Nintendo Wii Fanboy

All those Wii and DS profits must have been burning a hole in Nintendo's pocket, because they went developer shopping and picked up Monolith Soft. We guess they really liked that one screenshot of Disaster: Day of Crisis.

Monolith Soft is responsible for the reviled Xenosaga series (the Japanese limited edition release of Xenosaga II included the unfortunate figurine seen here, nicknamed MOK-KOS), the crossover strategy game Namco X Capcom, and, in conjunction with Tri-Crescendo, the two Baten Kaitos games. Maybe now we'll get that pseudo-religious science-fiction Kirby RPG we've all been waiting for!

Nintendo released a single screenshot of Monolith Soft's Disaster: Day of Crisis, the natural-disaster survival game announced at E3 2006. We now have our first indication of how the game will play-- that arrow suggests a Quick Timer Event. Whether that means an action/adventure game with occasional quick-button-press segments, or a Dragon's Lair-style game, we don't know. What is surprising even to us is that we're kind of hoping for the latter. We miss those laserdisc games! Are we the only ones?

Sure, we know a bit about Red Steel, Ubi's Yakuza-killing FPS where you're in charge of saving your bride-to-be through a violent combination of sword and gun play. Yeah, old news. But did you know that, during a nice dinner in America, Japanese Yakuzi spray up the place in an attempt to get your future bride's father's ancient sword, instead fatally-wounding him and abducting her, fleeing back to Japan? Oh, no? Not so smart now, eh?

Once you get to Japan, you'll also enlist the constant aid of Otori, who teaches you the art of sword combat, and Harry, night club owner and your primary source for learning the way of the gun. There are also other characters listed in Ubi's press release, along with a run down of their research into Japanese architecture and culture. The team also attempted to gain an American perception of the culture through visits to various Japanese centers in major US cities. With so much time put into making the atmosphere believable and realistic, let's hope they found some time to improve the game's controls.