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Fatal Frame is coming back, but as a pachinko machine
It's been seven years since the last game in the survival horror series, but someone thought a slot machine was the way to revive it.
Forget photos, watch the Wii U's new Fatal Frame in action
Will Fatal Frame: The Black-Haired Shrine Maiden release outside of Japan? We hope so, if only to see scaredy-cats fall backwards as spirits come hurtling towards their GamePads. The Wii U entry hits Japan on September 27. To find out more about it, point your lens here. [Image: Nintendo]
Fatal Frame haunts Japanese theaters on September 26
Proving once again that Japan gets all the cool stuff, the upcoming Wii U Fatal Frame sequel is to be accompanied by a Fatal Frame feature film, both of which are currently exclusive to the island nation. Though entirely in Japanese, the above trailer does offer hope that the film's creators have managed to capture the game's aesthetics and key themes. Spooky yet commonplace buildings? Check. Overly complex, anachronistic cameras? Check. Dour, possibly spectral Japanese girls? Check and double check. The trailer does take an odd tonal shift at the 1:00 mark thanks to a weirdly upbeat pop song, but that brief moment of levity is quickly silenced by a pile of teenaged corpses. While it's possible that this Fatal Frame film adaptation might come to the West, fans shouldn't get their hopes up. 2008's Fatal Frame 4: Mask of the Lunar Eclipse remained in Japan despite claims from Koei Tecmo that the game would reach both Europe and North America, and the publisher has yet to make any mention of an English-language localization for the upcoming Fatal Frame 5. [Image: Koei Tecmo]
Joystiq Weekly: Doom reboot, Microsoft's layoffs, Sunless Sea and more
Welcome to Joystiq Weekly, a "too long; didn't read" of each week's biggest stories, reviews and original content. Each category's top story is introduced with a reactionary gif, because moving pictures aren't just for The Daily Prophet. We're happy to hear that Doom is still brewing in the depths of iD Software, but if we're getting spoiled with updates to classics, we wonder if we could get anything else revived if we stir up enough demand. Remember how awesome Bubsy was? What about taking another crack at Altered Beast? What's that, you say? "No and your picks are garbage"? Well then. Lucky for you, this edition of the Joystiq Weekly carries no news of reboots for either series. It does offer a recap of the week's biggest non-fictional stories though, from Microsoft's plans to dismiss 18,000 workers to the latest fighters to take up arms in Super Smash Bros. There are also reviews for the stealth-focused Light and a spooky, exploration-driven journey on a boat called Sunless Sea, plus a WildStar postcard that digs into the MMO's PvP modes. It's all arranged neat and orderly-like for you after the break!
Wii U's Fatal Frame unveiled, petrifies Japan in September
The next Fatal Frame comes to Wii U in Japan on September 27, more than six years after the series' last fully-fledged entry. Nintendo and developer Koei Tecmo presented the first snapshot of the new horror game in a livestream this morning, revealing its Japanese title as Zero: Nuregarasu no Miku. Siliconera translates that as Fatal Frame: The Black-Haired Shrine Maiden, while Gematsu goes with The Raven-Haired Shrine Maiden. Either way, it's about a woman with dark hair, she's got a camera, and we still don't know if it's headed West or not. After all, Fatal Frame 4 only came to Japan, so localization doesn't seem too likely.
Joystiq Weekly: VR walker Omni, Hitman Go review, Mario Golf's season pass and more
Welcome to Joystiq Weekly, a "too long; didn't read" of each week's biggest stories, reviews and original content. Each category's top story is introduced with a reactionary gif, because moving pictures aren't just for The Daily Prophet. Okay, we have to admit that the Omni, a motion-tracking platform that associates real-life walking with in-game movement, is kind of ridiculous, right? Yeah, we do and we will - as long as we can also acknowledge how interesting the concept is. Sprinting in reality to hurry down a virtual hallway probably won't be as quick as strafing with arrow keys, but the tradeoff sounds worthwhile. Pairing Omni with the Oculus Rift would bring us closer to the hectic deathmatch action of games like Halo 4, but we could also do rhythmic leaps through stages of Runner 2 or wildly-dangerous imitations of Mirror's Edge's parkour. Hmm ... maybe Omni should be bundled with life insurance. We can ponder the benefits of treadmill controllers together, but if your brain needs a break from all that, there's plenty of gears to switch to after the break. Between a glimpse of the new Ace Attorney game, reviews for NES Remix 2 and Hitman Go, and an exploration of morality systems like those found in the Infamous and Mass Effect series, there's lots to think about beyond how physical our video games could be in a few decades.
Next Fatal Frame to snap ghostly images on Wii U
The next entry in the Fatal Frame series will haunt Nintendo's Wii U console, according to a Famitsu report translated by Gematsu. Nintendo and Tecmo Koei recently announced the new game, though the two corporations offered no further information on this project. Instead, they used this opportunity to promote a number of multimedia tie-ins tangentially linked to the survival horror franchise, including a novel, a manga and a live-action film from director Mari Asato. Unfortunately for anyone in North America that's a fan of camera-shy ghosts, it seems unlikely that the next Fatal Frame will ever reach our shores. As Gematsu points out, the prior entry, Fatal Frame: Mask of the Lunar Eclipse, made its Japanese Wii debut in 2008, but has yet to be localized for any other region. The 2012 Wii remake of Fatal Frame 2: Crimson Butterfly did manage to reach Europe, but it too skipped North America. [Image: Nintendo]
Fatal Frame snaps a selfie on PSN this week
The original Fatal Frame is scheduled to launch on PSN this Tuesday, as revealed on the PlayStation Blogcast. Fatal Frame enters the PSN Store as a PS2 Classic, and it never leaves because that's how horror works. Tecmo's first installment in the Fatal Frame series introduces Miku, a young girl who can see spirits. Her brother, who shares her powers, goes missing, and Miku tracks him to a derelict mansion. There, she picks up her mother's Camera Obscura, a device that captures souls on film, and must navigate out of the mansion while still searching for her brother.Be on the lookout for Fatal Frame's official announcement in the PSN drop this week.
Report: 3DS Fatal Frame spinoff uses 3DS cameras as in-game camera
It's kind of the perfect idea: match the Fatal Frame series, in which characters see and fight ghosts through a camera lens, with AR tech like that in the 3DS. And, if early reports out of the latest Famitsu are accurate, we'll soon get the opportunity to see if that idea is executed perfectly. Called "Spirit Diary," the game interacts with an included "AR Notebook" whose functions are curently unknown. In the game, you and a young girl investigate the cursed book. Other modes include AR minigames and a battle mode in which players fight using "spirit pictures" of themselves. It is currently unknown whether this game will be published by Tecmo, who handled most previous Fatal Frames, or Nintendo, who published the Wii Fatal Frame -- and then neglected to release it outside of Japan. [Image: Fatal Frame 4]
Footage of Nintendo's 3DS, DS and Wii lineups
Nintendo produced a few slick videos of its various console lineups for its conference, now embedded after the break. In addition to footage of known 3DS games, including Super Street Fighter IV 3D Edition and Professor Layton and the Mask of Miracle, the 3DS video reveals a second Resident Evil game, Biohazard: The Mercenaries 3D. The Wii video offers the first look at the new Fatal Frame and Rhythm Heaven games, among many other first- and third-party titles. And though you have to wait until the end, you will see clips of the new Kirby game and Battle & Get! Pokemon Typing DS in the DS video.
New Rhythm Heaven, Fatal Frame games announced for Wii
Nintendo's conference today wasn't all about the 3DS. The publisher has also announced new DS and Wii titles. Mistwalker's The Last Story was given a January 27 release date, but more excitingly, two new Wii sequels were announced -- one for the GBA/DS Rhythm Heaven series, and one for Zero, known here as Fatal Frame. Both games are scheduled for 2011 releases, and screens of both are available in our galleries.%Gallery-103585%%Gallery-103584%
The Daily Grind: Could a survival horror MMO work?
Survival horror games like Silent Hill or Fatal Frame are fairly niche single player genres and that certainly has something to do with how they operate: scaring the bonkers out of people. While the big scares are certainly a high point within these games, it's the ever present sense of dread that makes the best of them truly horrifying. Some games like to give players terrible controls to heighten the scare factor, while others use forced camera angles. Yet this isn't the problem with transitioning them into MMO-form. The innate problem with making a horror MMO stems from the logical school of thinking that people probably don't want to be terrified for hours on end. Which is pretty reasonable when you think about it. Still, this isn't to say that a horror genre of some sort couldn't persist as a wonderful niche game like this within the greater MMO market.The question we pose today dear readers is: Do you think a horror MMO of some sort could work? Also, roughly how would it work? Any tolerable MMO obviously can't be hours of radio noise followed up by wiggling, throbbing, convulsing aberrations popping out at you. Well it could be that, although somehow we doubt such a game would find much success. One possible idea is to borrow from Myst Online with a persistent world that favors puzzle-solving over combat situations. We kind of like that concept.
