Japan

Dreamcast Mania! – Canceled games: Came out on other consoles

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Finally, the much requested follow up to the canceled Dreamcast games deal I wrote a few weeks ago. For those who missed the first, I am taking a look at games that were slated to be released for Sega’s last system that got the axe for one reason or another (well, probably for the very specific reason that the console was discontinued). Special thanks to Christian for handling a few of these. Even I get tired of making stuff up about games I’ve never heard of.

Super Monkey Ball
What was it?
The first game in the best monkey based Marble Madness clone series.

Would it have been good?
The game didn’t rely on great graphics and the Cube version was indeed fun. It would have been an excellent Dreamcast game. →  Shining Post: Legacy of Great intention

Square Enix and the Merch

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Man Square Enix, you just live to piss me off, don’t you? Apparently you’ve opened your merchandise store to the west, and rather than being a force of awesome, you’ve filled it with lousy merchandise and worthless jewelry so teenage otaku have something to go with their black nail polish.

Let’s look at the subcategories on the side navigation bar. We’ve got specific links for every Final Fantasy from 7 to 12…. oh wait. FF9 isn’t there. Sorry Zidane; guess you weren’t emo enough pal. The rest of the FF’s, as well as all of Dragon Quest are each lumped into a big series category. Just great.

I guess we can still look at what they have. Hmm. Seems the other FF’s have nothing to offer me but figurines of summons. →  Shining Post: Legacy of Great intention

Sony’s Jamie Macdonald lies to Spong

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Digg led me to a hilariously bad review of Bioshock today. The site the review is on is called Sony Defense Force and, luckily, the entire site is hilarious. It may be a parody but it’s hard to tell, especially after the All I Want For Christmas is a PSP debacle.

Browsing the SDF page, I came across this gem of a story: PS2 still outselling Wii in all Major Markets. The bloggers own comments are excellent – “Looks like Wii won’t even be able to catch PS2. Get ready for another Sony dominated generation.” More importantly, the quote from Jamie Macdonald is an obvious lie:

“Jamie Macdonald: Could I just point something out – that PlayStation 2 is still outselling Wii in all the major markets.”

Unless he delivered this interview from last year, he is wrong. →  Imagine all the gamers playing for today

Dreamcast Mania!: What did we miss? – Capcom VS SNK 2: Millionaire Fighting 2001

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What happened – I don’t actually remember if there were even rumors of Capcom VS SNK 2 coming to American Dreamcasts, but considering we got the first game, it seems likely that there were. CVS2 would hit the Dreamcast, but only in Japan. In my experience it was one of the most widely imported titles in the West, to the point where some DC groups talk about it like it was a regular release.

The Game – If there is one thing Capcom’s massive library of fighters has taught us, it is that they never did get it right the first time. The first iteration always comes with its share of problems, while the final revision is often tweaked and polished to perfection. It happened with Street Fighter 2 and 3, it happened with Darkstalkers, and it happened with Capcom VS SNK. →  Jet fuel can’t melt videolamer.

Dreamcast Mania! – EA

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In my development of articles for Dreamcast Mania!, one theme has come up quite a lot – the lack of support from major companies like EA, Square and Konami greatly injured the Dreamcast’s chances of success. I agree that it certainly wasn’t a good thing, and I certainly agree that missing support from companies like Square and Enix in Japan was very close to receiving a death note. But when it comes to good ol’ Electronic Arts, I’m not so certain.

Hear me out with this one – the Dreamcast was released here in 1999. It died in 2001. 2001 is also the first year of Madden on the Playstation 2. Maybe my memory is foggy, but I remember that during the years of the original Playstation, it was NFL Gameday that was the big football game in town, while Madden was fairly shoddy. →  Shadow of Read

Pieces of a Perfect Game: Koei’s arduous slip into mediocrity

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Good strategy games can be hard to come by on consoles. The only company that reliably produces games in the genre is Koei, and, as I’ve noted before, their recent track record is not so good.

Koei is now widely known for their willingness to recycle old work in the form of Dynasty Warriors – to put it more nicely, they haven’t fixed anything that isn’t broken in a while. Their lesser-known, but longer-running, Romance of the Three Kingdoms series is now on its eleventh iteration. I haven’t gotten the latest one yet, because by now I’ve figured it out (took me long enough): Koei has a secret recipe for the ultimate officer-based strategy game, but they insist on releasing it a piece at a time.

You don’t even have to look within the series itself. →  All the lonely gamers, where do they all come from?

Dragon Questing yet again?

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By now you might have heard the news about Dragon Quest 4, 5 and 6 being remade for the DS. Unsurprisingly, the news is being met with joy more than disgust, because unlike with the constant Final Fantasy remakes, two of these three games have yet to see even one western release.

But with all the celebration comes a sad but true joke that many in the community have made; we probably won’t see these Stateside unless Square can conjure up more Final Fantasy demos. After all the care and attention DQ8 got in its localization, the game sold rather dismally, at least compared to FF12. While RPG fans embraced it, the franchise still doesn’t have the mass appeal that FF has outside of Japan, thus they may not find it worthwhile to get these localized. →  It’s time to read and chew bubblegum… and I’m all outta gum.

Gaming Meccas of Japan Pt. 1 — Den Den Town, Osaka, Japan

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Being a geek and living in Japan is kind of like mixing Ecstasy with LSD – it’s one hell of a trip. There are four places in Japan that should be on the must-see list for anyone who calls himself a nerd. The big one is Akihabara in Tokyo and I will be covering that in September along with The Tokyo Game Show. The third spot goes to Nintendo’s world headquarters in Kyoto but there isn’t much to see there because no one is allowed into the facility and tours are never provided. The fourth spot and topic of today’s installment is Den Den Town in Osaka.

Den Den Town can best be described as the poor man’s Akihabara. It is smaller in size, about four or five square blocks instead of an entire section of Tokyo. →  U R Not lamE.

Microsoft E3 Presentation – Disney movies on Live!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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Boy did Microsoft’s E3 presentation bore me. Here were the highlights:

– Disney movies coming to Xbox Live
– Short trailers for some good games including Resident Evil 5, Lost Odyssey, GTA4 and the new Call of Duty
– Sales spin – the 360 is expanding the video game market by leaps and bounds
– G4 cutting away during important moments and generally confirming they are actually a local college station
– Many new Live Arcade games
– Scene It, the boring board game, now coming to the 360 complete with easy to use controller for grandma
– Jeff Bell proving there is no God simply by existing
– New grayish green 360 to celebrate Halo 3
– Speech on how awesome MSs third party support is that ignored that Japan largely ignores MS
– Gears of War coming to the PC
– OMFG Disney movies!!!11 →  Read Band 2

Review — WTF aka Work Time Fun

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I am a masochist, I have to be. There is no other explanation for why I go back to a game that urges me to put as many caps on as many pens as fast as I can. There is no reason to keep chopping wood so fast that when a helpless little bunny gets thrown on the cutting block I can’t stop my swing in time and that little bunny become a bloody mass of flesh and fur. Such is the “game” that is Work Time Fun.

In Work Time Fun, you play a temp in a job agency in Hell. Various demons staff the job search desk, all of them offering the least helpful advice possible. There are tons of boring, grueling jobs to choose from (over forty I think) and they range from being a bouncer at a concert to the examples I described in the introduction. →  Contains 10% more consonants than comparable articles.