Nintendo Wii Fanboy

Chunsoft's ridiculously difficult Roguelike series, Fushigi no Dungeon: Fuurai no Shiren, is getting a new installment on the console that we kind of thought would be the least likely destination for crazy-hard games. The new edition, Fuurai no Shiren 3, will be in (very nice-looking) full 3D, and will contain a new item-growth feature in which items left in certain spots will improve after a certain number of turns.

Perhaps our favorite thing about this game is that it renders a common criticism of the Wii invalid. As of right now, the Wii officially has the most "hardcore" game of any next-gen console. We do feel a little bit bad about Chocobo's Mysterious Dungeon, which is pretty much redundant now.

Coinciding with the Japanese Virtual Console release of Mysterious Dungeon 2: Shiren the Wanderer for the SNES, GameSetWatch columnist John Harris has posted (the first half of) an exhaustive writeup of the game. His @Play column, about roguelikes, is consistently excellent even for those of us who are completely oblivious to the genre, and we're glad to have an excuse to mention this especially involved entry.

It's probably a good idea to read this before you jump into any roguelike (except for maybe Pokemon Mystery Dungeon). Shiren the Wanderer and other Mysterious Dungeon games are a little bit simplified, but still ridiculous in their complexity. Random items must be identified, monsters gain levels if they kill something, and it can take multiple playthroughs of a game to level up a weapon to satisfaction. Even containers are random and may turn out to heal you or destroy your items.

We have limited experience with the Mysterious Dungeon series-- we played the first few floors of Nightmare of Druaga, and then quit before it got into the serious stuff. After getting killed, of course. We don't know if we're brave enough to try another one.

Why don't scientists show a little more imagination? Genetically engineered Chocobos would solve most of the world's problems in a stroke. Traffic jams would be a thing of the past and all those cute yellow beasties running around would keep everyone way too happy for war or, y'know, other bad stuff.

It may be some time before this vision becomes a reality, leaving us with Chocobo's Dungeon: Labyrinth of Forgetting, which is heading to Wii in the not-too-distant future. The Chocobo's Dungeon games feature randomly generated levels, making them a little different every time you play. Details on the new title are pretty thin on the ground at the moment; expect more news at the end of the month.