Square Enix's anime-based action game Soul Eater: Monotone Princess has just been given a Japanese release date and price: September 25, for 6,090 yen ($57). Judging from the latest (small) batch of screens, you get a lot of flashy blue lights for your money, at least. It would appear that if you want to see blue arcs more than any other element on the screen, this is your game.
Just as we saw in the last screens, any attack performed in Soul Eater results in a blue tracer. Any impact then registers as a blue circle. It's part of Soul Eater's signature look, and emphasizes the awesomeness of the game's weapons, but it's also a bunch of streaky stuff covering the screen.
Thanks to Famitsu, we now know a little more about how the Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya dancing game works. It'll feature the Hare Hare Yukai dance, of course, but it will also feature new dances! Dancing through the main game will unlock options for the "free mode," including costumes, locations, and songs. In free mode, you can play the song of your choice. This is also where the three-player multiplayer is available. This mode is also being touted as enabling exercise, though we don't know if that means some kind of exercise/health-related (calorie count, etc.) will be included. It is also currently unknown whether the two remaining SOS Brigade members will be playable, but they're male and therefore a low priority.
The SOS Brigade icon in the corner of the screen reads "Action!" to alert players to the start of a stage. The life bar starts at full and decrements along with missed movements. Moves are to be performed while move icons are inside a generous red bar, which makes the game look fairly easy.
The mega-popular anime series The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya is now being made into a Wii game, after success on the PS2 and PSP (mostly as vectors for delivery of exclusive Haruhi figurines). The Wii game, we predict, will be the biggest success of all, because
it also includes a Haruhi figurine, and
it's based on the dance sequence from the anime's ending, which has become an Internet phenomenon
Up to three players control Haruhi, Yuki Nagato and Mikuru Asahina in a motion-based dance game, which seems to involve mimicking poses with Wiimote positioning. In addition, it also contains the standard anime-game adventure component, featuring a new storyline.
We're vaguely excited about Soul Eater, even though we aren't sure we should be. We aren't the biggest anime fans in the world, but the comments on the initial Soul Eater post suggest that there's good stuff to be found in this universe, and the concept of a school for weapon creation certainly holds promise.
But as high-quality as Square Enix's games usually are, and as interesting as this game concept sounds, we have to be wary of non-RPGs from the company. There are a lot more The Bouncers, Ehrgeizes, and King's Knights in Square's history than there are Einhänders. For that matter, the crowds of generic enemies suggest a possible Kingdom Hearts-alike, which seems like a good idea given the sale of Kingdom Hearts.
Square Enix has announced their fifthWiigame (fourth if Crystal Bearers doesn't pan out, of course), and, for the first time, it's not a Final Fantasy or Dragon Quest spinoff. Instead, it's a licensed anime/manga game! Soul Eater: Monotone Princess is based on the Soul Eatermanga (and the anime that just started this week) about students in some kind of crazy school where they learn to make living weapons.
Normally we'd groan about a licensed game, but Soul Eater is an action game! It has adventure elements, of course (those still portraits of the manga's characters have got to tell the story sometime!), but it looks like a pretty cool bit of 3D weapon-based brawling.
Have you been needing a Naruto fix, Europe? Nintendo announced today that Clash of Ninja Revolution will be hitting European stores on March 28th.
The game might not get the ramen-filled welcome that it received here in the U.S., but if you're looking for a fighter and have no plans to freeload Brawl, then Naruto might be your best bet.
The press release also boasts that the "European version of the game features the largest number of playable characters from the Naruto series and introduces several prominent and popular characters for the first time." We're not sure if this means there are extra characters for Europe, though, or if that's just a poorly worded way of telling us about the features available in Clash of Ninja Revolution. We suspect the latter.
With this morning's Smash Dojo announcement, we thought that today was as good a time as any to remind you about why Meowth is the awesomest Pokemon of all time (the anime character, not the species). Of the hundreds of reasons we could bring up to support this argument, we've picked out five for you to chew on:
Meowth is one of the VERY few Pokemon who can converse with humans. Respect.
Meowth actually taught himself to speak and walk upright, all so he could win the heart of a female who rejected him. He eventually got over her trifling ways and pursued other flames.
Even though he grew up in Hollywood, Meowth has a Brooklyn accent. That's just how he rolls.
Like Pikachu, Meowth doesn't bother with that Poke Ball mess. He has more dignity than that.
Because of Meowth's intense determination to mimic human traits, he never learned a lot of battle moves, including his species' signature attack, Pay Day. Despite that, he still rocked Brock's Onix, acting as both trainer and Pokemon, throwing buckets of water on the boulder-ish creature.
BONUS: Meowth cranks dat Soulja Boy.
To further prove our point, we've embedded past the post break two clips from "Go West, Young Meowth," quite possibly the finest Pokemon episode in existence. There might be superior episodes that don't currently exist in our present dimension or timeline, but we haven't seen them yet.
Famitsu has put up the first screenshots we've seen for Major Dream, Takara Tomy's recently announced Wii game for the baseballanime, and ... They look exactly like how you'd expect a low-budget anime sports title to look like. What's up with the crotch pinstripes in the above image? His outfit resembles a wacky line graph more than it does a baseball uniform. Even with the game's Eyeshield 21 similarities, all the motion blur in the world couldn't distract us from that mess of stripes.
These self-playing Super Mario World levels may not be as intricate or as precarious as the original Detteiu Mario videos we presented you, but they have an added dimension that further subverts the normal Super Mario World experience: musicality. The levels are designed such that noisemaking events-- jumps, 1ups, shell kicks-- are triggered in time with the accompanying (shrill) anime theme music. In this way, Super Mario World becomes a musical instrument itself; an extremely difficult-to-program sequencer
The best implementation of the technique, we believe, can be found in the first half of the video above, as Mario bumps and bounces in time to "Hare Hare Yukai" from The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya. We've embedded the original video for you after the break, so you can form your own hypotheses as to why all animation has not been replaced by custom Super Mario World levels. Check the link for some more anime/Mario mashups!
Posted Aug 20th 2007 12:40PM by Eric Caoili Filed under: News
We threw in the towel last week when we mistakenly identified GameFly's Victorious Boxers: Revolution mockup as the finalized design, but now we're scrambling into the ring to retrieve the surrendered cloth. "Uh, sorry about that! It must've slipped out of our hands!"
Dynamite Glove, a community site for the Hajime no Ippo series, received a first look at publisher XSeed's actual packaging, and it is a thing of beauty. This is the sort of box that we could run up the Philadelphia Museum of Art's steps with, holding it above our heads once we've reached the top, hopping up and down in slow-motion as the training montage fades out.
Those of you who would still rather have Ippo's fighting figure on the front will be happy to hear that the jacket is reversible, the opposite side using artwork from the Japanese cover. Jump past the break for a better look at both boxart designs.
Welcome to our weekly feature, Virtually Overlooked, wherein we talk about games that aren't on the Virtual Console yet, but should be. Call it aretro-speculative.
Wolfteam's El Viento for the Genesis may look like just another 16-bit action platformer, but that's only because it was. But it's not a bad one, and we live in a world now where side-scrolling action games are a rarity. We might as well play some old ones while we're waiting until the end of time for new ones.
Kekkaishi is a manga and anime series about high school kids who trap demons inside magical barriers in order to protect their haunted school. We think. Not having read the manga or seen the cartoon, we're mostly concerned with the Wii adaptation and the basic gameplay mechanic, which looks fun.
You target crazy demon creatures with a reticle, then you apparently draw shapes around them, and fling the Wiimote upward to create barriers in those shapes. Once the monster is enclosed, you hit the B button to destroy it. If you forget the anime license, that actually sounds like an interesting basis for an arcade-style game with potentially enjoyable motion controls. But if you remember the anime license, it sounds like a recipe for wasted potential that we'll never see in the US anyway.
Don't get us wrong, we used to like Dragonball Z. When we were, like, twelve. But with the announcement of yet another DBZ game coming to the Wii, we can't help but think of all the other deserving anime franchises that could use the gaming treatment. The import Naruto titles on the 'Cube were spectacular, and we hear that the Bleach and Full Metal Alchemist titles aren't half bad.
You guys probably watch more anime than us, so which series, no matter how obscure, would you have make its way to the Wii? How about Read or Die, which could make very interesting use of the Wiimote for the various paper-based powers, or maybe Hikaru no Go, as a cool boardgame/RPG tandem title? Come forth, otaku, we summon thee!
Posted May 21st 2007 6:35PM by JC Fletcher Filed under: News
Even though the series started in Japan back in 1989, and ended in 1996, the tie-in games just keep on coming for Dragon Ball Z.Atari has announced Dragon Ball Z Budokai Tenkaichi 3 for the Wii and PS2. Like the previous installment on Wii, this is part of the Dragon Ball Z Sparking series in Japan and is developed by Spike.
Dragon Ball Z Budokai Tenkaichi 3 will include improved Wii controls and over 150 playable characters, which is a lot of big-haired dudesand blonde versions of those same big-haired dudes. The stages will include day/night versions, which opens up a transformation ability for many characters. There's a teaser animation on the Japanese website, but no screens or anything yet.
What did you all think of the last DBZ game on Wii? Are you enthused about another one? Has the series been run into the ground?
We have yet to get the first Gundam game in the US, and BandaiNamco is already moving on to another one. Whereas SD Gundam SCAD Hammers used the pudgy lil' SD Gundam characters, this one is based on Gundam 0079, which is serious business. We've got a scan featuring the first images from the game after the break.
Also announced, but not yet shown, was a Wii version of Guilty Gear XX Accent Core-- this is apparently 2D Fighter Announcement Week. We're a little scared to see how a precise 2d fighting game will use the Wiimote, and we're hoping that we can skirt the issue with configurable Classic Controller functionality. At least until Hori gets around to releasing a wireless joystick.
Have you been needing a Naruto fix, Europe? Nintendo announced today that Clash of Ninja Revolution will be hitting European stores on March 28th. 
With this morning's Smash Dojo announcement, we thought that today was as good a time as any to remind you about why Meowth is the awesomest Pokemon of all time (the anime character, not the species). Of the hundreds of reasons we could bring up to support this argument, we've picked out five for you to chew on:
We threw in the towel last week when we mistakenly identified GameFly's Victorious Boxers: Revolution mockup as the finalized design, but now we're scrambling into the ring to retrieve the surrendered cloth. "Uh, sorry about that! It must've slipped out of our hands!"
We have yet to get the first Gundam game in the US, and Bandai Namco is already moving on to another one. Whereas SD Gundam SCAD Hammers used the pudgy lil' SD Gundam characters, this one is based on Gundam 0079, which is serious business. We've got a scan featuring the first images from the game after the break.
