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Astral Chain

The Astral Chain IP was previously held by both Nintendo and developer PlatinumGames. Now, however, that’s no longer the case.

PlatinumGames boss Atsushi Inaba confirmed to VGC that Astral Chain fully belongs to Nintendo. There were questions regarding its ownership after the official website changed its copyright, and PlatinumGames was no longer included.

Takahisa Taura was given his first shot at directing a game with Astral Chain. He had worked as a designer for a full decade prior, but that wasn’t enough to offset a bit of the uneasiness he felt.

Taura spoke about the distress he experienced while developing Astral Chain in a previous issue of Famitsu, which also featured supervisor Hideki Kamiya from PlatinumGames and Yoko Taro from Square Enix. It was Kamiya who ended up guiding him through while the team was “trying to nail down the action mechanics.”

Here’s our full translation of the interview excerpt: 

Astral Chain

Astral Chain is officially one year old. Nintendo and PlatinumGames launched the Switch title on August 30, 2019.

PlatinumGames is celebrating the milestone, which includes special art from concept artist Yuki Suda and scenario writer Akiteru Naka. The team also had some rather nice-looking cake prepared.

Here’s the full celebration roundup:

Astral Chain has the type of hardcore action that PlatinumGames fans are accustomed to. On top of that though, there are other detective-like elements as players interact with citizens, question suspects, and more.

Astral Chain supervisor Hideki Kamiya and director Takahisa Taura spoke about the Switch title in a recent of Famitsu. Regarding the the detective portions of the game, Kamiya revealed that the team “toned that stuff down” during development.

Kamiya said in the Japanese magazine:

A recent issue of Famitsu has a lengthy discussion between Japanese game director and scenario writer, Taro Yoko (who is also the creator of NieR), and PlatinumGames’ Takahisa Taura and Hideki Kamiya. The three chat about each other’s games, their development style and their experiences. Yoko revealed some of his wild, early impressions of Astral Chain and where he thought the story to go.

We’ve translated the following:

The Wonderful 101 started out on Wii U where it was an exclusive and published by Nintendo. On the other hand, for The Wonderful 101: Remastered, it’ll be self-published by developer PlatinumGames and will release on multiple platforms. Some may wonder what that could mean for Astral Chain, which is in a similar spot.

PlatinumGames studio head Atsushi Inaba confirmed to VGC that Astral Chain is “owned half by Platinum and half by Nintendo.” He also said that it’s “too early to say” whether Astral Chain will eventually take the multiplatform route, but it would be up to the Big N to sign off on such a move.

Inaba’s full words:

Nintendo has announced a new Spirit Board event for Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. As part of what’s planned, players can get their hands on a set of Astral Chain spirits. There will be four in total.

The new Smash Bros. Ultimate Spirit Board event goes live on January 17. It will last for five days.

Source

Astral Chain

The upcoming issue of Famitsu will have an interesting talk between PlatinumGames’ Hideki Kamiya and Takahisa Taura on a variety of topics. Thanks to a few excerpts being posted early, we now know that the director of Astral Chain, Takahisa Taura, is quite pleased with the Switch exclusive’s performance, stating: “Thankfully, Astral Chain has sold above expectations.”

The discussion also includes Japanese game director and scenario writer Yoko Taro. Naturally, the conversation gets strange and fascinating very quickly. Look forward to more coverage soon.

source

It’s the last episode of NEP of the decade! Join Oni Dino and Galen as they give their personal awards across the nightmare-scape that is gaming in 2019. Biggest surprise, biggest embarrassment/controversy, best new character, and so much more. The gang employs a process of elimination that requires bargains, arguments, concessions and a whole lot of passive aggressive love. What will win? How will we compromise? Who won’t make it out alive?

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Hello my 8-bit and 16-bit beauties. This week on NEP, we accidentally pitch our ideas for the next Luigi’s Mansion game (and the next) in a fervor of excitement. Then, Oni Dino is excited about Heroland while Galen critiques Bioware’s Anthem. Oni Dino goes on to talk his love for Breath of Fire II and Galen muses on the “Zelda II Maker” update we received in Super Mario Maker 2, and what Maker could be next. We then read some listener mail leading into next week’s The Game Awards, a New Year Nintendo Direct and Super Mario Sunshine… 2?

If you’re enjoying NEP, please consider giving us a 5 star review on Apple Podcasts, aka new iTunes. It’s incredibly helpful in getting us exposed to new listeners through algorithms, so we would greatly appreciate your help. Thank you for listening!


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