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Seconds Out, Round Two Konami/Jaleco/Namco legal action continues. The spectacle of major games companies in Japan resorting to legal action continues, with three new legal actions since the last MGT Report. First, Namco has filed to have Konami's Beatmania patent declared invalid (since Namco's arcades have Jaleco's VJ machines in them and so are also being legally targeted.) Jaleco, although it has already agreed to stop producing VJ machines, has also filed to nullify Konami's patent. This now looks like it's turning into a protracted legal battle.
Finally, Jaleco has filed a counter-suit against Konami regarding a completely different title! A Jaleco press-release quoted by Re:Tokyo makes it clear that this is a direct tit-for-tat lawsuit only prompted by Konami's VJ legal action. Jaleco's suit concerns its quiz game Hayaoshi Quiz - Nettou Namahoso, which Jaleco claims has had its patents violated by the Namco music quiz Do-Re-Mi-Fa-Grand Prix. So this adds another confusing factor to the legal mix.
Exclusive to this column, we may have discovered which Dreamcast titles Namco is due to release later this year. As you may have seen in previous columns, Namco has indicated that it has two more titles in development, but won't yet reveal which ones they are. After one of the Soul Calibur designers mentioned at a Japanese press conference that one of the upcoming DC titles was "a recent arcade game," a lot of the press has been presuming that Tekken Tag Tournament is one of the games in question. However, we've received reliable information from a senior game industry source that the two titles are in fact Ridge Racer DC and Time Crisis II. This makes sense, as Namco is now allowing Ridge Racer onto other formats such as N64, so a DC port is not out of the question. Also, Time Crisis II is indeed a recent arcade title, and it was unclear which format the company would choose for its conversion. As arguably the best gun game of all time, this would be an amazing DC companion alongside House Of The Dead II and another big plus for Sega. We could, of course, be wrong. (But we sincerely hope not.) DC Weirdness Continues. More unconventional-but-cool software for Dreamcast is being announced after the success of Seaman. This shows a willingness from Sega to diverge DC software to a wider arena than just games (this attitude is due to the Internet link and keyboard/storage add-ons.) First among the unusual content options, a Dreamcast music composition program has just been announced by Waka Lab. Dreamcast Sequencer is out at the end of October and allows
you to make you own music on DC with 2500 built-in sound samples. You can also upload and download tunes over the Internet and even sample with the DC Mic device (although presumably the VMS memory will be fairly limited, so you won't be able to get particularly long samples). Sounding quite similar to the PlayStation European hit Music (and the forthcoming Music 2000), this could be a whole bunch of fun and a potential surprise hit. Secondly, Sanrio is getting behind the Dreamcast with the announcement of Kitty Mail, an e-mail service for Dreamcast using "Hello Kitty" characters. This kind of licensed personalization is a great move, as is the limited edition Dreamcast Hello Kitty Version with a transparent shell and Hello Kitty characters painted on it. Again, judicious use of licensing and the magic word 'limited edition' are giving the DC quite an edge in Japan, and while this may be approaching the high point of DC hype, there's more buzz building, even in a previously unreceptive Akihabara.Other News Square has officially announced it will have at least one PlayStation 2 launch title, and it seems semi-official that two PSX2 Square titles are definitely in development. These are Ehrgeiz 2 from Dream Factory, and a racing game from Escape. We're especially looking forward to Ehrgeiz 2, since the original is an excellent 3D fighter and Dream Factory can only improve on the original, especially with more spectacular interactive 3D scenery afforded by the PlayStation 2. The Tokyo Game Show (September 17th-20th) will reveal all, or at least a lot more. Looks as though Star Gladiator 2 on Dreamcast, only recently announced, is already slipping from its October release-date to some time in winter to allow gameplay tweaking and extra modes to be added. A shame, but if we get a better game at the end, it's worth it. Its first public showing will be at the TGS in September. Titles to watch on PlayStation this Autumn include Choro Q Wonderful from Takara, which has super-deformed cars being able to talk to and even date (!) other cars, as well as all the normal racing action. Goo Goo Soundy from Konami is also more than averagely crazed. It's a strange virtual-pet-meets-dancing-game in the Bemani series - watch your snowman/devil/mummy/skeleton grow up as you get better and better at making him dance! There's also a number of top RPGs in production, including the now partially 3D Breath Of Fire IV from Capcom, Enix's Dragon Quest VII, Sony's Wild Arms: Second Ignition, and many others. Core Magazine reports that depending on how well you do the DC title Seaman, the weird fish-pet-thing can actually say "See you in 2001" (but in Japanese, naturally!) Much like signposted film endings, is this clueing us in to the existence of a Seaman sequel? Let's hope so. More about Seaman in the Top Ten section below. More details on Pokemon Silver and Pokemon Gold on Game Boy for those Pokemon freaks tuned in to Gamasutra. Japanese release is on September 5th, and there are many, many enhancements. For example, there are special in-game time and date related events, massive amounts of new Pokemon, each Pokemon will have a gender and grow differently because of it, and the player now has a 'Pocket Gear' in-game, which works as a phone, data storage, and music player to make you a better Pokemon trainer. The Japanese Top Ten (for the week ending August 1st)
As you can see, there's a fair amount of change this time round, and a brace of sports games hog the top spots. After the major success of Mario Golf on the N64 and Game Boy, Camelot shows that it's the undisputed master of the golf title with Everybody's Golf 2. It's sold well over a quarter of a million in its first week, and is the kind of steady seller that should keep on for months to come. Obviously, its slightly cartoony style isn't entirely to straighter Western tastes, but with the right marketing here in the West it should do excellently. The other two sports titles in the Top 5 are both from Konami, and are continuations of multi-million selling series. The latest super- deformed baseball game, Powerful Pro Baseball '99 on the PlayStation, rapidly approaches half a million sales, even though it's never made the slightest dent in sales outside Japan (ballgame fans over here obviously feel that playing with Lego men is a little frivolous!) And the latest version of International Superstar Soccer on the N64 is also selling like hotcakes - interesting that soccer games are almost always realistic-looking in Japan, whereas a lot of other popular sports games are super-deformed. In any case, Konami, like EA in the West, makes a name for itself and keep improving the franchise season-in and season-out. Another Konami franchise that just keeps delivering is the Bemani series of course. Guitar Freaks sticks at No.2, a likely outcome considering the immense popularity of the entire series of games. And yes, you can get a guitar-shaped custom controller in Japan too. (As a side note, the only Bemani title that hasn't done quite as well is a Game Boy title called Beatbreaker, which is a very bizarre Tetris-style puzzle game where you have to tap out tunes and create blocks, which are then removed if you have certain numbers of blocks in a row. Plays very strangely, but a collector's item, to be sure!)
A couple of Dreamcast titles also hit the Top 10, with Seaman at No.5 causing a particularly big buzz in Japan. We've covered this bizarre virtual pet title before, but to sum up: you have a microphone and you talk to a fish with a man's head swimming round an aquarium, 'Monty Python'-style. Riiiiight. But it's actually excellent, very clever, and Seaman has an interesting and complex life-cycle involving multiple lifeforms (though it's absolutely deranged - the "Seamen" eat each other, for starters!) Looks like it should now get a US release, too, so we can all enjoy it. And Air Force Delta is the last of the brace of Konami titles in the Top 10, perhaps not up to the standard of something like Ace Combat 3, but still a very good Dreamcast title and way better than Aero Dancing, its only DC competitor. 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 
Secondly,
Konami has also filed a lawsuit against Namco itself, for the arcade title
Guitar Jam. Konami contends that the game infringes on the copyright
of the arcade (and now PSX) title Guitar Freaks. The two games
are certainly close in terms of content. But this lawsuit is presumably
at least partially related to the Beatmania suit against Jaleco,
since the games work on the same music-related premises. So, it's all
one big legal mess.
It's
difficult to see what the balanced view of this situation should be. Jaleco's
VJ is clearly very, very close to the Beatmania series.
But a series of high-profile lawsuits seems a very direct way to go about
stopping production. And wasn't it Parappa The Rapper that started
the whole music-related game industry? While the Bemani series from Konami
may have a unique way of depicting the interactivity (scrolling bars with
'notes' hitting a line) that Jaleco 'borrowed', where does taking influences
stop and direct plagiarism begin? My take is that VJ is probably
the wrong side of plagiarism, but it's a shame that Konami couldn't solve
this more amicably. As for Guitar Freaks vs. Guitar Jam,
I haven't seen both cabinets, so I'm not really in a position to comment.
We'll see what happens.
Namco
Dreamcast titles revealed?
