Retro Game Challenge is a collection of small games designed to imitate both the look and the gameplay style of classic early-era NES games. That's pretty risky in and of itself, but not unsellable. However, it's also a game based on a show that isn't available in the US, starring a comedian that nobody has heard of.
You know our stance on Retro Game Challenge (100% awesome), but what about people who aren't us? Is a game built around a (for all intents and purposes) nonexistent license going to work? Will people be confused by the Arino character? Or are there enough nerds out there who know all about Game Center CX that it doesn't matter?
Finally, 1UP provides us with our first look at Retro Game Challenge, the English-language version of Game Center CX: Arino no Chousenjou. When XSEED showed the newly-announced US version of the game at E3, they simply used retail Japanese cartridges in the demo units. We asked the XSEED rep at the time how they planned to approach localization, but they weren't talking yet.
The good news is that not much has changed, other than the words being in English. The young Shinya Arino character is still Arino, and the Famicom on the floor still looks like a Famicom. We can see from a very quick flash of the menu that the magazines are still there; we were a bit worried that they would be left out.
Holy crap is this the most awesome DS game! Seriously, when JC was talking up the title, I trusted the man's judgment, but he couldn't possibly prepare me for how utterly great the DS game is. And when I met up with the folks at Marvelous here at E3 to try out their titles, I had no idea that they were going to have to physically pull me away from Retro Game Challenge.
Lucky for me, I have a good grip. So I get plenty of play time with what is sure to be one of my favorite DS games this year.
With several major press conferences yesterday and a deluge of media assets, it's easy to miss all the smaller news items that popped up. We've rounded up three of them for you so that they won't be completely forgotten!
1. Retro Game Challenge logo! Yep, there it is, right above our post. It doesn't look too different from the Retro Game Master DVD logo, but we'll find any excuse to talk about this wonderful, nostalgic title. In fact, keep an eye out for our hands-on impressions from the E3! For now, you can check out five new screenshots in our gallery below or have a look at the Retro Game Challenge sell sheet past the post break.
2. Zoo Games is working on aPuzzle Questclone? Any time we see the words "puzzle" juxtaposed with images of fantasy-type warriors, as was the case with Puzzle Kingdoms, our minds immediately go to last year's surprise hit, Puzzle Quest. Though developer Infinite Interactive already has two officialPuzzle Quest clones in the works, the hybridization of RPGs and puzzle games are addictive enough that we don't mind seeing knock-offs. We hope to see more than just three pieces of character art for Puzzle Kingdoms soon!
3.Guitar Hero: On Tour Decades coming out less than six months after Guitar Hero: On Tour? Alright, so you might have heard that Vicarious Visions is preparing a Guitar Hero DS sequel for the holiday season, but if you stop for a minute and think about it, you'll realize that the original game came out only three weeks ago! That's a shorter gap than the time in between Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock and Guitar Hero: Aerosmith's releases (8 months) for consoles!
With XSEED recently revealing its intentions to localize Game Center CX: Arino's Challenge (U.S. name: Retro Game Challenge) for the North American market, we thought now would be an opportune time to feature an English-translated commercial for the Japanese game. Really, we'll make any excuse to post about this interesting title.
A quick rundown of the Game Center CX show and DS game, for those of you who didn't read about the release the first dozen times we posted about it:
Game Center CX is a Japanese television series in which comedian Shinya Arino plays popular "retro" games
In the Indies Zero-developed DS title, players are sent back in time to the 80s by Arino
Players have to complete challenges in eight Famicom-styled games, like Star Prince (Star Soldier clone) and Guadia Quest (Dragon Quest clone)
There are a lot of great "meta" touches to the game, too -- a child version of Arino befriends and cheers you on against his older self, you'll have access to instruction manuals and Game Fan Magazine issues with tips and cheat codes, and Arino will even ask you if you're going to the bathroom sometimes when you pause the game.
Anyway, jump past the post break for the commercial; we've also included photos from train advertisements and a segment from the show as bonuses!
XSeed is gracing us with the amazing DS game based on Game Center CX, so we thought today would be the perfect time to share a clip from the original show. We don't know if XSeed or anyone else has licensed Game Center CX for DVD or TV release yet, but in the meantime we can enjoy untranslated excerpts!
We're of the opinion that you don't need to understand Japanese to enjoy the clip seen here from episode 33, in which the "Kacho," Shinya Arino, is presented with a Game Gear game (Ganbare Gorby, or, roughly, "Go Gorby" or "Do Your Best Gorby") starring a cute chibi version of Mikhail Gorbachev.
XSeed's list of E3 announcements just came in, featuring super awesome surprises! First, they've somehow gotten the U.S. publishing rights to Namco Bandai's Game Center CX: Arino no Chousenjou, the DS fake-retro-game collection based on the TV show! This winter, the company will release it in North America as Retro Game Challenge, which actually fits in nicely with the Retro Game Master title used for the American debut of the show. They've also announced a localized release of Populous DS for this fall.
The announcement provides official confirmation of U.S. releases for both Korg DS-10 and Avalon Code, as well. Still no Steal Princess, but we can't muster up any outrage about that right now.
Stylejam, distributor of the Japanese Game Center CX DVDs, is showcasing the retrogaming marathon show in the U.S. for the first time, at this year's New York Asian Film Festival. Two subtitled episodes of the show, titled Retro Game Master for the American release, will be shown during the festival at the IFC Center, for free. On June 21, 25, and 28, NYC locals can catch Shinya Arino's attempt to conquer Atlantis no Nazo, and on June 22, 29, and July 2, the festival will show Arino's battle with Ghosts 'n Goblins.
We're pretty upset at the limited nature of the showings (as in, limited to places that are really far away), but Stylejam's first tentative steps into a U.S. release of Game Center CX give us hope for a subtitled DVD release (as does the poster text) and, in our wildest dreams, a localized release of Namco Bandai's Game Center CX mock retro game collection.
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.
Shinya Arino, the put-upon host of Game Center CX, is also a member of a comedy duo called Yoiko along with Masaru Hamaguchi. They starred in a television special in December of last year called Mujintou Seikatsu (Deserted Island Life) in which the two of them survived on an island for three days. That sounds like a perfectly reasonable basis for a minigame collection, right?
Namco Bandai assessed the situation similarly, and thus Tottado!~ Yoiko no Mujintou Seikatsu(Yoiko's Deserted Island Life) was born. The minigames involve survival-related tasks -- building and maintaining a shelter, catching fish, and cooking -- with lots of wacky comedy faces. "I caught a fish WACKY COMEDY FACE!"
We don't need to tell you how likely we think this is to leave Japan.
Gaming sites are inundated with holiday gift guides at the end of the year, listing the best and most popular games that everyone pretty much already has (or knows about). Well, we're not going in for that this year. Our gift guide will help you find the best gifts in categories the other sites won't cover -- because we just made them up.
Of course we recommend buying DS games and accessories for everyone on your shopping list -- whether they want them or not. But, ironically, the hardest people to give the gift of DS are the people who love the DS the most -- people who live the DS. In a word, us. Game bloggers. Well, not us specifically, but people like us who are far too enthusiastic about the Nintendo DS.
We're so nuts about the DS that we devote most of our lives to talking about it. We know pretty much everything out there, and we spend entirely too much time building our collections. We're emblematic of exactly the kind of brutally insane people for whom it's nearly impossible to shop. That's why we've put together this handy guide to the kind of stuff we would love, but wouldn't necessarily think to buy ourselves. Not because we want you to buy gifts for us, although we certainly won't stop you if you think we deserve a little token of appreciation.
See what we did there? We've given you the gift of an obvious opening through which to insult us! 'Tis the season!
This week's 1UP Show video ... podcast ... show ... thing-with-people-talking-and-also-footage-of-games takes a break from the constant Rock Band coverage to talk about new games on some weirdo handheld system with two screens. If, instead of reading about Final Fantasy XII Revenant Wings and Dementium, you'd like to watch and hear about them, this is a prime opportunity for that!
The discussion about categorizing Revenant Wings for a country with few strategy games is particularly interesting. As is the pronunciation of "Ivalice" -- who knew? The real star of this video, of course, is Game Center CX, the current obsession of every retrogamer who can get it and read the text. There's video! Oh, Game Center CX. We will continue to read and watch things about you for as long as we can. Fun fact: Ray Barnholt, who leads the discussion of the game, is also largely responsible for bringing the show to the attention of the American enthusiast audience with his exhaustive guide.
Continuing with his coverage of Game Center CX, Chris Kohler has posted descriptions of the game's progression, along with details about each of the games. A few games at a time are unlocked, and you earn more games by completing specific challenges. For example, getting all your characters to level 7 in the Dragon Quest-like Guadia Quest, or shooting a giant asteroid in the Galaga-inspired Cosmic Gate fulfill requirements set by the game.
Every element of Game Center CX accurately parodies Japanese retrogaming: Rally King SP is a remade version of the (also fake) top-down racer Rally King with branding from a fictional ramen company. Product tie-in games like this were common in Japan at the time (though they've all become frustratingly rare now!) and in fact, some, like Gradius: ArchiMENdes Edition, were actually given away by ramen companies.
The "challenge" focus of the game actually sort of makes Game Center CX a bit more modern. Rather than simply completing levels, you're fulfilling objectives. It's almost mission-based, but in an interesting way.
A very simple topic today: would you play the Game Center CX game? Check out our previouscoverage of the game and make a hard decision about whether parody retrogames, combined with parody game magazines, are the kind of thing you'd like to experience.
Just in case somebody from Namco Bandai happens to wander into our little website, we'd like to have proof that there's an Anglophone audience for this game. Your comments will be that proof! (Note to hypothetical Namco Bandai representative: if nobody comments, it's just because our readership has puckishly decided in unison to play a little joke.)
We knew that Namco Bandai's Game Center CX strongly exhibited the spirit of awesomeness, as a collection of fake retro games tied into a TV show about playing old games. Chris Kohler reports that the game is actually pretty great, and a lot more clever than even the premise of parody retro games.
Basically, you're tasked with performing specific challenges in each game, and you need to go through the made-up instruction book included in each game's pause menu to figure out how to achieve those objectives. Furthermore, you can find secrets by looking through fake game magazines. The game simultaneously parodies the inscrutability of old games and accurately models real gameplay experiences. That's pretty cool!
Kohler recommends a localization for this game, and we'd like to agree. It sounds great, but the game requires rather a lot of Japanese reading. Since, as Kohler says, "you need not be at all familiar with the source material to understand the premise," it would probably be okay to bring it over without the license, or possibly as the only representative of the license. The retrogaming theme is enough context for us.
But those Japanese gamers who are familiar with the show get a clever bonus: a replica of host Shinya Arino's Bandai Namco business card, given to him at Bandai Namco's offices while playing The Quest of Ki. Everyone should get some kind of consolation prize for playing The Quest of Ki.
XSeed's list of E3 announcements just came in, featuring super awesome surprises! First, they've somehow gotten the U.S. publishing rights to Namco Bandai's Game Center CX: Arino no Chousenjou, the DS fake-retro-game collection based on the TV show! This winter, the company will release it in North America as Retro Game Challenge, which actually fits in nicely with the Retro Game Master title used for the American debut of the show. They've also announced a localized release of Populous DS for this fall.
Shinya Arino, the put-upon host of Game Center CX, is also a member of a comedy duo called Yoiko along with Masaru Hamaguchi. They starred in a television special in December of last year called Mujintou Seikatsu (Deserted Island Life) in which the two of them survived on an island for three days. That sounds like a perfectly reasonable basis for a minigame collection, right?
Continuing with his coverage of Game Center CX, Chris Kohler has posted descriptions of the game's progression, along with details about each of the games. A few games at a time are unlocked, and you earn more games by completing specific challenges. For example, getting all your characters to level 7 in the Dragon Quest-like Guadia Quest, or shooting a giant asteroid in the Galaga-inspired Cosmic Gate fulfill requirements set by the game.
We knew that Namco Bandai's Game Center CX strongly exhibited the spirit of awesomeness, as a collection of fake retro games tied into a TV show about playing old games. Chris Kohler reports that the game is actually pretty great, and a lot more clever than even the premise of parody retro games.
_cg_oct22_kjgfdhd_thumbnail.jpg "Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars")
