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3DS 'Weapon Shop de Omasse' opens on Feb. 20
Weapon Shop de Omasse, the final title in Level-5's Guild 01 series, will reach the 3DS North American eShop on February 20, Nintendo announced today. Omasse's comical, light-hearted plot is the result of a collaboration between Level-5 and comedian Yoshiyuki Hirai. In Omasse, Oyaji and his apprentice Yuuhan manage an item shop that equips heroes with the weapons they need to take on valiant quests. Players forge weapons by hammering weapons on the 3DS' lower screen. Players tap out rhythms immediately after hearing them, achieving a higher level of craftsmanship according to their accuracy. A content rating for Omasse from the Australian Classification Board popped up earlier this year. [Image: Nintendo]
Final game in Guild 01 series rated by Australian Classification board
The majority of Level-5's Guild 01 series has been made available on the 3DS eShop, but the last game in the series was absent from the publisher's initial localization announcement. That missing title is Rental Bukiya de Omasse, a game in which players manage a shop that crafts and sells weapons to passing adventurers. While the game currently isn't available in an English format, the Australian Classification Board has assigned it a PG rating, suggesting a localization treatment is in Rental Bukiya's future. We suspected the initial arrival of the Guild 01 series after Level-5 filed trademarks in the US for two Guild 01 titles, Liberation Maiden and Crimson Shroud. Level-5 confirmed the localization almost two months after those trademarks were noticed. While the Australian Classification Board is a different entity, its early ratings of Sega's 3D-ready line of classics for the eShop gave proved to be telling of their eventual NA debut. Hopefully this instance will play out similarly so that Rental Bukiya can open up shop stateside.
Level-5: Layton series sells 15 million, Ni No Kuni 1.4 million
Level-5 sales numbers suggest there's a big pile of cashola sitting beneath that big top hat of Layton's. The Japanese studio shifted 15 million units of the prof's puzzler series alone, along with 1.4 million PS3 and Japan-only DS copies of the glorious Ghibli RPG Ni no Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch. As Siliconera reports, company CEO Akihiro Hino revealed the figures at a press conference yesterday, and that the company's success is not limited to those franchises. Soccer RPG series Inazuma Eleven scores 6.5 million sales, while the dream-team-developed Guild games on 3DS, including Crimson Shroud, Liberation Maiden, and Attack of the Friday Monsters, are up to 400,000 downloads combined. At the same conference Level-5 announced Layton 7, a new spinoff for the prof's series that's coming to iOS Android, and 3DS. Layton 7 is the series' second game on mobiles, the first being whodunit Layton Brothers: Mystery Room, unearthing a million downloads.
A call for a U.S. release of Guild01's shopkeeping RPG
This is a column by Kat Bailey dedicated to the analysis of the once beloved Japanese RPG sub-genre. Tune in every Wednesday for thoughts on white-haired villains, giant robots, Infinity+1 swords, and everything else the wonderful world of JRPGs has to offer. Whenever I sit down and read an ostensibly hilarious article about JRPG cliches, I can always count on someone making a snarky observation about the in-game economy."Isn't it funny that shops actually charge heroes trying to save the world? Don't they get a hero's discount?" These sorts of observations are as cliche as the JRPG tropes they try to skewer, but there is a kernel of truth to them. Hence my interest in Rental Bukiya de Omasse – a Yoshiyuki Hirai-developed "fantasy rhythm" RPG which unfortunately may end up being the odd game out in the upcoming eShop release of games from the Guild01 collection. We have enough snarky fan observations to last us a lifetime. Self-awareness and a real sense of humor on the part of developer is something far more rare.
Level-5's Guild01 games coming to 3DS eShop
Level-5 is releasing three of the four minigames from the Guild01 collection on the 3DS eShop in Europe this year, as separate apps. Suda51's "Liberation Maiden," Yoot Saito's "Aero Porter," and Yasumi Matsuno's "Crimson Shroud" will be released in October, November, and December, respectively.Liberation Maiden will be available immediately following the Nintendo Direct presentation in Europe. Like, today.Update: Nintendo of America is also bringing these three games out, by the end of 2012. Liberation Maiden, Suda51's anime-inspired shooting game, is first, coming "before this holiday season."
Level-5 trademarks names from 3DS 'Guild01' collection in US
Guild01 is a collection of four games on one 3DS cartridge, featuring talent like Suda 51 and Seaman/SimTower creator Yoot Saito. So far, it was only released in Japan, but two new trademarks registered by publisher Level-5 indicate potential for a US release."Liberation Maiden" and "Crimson Shroud" refer to two games within the 3DS collection, one a shooter made by Suda51, and the other a dungeon RPG designed by Final Fantasy XII/Vagrant Story director Yasumi Matsuno. These are, so far, the only two Guild01-related trademarks registered in the US by Level-5. Curiously absent are the other two games from the cartridge, Saito's airport luggage puzzle game Aero Porter and comedian Yoshiyuki Hirai's weapon shop management game Omasse's Rental Weapon Shop.The title "Guild01" itself is also missing, which leads us to wonder if Level-5 plans on releasing the games individually instead of in a bundle.
No More Heroes, Seaman and Vagrant Story creators making Level-5's 'Guild 01'
Level-5 has assembled a dream team of unconventional game designers for the 3DS "variety" game Guild 01, out in Japan next year. Four creators are each designing a single game, to be collected on a single cart. From Suda 51 comes Kaiho Shojo, a touch-controlled mech shooter starring a schoolgirl who is also "president" of Japan, and operates an 11-foot-tall winged mech. This game features animation from the studio Bones, suggesting a high-budget approach to these games (which are close to being considered "minigames"). Yoot Saito, creator of SimTower, Seaman, and Odama, contributes Air Porter, a game about managing luggage at an airport. There's really no overarching theme to these things! Yasumi Matsuno, the man behind Ogre Battle, Vagrant Story, and Final Fantasy XII, is making a "darkness fantasy" RPG called Crimson Shroud. Matsuno is actually working full-time at Level-5 now. And, weirdest of all, comedian Yoshiyuki Hirai (from the group America Zarigani) is designing a game about running an RPG-style item shop, called Rental Bukiya de Omasse. These details originate from Famitsu leaks; we'll certainly learn more this weekend at Level-5's event.
