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Everybody was touchscreen fighting
The DS's touchscreen technology has allowed us to indulge in some truly unique activities, from painting tanks to DJing to slapping women. Seriously, who would have guessed this kind of thing was the future in 2003?Not wishing to be left out, Capcom's Rosario + Vampire (which, Capcom has confirmed, won't be appearing in the west) also uses the touchscreen in a novel way. Rather than the traditional method of pressing buttons, the game's combat sequences are carried out with directional stylus swipes, with different Ouendan-esque strokes producing certain moves.It's definitely an interesting approach, and it makes us wonder whether we'll be seeing more fighting games embracing this method in the future. If Rosario + Vampire pulls it off well, we wouldn't bet against another developer picking up this idea and running with it.
Fist of the North Star's sensitive minigame
We thought this minigame in the Fist of the North Star DS game was awesome enough to warrant its own post. As the latest screenshot update on the official website illustrates, Raoh's storyline is playable in addition to Kenshiro's.This follows outside of the main game as well, with this Raoh-spotting minigame. We've seen some weird minigames in our tenure as DS fans, but this one may manage to be the freakiest yet. Given a selection of four details from manga panels, you are asked to pick which depiction of Raoh features Raoh crying over his brother Toki. That's actually not the whole of the game; it's a wireless multiplayer trivia game, which is a neat addition. Still, for us it's always going to be the crying-Raoh game. Lest you think Raoh is weak, we should tell you why he's crying over his brother Toki: it's because he has just punched Toki almost to death, and is about to punch him all the way to death. You'd cry too.
Fist of the North Star screens precisely attack our eyeballs
There's something about stylus controls and Fist of the North Star that go so well together. Despite the animation being sub-par in the anime, we still enjoyed it very much (but don't even get us started on the live-action film) back in the day, so the prospect of being able to play it on our DS is one we've been in favor of for a bit now. Oh, how we can't wait to hit some fools with about a billion punches.These newest screens mix in a couple oldies with all of the others, so keep that in mind. For the most part, though, it's all fresh.
To-Love-Ru: a game and pun that will never make it outside Japan
To-Love-Ru is a play on the Japanese pronunciation of the English words "trouble" (toraburu) and "love" (rabu). Unfortunately, the pun just doesn't fit native English phonology as well; to put a finer point on it, "tlovel" isn't all that funny or clever-sounding. Too bad. It's pretty neat that a pun on English words only works in another language's sound system, though, right?Anyway, To-Love-Ru is also a manga/anime property that is being made into a DS game by Marvelous Entertainment. The manga is about a high-school boy, Rito, who gets involved with some alien princess thing and hilarity and awkward social situations ensue -- your basic manga stuff. What is interesting to us is how Marvelous has chosen to undertake this adaptation: they're calling the DS To-Love-Ru game a "2D digital comic with 3D touch action." Minigames on the DS are no big deal, but we like seeing more publishers getting the idea that the best way to adapt comics to the DS is just to put them on there.[Via Siliconera]
Fist of the North Star DS comes with neighsayer
The DS Fist of the North Star game was already an interactive manga in which you tap spots on the screen to beat up on dudes. It was already pretty bizarre. But Spike has decided to pile bizarre upon bizarre with this bonus for early purchasers.It's a keychain that plays a horse noise. Awesome, right? You could be out anywhere, and suddenly have the urge to listen to the sound of a horse, and just have a horse noise right there. In your pocket. To be fair, the horse immortalized by this keychain is not just some regular horse, but Kokuoh-Go, Raoh's giant horse who is also a king. Unfortunately, we don't know what Kokuoh-Go sounds like, but maybe his neigh is way tougher-sounding than a normal horse's.GAME Watch has some new screens of the game, in case you're as interested in extremely violent screen-tapping as we are.
Now we want all our comics in DS form
Famitsu has precious few (well, precious two) screens of DS de Yomu Tezuka Osamu Hi no Tori, the DS adaptation of Tezuka's Phoenix manga, but there's enough information there for us to get an idea of the presentation, at least. Basically, the full page appears on the bottom screen, and one panel at a time is zoomed in on the top screen. It's a very similar approach to Marvel Digital Comics' Smart Panels viewing style. We just hope that, unlike with Smart Panels, you are also able to move the panel view around manually in order to see more than just the focal point of each panel.The 12 volumes of Phoenix are being divided into three DS cartridges, each retailing for 4,179 yen ($37). $37 isn't terrible for four books' worth of manga, but collecting whole series in DS format could still become painful quickly.
New and interesting ways to bust up dudes in Fist of the North Star
Spike has updated their Fist of the North Star website with a couple of new screens showing the varied input methods in the game. The gameplay is not entirely limited to tapping things, but sometimes involves tapping and then dragging. We might not know too much about Fist of the North Star, but we know that any game involving using the stylus to cut a guy's face all criss-crossed is something we want to play.Also revealed in the latest update: you'll be able to play as characters other than Kenshiro. Raoh is mentioned by name, but there will certainly be more.[Via Ruliweb]
Osamu Tezuka's Phoenix coming to the DS
You may expect some terrible DS platformer or something to be built from this comic license from legendary Astro Boy creator Osamu Tezuka, but that is not at all what developer Compile Heart is doing. Phoenix (also known as Hi no Tori/Fire Bird) is coming to the DS in its original form. As manga.DS de Yomu Tezuka Osamu Hi no Tori is a collection of Phoenix comics to be read on the DS, featuring extra visual and sound effects (such as the screen shaking to emphasize a dramatic panel). Of course, other helpful features like bookmarking are also included. No word as to how much of the Phoenix backlog will be covered in this collection, though we doubt it's the whole thing. It'll be released in May for 4,179 yen ($37.50). If it works out, Compile Heart will expand the Read on DS series.
Rosario + Vampire = huh?
Capcom has created a site for a game based on the manga Rosario + Vampire. Like most manga, we didn't know what the hell this was. It turns out to be some high school romance thing, but it's at least got an unusual twist: the main character has been enrolled in a school for monsters by mistake! And then he falls in love with a vampire girl, so rather than going to the principal, he decides to pretend to be a monster. Oh, the comical misunderstandings that must ensue! The game looks like a pretty standard dating sim/graphical text adventure thing. Travel to different locations around the school, talk to girls, that sort of thing. But ... monsters! Check out the "pre-opened" site for more screens.[Via Famitsu]
Fist of the Web Site
We hope other people are as interested in the Fist of the North Star game as we are. It should at least be better than the Sega Master System Fist of the North Star game (though the music probably won't be as awesome). We are aficionados of the dudes-getting-punched-many-times genre, of which Fist of the North Star is one of the classic works. That is why we're so interested in a fresh take like this one which combines classic material with new mechanics. The website shows some nice clear screens, and introduces the game in general terms -- the action sequences, story sequences, and unlockable character cards.Can tapping dude-shaped things on the screen many times really substitute for pushing buttons many times to punch dudes? We cannot wait to find out! Of course, we may have to read the dudes' reactions to our punches in an incomprehensible foreign language, because there's little likelihood of a U.S. version. But that's okay -- we can pretty much get the gist of "Ow! My face has been punched numerous times!" in any language.
Akira Toriyama's classic manga Slumps onto the DS
Before becoming way famous for Dragon Ball, Akira Toriyama created a popular manga series called Dr. Slump, about a failed inventor and his flawed robot daughter Arale. Now Namco Bandai is prepared to bring the incomprehensible (to people trying to learn about it in a hurry, say, for a blog post) series to the DS in the form of Dr. Slump: Arale-chan.According to the enthusiastic GAF thread, it's going to be a 3D adventure game starring Arale, with, of course, tons of other series characters (like Suppaman). The screens certainly bear that information out. It should be interesting to see if Toriyama/Dragon Ball fandom is enough encouragement for Namco Bandai to localize this, or if they'll do it just to spite all of us waiting for their other new Japanese DS game.
Robot cats that play baseball? Where do we sign up?
It's no Baseball Stars, but for those of you craving a good portable baseball game, Dorabase DS might be your best bet. The game is set from a Japanese manga of the same name (sans the "DS" part), featuring a baseball loving, cat-like robot named Kuroemon and his team.We recently told you about another baseball game called Famitsa DS, but unlike its sounds-like-a-Japanese-magazine counterpart, Dorabase DS utilizes stylus controls. For example, the ball is hit or pitched depending on the direction of the line drawn with the stylus. We know we made that sound as lame as possible, but the controls actually appear to be easy and natural.Another nice thing about Dorabase DS is the Kuroemon themed, screen cleaning strap "reservation gift" (pictured after the break). Of course, this is (currently) a Japan-only title, so if it strikes your fancy, you'll have to import it come December.Check out some game-related pictures after the break.
Create a LifeSigns manga, (maybe) win a DS (probably not)
Remember LifeSigns? No?Well, for those of you angry at Trauma Center for breaking up with the DS, LifeSigns: Surgical Unit (which is being released this week) is a welcome substitute.You also might want to know that the folks behind LifeSigns are giving away ten DS Lites (with copies of the game, of course). All you have to do is make a manga on the LifeSigns website, advertise send it to some friends, and hope yours gets picked to win. It's similar to the Phoenix Wright and Harvey Birdman contests, but it's a trend we don't mind spreading. Make stupid comics and get free stuff? Fine by us.
More screens of the Fist of the North Star interactive manga thing
We're willing to work with a blurry magazine scan to get a few more screens of the Fist of the North Star interactive manga game. Some of the screens are identical to those we saw before, but new ones appear as well. Since this uses (obviously) manga graphics and screen-tapping mechanics, it reminds us a bit of a non-musical take on Ouendan, which relied on manga-style scenes on the top screen to tell the story. Therefore, in our heads, manga + touching on-screen icons = fun. And then this Fist of the North Star thing swaps out music and ridiculous situations for over-the-top violence.We can also just make out the January 31st release date and the 6040 yen price. ($53-- ouch) Check out the full scan after the break!
Night of the Dragon - Richard Knaak interview
Our friends at Blizzplanet have a video interview up with Richard Knaak, author of the Warcraft novels Day of the Dragon, the War of Ancients trilogy and the upcoming Night of the Dragon, as well as the Sunwell Trilogy and upcoming Burning Crusade manga. For those of us who can't watch video due to work or other issues, they've even thoughtfully presented a transcript of the interview here. What I found especially interesting are the little hints Knaak dropped in the interview about Malygos, Rhonin and his role with the Kirin Tor, what effects the characters of the upcoming Burning Crusade manga have on Wrath of the Lich King, and the sputtering response to the Diablo 3 question. Is there something fishy going on there? (Probably not.)Additional tidbits of note: we will probably see Vereesa again, and no, she's not big on the Blood Elves (may we dream of a sisters Windrunner family reuinion?), Knaak would like to use a Draenei in the upcoming book, no word yet on if Hakkar the Houndmaster was an eredar or what relation he has to Hakkar the Soulflayer (perhaps identical cousins?) and finally, Knaak's contracts with Blizzard keep him from saying too much, which for a lore junkie like myself is very maddening.Savor the interview and let the rampant speculation commence.
Fist of the North Stylus
We don't know if it'll be fun, and we don't really know if it'll have any replay value, but damned if this Fist of the North Star game isn't pretty. Seems to us that the right way to do a tie-in game for a manga is to use manga in the game rather than making some ugly 3D models of all the characters.Here's how Hokuto no Ken: Hokuto Kami-ken Denshousha no Michi (something like Fist of the North Star: The Way of the Storyteller of the Northern God maybe, but don't take our translation as gospel) works: you touch certain marked points on the screen with the stylus to make Kenshiro fight and to otherwise progress the story along.It's kind of a simple idea, but touching icons on the screen is sort of the basis for many DS games (hello, Ouendan) and it works just fine. This way, at least, the Fist of the North Star story is told in a faithful way, using gorgeous visuals. They're especially gorgeous when compared to the NES Fist of the North Star game.
World Wide Wow: Welcome to "Messy Cow"
A recent addition to Blizzard's fan art page shows a dramatic cast of characters for a new online comic entitled Messy Cow, by a talented illustrator named Weng Chen. I always love to see new webcomics, especially WoW-related ones, so naturally I headed over to messycow.com to check it out, and was pleasantly surprised with what I saw. Weng Chen (who also goes by the internet nickname "Wonn") has been drawing manga (an Asian style of comics) since she was 14, and recently been introduced to MMO gaming through WoW. She taps into a huge fanbase with a comic about WoW, too, and has gotten a good start on translating the comics from Chinese to English with the help of some native speakers. Messy Cow has 8 pages of comics in English at the time of this posting, with many many more in Chinese, and she seems to be translating them very quickly. So far, the English comics give a good sense of what it's like to be a new WoW player, finding lots of cute humor in the situations a new player faces, as well as highlighting some of the most important things a new player has to learn as he or she gets into the game, from how she chose her character, to how she learned about loot rules, to how she first got into PvP . If you have a friend who is new to the game or wondering what playing is like, this comic could be a great way to get her interested and comfortable with it.In addition, Messy Cow shows just how much of the WoW experience is the same, whether you are in the East or the West. Both sides of the world love this game, and deal with a lot of the same issues when entering into it for the first time. When people talk about WoW, anywhere in the world, it is a set of common experiences we share, a common culture that overlaps whatever differences there are between us. It may seem too idealistic to some, but in an era when there are wars and rumors of wars on the lips of people all over the world, mounted on top of so much fear and misunderstanding between cultures who really ought to have nothing to fight about, it's encouraging to see more evidence of the World of Warcraft bridging the gap -- one of many forms of media and culture that build common ground all around the world. In Azeroth, we relish the war, but on earth WoW fosters peace and shared identity.
Victorious Boxers boxart, for real this time
We threw in the towel last week when we mistakenly identified GameFly's Victorious Boxers: Revolution mockup as the finalized design, but now we're scrambling into the ring to retrieve the surrendered cloth. "Uh, sorry about that! It must've slipped out of our hands!"Dynamite Glove, a community site for the Hajime no Ippo series, received a first look at publisher XSeed's actual packaging, and it is a thing of beauty. This is the sort of box that we could run up the Philadelphia Museum of Art's steps with, holding it above our heads once we've reached the top, hopping up and down in slow-motion as the training montage fades out.Those of you who would still rather have Ippo's fighting figure on the front will be happy to hear that the jacket is reversible, the opposite side using artwork from the Japanese cover. Jump past the break for a better look at both boxart designs.
Not So Victorious Boxart
Publisher XSeed will be bringing Victorious Boxers: Revolution to the US (Hajime no Ippo: The Fighting Revolution in Japan), but the boxing game's manga-tastic cover won't be coming along for the trip, at least according to the packaging design on GameFly's product page.Instead of the crowd of expressive faces -- determined, vengeful, and contemplative -- that we saw with the Japanese boxart, we'll be getting this victory pose silhouette and a ho-hum logo. While we understand that Hajime no Ippo isn't as popular in North America as it is across the Pacific, it would've been nice to have at least seen Ippo, the series's hero, on the cover.Victorious Boxers hits store shelves this September. Bob and weave past the post break for a look at the game's dramatic packaging art in Japan.
Friday Video: Fast as lightning
Since we talked a little about import games here this morning, showing off a trailer for a game often mentioned in the same breath as "if only" seemed appropriate for our video spotlight. If you're one of the four people around who isn't familiar with Jump Ultimate Stars, let us enlighten you. Jump Ultimate Stars is a fighting game packed with hundreds of manga characters. Yes, hundreds, from dozens of series ... and it also happens to be a great fighting game on the DS. Check out one of the trailers for the game after the jump.
