This quote comes from the latest edition of Japanese gaming magazine Nintendo Dream…
“I’ll freely admit that I don’t create the sort of games I actually play. Maybe I don’t push my own interests in my games, but I do see a need to make an effort to fulfill the needs of beginners and broaden horizons. It’s not a matter of one approach being better than the other; doing it either way is fine. Some people push their own visions in other art forms, besides.” – Masahiro Sakurai, Super Smash Bros. Brawl director
I have to admit that I’m surprised by Sakurai’s words. Pretty much all of the games he’s worked are titles that core gamers generally enjoy.
As the ‘80s were drawing to a close, the developers at Capcom began work on a top secret project that aimed to set new standards for the platformer genre. That game was called “Dark Rift”, and it blended the intense shooting action of Section Z™ with the latest innovations in platform jumping from Mega Man. In order to properly fulfill the producer’s vision for Dark Rift (later renamed Dark Void), the hardware engineering team at Capcom was enlisted to design and produce an all-new chipset that would be included in every cartridge, enabling huge numbers of sprites and never-before-seen special effects to be displayed on the aging NES® platform and the PlayChoice-10 NES arcade cabinet.
Alas, time waits for no man and game developers are no exception. The dawn of the Super Nintendo Entertainment System® made the additional hardware requirements for Dark Void redundant. Capcom suspended development on Dark Void as it began to evaluate the SNES. Before long, the game was shelved and drifted into the annals of gaming history. Even the internal tape-based archives were lost due to an unfortunate magnet incident which even today is best left un-discussed. Dark Void became a legendary “lost project” at Capcom…until now.
Capcom released their forecast revisions for year ending March 31, 2010 today and the company had some unfortunate news to share with fans. Monster Hunter 3 (overseas release), in addition to Lost Planet 2 and Super Street Fighter 4 have been delayed to the next fiscal year. This means that these titles are now expected to ship anytime from April 1st 2010 to March 31st 2011. In their revisions, Capcom highlighted reasons for the delays:
?Avoid competing with the major titles that other companies plan to introduce
in the 4th quarter
?Preserve the value of Capcom’s titles and maximize sales volume
?Expand the lineup of titles in the next fiscal year and afterward
The First Original Title in a Decade From a Legendary Japanese Developer
NEW YORK, NY – December 21, 2009 – GAME ARTS announced today that the heartwarming action-adventure game The Magic Obelisk will be available in North America on WiiWare™ on December 28, 2009. This is the first original title in a decade from the acclaimed Japanese developer. The Magic Obelisk is an unforgettably original gameplay experience featuring fascinating characters, an extraordinary tale, and the forge of a deep friendship.
Featuring over 30 stages, The Magic Obelisk revolves around a tree spirit named Lukus. Like other tree spirits of this world, Lukus is gifted with the ability to transform into trees and is eager to use his powers to help people around the world. He is looking for the perfect place to take root and become a tree, but unfortunately the only way he can move is by shadows, a journey he cannot complete himself. Players are tasked with helping Lukus reach his goal by taking charge of Popo, a light spirit who can shine his light near the mysterious Magic Obelisks to create shadows. When Popo shines his light near one of these obelisks, he can create shadows and connect two or more shadows to help Lukus move through the level.
This image popped up in the latest edition of Famitsu this week. It apparently shows that Atlus has a new project in development. It seems to be a general teaser of sorts, as it only really seems to indicate that it’s not a Shin Megami Tensei, Persona, or Etrian Odyssey title.
Tetsuya Nomura has worked on a number of projects for Square Enix. He’s acted as the director of numerous Kingdom Hearts titles, participated in the development of a few Final Fantasy projects, and even produced battle graphics for Chrono Trigger. Most recently, Nomura has been busy wrapping up Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep, which will be released in Japan next month.
However, in this week’s Famitsu, Nomura revealed that he has two other games in the works. Regarding the first game, he noted that development is going well and that they are beginning to record voices. Nomura was a bit more cryptic with the other game and was only willing to say that it’s not an entirely new project. Unfortunately, Nomura wouldn’t share any other details about the title, but he hopes fans look forward to an announcement in the future.
The 2009 Video Game Awards clearly are very important to Spike TV. The show was not only broadcasted in the United States, but also in other countries such as the UK and Singapore. But how do the ratings compare to last year? Well, according to Geoff Keighley, there was a “significant increase” in viewership.
“We were really happy with our ratings actually this year. Across our three airings, it goes back to back to back. On Sunday night we saw significant increases in viewership over last year.”
Last week, Capcom hosted a celebration for Mega Man’s 22nd birthday. After playing a little bit of next year’s Mega Man 10, Keiji Inafune answered a few questions from fans. One such question was whether another game in the Mega Man X series will be created. Inafune expressed some interest, but perhaps more interestingly, he stated that first he would like “to do something completely different with Mega Man.”
“I love the series and I’d love to make a game like that, but you have no idea how busy I am. I’m glad the fans love the X series, but I think before I make a return to that series I want to do something completely different with Mega Man.”
