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Dead or Alive 5's 'fighting entertainment' means even crazier stages
Team Ninja pulled an Apple-style "one more thing" at its pre-TGS party, announcing Dead or Alive 5 at the last minute and showing an early trailer. At that event, studio head Yosuke Hayashi called DOA 5 a "fighting entertainment" game, something distinct from other fighting games. Later, in an interview at Tecmo's TGS booth, I asked Hayashi to clear up that terminology. The early generation of fighting games, around Street Fighter 2, he said, "had some of the most outrageous graphics, fun gameplay, and really a lot of stuff going on." He implied that, in comparison, modern fighting games emphasize online competition over wowing players with unprecedented visuals. "It's not as over-the-top, it's not as much of the entertainment aspect that the originals had, and so they seem a little bit dull, in some aspects." The term "fighting entertainment" represents an effort to return spectacle to the genre.
Ninja Gaiden 3's 'Hero Mode' allows more players to experience the story
Ninja Gaiden 3 is Team Ninja's first full Gaiden game post-Itagaki, and it looks like things are progressing a little differently. For one thing, it's got a sort of easy mode called "Hero Mode," which adds automatic dodging and blocking of most normal attacks, to which I can imagine Itagaki's head shaking, making waves in a cloud of cigarette smoke. I asked director Fumihiko Yasuda (who also did design work on Sigma 2) about why such a ... friendly mode would appear in such a typically unfriendly series. "We really wanted to flesh out the story this time around," Yasuda said, "so we wanted people to enjoy that story and get used to the game as it is. In the past the games were really hardcore and we couldn't get players to stay with us and complete the game." Team Ninja is "redefining" Hayabusa's image, and wants people to experience that whole story without dying over and over again or throwing the game into the disposal in frustration.
Square Enix announces Final Fantasy XIII-2 DLC
DLC is the new black, you know? During the recently concluded Tokyo Game Show, Square Enix producer Yoshinori Kitase announced a fair amount of DLC for this winter's sequel to a sequel: Final Fantasy XIII-2. Now, DLC is par for the course for a lot of western RPGs, thanks in no small part to the Dragon Ages and Mass Effects of the world, but it's virgin territory for the everlasting, oxymoronic Final Fantasy series, spinoffs not withstanding. Nothing specific was revealed, but Kitase did mention weapons, monsters and costumes as being on tap. We hope Square Enix goes whole hog; we'd pay 1200 MS Points for a blinged out Historia Crux.
Street Fighter X Tekken: Cole MacGrath pummels Ken on Vita
Here's some more Street Fighter X Tekken footage, purportedly taken from PlayStation Vita. Infamous loner/loaner Cole MacGrath appears and brings along his spectacular electrical vortex. (Isn't it ionic? Don't you think?)
There will be spud: Our tour of retro game shop Super Potato
Inside Tokyo's electronics district, Akihabara, you'll find Super Potato. In short, Super Potato is a retro gamer's paradise, especially for those with fond memories of Japanese titles. The multi-level store is packed with nearly every older title and system under the sun. Famicom, Super Famicom, Mega Drive, Sega Saturn -- you name it, and it's there. I made it my mission to find Super Potato and, within its walls, a copy of Vampire Savior, the third game in the Darkstalkers series that never came out in North America. Spoiler alert: I found it, along with a whole lot more. Now I just wish I had remembered to look for Dungeons & Dragons Collection. There's always next year, right?
Mommy Tummy and me: A Tokyo Game Show story
This year marks my first year at the Tokyo Game Show. It also marks the first time I've ever been to Japan. I've heard stories about how different it is, of course, and I've seen Lost in Translation more than once. So, before I arrived in Tokyo, I had considered the possibility that there might be a crazy adventure in the works. I've now experienced Mommy Tummy, a "serious game" project from Kosaka Laboratory – part of the Kanagawa Institute of Technology – and let me tell you: Scarlett Johansson ain't got nothing on me.
Let's play the blame game: Inafune on what went wrong with Capcom's original IP push
In the latter half of 2009 and early 2010, Capcom released two major retail games in collaboration with prominent Western devs: Crimson Skies dev Airtight Games created Dark Void, and gun-for-hire Grin rebooted Bionic Commando. Those two games, however, were prominent sales flops. One even contributed to the eventual closure of Swedish dev Grin. For its part, Capcom promptly returned to its tried and true franchises, with a lineup today featuring many more sequels than back in 2009. At the time, Mega Man co-creator Keiji Inafune was overseeing production on Capcom's retail titles, and when I spoke with him this past week at the Tokyo Game Show, I wanted to know what went wrong. Beyond sales, neither game was particularly loved by critics, especially Dark Void. "[It's] very, very simple: The publisher was Japanese and the developer was foreign. Even inside Japan, when you work in two different companies, they always blame each other for any small mistakes, so that's pretty much what happened in those two games -- blaming each other," Inafune explained. He went on to compare those development experiences with that of Dead Rising -- a game that has since become a major franchise for Capcom, not to mention a commercial success.
Tokyo Game Show 2011 wrap-up
All good things must come to an end, and likewise with this year's Tokyo Game Show which wrapped up yesterday. Despite the PS Vita's dominance and the lack of newly-announced hero hardware at the show, we were still able to keep ourselves entertained with the odd peripherals here and there, alongside some very interesting exhibits both at TGS and the Amusement Machine Show next door -- head past the break to humor yourselves. Alternatively, feel free to catch up on our TGS coverage while you're here (we have a list after the break as well), and don't forget to check out our awesome buddies over at Joystiq for even more gaming news. %Gallery-134244%
Crazy Eddie's TGS 2011 Trailer Blowout! It's an Asura's Dogma Army Online of savings!
That's right folks, it may still be Sunday here in the states, but in glorious Nippon it's already Monday, and that means these Tokyo Game Show trailers are priced to move! Our manager is out of town and we've gone crazy!! Just look at these prices: Army Corps of Hell Trailer - Free! Dragon's Dogma Trailer - Free!! Asura's Wrath Trailer - Free!!! Phantasy Star Online 2 Trailer - Price too low to print!! Resident Evil Revelations Trailer - 100 percent off!! Are you still reading this? You'd have to have a toolbox for a head to pass up an opportunity this golden! Jump past the break and find out why Crazy Eddie's Discount Trailer Emporium and Rustic Furniture Showcase is still your number one source for new and used video game footage!
How Street Fighter X Tekken's 'Pandora Mode' bridges the fighters' styles
During TGS, Capcom revealed Street Fighter X Tekken's "Pandora Mode," which allows players to sacrifice a character in order to give the tag partner infinite EX meter before also dying, allowing for last-ditch comeback efforts. Curious about the motivation for this kind of crazy mode, I asked producer Yoshinori Ono, who then proceeded to take me to school about the differences in flow between Street Fighter and Tekken games.
Ono: Porting Street Fighter X Tekken to Vita isn't hard, but integrating rear touch panel might be
Street Fighter X Tekken producer Yoshinori Ono told me that he hasn't had much trouble in technical terms porting the game over to PlayStation Vita ("When I say 'I' of course I mean the programmers," he clarified, "because I'm not doing this myself.") "A lot of people, when they're porting to new hardware, especially a handheld, they'll talk about how it's difficult because of memory restrictions or speed or things like that, and I haven't found that to be the case." His team has been able to confer with the team working on the Vita version of Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3, as well, further streamlining the process. The difficulty isn't in the technical stuff, it's in making smart use of the Vita's features. "We've been putting less energy into the porting process itself and more energy into adding additional features, because we don't want to do a straight-up port -- that's silly and meaningless."
Phantasy Star Online 2 preview: Back, in action
Phantasy Star Online hit some kind of magical sweet spot back in 2000. Though its spinoffs and followups kept much of the formula from that release, there was always something that felt off about them, and prevented some fans (like me) from getting fully into them. It turns out that maybe those games were hewing too closely to the first PSO, because the new Phantasy Star Online 2 feels significantly different from its predecessors in action, and seems to have paradoxically recaptured the PSO excitement by doing so. It definitely hits all the right notes, but the mechanics have actually been upgraded. Can you believe it? Of course, the bummer about this is that it's a currently Japan-only, PC-only game.%Gallery-134159%
Harmonix CEO Alex Rigopulos explains what happened to Rock Band Japan
After announcing intentions to bring its Rock Band franchise to the Japanese market way back in the summer of 2008, Harmonix and co-developer Q Entertainment quietly walked away from the project. "Never say never," Harmonix CEO Alex Rigopulos said of the project in a group interview session this week at Tokyo Game Show, answering a question asked by Kotaku's Brian Ashcraft. "We were very much interested in bringing that experience in some form to the Japanese market," he explained. "There were a couple of significant challenges." Beyond the whole "manufacturing and shipping hundreds of thousands more plastic peripherals to an island country" ... thing, Rigopulos lamented issues with licensing Japanese music for the game, which he characterized as "very difficult in Japan, relative to other countries." He also pointed to a rather obvious concern: space limitations in Japanese households. "Even for people who have the space, Japanese families tend to not make a lot of noise in their homes. They generally have a quieter lifestyle at home 'cause they're living in closer quarters, and also Japanese families don't entertain in their homes as much." Given the original inspiration for Harmonix' franchises Guitar Hero and Rock Band was the arcade-born Guitar/Drum Freaks franchise, I wondered if Harmonix had looked at Japanese arcades as an option instead of a home console release. "That's something we considered," he admitted. "One of the challenges is that arcades are very, very noisy, and so if you're trying to make something that's really a musical experience and you've got 37 other arcade machines all turned up to full volume, it kind of impairs the musicality of the experience." Again, Rigopulos said Harmonix has yet to give up on the concept of Rock Band in Japan, but from the sound of things, it's not exactly at the top of his priority list. [Image credit: ShonenKnife.com]
Hayashi: Ninja Gaiden 3's dismemberment-free gameplay adds meaning to the violence
Ninja Gaiden 3 won't feature the frequent decapitations and other freeform dismemberment of its predecessors. You may think of this as softening the impact of the violence in Team Ninja's famously brutal series, but it's intended to be quite the opposite. In fact, if anything, Team Ninja lead Yosuke Hayashi made it sound even more sadistic. "For Ninja Gaiden 3," Hayashi told me, "we wanted to focus on the act of cutting someone down, and what it's like to actually kill someone with a sword. Once you start lopping off limbs, your enemy goes from being a living thing that you're killing to just a thing." And to hammer the point home (or katana the point home, if you prefer) that these are real human beings you're flipping out and killing, he continued. "When you're actually cutting into a person, and you feel them getting scared, and the blood is spraying right on you, you hear their dying breaths in your ear -- that's the kind of visceral violence we're going for in Ninja Gaiden 3." In the demo level I played, by the way, the enemy soldiers start pleading for their lives as soon as you begin attacking them. At this point you might think, as I did, that you're going to start feeling guilty about cutting into all these bodies. That's ... kind of the idea. "Ryu Hayabusa is a dark hero," Hayashi explained. "If people want to take the easy way out or a cleaner way out -- not killing people -- that's not what the story is about and what Ryu Hayabusa is about. To be a dark hero, you have to do bad things in order to do good."%Gallery-133725%
Harmonix interested in branching out beyond music with Kinect
Many years ago, before Harmonix was the dev house that birthed Guitar Hero, Rock Band, and Dance Central, the company created EyeToy: AntiGrav -- a motion-controlled game for Sony's PlayStation 2 "EyeToy" camera peripheral. Despite strong sales, that was the last time that the Massachusetts-based developer created a project not steeped in music. But it seems that the studio may not have abandoned its one-time interest in non-music motion-based games. "I think we're always open-minded about new opportunities," Harmonix CEO Alex Rigopulos told me in an interview this week at the Tokyo Game Show. "Certainly our focus always has been and probably always will be on music-themed games," he added, but his company's involvement with Dance Central has rekindled the studio's interest in other types of motion-based gaming. "A perfect example is the Kinect, which I think that through our work on Dance Central we've developed an affinity for -- towards motion gaming." Though Rigopulos wouldn't speak to specifics, he would say that, "It wouldn't be surprising if in the future we took some steps outside of our wheelhouse in music to try some new things in non-music focused motion gaming." Harmonix' latest release, VidRhythm for iOS devices, may also be on the cards for some type of Kinect-based adaptation. "Of course our hope is to keep improving it and expanding it, including bringing it to other platforms, such as possibly Kinect," Rigopulos explained. That said, with VidRhythm having just launched in the past few weeks, he's not even sure of initial sales reports just yet, so it may be a few before we hear more about the application headed to other devices.
TGS serious screen 'splosion: BF3, MW3, Uncharted 3, Binary Domain
Tokyo Game Show isn't all fun and games -- some of this stuff is serious business. The following screens, for example, are very serious, and nothing at all like the pictures of happy Sackboys we showed you earlier. The galleries below are the exact opposite of happy Sackboys: They're angry sieve-men. With guns. Serious guns. Binary Domain %Gallery-134129%
Video: Taking a detour to the Amusement Machine Show
Today, after finishing up our last appointment at TGS, we wandered over to an annex of the convention center and found ... a secret second convention! The JAMMA Amusement Machine Show is usually held sometime near TGS, but this year was held concurrently, and thus we were able to just pop in there! The show was heavy on redemption and medal games, with entire booths dedicated to companies' prize offerings, but we were able to see some video games as well -- including a line of Tekken Tag Tournament 2 machines! There was also randomly a concert in progress over at Sega. You can see a bit of that, along with (OF COURSE) a few big mascot characters, in the video above!%Gallery-134200%
The Joystiq Show - TGS 2011 Check-in 2
The guys are still at TGS and they are having the true Japan experience. Richard experienced a virtual pregnancy and will be on Japanese TV. A trip to Japan doesn't get much more Japanese than that. This one is slathered with Japanese flavor. Tune in for stories of soda with chunks in it, hamtaro, Capcom DLC plans, tiny arcade sticks and more! Get the podcast: [iTunes] Subscribe to the Joystiq Podcast in iTunes [Zune] Subscribe to the Joystiq Podcast directly in the Zune Marketplace [RSS] Add the Joystiq Podcast feed to your RSS aggregator [MP3] Download the MP3 directly Hosts: Richard Mitchell (@SenseiRAM), Ben Gilbert (@BigBossBGilbert) and JC Fletcher (@jcfletcher) Producer: Jonathan Downin (@jonathandownin - Game Thing Daily) Music: Bust This Bust That by Professor Kliq See all show links, and stream the show, after the break.
TGS Vita screen 'splosion: Escape Plan, LittleBigPlanet, Dark Quest, Legion of Hell
We don't know if you realized, but Tokyo Game Show is actually conducted entirely in stop motion, through a series of giant screencap cutouts and mulitcolored strobe lights. Really, it is. No, really. OK, fine. It isn't. We do, however, have a ton of screenshots from TGS, including the following batches of Vita games: Escape Plan, LittleBigPlanet, Dungeon Hunter Alliance (Dark Quest in Japanese) and a new title from Square Enix, Legion of Hell (make sure your speakers are turned up all the way for that website). Switch on your strobes and let the show begin below: LittleBigPlanet %Gallery-134126%
Inafune envisions a future where portable gaming consoles and Smartphones coexist
When Nintendo president Satoru Iwata delivered the keynote back in March at this year's Game Developer's Conference in San Francisco, he spoke of the "commoditization" of gaming, and the resultant devaluing of games. But given his position as head of a company leading the charge in the dedicated gaming portable market, it was difficult to see past his highly vested interests in this stance. To put it more bluntly, Iwata is a man who relies on people buying his portable console's games for $30 to $40, and thusly his ideas on the subject are tainted by his own vested interests. But when Mega Man co-creator and ex-Capcom head of production Keiji Inafune feels similarly, we can't help but take note. I asked him during an interview this week at the Tokyo Game Show how he felt about Mr. Iwata's keynote, and if the Nintendo 3DS -- as well as the PlayStation Vita -- stand a chance against the rise of the Smartphone. "I think it's very similar between cell phone cameras and professional digital cameras [DSLRs]. You don't use a Smartphone camera for an interview, and you don't use a really professional camera to take some small pictures when you're going to work," he told me, drawing a comparison between the DSLR my colleague was holding and the iPhone 4 I was recording the interview with. "I think that's the same thing that happens with game consoles as well," he continued. "If you want to play a good game, you get a PS3 or Xbox or that kind of thing. You don't stay on your iPhone or on a Smartphone game for three or five hours, nobody would do that. So I think the needs difference is happening here."
