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Beware The Console Wars, My Son Playstation 2 - Hype Time As the Japanese release date of the Playstation 2 rapidly approaches (March 4th, lest we forget, batfans!), more and more games are sneaking out of the woodwork, although not all of them are confirmed for launch date.
The slight lack of new-idea-based launch titles is unsurprising if you consider that even Tekken Tag Tournament has now slipped to March 30th. If a game with the majority of its gameplay and features already designed can't shoehorn itself into a launch date, what hope have we for newly designed titles? But onward to the more interesting details of new titles, some launch titles, even. Konami has a launch soccer title, Jikkyou World Soccer 200, part of the "ISS" series - flat out the best set of soccer videogames available right now. Admittedly, this isn't mainstream in the States (but certainly is in Europe), but who can forget to drool over 100 countries with real-name teams, 8 game modes, and some really absolutely spectacular-looking graphics? Considering there's an established AI and gameplay engine to build on there, look for this to be a highlight launch title (yes, much better than Virtua Striker 2!) Intriguing, Jaleco has just announced Stepping Stage as a 2xCD launch title for Playstation 2, along with optional dance controller. This is particularly interesting for two reasons - firstly, in light of the litigation-happy Konami and their Bemani series (Stepping Stage is basically Dance Dance Revolution with a different step-pad configuration), and secondly because Jaleco have licensed music titles from Avex and BMG, doing what Konami have been starting to do recently - getting recognizable music tracks to dance along to. And these are recognizable in the West, too - Britney Spears, Backstreet Boys, and Steps, anyone? Oh, and lo and behold, isn't that the late Scatman John on one of the screenshots of the game too? So, this, whilst hardly showing off the PS2's capabilities, looks like it should be a pretty fun and relevant title, and the kind of mainstream thing Sony are looking for. Providing Konami don't get the lawsuits out, that is - but since the arcade version of Stepping Stage has never been challenged in court, as far as I know, they should be ok (unlike Jaleco's VJ.) And there's plenty of other new titles looking smart, too - Square's new baseball and wrestling titles, their Driving Emotion racing title, From Software's RPGs and Armored Core sequel, Koei's Kessen, and Sony's Gran Turismo and IQ sequels. All systems go for March! In other PS2 news, Magic Box Gaming News, ever an interesting purveyor of Eastern-based tittle-tattle, recently quoted the Nakagawa Junichi paper as pointing out that a number of Japanese software companies involved in PS2 launch titles have been doing well on the stock market. Konami's stock has gone up 10 percent since they announced PS2 titles in December, and Namco's and Square's has similarly increased. PS2 is probably the most awaited console in history, and it seems this buzz has spread to investors, too. Dreamcast Roundup One of the most exciting things for us design freaks since last time has been the announcement of Capcom's Power Stone 2, complete with some amazing looking screenshots (skydiving, anyone?) and 4-player simultaneous gameplay. Were we able to drool any more effectively at this point, we would do - the original innovated cleverly and had amazing graphical design, although the gameplay was ultimately a little shallow compared to Tekken-esque games. The sequel should go even further towards a supremely enjoyable experience. Yummy. Another
interesting announcement from Capcom is a collaboration with KDD on a
fighting game network. This will enable forthcoming Capcom games such
as Marvel Vs. Capcom 2 and Rival Schools 2 (both newly announced)
to run over a network. However, what isn't always made clear is that this
is again the high-speed Tokyo cablemodem service, and these games won't
work over conventional modems in Japan. So whilst we must applaud Sega
for allowing Net access with its normal modems, it is definitely continuing
to have problems delivering anything more than very simple games over
a 56k modem network. I've heard that the DC modem has to do some operations
in software and games take a hit as a result, so this may be at least
part of the problem. But nobody can really run precise things such as
fighting games well over a conventional modem, so Sega aren't exactly
entirely to blame.
The release of Shen Mue finally happened (see the charts section for a little more sales commentary), and for those who've seen it so far, two things are clear. Firstly, it looks absolutely amazing. Secondly, it pretty much lives or dies by its story, and by that token, any judgment by a non-Japanese speaker will have to wait until the English-language version comes out. Nuff said. Other News Worth mentioning is the delay of Enix's Dragon Quest VII past the end of the financial year, to sometime in May. Enix has almost halved its revenue estimates for the year due to that delay, and the game is now coming out on Playstation after the PS2 has launched. Thank goodness for the backward compatibility, hm? Upcoming N64 things worth mentioning - Japan will get Kirby 64 in March, and the Zelda sequel, now called Zelda - Mask of Mujula, is due out April 27th Tokyo-wards. These are both long-awaited titles that should dump some non-Pokemon-related oomph back into Nintendo's line-up, with Dolphin still looking at least a year away.
Omnipresent and seemingly omnipotent too, the Pocket Monster Gameboy duo retrace their steps from whence they came - back up to the top two spots on the Japanese chart. Having been given a large holiday-season sales boost, they've now sold 2 and three-quarter million copies each (yep, that's 5 and half million copies for Nintendo in less than 6 months.) They also outsold the third-placed game by more than half. Gran Turismo 2 has proved more than suitable for those vehicularly-inclined Japanese and has already sold over one and a half million copies in Japan. Sony must be looking forward to the continuation of this franchise on the PS2 with some smugness.
Next up is HAL's rather smart Mario Party 2, criticized by some for being too similar to the original and a little over-complicated, but sporting great graphics and that same addictive board-game and mini-game party play angle. Titles like this will extend the shelf-life of the N64 just that bit longer, especially for family users who are less paranoid about being 'behind the times' when it comes to cutting-edge consoles and systems. Further down the chart, we have some of the usual unlikely suspects, namely Momotaro Electric Railway, a train simulator from Hudsonsoft that's clocked up over 350,000 sales so far. The whole locomotive thing just doesn't do the locomotion for the West, does it? Unless anoraks are your preferred haute couture, that is - yep, the traingeek is more geek than the gamegeek. And then there's even a Western-authored title, Donkey Kong 64, approaching a million sales, almost unprecedented for a game actually designed outside Japan. Still, when you facsimile Miyamoto and send the resulting title back to Tokyo, even they can't tell the difference (see also Crash Team Racing, which has already shifted over 300,000 in Japan - and I'm not knocking these games at all, just saying that the only way you can nail Japanese buying habits from a Western perspective is to make very similar games to those that have already done well in Japan. The result is just like selling igloos to the Eskimos, right? Or coals to Newcastle, for our English readers.) Then there's Shen Mue down in 10th place, after debuting in 1st. It's doing pretty good for a Dreamcast title but has still sold less than 500,000 in total. Wonder if it's going to make its money back? Actually, the knock-on effect of such flagship titles in console sales and general prestige probably makes it worth it for Sega, no matter how much they paid for it. Oh, and a special mention for the best name of the chart. For those wondering, Muscular List Vol.1: I'm The Strongest Man is a Japanese wrestling game, as far as I can divine, as opposed to one of those amusing contests where people have to drag trucks with their teeth and hoist stones on top of barrels, which is what the game title reminds me of. What a shame. Oh well, one can only dream.. 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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