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New
Year, New Style?
Parappa
Back… The sequel to the massively innovative Playstation title Parappa
the Rapper, called Unjammer Lami, was recently announced in Japan, and
it's already being shown in TV advertisements. In the game, rap has been
exchanged for rock, voices for guitars (at least partially), and a female
lead for a male lead. It seems Rodney Greenblat's excellent characters
still provide the basis for the game, however. I'm pleased that Sony didn't
simply create a sequel with the same characters, although this title is
set in the same attractive universe. This game will be released this Spring,
so watch out for it.
Thoughts on the Christmas list. It's apparent that a number of great titles made it onto this chart. Although yet another Bandai Gundam game appears on the list, there are plenty of non-licensed titles in on the list as well… Note that another Gameboy title, Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters, made it to the top spot. This indicates how revitalized the handheld market is in Japan, thanks largely to the launch of the Gameboy Color. This Konami RPG sold 670,000 copies the week it was released!… Ehrgeiz, Square's excellent 3D beat-em-up (with playable Final Fantasy VII characters thrown in as an extra gimmick) is a great arcade conversion by Dream Factory, the team behind Tobal No.1 and Tobal No.2... Mario Party is an N64 game, which actually plays like a board game. It has a number of subgames that look interesting, as I mentioned in previous columns. Nintendo has been careful who it licenses the Mario franchise to, and giving the go-ahead to this project was a good call on their part. Simon Carless is a game designer/project director at a UK games developer. His game credits include design on PC and Playstation titles for (amongst others) Eidos and GT Interactive. He can be contacted at h0l@mono211.com. Simon would like to thank Magic Box, Re:Tokyo, Gamespot, FGNOnline, Core Magazine, and his other Japanese sources for the information that helps to write this column. |
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News
Analysis 
A
promising third-party game for the N64? God forbid! Actually, it's Super
Snobow Kids, the sequel to the surprisingly cute cult-favorite snowboarding
game, which Atlus is releasing next month in Japan. More of the same,
perhaps, but the first title was pretty classy, and another crack at it
should iron out some more of those annoying features that some people
took offense to. 
Metal
Gear Solid has now sold 2 million copies. Over half of these were within
the U.S., and the game hasn't even been released in Europe yet. Pretty
impressive. And in the same genre, although markedly different, Konami's
Silent Hill may do just as well. I've had a chance to play a demo, and
it's wonderful -- very suspenseful. The way you pursue shadowy characters
through the mist and the intensely cinematic camera angles (a film graduate
friend of mine got particularly excited about these) really bring a new
maturity to this style of game. After all, Resident Evil and its relatives
are certainly scary and sometimes macabre, but they are also slightly
kitsch, in an action-movie style. Silent Hill drifts more into suspense
than pure shock value, and I have a feeling we're going to enjoy the excursion
very much. It should be out in February in both Japan and the States.
Sonic
on Dreamcast. A couple of Japanese game stand out in particular and deserve
your attention. The first is Sonic Adventure on the Dreamcast. I suppose
with Nights and even "Burning Rangers", we should have realized that public
opinion is divided over Sonic Team games. These titles are often complex,
and spur a love/hate relationship with players. This could be true with
"Sonic Adventure" as well. It benefits from some fascinating side quests
and artificial-life-type games that have little to do with the main quest
(much as Nights had), but camera angle problems and occasional bugginess
mean indicate to me that it isn't quite up there with the all-time classics.
Undoubtedly, however, this title will help Sega sell a lot of consoles.
