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Tokyo Becalmed As you'll see later in the report, it's relatively quiet for Japanese videogaming right now. But there's still plenty of relatively intriguing news in this fallow period. Kojima - MGS2? ZOE?
Although more will be revealed at E3 in Los Angeles, probably by the time you read this, the continued work of Konami's hottest game designer is causing a lot of interest. The latest title Hideo Kojima is involved with, Z.O.E (aka Zone Of Enders for those who were wondering) was probably the most interesting new PS2 title unveiled at the Spring Tokyo Game Show. But also worth reporting is a tantalising recent Famitsu interview, where Kojima mentioned that he was hoping to get Metal Gear Solid 2 out by the fall of 2001, and he was looking at using gameplay mechanics such as temperature and air pressure to vary gameplay. Looks like PS2 MGS2: Sons of Liberty will be a big E3 fixture, and shows the willingness of big Japanese companies to debut Japanese-developed games in a more global marketplace than just Japan. Bear in mind that MGS sold more in Europe and the US individually than it ever did in Japan - this explains what will be an increasing trend, companies such as Square and Konami looking to aim and debut their games for a worldwide market, not just the Japanese market. After all, whilst Western games translate surprisingly badly into Japanese markets, a lot of Japanese games work very well in the West. (Oh, and as a footnote, the Konami/Microsoft strategic partnership, so far pretty much devoid of results, has finally indicated a PC version of Metal Gear Solid, with all the "Integrale" missions, will be out by the end of the year. With Konami also having partnered with Universal recently, there's a lot of complex gamesbusiness cross-pollination going on around here!) Sega's Bright, Cheery Fun Time It seems that Crazy Taxi is practically the epitome of Sega's output of late - very console-like, very bright and happy (look ma, lots of primary colors!), and impeccably stylized. For all those of us who thought the classic sharp-edged Sega look in games like Virtua Cop or Winter Heat was the bee's knees, there's plenty more of that action a-comin'.
Virtua Tennis, which is majestic in arcades, incidentally, has been announced for DC release with wads of extra options (although, as a webmag pointed out recently, a lack of recognizable US tennis players may stunt it somewhat. There's only Jim Courier, and who gets excited by ol' dependable Jim? We want Andre Agassi and, umm, Jim Daly, and we won't settle for less!) Also, there's
a new Athlete Kings sequel for DC, Virtua Athlete 2K, out
in Japan on July 13th. For those who remember the original title (aka
Decathlete, came out for the Saturn and ST-V arcade board), it's
time to start sashaying across the room and caressing your DC oh-so-lovingly.
More at E3, again, but with the Olympics in Sydney this summer, this looks
like a timely move for Sega, since interest in running, jumping, and throwing
large heavy objects will be at a high. But then, of course, that means
more competition, and Eidos has the US and European Olympics licenses
(with ATD hoping to make a better job than the frankly dodgy 1996 titles
it did..), but Konami has the Japanese Olympics rights (International
Track And Field on Playstation was the official Olympics license last
time round in Japan). In any E3 will give everyone a nice look at Sega's relatively successful Japanese output of late, which has been high on arcade-style quality but low on depth (still no good conventional RPGs on the Dreamcast? What can they be thinking?) It'll also be interesting to see Quake 3 and Half-Life and ponder about how they'll translate back to Japan when released over there - it'll be the first time a first-person shooter will have been available on a mass-market console in any meaningful way. Other News A little tidbit that should be priceless - something Japanese developed to watch out for, since it may possibly be shown at E3. Apparently Nintendo have a Kirby title called Kirby Tilt N Tumble, which has a tilt sensor built-in to the cartridge. You have to manoeuvre Kirby through mazes by actually tilting your Gameboy around! This is a pricelessly cool gadget, and especially good for those of your useless game-playing relatives who insist on doing this anyway when using a game controller (you know what i'm talking about, right? They're not going far enough to the left so they start tilting the whole controller to the left as if it'll make a difference.) Also, see below for comments on the probably developer, HAL, since if it's by them, then 'duff' isn't even an option (although, talking of their handheld output, I was a little disappointed by Pokemon Pinball compared to the magisterial Kirby's Pinball Land, but that's something I'll have to work out in my own time..) Also news
of a forthcoming PS2 title which is getting a bunch of publicity in Japan
and is actually, shock, horror, Western developed. Imagineer take a lot
of Western products and move them to the East (including their joint project
with Rage on Wild Wild Racing, for example..) In this particular
case, it's the sequel to Wetrix, called Aquaqua in Japan,
and it's developed by the UK dev-studio Zed Two, who have been round an
awfully long time and are also working on Taz Express for Infogrames.
This type of puzzle title works very well on PS2 (dealing with water,
after all), and is nice and iconic and universal - and after all, the
Japanese have taken puzzle games to their heart, and maybe ten times the
amount of PS puzzlers released in the US are released in Japan. Good luck
to Zed Two.
As mentioned at the start of the report, this is a fairly quiet time for videogame sales in Japan, as reflected by the sales numbers on the Top Ten. Even the first-placed title (Rockman Dash 2 - the continuation of the Megaman 3D series that's probably destined to be cult-ish but nothing more in the West) sold less than 30,000 copies. And the 10th placed title, Warioland 3, shipped a little over 13,000 copies. Nonetheless, this is respectable (and reasonably close to the video-game market in the US, as the Japanese market often is..), but there's no break-out title selling hundreds of thousands in a week right now, as is often the case. Nonetheless, there's some other interesting titles in the Top Ten, and some interesting numbers on the end of them. Kirby 64 is still selling strongly, and in much greater numbers than most Western observers would have predicted, already over 650,000 sales in a very short time. HAL, Kirby's creators, must be delighted (and talking of HAL - aren't they one of the biggest-selling developers in the world right now, and with a very low profile? They also created Pokemon Snap and Super Smash Brothers, both massive sellers..) Also of note - another in the Duel Monsters series from Konami on Gameboy, sorta vaguely Pokemon-ish (I'm surprised they haven't tried importing it yet), has just been released and is already selling through quite aggressively. Marvel
Vs. Capcom 2 is still doing the business for Capcom, but, still way
less than 200,000 sold? The Dreamcast, in general, is on the disappointing
side for sales on quality product such as this (which _is_ actually mainstream
in Japan, as opposed to Finally, Dancing Stage Featuring Dreams Come True is Dance Dance Revolution, but with a famous Japanese pop outfit providing all the songs. Well, tickle me silly, but I can't believe more people haven't tried this type of thing in the West yet? For those who remember Spice World, I believe that sold pretty well, even though it was graphically cute but completely void of even music-game gameplay. So why hasn't anyone broken out the Backstreet Boys dancing game or the Ricky Martin buttock-swaying title? Cash offers to steal this idea to the usual address, please... 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
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