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Go East, Young Man Metal Gear Solid: Version Integral! One of the major news stories this time round is that there is a special, enhanced edition of Metal Gear Solid coming out July 4 in Japan. MGS: Integral includes a third CD with 300 new training sessions, the completion of which opens up new events and stories in the game. There are also options to play the game from a first-person perspective and randomize the items and guards in any location, as well as several other cool extras. This sort of "director's cut" approach to popular games seems to be increasingly popular. It's sometimes motivated by the fact that the U.S./European release of a title includes enhancements that people can add during the gap between release dates. The original Japanese version can then be re-released with those enhancements and other goodies. (See Sonic Adventure in the future, perhaps?) Is it ripping off the public? Not if the enhancements are worthwhile and people want more of a title, and in Metal Gear Solid's case, that's true. As a side note, it's interesting that Metal Gear Solid has sold "only" 600,000 copies in Japan, which doesn't put it spectacularly high on the list of Japan's biggest titles of last year. Konami has sold far more copies in the U.S. and Europe, where players seem to be more into action games - perhaps because action movies (upon which MGS is based) are the mainstream in the West, whereas, broadly speaking, action-based cartoons are the mainstream in Japan. Namco - Tekken 4 for PSX2? As some of you may have heard, Namco has announced it will release Tekken Tag Tournament -- effectively a "Tekken 3-and-a-half" -- in arcades this summer. Reports are that players are able to fight in "teams," perhaps changing characters mid-bout, and all the characters from Tekken 1-3 are supposed to be included. The game uses the System 12 arcade board, as used in Tekken 3, which is not too far away from Playstation architecture. I'd say Tekken Tag Tournament is an almost guaranteed PSX release for this Christmas. Even though Sony is busy readying the Playstation 2, they'll still want some late, strong Playstation titles. Other news I hear from the Namco camp is that they are preparing Tekken 4 for the Playstation 2, and much of the design has already taken place. The team is just waiting for final Playstation 2 dev kits, or may have only just received them. It seems likely, then, that there will be some kind of Playstation 2-based arcade board that Namco will use for the arcade release of Tekken 4. And, although arcade games do not figure in Sony's strategy at all, the birth of such a board could be very dangerous for Sega's Naomi technology, especially if it's relatively low-cost. Also, it seems that the Ridge Racer R4 team has started working on a Playstation 2 racer -- gentlemen, start your drooling. Rumor also has it that Soul Calibur will be Namco's only major Dreamcast release unless the installed base of Sega's machine increases dramatically. Oh, dear. And finally, a gun game based on Lethal Weapon 4, by Namco but using PSX2 technology? Now that's a weird rumor. More conceivably, perhaps, I have also heard reports of Time Crisis 3. But you never know, Joe Pesci may yet be popping up in our arcades in whiny polygonal form. Dance Dance Cultural Phenomenon It seems that Konami's Bemani music games have ingrained themselves so far into Japanese youth culture that there are even Dance Dance Revolution championships held in Tokyo. The Re:Tokyo web site reported on the "Best Of Cool Dancers" final, in which 92 dancers strutted their funky stuff on the Konami arcade machine at a massive disco in the trendy Roppongi district. For those not in the know, Dance Dance Revolution is a music and dancing game where you step on floor pads in time to the music in order to win. It seems that there was even an exhibition competition at the championships, in which contestants did crazy things such as playing without looking at the screen, two players switching sides while playing, dancing back-to-back, and so on, all while making perfect scores. Wow. It has to be said, looking at these championships as an example, that Japanese game players seem to comprise an even more obsessive fan base than the West, and a much more female fan base, too, as I may have mentioned before. It's interesting that the many books, articles, and so on about girl gamers haven't really touched on this -- games do appeal a great deal more to both sexes in Japan, especially the nonviolent titles such as the Bemani series. I guess the West is so much more culturally fragmented and arcade games are that one notch further away from the mainstream in the U.S. and Europe. This and the fact that gender-based "likes" and "dislikes" seem more differentiated outside Japan means that attracting female players will be much trickier. The difference may be that in Japan, arcades can be social places. In the West they are generally antisocial places, and this fact resonates down to home-based gaming. There is clearly a lot more to it than that, however, and I'll try to discuss it soon in another MGT Report, when I'll continue to offer the same cod-psychological generalization of cultures. Ahem. Other News Capcom has announced another killer late-Playstation title, Biohazard: Nemesis (a.k.a. Resident Evil: Nemesis). It's a semi-prequel to Resident Evil 2 and will feature the same winning mix of CG backgrounds and 3D characters. Although Metal Gear Solid has proved it can be done in real time, Resident Evil 2 had the suspense and refinement to avoid most of the problems with fixed camera angles. And besides, look how much trouble a lot of people are getting into with 3D cameras nowadays. With the Resident Evil movie in development and the Dreamcast Res Evil title due out around the same time near the end of this year, it's another franchise that can only get bigger. Top Ten Japanese Games (Week Ending March 28)
At last, the Japanese chart heats up again, with these titles moving some serious units (the top three games all sold over 100,000 in a week). Konami's cartoony super-deformed-ish baseball game for the N64 rockets in at #1, while Sega, Sony, and Nintendo fill out the next three slots with some of their top titles. Pokemon Snap for the N64 is worth commenting on further, it being a pretty crazy idea, and typically Japanese in execution. If you remember the stages in Pilot Wings on the N64 where you had to take pictures of certain features to score points, the whole game is essentially along those same lines. You get driven around an island and have to take nature photographs of Pocket Monsters in their natural habitat. When you run out of film you get returned home and your pictures are judged. You can put food down to tempt some Pokemon to reveal themselves, and the whole concept is tremendously bizarre but at the same time quite endearing. Of course, the license helps, and also the fact that you can choose your favorite photos and print them out as stickers in certain Japanese convenience stores. But in general, you can imagine this going straight over the heads of most Western players. We'll see if it ever gets released outside Japan. Further down the chart, there's some interest, too, as Densha De Go! 2 rockets towards half a million copies (train games, huh?), and the excellent but slightly-flawed Blue Stinger gives Sega two Dreamcast titles in the Top Ten. One final, rather sweet piece of news: Playstation's King Of Fighters 98 has two variant covers, one with Kyo's eyes open and one with them shut. The version with his eyes open appears on only one in every 100 copies of the game, making it cool and highly collectible, much like variant comic book covers. Might we ever see variant video game covers sweep the market? God help us all. Until next time, adieu.
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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