fist-of-the-north-star
Latest
Yakuza 5 and Fist of the North Star inspire ... interesting PS3 special editions
The first special-edition releases of the new toploading PS3 have been revealed for Japan, and they're ... uh ... different, and made in honor of two games that definitely won't have special-edition hardware elsewhere. The Yakuza 5 "Emblem Edition" (above) features gold emblems of the virtual crime families featured in the series around the edges of the 250GB system, and a gold controller to match, along with a special themed USB drive. It's due in Japan December 6.The Fist of the North Star: Ken's Rage 2 "Legend Edition" has character art in white along the periphery of the black system, with a controller that is supposed to feature a Big Dipper design, but which looks a lot like it's been pooped on by birds. It'll be released on December 20.
European PSN releases for December 1
It's the first day of December, and people across the globe are preparing themselves for holiday festivities. Why not get yourself in the spirit of the season with a few selections from today's PSN update, like Dead Nation? Oh, no, wait. That won't do. What about that demo for CSI: Crime Scene Investigation: Fatal Conspiracy? Hm, that's not particularly cheerful either, is it? How about you blow up some more dudes in new in interesting ways with that Fist of the North Star: Ken's Rage DLC? This ... this is going to be a weird month. Choose your platform to view the corresponding release list: (Note: Continue past the break to view both release lists.)
Fist of the North Star: Ken's Rage review: Going south
If I said, "ATATATATATATATATAT!" and that held any meaning to you, then congratulations: Somebody's made a game just for you! If reading that caused your forehead to crinkle, then buckle up because we're going though the looking glass. For those lost in translation, Fist of the North Star: Ken's Rage is a third-person beat-em-up based on the 1980s anime series that begot cartoons, animated features and (ta-dah!) video games. The central campaign follows the conquests of its titular hero, Ken, a battle-axe with a heart of gold and a thing for purple-haired ladies. %Gallery-104050%
PSA: Fist of the North Star demo now on Xbox Live
Heads and bodies, and even entire armies, are sure to explode in the Fist of the North Star demo, currently available on Xbox Live. A PSN version will be released later today following the service's weekly update.
Sample Ken's Rage on October 19
You may be feeling one of two (valid) concerns about Fist of the North Star: Ken's Rage, even if you're tentatively interested in the title. It might get repetitive like other Warriors games. You might not want to see that many people explode like water balloons full of blood. Luckily, Tecmo Koei is giving you an easy, low-risk way to find out if your concerns bear out: a demo. On October 19, the publisher will release a demo for the manga-inspired massacre game on both PSN and XBLA. It won't take you long to determine your tolerance for both bloodsplosions and endless waves of punchables.%Gallery-104050%
Fist of the North Star media depicts more victims of Ken's Rage
What motivates the thugs in the Fist of the North Star universe? "Sure, that guy Ken just punched through the last 400 identical guys like they were tissue paper, but I'll get the drop on him." You won't. Go home. Be with your loved ones.
Fist of the North Star: Ken's Rage erupts on November 2
Fist of the North Star: Ken's Rage, the manga-based, Dynasty Warriors-esque action game about punching and kicking absolutely everything until it explodes, will be in North American stores just in time for an exceptionally violent holiday season. Tecmo Koei just announced a November 2 release date for the post-apocalyptic thug tenderizing game. Ken's Rage allows you to play through the manga/anime storyline, or a "Dream Mode" that steps outside of canon, with a cast of characters including Kenshiro, Mamiya, Rei, and more, all of whom are guaranteed to be brutal enough to make you feel bad about playing video games.
Fist of the North Star: Ken's Rage includes both English and Japanese voice
Chances are, if you're interested in playing Tecmo Koei's Fist of the North Star game, you aren't just tolerant of Japanese voices in video games, you prefer them. The company is aware of anime fans' preference for Japanese audio, and told Eurogamer that it will retain the original voice track in the North American and European releases of the Dynasty Warriors-alike. You'll be able to hear "ATATATATATATATATA" in the original Japanese. In order to satisfy both the audience who craves authenticity and the audience who likes knowing what the characters are saying, Tecmo Koei is also including a full English voice track. That way, you won't have to have your screen filled with subtitles reading "ATATATATATATATATA." %Gallery-94946%
Preview: A quartet of Tecmo Koei titles
I usually try to avoid whirlwind preview sessions during gaming events -- hour-long booth tours that see me bouncing between a handful of titles from the same developer. However, that was the case during my recent E3 time with Tecmo Koei's suite of upcoming titles, a collection which included Fist of the North Star: Ken's Rage, Trinity: Souls of Zill O'll, Quantum Theory and Warriors: Legends of Troy. Given my limited time with each of the aforementioned games, I decided to arrange my initial impressions about them into a single preview. You can check out my thoughts on Tecmo Koei's lineup after the jump.
Tecmo Koei brings Fist of the North Star, more to E3
The combined Tecmo/Koei entity has revealed a selection of four games it will have on display at next week's E3. The shooter Quantum Theory and the action RPG Trinity: Souls of Zill O'll, both delayed earlier this year, will be present at the show. In addition, Tecmo Koei has announced that it's localizing its punchy Dynasty Warriors game, Fist of the North Star, as Fist of the North Star: Ken's Rage, with a planned fall 2010 release on PS3 and Xbox 360. Rounding out the (known) lineup is Warriors: Legends of Troy, which is also kind of like Dynasty Warriors, but focused on ancient Greek history instead of pseudo-historical China or Japan. Check out new Fist of the North Star screens in our gallery below, and follow the break for galleries of the other three. %Gallery-94946%
North Star Musou video introduces game's cast
Frankly, we don't know why anyone wouldn't be satisfied with Kenshiro in North Star Musou, but Koei's seen fit to add a bit of a variety to the game's cast of characters. The above promo video spotted by the Koei Warriors site chronicles several other selectable karate people. The guy with the rocket launcher kinda threw us for a loop, though -- what good is a giant tube gun when everyone in the future is so easily exploded through poking? [Thanks, Peter]
North Star Musou videos punch a hole in our heart
If you're not excited by Fist of the North Star Musou, then maybe you should go watch that Gandhi movie or something. However, if the thought of punching stuff makes you want to punch stuff, then check out Musou's new internet digs. The official site for the game has received quite the substantial update, assaulting our eyeballs with a variety of new screenshots, gameplay videos (past the break) and bios for characters and stages. There's even a flexing shirt rip that would make Balrog pee his boxing shorts! [Via Andriasang]
Fist of the North Star Musou hits Japan in March
Japanese gamers and eager importers will be able to start throwing hundreds of high-speed punches at giant thugs as soon as March 2010. In a video game, we mean. Specifically, in North Star Musou, the Dynasty Warriors spin-off based on the legendary, post-apocalyptic fighting manga, Fist of the North Star. Also, unfortunately, the company released the price for the upcoming brawler. We say "unfortunately" because it's ¥8,190 ($94.27), which probably marks the end of quite a few import plans. Koei has yet to announce a localized version of the game, but we don't think the publisher would allow a Warriors game to go unreleased. %Gallery-75563% [Via Andriasang]
See North Star Musou's gory details in video teaser
Tecmo Koei opened a teaser site for the new North Star Musou, featuring a brief clip of in-game action. If you're familiar with either Fist of the North Star or the Dynasty Warriors games, you know exactly what to expect: a little post-apocalyptic Mad Max-esque wasteland, and one giant guy exploding a horde of identical thugs with his bare fists and feet. The combination of these two licenses is doing a pretty good job of renewing our interest in both!See the footage after the break. If you squint, it kind of looks like a high-definition God Hand sequel.%Gallery-75563%[Via Andriasang]
Koei drops assets, plot details for Fist of the North Star Musou
Hokuto no Ken, it means no worries for the rest of your days ... Koei recently sent over a handful of screenshots from its recently announced video game adaptation of the Fist of the North Star anime series, Hokuto Musou, which is due out in Japan in 2010. Thankfully for those of us who aren't manga aficionados, these screens were accompanied by a brief primer on the series' plot. We won't bore you with the entire premise, but instead offer you this highlight from Koei's description: "Channeling their energy into a single deadly blow, players can strike their victims and cause them to violently explode on screen. Gamers can also let loose with Kenshiro's signature move- a ruthless flurry of ferocious punches, triggering the instantaneous breakdown of internal organs, and death." Yes, please. %Gallery-75563%
Koei Tecmo's new game is North Star Musou
The new game being teased by Koei Tecmo -- the one with the flowers? Um, yeah, it's actually about punching people: As predicted, the game's been revealed by Famitsu as Fist of the North Star Musou (officially, just Hokuto Musou, or North Star Musou) combining Koei's populous Dynasty Warriors series with the venerable manga series, and it's the smartest thing Koei has ever done with the Warriors series since the original idea.The Fist of the North Star franchise follows a martial artist named Kenshiro who wanders around a post-apocalypse Earth, using his "Hokuto Shinken" style to fight gangsters that prey on hapless innocents. Why is this series so perfect for Warriors? Because it's a well-known universe in which it's perfectly believable for one guy to beat up a couple hundred enemies with his bare fists. This license will not require much adapting in the transition to a Warriors game.Hokuto Musou, according to the magazine, will be out sometime next year on both PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360.
Koei Tecmo teases new game with dead flowers
Man, Koei Tecmo, you really know how to confuse the hell out of us. You've proven your capacity to perplex with your billion-dudes-on-screen action franchises -- now, you're diversifying your riddlecraft with a teaser site for a heretofore unannounced game. Based on context clues, we're guessing it's the long overdue revival of everyone's favorite classic franchise: Pretty Flower, Dead Flower, Falling Girl. We're kidding, of course. Judging by the Big Dipper which slyly appears at the end of the teaser's video loop, and the fact that the entire Musou (or Dynasty Warriors and Samurai Warriors) team will be in attendance when the game is revealed on October 14, we're guessing it's actually Fist of the North Star Musou. Shame, really -- we were so excited about a current-gen reimagination of PFDFFG. [Via IGN]
Flash of the North Star
Got a few minutes to kill? Spend it killing with your fists of stylus-enhanced rage. Spike has created a Flash demo of the Fist of the North Star game and made it available at the official website, allowing you to first enjoy a tutorial that demonstrates the controls, and then, as Kenshiro, take on some enormous guy in a fight. Just click around the navigation buttons under the DS on the demo page and you'll get to all the content.The tutorial isn't terribly necessary -- click numbers in order, drag back and forth between lines pointing at each other -- but we recommend it, because it basically amounts to a little bit more game. There's a decent challenge to be found in some of the tasks, mostly because of the timer. The back-and-forth motions, for example, require some decent speed and accuracy. Of course, this is made somewhat more difficult by the substitution of a mouse for the stylus. [Via Inside-Games]
Segaton: Master System games on the VC next month
Awesome news for people who love 8-bit games, or just wonderful things: Sega Master System games will be offered on the Japanese Virtual Console starting in February, with other territories to follow. It looks like the base price for games will be 500 points, with the customary 100 tacked on for licenses. Sega Mark III games and even Game Gear games will be offered for download -- marking the first handheld games available through the VC, all thanks to the Game Gear and the Master System using identical hardware.The first two offerings? Fist of the North Star for 600 points (yay?) and Fantasy Zone for 500 points (yay!) Neither Nintendo nor Sega have updated their Virtual Console pages to reflect this development, so we'll get to freak out again when that happens. For now we can just dream about what the future holds. Remember ALF? He could be back -- in Virtual Console form.
Happy trailers to you! Japanese game trailer roundup!
Yee-haw, we're rounding up some wild game trailers today! Courtesy of an even bigger trailer rodeo over on Dengeki, we've got new videos of some of the most interesting, most anticipated, and most not-in-either-of-those-categories games coming out of Japan. You'll recognize Fist of the North Star above, one of our recent infatuations. It continues to look amazingly weird in motion, and further fuels our desires to tap on-screen indicators violently.After the break, we've got trailers for the sweetly nostalgic adventure game Afterschool Boy, the, uh, other adventure game Lux-Pain, and the other other adventure game Mushishi. Joining them are the SRPG remake Summon Night and the sweat-mopping simulator Duel Love. We kind of forgot to keep the cowboy talk thing going throughout the whole post. Uh, these trailers are rootin'-tootin'? No?
