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Astonishia Story 2 headed for Japan as Garnet Chronicle
A name change is just what Astonishia Story 2 needs for its journey from South Korea to Japan; at least in the opinion of its Japanese publisher, Sega. A Weekly Famitsu scan shows the game will debut in Japan this fall as Garnet Chronicle and highlights the game's main characters, story, the battle system and the Japanese version's seiyuu. We've made available the Korean version's demo before so feel free to try it out. The game will arrive in Japan on October 23rd. Take a look at the scan here.[Via PSPHyper]
From out of nowhere, Astonishia Story 2: More Astonishiaed
While our subject line is obviously in jest, the main point is not -- Astonishia Story is getting a sequel and we couldn't be more surprised. The first title was, admittedly, a hit-or-miss amongst fans, but Sonnori did well with the remade title. So well, apparently, the game gets a sequel. The new game is going to get the special treatment from Ntreev Soft, a South Korean developer. From the screens we've seen, be sure to expect some drool-worthy 2D/3D hybrid graphics and what we assume will be a tweaked battle system. More news on this as it breaks!
Load times quantified by GameSpot
Gamespot recently wrote an impressive feature on load times for the three dominant handheld platforms on the market. They wanted to see how long it took for a game to become playable from a completely powered-down system (no standby mode, which is available on both the DS and PSP). Here are some interesting facts from the write-up: The three quickest loading games were Astonishia Story, Gradius Collection and Lumines. They took up to 55 seconds to load. The longest loading game is (unsurprisingly) WWE Smackdown!: more than four minutes for that game. Games with the highest ratings on GameSpot had the shortest load times. Joystiq asks "Does this show that reviewers appreciate short load times, or just that better games tend to be designed to load faster?" I'd say both hold true, but as games like GTA and Daxter show, developers that care about the PSP know how to get around load times. The average load time for cartridge-based DS? 24.5 seconds. The average load time for UMD-based PSP? 103.4 seconds. This shouldn't be surprising to any PSP owner, but it's fascinating to see the numbers. I hate load times a whole lot, and I will avoid games that have insanely high loads. That being said, I don't see one minute loads to be too bad at all. What about you? What do you think about load times?[Via Joystiq]
