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Eye Think Eye'm Turning Japanese Pokemon Network Title Announced
This wholly different angle in Japan is, of course, at least largely to do with PCs being much less widespread. Cellular networks such as NTT already provide increasing amounts of up-to-date news and entertainment information that the Net tends to provide a lot more in the US. But with companies such as Konami signing on to provide game information services over the cellular networks (100,000 people checked out Konami's Tokimeki Memorial 2 info in just the first week, on just one of the three main networks!), it's clear that Nintendo's move is as lucrative and relevant step as, say, announcing a game will boast Internet support in the West. Incidentally, Gameboy Advance is now apparently due next August in Japan and will include a new Zelda title on launch. It's unclear whether this is likely to be part of the same Zelda trilogy due on GBC over the next few months from Nintendo and Flagship, but it seems entirely possible. 64DD Out - Minus Network Support! Well, the Nintendo 64DD, fabled and famed, is finally available for purchase in Japan, but inexplicably, the online service itself, RandNet, is not yet available, due to some last-minute bugs. It won't actually start until February now. To say this is sloppy would be understating it significantly - the 64DD is more than anything built for downloading and network-related shenanigans, and to launch without it is pretty reprehensible. However, of the titles that did ship, Mario Paint looks like very very good fun as a themed, entertainment-slanted paint package, and Kyojin the Doshin.. well, like the developer's previous titles, Aquanaut's Holiday and Tail Of The Sun, it looks to be pretty much crazy, an acquired taste but very good fun, if a bit flawed. To summarize what actually goes on now that the title is out, the player has to switch between a 'Love Giant' and a 'Hate Giant'. Using these, he can carry things around, lift and lower things, cultivate land, and so on. The giants gets bigger and bigger, and when they get so big they hit the sun (?!) the game is over, but the land stays as you've cultivated it. Also, since the 64DD has a clock, things will change over time, in real-time (though 30 minutes is one day in Giant-land.) Intriguing, indeed. So, the 64DD will continue to exist as a quirky and extremely niche peripheral. It will be great to see forthcoming titles such as Sim City 64DD (due February 2000) and F-Zero Expansion Pack (due April 2000), as well as the increasingly spectacular Mario Paint expansions, including a Polygon Studio add-on adapted from the impressive Nichimen game development tools (due April 2000), and I, which is even crazier and allows you to create virtual actors and mess with them (due February 2000). Other News Particularly vital news comes to us via Namco, whose Ridge Racer V mascot Ai Fukami apparently likes curry and scuba diving, according to her character profile. (I figured the game development community should be kept abreast of that particular gem.) More importantly, the newest screenshots of the PS2 launch title are showing radically improved special effects and background detail, and with some rumours that Gran Turismo 2000 won't be making launch now (with there being an arcade version ahead of the home release), it seems much more likely that Ridge Racer V will definitely make it as a launch title. March 4th, 2000 should herald our chance to see all this impressively curvy architecture from Namco, of both the building and mascot types.
Worth underlining in that previous story is Square's commitment to Wonderswan - they've announced they'll be producing 9 titles for it over time, including ones in the Final Fantasy series, and they'll be compatible with both the cellular phone add-on for the Wonderswan, the Wondergate, and a connector which allows the Wonderswan to interface with both Playstation and PS2, called the Wonderwave. Those in The West in software development should be aware of the Bandai threat coming up from leftfield here - all they need to do is announce a color machine (although there's no sign of that yet), and the range of licenses they have already makes them arguably much more competitive than the Neo-Geo Pocket Color in the West, which is still doing very badly in Japan. As mentioned previously, the Wonderswan does so (relatively) well in Japan because of the strength of the licensed product and because it's so cheap - at this point, the fact that it's black and white matters much less to Japanese consumers. And a colour handheld Final Fantasy title is only likely to come on Wonderswan in the next year or two - boy, would that be a killer app! A low-key announcement but one to watch - the N64 title Pikachu Genki Dechu, the virtual pet game starring Pikachu, has now been confirmed for US release sometime in 2000, and will be bundled with a microphone that will allow you to chat with Pikachu in English. This title hasn't got too much coverage in the West because it's fairly unplayable if you can't speak Japanese (as opposed to games with Japanese text in them, which you can just click through!), but as a killer N64 app when it's starting to fade a little, this and Pokemon Stadium are the aces up Nintendo's sleeve to reinforce its knockout Gameboy performance of late. Capcom seem
to have confirmed both Dino Crisis and Bio Hazard (Resident
Evil) sequels underway in development for the Playstation 2. As if
we didn't know already, but it's nice to be reassured! Actually, it's
a shame that Konami have just got the
The obvious success story here is.. duh.. hang on.. Garbage Pail Kids? Oh no, it's Pikachu again! Despite the cartridge shortages mentioned in earlier articles, there's already been almost 3 million copies of the two new Pocket Monster Gameboy titles sold, and they both topped 500,000 sales in this particular week. [Interestingly, did anyone spot that, much like Lara Croft's new teenage version (ahem, "Young Indiana Jones", anyone?), Pikachu has a cute baby version in Pocket Monster Silver and Gold? Let this serve as a warning - next the Muppet Babies will be coming back or something. Argh.] Down at No.3, Sega at least prove they can sell good numbers in their first week, with their flagship sports title Virtua Striker shipping over 150,000. But with official downsizing of Japanese hardware sales estimates (although accompanied by larger upsizing of American estimates!) and worries about the amount of debt the company has, Sega's Japanese position is not wonderful. But its US and European position is looking increasingly peachy, at least for now. Perhaps we're looking at a rerun of Nintendo 64's relative popularities in and outside of Japan? There's also some curious restructuring going on internally at Sega - for example, Shen Mue is now officially presented and published by AM2 of CRI. CRI are the 'research arm' of CSK, the parent company who own Sega. But then CRI in their own right are also responsible for the Dreamcast title Buggy Heat (TNN Hardcore Heat in the US), and so.. is anyone else confused yet? It seems there's going to continue to be some rebranding going on, in any case, whether financially motivated or otherwise. We'll keep you informed. Finally, an interesting tidbit about Virtua Striker on the DC is that it's again been farmed out to Genki, the developers who converted Virtua Fighter 3TB and also did Tokyo Highway Battle. Also a major near-Christmas release is Sony's RPG Legend Of Dragoon, which has sold a healthy 150,000 in its first week too, but has been getting some questionable early reviews in some Western quarters, especially as it's been particularly long in development. But it seems to be of a pretty high build quality, even if the longer-term gameplay is somewhat flawed, so will cement Sony's reputation as one of the few really competitive RPG producers in Japan (alongside, particularly, Square and Enix.) Keep going down the chart, and you'll find Chrono Cross continuing to sell very healthily indeed, and dating sim of choice Tokimeki Memorial 2 doing pretty good too. New DC title Sunrise Heroes also does pretty good, and the popular virtual pet title Accompaniment Anywhere also sneaks into the Top Ten with a Pocketstation-specific SKU! This particular series is getting so popular in Japan that there's an Accompaniment Anywhere-branded Playstation bundle now available. Until next time.. Simon Carless is a newly transplanted English lead designer at a major Californian games developer. His game credits include design on PC and PSX titles for (amongst others) Eidos and GT Interactive. He can be contacted at h0l@mono211.com , and he'd like to thank Magic Box, Gamespot, FGNOnline, and all his other Japanese sources for the information that helps write this column. 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 
One
of the most interesting announcements since the last MGT Report has been
Nintendo's indication that Pocket Monster X will be released next
April alongside their already-trailed cellular phone adaptor for Game
Boy Color. Perhaps because cellular phones are almost omnipresent in Japan,
this seems a much more natural step than a lot of people in the West think.
Cellular phones are already used a great deal for sending messages/email
and reading information, and so the step to providing possibilites for
fighting against other Pokemon trainers over your cellphone and downloading
new information and game data is a relatively small one.
In
a follow-up to some news reported in the last MGT Report (Shen Mue
being moved forward, most probably because of Dragon Quest VII's
postponement until February 2000), Square announced that Final Fantasy
IX for Playstation will not ship before the end of the fiscal year
(end of March 2000). This is again due to the threat to sales from Dragon
Quest VII, which looms Star Wars-like over release schedules
throughout Japan, having accrued millions of pre-orders. Square's share
price dropped sharply after the announcement, which was likely also due
to the title needing a little more time in development(the postponement
of the Square Millenium show was a hint to that.) In a related note, it
appears Square will show 3 new PS2 titles, 5 new Playstation titles, and
a number of new Bandai Wonderswan titles at the rescheduled Millenium
Show on Jan.29th 2000. Well worth looking forward to.