter, anything popular in Japan (see also: food and walking) Powerpuff Girls Z is getting its own DS game. This has to be the most derivative game ever in terms of source material-- just surpassing the game adaptation of Street Fighter: The Movie.
This 
We generally approach anime and manga games hesitantly, much like one would approach a bear trap surrounded by a moat. But 
In our enthusiasm to learn more about Namco Bandai's latest 2D platformers, 
These two games are almost intolerably cute -- our internal cute-ometers are spinning out of control, having long since passed "awwww". The first, Yes! PreCure 5, is an isometric 2D action game from Bandai based on a magical girl anime. The premise of the anime involves, according to Wikipedia, a girl named Nozomi receiving a "Pinky Catch" from a pink butterfly, thus enabling her to transform into "Cure Dream", at which point she begins assembling a team of young girls as "Pretty Cure." Each member of Pretty Cure has her own special attacks, like "Mint Protection!" and "Cure Lemonade!"
Since we talked a little about 
Popular Japanese anime series Pururun! Shizuka-chan is about to make a splash on the DS, courtesy of developer Open Sesame.
We were all set to make fun of Cosmetic Paradise, but then we thought about it and realized that a makeup game on the DS will probably be something of a hit in Japan. Here's our reasoning:
This news manages to be both supremely weird and completely banal at the same time. It's interesting conceptually, but mechanically, it's another licensed minigame set. 
