When Siliconera's Spencer Yip interviewed Aksys's Gail Salamanca about Jake Hunter: Detective Chronicles, he also submitted a battery of questions about Super Dodgeball Brawlers, many of which were submitted by readers. One reader asked if Aksys would keep the Kunio series characters for the game, rather than making them more generic and American. Salamanca responded with "Yes, we will be keeping the Kunio names for the US version."This may only be significant to us and to the person asking the question (who was, we admit, also us), but that means that Super Dodgeball Brawlers will be the first Kunio game in the U.S. Renegade, River City Ransom, Crash 'n the Boys Street Challenge, Super Spike V'Ball, Nintendo World Cup, and every previous version of Super Dodge Ball were all part of the Kunio-kun series from Technos, starring two rude high-school kids named Kunio and Riki. And without exception, the original characters were excised from the localization.
Another reader asked if more Kunio games were upcoming, and Salamanca replied "We hope so." Not much news there, but if Aksys wants to continue publishing upcoming Kunio games, we're happy to hear it. What a great day for Technos nerds.




The DS is seeing an unparalleled boom in surprise sequels to venerable franchises. That leaves retrogamers and other sensible people in a dangerous financial situation. With many of these games currently yet to be confirmed for US release, we face the possibility of expensive imports, or letting them pass us by.
Even without the 
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Million, the developer of Super Dodge Ball Advance and River City Ransom EX, is made up of former Technos employees, including founder Kunio Taki. It's as close to real Technos as anyone can get. That's why it's so great to see their name (misspelled as "Milliom" though it may be) in the copyright information on the Famitsu story about 



