red-entertainment
Latest
Fire Emblem Awakening posts 180K first month sales, 63K downloads
Fire Emblem Awakening shifted 180,000 units across its debut month at North American retail, Nintendo of America tells us. In a statement sent to Joystiq, the company said the tactical 3DS RPG enjoyed best ever first month sales in the franchise's nearly 23-year history. No doubt that was helped by a strong eShop uptake of 63,000 units, which comes in at 35 percent of total sales.Considering the series' last entry, Shadow Dragon, sold just over 250,000 units in North America to date, Awakening's sales bump over here is impressive, much as we thought the game was in our review. We awarded Awakening four and a half stars, deeming it "the best soap opera since CBS canceled Guiding Light," which is certainly saying something.
Fire Emblem - Awakening review: One life to live
Fire Emblem: Awakening is the best soap opera since CBS cancelled Guiding Light.If you've never played a Fire Emblem before, imagine Final Fantasy Tactics from an overhead perspective, or a particularly bloated derivation of chess. Nintendo's stalwart helped establish the turn-based tactical RPG genre, and Fire Emblem: Awakening features everything you expect from the series. Dozens of warriors team up to protect the magical Fire Emblem from an ever expanding army of evil miscreants. Each chapter is a different battle fought on a square grid, with your small army of various combat classes fanning out across the terrain to wipe out the opposing forces. The standard array of RPG unit types are present – warriors deal heavy damage with axes or lances, wizards hurl bolts of fire and lightning from afar, archers arch and thieves thieve.Forget the standard medieval fantasy trappings, though. Forget the swords and arrows, the burly warriors and lithe Pegasus knights, the pointy-hatted mages and high-hatting nobles. Forget the vast array of combat tactics permissible by the game's open-ended approach to strategy. Forget the experience points earned with every attack. Forget the more powerful unit types unlocked once characters hit level ten, and the forges that upgrade your weapons, and the Paralogue missions that provide a secondary story to explore. Those are all vital to Awakening's compulsive allure, but what elevates Fire Emblem above other turn-based tactical RPGs are the deep roster of characters and the relationships that flower between them. You'll get as wrapped up in their stories as your grandmother did with the vengeful harridans and scheming suits of a soap opera.%Gallery-175932%
Fire Emblem: Awakening teaches the value of friendship
You might have thought the best part of friendship was a sense of camaraderie and togetherness. As this Fire Emblem: Awakening trailer proves, the real boon of friendship is sweet combat boosts.
Empowering your Fire Emblem: Awakening army with StreetPass
Despite the unique and interesting qualities of the 3DS' StreetPass and SpotPass functionality, I've rarely had reason to use it. So far, my favorite example of StreetPass functionality has been found in Theatrhythm: Final Fantasy, where it's possible to swap Dark Notes and custom character cards. When Fire Emblem: Awakening launches next month, however, I expect the mileage I get from those features will increase.At a preview event on Wednesday, Nintendo demonstrated its upcoming 3DS strategy game, giving the media a glimpse at its secondary features. My time with it left me intrigued. It's rare to see StreetPass bonuses and DLC embedded so deeply in the single-player experience.Fire Emblem: Awakening's DLC plan, for the most part, has already been revealed. We've been aware that characters such as Marth, Roy, Ike, and other franchise luminaries will be available via an in-game variant of the eShop. What I hadn't realized until now, however, is that there are actual rewards for completing a map in the game.%Gallery-175932%
Swag Sunday: Oh, Nostalgia (DS) [update]
Update: Comments have been closed and a winner shall be emailed expediently! Check your inboxes, dearest readers. Ahhh, nostalgia. It's quite a thing, isn't it? That old familiar feeling. We were just tots 20 years ago when the first Final Fantasy was mere months from its North American release, a game that went on to influence -- be it directly or incidentally -- many of the RPGs we've played since. Like this week's Swag Sunday, the appropriately titled Nostalgia, for instance (appropriately titled for our theme, that is). Joystiq's own JC Fletcher said in his preview that, "The winsome attitude of Nostalgia makes it a nice counterpoint to the self-importance of, say, Final Fantasy games, and the no-frills combat (and ability to make a temporary save file if you need to quit and aren't near a save point) is perfect for short-session handheld play." You see that? He even names Final Fantasy! How's that for sticking with a theme! Anyway, if you'll be so kind as to leave a comment below in the next 24 hours (once only, please) telling us about a nostalgic moment you've had while gaming, you'll be entered for a chance to win a copy of the game. Get to it! Leave a comment telling us about a nostalgic moment you've had while gaming. You must be 18 years or older and a resident of the US or Canada (excluding Quebec, mostly because of the lack of sweet Fez footage as of late). Limit 1 entry per person per day This entry period ends at 7:31PM ET on Monday, January 18. At that time, we'll randomly select one winner to receive one copy of Nostalgia for Nintendo DS ($34.99 ARV). For a list of complete rules, click here %Gallery-75764% What is Joyswag? Since we don't keep the games and merchandise we receive for review or promotional purposes, it becomes "Joyswag," which is passed along to our readers. Please note that Joyswag may be in "used" condition. For more info on our policy, click here.
Hands-on: Nostalgia (DS)
There's only one word I can use to describe the tone of Tecmo and Red Entertainment's Nostalgia, but that one word describes it perfectly: jaunty. I don't think I've ever played a jauntier game in my life, one that's so upbeat about the abstract notion of adventure. This enthusiasm for getting out and seeing the (fake) world is aided by a simplistic, familiar RPG gameplay system that keeps the mechanics of the game out of the way of your adventurin'. If Dragon Quest were set in a fake version of early 20th century Earth, it would be Nostalgia.%Gallery-75764%
Sakura Wars: So Long, My Ears
Sega and Red Entertainment's Sakura Wars series has enjoyed great popularity in Japan (witness the Sakura Wars Dreamcast system), but despite that success, it's never been localized. It seemed that non-importers would never get to try the long-running strategy RPG series, until NIS America announced plans to localize Sakura Wars V as Sakura Wars: So Long, My Love on Wii and PS2.It is the novelty of a Sakura Wars game in America, along with the appeal of a mech game set in an alternate 1920s NYC, that sustained us through this trailer (after the break), despite the voice acting. Don't worry, the game will include both English and Japanese!
Interview: Tecmo's Keisuke Kikuchi and Red Entertainment's Naoki Morita on Nostalgia
Tecmo's Nostalgeo no Kaze, being localized as Nostalgia by Ignition Entertainment, is a fantasy RPG set in a fictionalized version of our own world in the late 19th century. In this steampunk-inspired world, a young man named Eddy searches for legendary treasures, traveling around the world ... on his zeppelin. During E3, we had the opportunity to speak briefly with producer Keisuke Kikuchi (best known for creating Fatal Frame) and director Naoki Morita (known for his work on Sega's Sakura Taisen series, which is finally coming to North America) about the inspiration behind the fanciful Nintendo DS RPG, and about life after the Tecmo-Koei merger.
Another Week in Japan: Hardware and software numbers 4/14-4/20
Something caused a Phoenix Wright sales revival, and we suspect it was the Gyakuten Meets Orchestra concert (which was also a Gyakuten Kenji hype event). Both the first and second Gyakuten Saiban games for the DS ended up in the top thirty this week.Newcomer We're Fossil Diggers (a second-party effort by RED Entertainment that actually sounds really fun, at least to the dinosaur lovers in us) deserves all the glory, though. Debuting at third place, this unique piece of software did rather well for itself in its first week.Besides the same old games that have been showing up in the charts for the past few weeks, the other notable is Square-Enix's dull-sounding bookkeeping game. It seems like a rather niche title to end up in the top thirty, but who knows -- maybe a lot of Japanese folks are getting ready to take the Level 3 Bookkeeping exam. Or, maybe they just can't resist a game by the beloved Squeenix.To see all the placings and numbers for yourselves, just click on past the break.
PS3 Fanboy impressions: Agarest Senki demo
It's difficult to play games in a language you don't know. However, based on the nearly infinite well of RPG experience under our belts, we can make a few pretty obscure parallels to the recent demo of Agarest Senki that popped up on the Japanese PS Store this past week. If you're unaware of the title, it's a strategy RPG that harkens to the like of all those Nippon Ichi titles, except this one spans generations of characters that are born, fall in love, and breed according to your actions. It sounds fun on paper, but what happens in the demo is more confusing than biting into a donut to find it's filled with salad.
Record of Agarest, formerly known as Phantasy Star III, enters
The crowd who enjoyed the Phantasy Star series on the Sega Genesis are surprisingly sparse. Not because the games weren't that great, or niche, but because the Genesis wasn't exactly the system to turn towards for your role-playing fix. The third Phantasy Star game, subtitled Generations of Doom, was the black sheep of the bunch and left a sour taste in many longtime fans' mouths. Why? Don't ask us, or Morgan Webb. We thought it was fantastic. Apparently Idea Factory, Red Entertainment, and Compile Heart thought so, too, because their new title Record of Agarest shares the most interesting factor to that "black sheep".Record of Agarest puts you in a the position of controlling a main character, going through what we assume will be a paper-thin story, choosing a bride and having a kid. You then take control of the child and so on and so forth for five generations. Each generation explores a new continent, much like the "generations of doom" explored more and more parts of the Alisa III in PS3. We expect more partner choices and branching stories in Agarest, though. That aside, it seems to be planned out as a standard RPG -- turn-based battles and all. Does it sound like we're bitter? We're not. We're excited, since we thought the whole generation-spanning aspect of the Genesis classic was wonderful and we'd love to see an evolved form of it take shape. Our eyes are on this probably-import-only title, due out at the end of September in Japan.
Project Hacker Kakusei; Uplink for your DS
An intriguing television commercial for a Japanese game called Project Hacker: Kakusei, a title for the DS that closely resembles the innovative hacking title Uplink, has popped up on the internets. The game will place you in the role of Satoru, a detective with an organization called the GIS, for which you will have to face hacking-themed puzzles like password cracking. The commercial demonstrates effective use of the stylus combined with Uplink-style hacking, along with elements similar to Phoenix Wright's detective style and 2D anime artwork; hopefully the developers plan to emulate Ace Attorney's over-the-top dialog and light-hearted premise too.According to IGN's page on Project Hacker, the title was announced in October '05 when it was originally called Detect Hacker. It's being produced by Nintendo and developed by Red Entertainment and is due for release in Japan before the year is out. I couldn't find anything online about an English localization, so unfortunately we must assume that this is going to remain exclusive to Japan for now. With a little luck (and some pressure from you guys--for a start, the game's wiki page could do with some work), that will change.
