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GDC08: Will Wright talks the importance of worlds, community ownership
Tonight had a chance to attend a speech given by Will Wright at the Mezzanine in San Francisco. "This is the first time I've ever spoken to a drunk audience," he quipped. Before the speech, Electronic Arts PR Neil Young warned everyone that this would not be a speech about Spore. That's all subjective, of course -- Wright's talk, spanning everything from social science to pop culture, show an insight into his psyche and drive for Spore better than any video game session could.The point Wright started out was the negative connotation in the use of words such as franchise, brand and property, instead preferring the term "worlds" (though, we should note, he used franchise and brand a few times). Star Wars is presented as an example of a fractal timeline, with smaller iterative stories adding to fill in the gaps in between and around the major arc originally presented. Other successful worlds include LEGO, James Bond and Godzilla.%Gallery-16662%
Phoenix Wright Ace Attorney: Trailers and Tribulations
We were just coming down from our adrenaline-fueled reverie over Contra 4 when this came along and OBJECTED its way into our lives. TAKE THAT!, normal heart rate! It's a trailer for Phoenix Wright Ace Attorney: Trials and Tribulations! What's more, Capcom USA bloggers promise frequent updates on the official blog and in the forums! It's so nice when a company thinks about all of us non-E3-goers who just want to see some cartoon arguing. [Via NeoGAF]
Japanese Phoenix Wright 3 gets boring bonus
If you buy the Japanese Best Price release of Gyakuten Saiban 3-- cue the chorus of "don't buy it or Capcom won't localize the next one"-- you may be entitled to a set of reversible box covers for the whole series of DS releases. It looks like they're designed so you can store 2 games to a case. However, the Gyakuten Saiban series already uses a consistent boxart design in Japan, meaning that all four of the DS games already match. And on top of that, the design for these bonuses is significantly less interesting than the original boxart. Of course, we're still getting this thing.We wish it was nicer-looking, but it's lovely of Capcom to hand out bonus stuff in general. We hope these get included with import orders (that's right, we're ordering the import!)
DS Daily: Narcissus Tort
So, some of you didn't like "Apollo Justice" as the potential name for the hero of the fourth Ace Attorney game. We don't even know if that's the name yet, but it didn't stop anyone from reacting to it.We want to see you do better. Here are the rules: the first name should be a mythological character (and not necessarily a Greek or Roman one, Anansi fans) and the last name should be a surname that has a relatively common homophone (like "Wright"/"Right"). Right? Right. If you can use a legal term, so much the better.Oh, and remember, this is us, so we encourage ridiculousness. Bellerophon Bench, anyone?
Gyakuten Saiban timeline
We still get occasional comments from confused readers who can't decipher which Gyakuten Saiban games correlate to which Ace Attorney games. This has been especially confusing recently, as Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney: Trials and Tribulations (based on Gyakuten Saiban 3) was announced for the US at the same time as Gyakuten Saiban 4 was being released in Japan. 4cr must have gotten similar confused comments, but, unlike us, they decided to do something about it. Well, we're doing something about it now, but it's just linking their article, which is much easier. They've written a history of the series, detailing exactly which games were ported from the GBA, and the US and Japanese titles of each game. If this is too academic, you can always buy every lawyery-looking game you see, and figure it out when you get home.
SimCity DS footage, June release
Stills? We don't need no stinking stills! Show us some action! EA has released the first trailer for SimCity DS. If you've ever played SimCity then you know what you're in for, but it's interesting to see some arcade-style mechanics being brought into the mix. Blowing out fires with the mic, attacking the monster with the stylus. EA is sticking with an "around June" date for release. Sun, surf, sand and SimCity DS. Summer is going to be nice.After the break as an added bonus is the pretty spiffy Japanese commercial.
Gyakutan Saiban 4 impressions
Unfortunately, when we were getting ready to install the tiny chips into our heads to allow us to fluently speak and understand Japanese, we accidentally grabbed the German chips by mistake. Es kann sehr nützlich sein, but it doesn't allow us to play Gyakuten Saiban 4 anytime soon. Luckily, the guys at Siliconera have our backs.They've run through the Phoenix-less title's first case, and have gotten a fairly good idea of where the series is going. Rest assured, the quality of the plotting seems wholly intact, and the guys are enjoying the fully-integrated DS features (a la case 5 of the localized Phoenix Wright: Attorney at Law). For some more details, check out the full preview. Take that!Seriously. Take it.
Gyakuten Saiban 4 is huge
Capcom announced today that Gyakuten Saiban 4 passed the half-million mark in shipped copies today, a new record for the series. It's no surprise that being on the DS boosted sales; it's likely to boost sales of anything. But let's not diminish the accomplishment. Gyakuten Saiban 4 is a hit! This milestone has contributed strongly to another milestone: as of today, the Gyakuten Saiban (Phoenix Wright) series has shipped 2 million copies in Japan alone. That's pretty great for any series, much less a text adventure series! If there were any objections within Capcom about spending the money to localize GS4, they've probably been shot down by now.
DS Fanboy Favorites: Jason's top five
All this week, the DS Fanboy staff is letting you in on a few of their favorite titles. Each day, a different member of the staff will present their personal top five DS games along with a snapshot of their gaming paraphernalia and habits, in an effort to provide our readers with a little more information on the tastes and personalities of our writers.It's odd; in the past two years, I've played my DS more than any other system, console or otherwise. However, I very rarely play outside of the comfort of my own room. Sure, I have the ten minute bus ride to campus everyday, and an hour break between classes, but the bus ride is relaxing and the hour I spend on campus, playing chess with some friends. It's really a testament to the quality of the library on the DS, that it would stand against the heavy-hitting consoles without the added advantage of portability.I'm a bit of a Renaissance gamer, playing titles far and wide. Sure, I've grown tired of the World War II shooters, but if a game is innovative and/or well-crafted, I'll give it a shot. I also like bunnies and salsa dancing and figure skating; I'm so macho.
Rumor: Phoenix Wright: Trials and Tribulations
What's the opposite of OBJECTION!? Oh, we know! APPROVAL! A Gamecrazy employee posted this screen from his store's computer system over on the awesome Phoenix Wright fansite Court Records. It shows a game called PHOENIX WRIGHT-TRIALS TRIBU, to be released on September 25. We'll go ahead and deduce that the full title would be Phoenix Wright: Trials and Tribulations, and that since it names Phoenix in the title and not the new guy, that this is a DS port of Gyakuten Saiban 3. Retail computer systems aren't the most reliable sources of information, but we doubt Gamecrazy would make up a title. Plus, we've had evidence that GS3 was going to be localized for a while. Now, if you'll excuse us, we're going to go to Gamecrazy and reserve our copy of the game. If they aren't open yet, we'll just break in. No problem! [Via NeoGAF]
New Gyakuten Saiban 4 screens
We're having a pretty hard time coping with our Gyakuten Saiban withdrawals. Ever since we learned that we wouldn't be able to play the Japanese release in English, we've had to turn to alternate means to get our daily allowance of fake Japanese law. We refresh the GS4 website obsessively, play the translated demo until it hits question-mark land, and shout "OBJECTION" at every opportunity that is even a little appropriate.We found some screens on Famitsu to torture ourselves with. They show the intro to the second case, a witness in Chapter 1, and Chapter 2's defendant. If you want to make yourself feel bad about the lack of Ace Attorney in your life, then by all means, have a look. If you can't handle the wait, we suggest trying to put the whole thing out of your mind.
Gyakuten Saiban 4 demo translation is a heroic effort
DS Fanboy pal Zachary Hinchliffe is powerfully awesome, and you can quote us on that. He's working with Croik of the Phoenix Wright fansite Court Records to translate the Japanese Gyakuten Saiban 4 Flash demo, which actually consists of part of the first case.It's in a very early stage right now-- essentially, once you get past the intro and into gameplay, the text switches over to question-mark speak that is even less useful than the original Japanese dialogue, but you can at least watch the introduction. And you can set your bookmark now to play more as more gets translated, because we're sure you'll get to play this demo to completion in English before the game gets an English release.
Gyakuten Saiban 4 wallpaper
In addition to Capcom's official Gyakuten Saiban 4 page, retailer Tsutaya has their own, with the same screenshots, character art, and story information as that on the Capcom page. We saw on Dengeki Online that the Tsutaya page had a new GS4 Flash game up, and we got excited. Turns out it's a personality quiz that tells you which character you're most similar to, which is neat, but it's also totally in Japanese and not really something we can recommend.Poking around the site a little more, we found this sharp wallpaper featuring new hero Odoroki Housuke, and figured that you would enjoy it! Put it on your desktop and start memorizing the title kanji. It's a good first step toward learning enough Japanese to play the game! Gyakuten Saiban 4 wallpaper800x600 1280x1024 [Via Dengeki]
Gyakuten Saiban 4 hates English speakers
Previous Japanese incarnations of our beloved Gyakuten Saiban series, a.k.a. Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney, a.k.a. the greatest courtroom drama in the history of mankind, have included an English language option for those who wanted to get their fix early. In fact, savvy importers were able to play the superlative Phoenix Wright 2: Justice For All back in October, months before their blissfully ignorant counterparts.Alas, it appears that the next installment of the series, Gyakuten Saiban 4, will not contain an English language option for importers. However, we would like to note that GS4, though the third title in the series to be released on the DS in Japan, is precluded by the currently GBA-only Gyakuten Saiban 3, which has not yet been localized in any form. According to preliminary reports, the storylines of GS3 and GS4 are not directly related (GS4 doesn't even star our man Phoenix), but you never know with those crafty writers.For people not completely obsessed with Phoenix Wright, please rip out your own colon please ignore the above paragraph and simply know that you won't be able to import GS4 from Japan.>.>[Via Siliconera]
Capcom blogger interviews Phoenix Wright localization staff
We just found out about the employee blogs that Capcom USA has on their website. One in particular, belonging to "Scarlett," is especially cool because it features an interview with a member of the Phoenix Wright Ace Attorney Justice For All localization staff, Janet Hsu!The interview provides some fairly interesting information about working at Capcom Japan, and about trying to make something as Japanese as Gyakuten Saiban make sense to American audiences. There's also the incredible statement from Ms. Hsu that she only took Japanese classes for about 2 years before coming to Japan. Certain members of the DS Fanboy Blogging Squad have taken much more Japanese than that and can't translate their way out of a paper bag. It's official: Janet Hsu is our new hero, and so are her colleagues JP Kellams and Brandon Gay.[Via GameSetWatch]
Spore's power struggle: freedom vs. beauty
What is a magic crayon? If you're envisioning Harold and his purple outlet of creativity, you wouldn't be far off from the intended metaphor. Chaim Gingold, design lead for Spore's editors and cell game, described the magic crayon as a toy that is simple to use and yet gives the user enough power to create something they'll appreciate. Gingold kicked off his presentation, one of the last after a marathon of lectures and roundtables at this year's Game Developers Conference, by defining a magic crayon through example. Photoshop is not a good magic crayon, for example, because it is very hard for most people to use. Neither is Super Mario Bros., since you are not changing anything in the world. Kid Pix fits the schema for a magic crayon, as does the Mii creator, which is an "absolutely beautiful, wonderful magic crayon," he said.
DS Daily: New horizons
There have been a lot of familiar franchises on the DS, and we love them! But, and this is where a lot of the system's publicity comes from, there has also been an explosion of new genres and new experiences, as well as revivals of past trends. So, as hardcore gamers (the kind who read game blogs), has your gaming universe been expanded by the DS? Have you taken part in any completely new experiences? Played your first graphical text adventure? Minigame collection? Whatever Brain Age was?Or maybe what you discovered on the DS is something popular that you just missed out on for some reason, like Final Fantasy or Castlevania. We want to hear about your experiences! We want to know how the DS has affected your gaming tastes! We want to know how you classify Brain Age!
News flash: Baseball players play baseball games
Apparently baseball players' involvement with video games goes further than Guitar Hero related injuries. An Orange County Register story reveals that games like Sony's MLB '07 The Show have "virtually become required playing in every clubhouse and on the PSPs players use to pass travel time." The little factoid is unattributed, but probably came from Mets third baseman and The Show cover star David Wright, who goes on to explain the game's usefulness as a tool for checking out the competition. "Pitchers throw the curves and sliders they're known for and hitters chase what they chase in the game. It's like scouting," Wright said. Does anyone else miss the days when sports games were more about accessible fun and less about being virtually indistinguishable from their real life counterparts?
Bone: DS adventure renaissance continues [update 1]
[Update 1: The announcement was about Bone for the PC and not for the DS. It mentions that the publisher is "focusing on the PC and Nintendo DS markets", not the game. We apologize for the misunderstanding. Thanks to eric c for the correction!]Before the episodic Sam & Max games, Telltale Games were known among adventure game holdouts for their adaptations of Jeff Smith's Bone comic series. They followed a similar business model: periodic, bite-sized chunks of delicious puzzle solving, set in cult comic book trappings.Now publisher Xider is bringing the Bone games to the DS PC and unidentified games to the DS in Europe in 2007. We hope that they decide to bring them stateside as well, and that they don't decide to shoehorn weird touch screen/microphone puzzles into what is supposed to be a pretty good adventure series. It's still possible, but the identities of the DS games have yet to be announced.We're so proud of our little DS, bringing back two of our favorite long-lost game genres: the graphical text adventure and the 3D adventure game.
Japan gets a Gyakuten Saiban 4 calendar and we don't? OBJECTION!
Capcom put this gorgeous "school calendar" (it starts at April) up for sale in their Japanese store today, and we're dying over here. Look at that cover! That is better than most posters, there. There's Ema Skye, and Phoenix Wright, and the whole group is surrounded by new guy Odoroki Housuke's bracelet thing.And there's six pages of official art inside. This is too much. We don't really have anything clever to say about it. Look at it. It's a thing we want, a lot, and probably won't be able to purchase.Oh, man, we feel so inadequate. How can we be Phoenix Wright fans if we can't look at some Gyakuten Saiban characters when we want to see what day it is? We're going to have to look into placing an order for this thing. 1,260 yen turns out to be ... $10.45.Oh, and while you're at the e-Capcom store, check out these other just-out-of-reach Gyakuten goods!Sample calendar page after the break. You could resize it and make a very blurry, artifacty wallpaper out of it!
