It's been known for awhile that Nintendo was calling some sort of press conference in Tokyo on October 2nd, but nobody knew exactly what it was about. Now major French gaming site Gamekyo is reporting, if unsourced, that Nintendo is going to announce a revival of a major retro franchise at the press conference. The post is in English, and here's the text in its entirety.
Nintendo seems to be hiding some more surprises for its upcoming Japanese press conference next Thursday. Everyone is talking about a new model of the Nintendo DS that includes a camera, but what you don't know is that Nintendo has a new game to show. We can announce today that Nintendo will reveal a new game for the Wii during this event which is actually an old franchise that everyone is waiting for. Nintendo press conference will be held in Japan on October 2nd.
Hmm, are we finally going to see that Kid Icarus or Punch-Out!! game rumored to make its first appearance at E3? Personally, I'm hoping for the long-overdue revival of Devil World...
Hey, my Nintendo Power finally showed up! So I sit down and read all the nice articles inside I've been talking about, have a few smiles, and then go to work crunching through the four dozen or so websites I keep an eye on for news. One of the first things I find is this, and while I'm not usually one to complain about game prices, it really does give me pause.
Yes, as reported by GoNintendo and found via Amazon, the pre-order price of GTA: Chinatown Wars is $49.99. That's getting into the upper end of the Wii's usual software price range. Hell, you could buy both PSP GTA titles for that much.
Now, granted, Grand Theft Auto sounds like it's going to set a new standard for "feature rich" in a DS game, but... fifty bucks? People are still upset about the standard $39.99 for The World Ends With You. This needs to be one hell of a game if it does actually street for an even higher price tag.
There's a really interesting rumor doing the rounds regarding Square-Enix's Final Fantasy IV: The After. In Japan, it's a cell phone exclusive sequel to FFIV, with the presentation done all 16-bit style. With cell phone games less popular in the US, Square-Enix has mentioned wanting to find a way to get the title out over here on a different platform. You'd expect Nintendo DS, right? Actually... the word on the street is that Square-Enix may try to take advantage of the Mega Man 9 retro craze and release it as a WiiWare title.
The source on this is fansite RPG Site, who in turn credit the info to unnamed sources at Square-Enix USA. Now, if it's the sources who keep telling EGM about how there's going to be a PS3 remake of Final Fantasy VII every year, this is probably nothing more than wishful thinking on the part of fans (and probably Square-Enix USA). That said, the entire scenario strikes me as eerily plausible, and dropping $10 or so for the game on WiiWare is a better deal than a $30 DS cart would inevitably be.
So there's finally word on the additional features for Chrono Trigger DS. The source on some of this info is vague, so take it as rumor if you want.
The online head-to-head feature duplicates the monster battling that's shown up in the more recent Dragon Quests.Can catch, breed, and evolve 50 different species of the game's monsters, and earn rare items by winning battles with them. You can also battle them against other players via Wi-Fi.
Via NeoGAF comes the info on the two bonus dungeons. Dimension Distortion is a dungeon that appears to have different features in different time periods, and clearing various parts of it has an affect on the End of Time. Dragon's Sanctuary also has a gimmick that requires you to clear different parts of it in different time periods, too.
Chrono Trigger
Rumor-mongers extraordinaire Kombo have done it again, this time dishing up a ton of Mega Man 9 rumors including a potential release date, features, and hints at other big upcoming releases. Here's a quick summary.
- There will be about one year's worth of DLC.
- Release date is September 22.
- Release may be pushed back because of "big" VC title that could also hit that week. (Mega Man 2? Earthbound? More Cho Aniki?
- DLC to include: different Buster Shot patterns, remixed music, playable Protoman, Star Force Mega Man costume
- DLC may be free or earned via in-game actions.
- Wii is lead release platform for MM9, other versions are unaltered ports
- XBLA Achievements cooked up by Capcom USA, "not worth your time".
- Controls on XBLA, PSN versions inferior to Wii Remote controls.
Something weird is up at Nintendo Europe. Over the weekend, two new DS games got announced and one long-absent Wii game got dated via their press area, despite total silence from America and Japan. Is Europe about to get a ton of exclusive Nintendo games, or has their press room committed a major gaffe?
Reportedly, Nintendo Europe's press area was updated with a new Disaster: Day of Crisis press release that announced the game for an October 24 release. That said, Day of Crisis has already missed at least three different ship dates and was declared "indefinitely delayed" just a few months ago.
While there's no press releases for them, Nintendo of Europe's press site is also reportedly listing the DS RPGs Herakles no Eikou and Bokura wa Kaseki Holder in their upcoming release schedule. Herakles no Eikou is actually a fairly old series of RPGs about Greek mythology, while Bokura wa Kaseki Holder has something to do with collecting dinosaur fossils.
EDIT: Looks like the second Professor Layton game has also been dated for Europe, November 7th. Of course, there's no new info on the US release date.
Here's an interesting follow-up on the last LucasArts rumor. This time is the source is the perennial but occasionally dubious Quartermann, so take it for what it is: another rumor, though an interesting one.
Remember earlier this summer when LucasArts finally announced Star Wars: The Clone Wars -- Lightsaber Duels, the lightsaber-wielding Wii game that everyone had been waiting for? And then not a month later, when Nintendo announced WiiMotion Plus during E3? Well, apparently LucasArts hadn't heard anything about this new technology, so Lightsaber Duels will not be implementing it. The understandably ticked-off publisher is already in talks about another Wii lightsaber game that will use MotionPlus for sometime next year, according to our sources
I sort of wonder if this new Star Wars lightsaber game, if it's not lies and vaporware, might use an Original Trilogy setting. It would allow for more "realistic" battles and better use of the MotionPlus support.
The upcoming Tatsunoko vs. Capcom fighting game is drawing quite a stir from the fan community, if less so than the much bigger Street Fighter IV. Tatsunoko vs. Capcom is a fighting crossover in the style of Marvel vs. Capcom, this time pitting Capcom against the anime heroes created by the legendary Tatsunoko Pro animation studio. While it's set for an arcade release, it's still interesting to us because of some information that popped up on this Japanese page.
Along with basic information about the arcade unit's price (a ridiculous 300,000 yen), basic gameplay style, and concept, there's some mention of the hardware the game is running on. The site describes the game as running on a "Wii interchangeable circuit board" - basically, an arcade board that's extremely similar to the Wii's own internal hardware. Think of the Dreamcast and its famous arcade sister board, the Naomi.
What this seems to mean (if I'm right) is that Tatsunoko vs. Capcom is, in hardware terms, basically a Wii game, and likely to be ported to the Wii when time for console editions comes.
Now here's a bit of speculation to chew on. There have been no official announcements, but Go Nintendo has put up an image of a flyer which states that High Voltage's highly-anticipated Wii FPS The Conduit will be at this year's Penny Arcade Expo... as part of the Nintendo booth. That is, it will be displayed at PAX alongside Nintendo's own first-party games.
At E3, High Voltage had to make off-site appointments to show off the game because they didn't have a publisher, and so didn't have a booth. Why is Nintendo suddenly playing host to them at PAX? Did High Voltage cut some kind of deal with Nintendo to get floor space? Possible, but... does Nintendo intend to publish the Conduit themselves?
The only hard source on this is a tiny paragraph in this month's new Game Informer, so take it with a grain of salt. It's long been established that Nintendo didn't bother to tell any third parties about the Wii MotionPlus peripheral until their E3 press conference this year, which means that basically nothing hitting in Q4 this year or even early 2009 is likely to support it.
The word is that LucasArts is hopping mad with Nintendo about this, since one of their Q4 titles for this year - Star Wars: The Clone Wars: Lightsaber Duels - is the sort of title that would benefit tremendously from 1:1 motion input. Instead, the "ultimate lightsaber combat game" is very likely to ship with swordfighting controls inferior to those found in Wii Sports Resort (on top of being beaten to lightsaber combat by No More Heroes).
If Nintendo had shared the tech with them earlier in the development process, then Lightsaber Duels could've shipped as one of the first titles with full Wii MotionPlus support. Instead, it's looking more likely that LucasArts and possibly other third-party publishers are simply not going to support the peripheral at all.
