Lovedelic bargains to be had

Play-Asia is having a huge sale to celebrate Chinese New Year. 5000 items discounted! And there are a few Lovedelic school games included. Here’s what’s left.

Sakura Note – £25.21

Bit Generations: Boundish – £6.26

Captain Rainbow – £12.57 [EDIT - As Douglas points out, Captain Rainbow has already reverted to its whopping £41 price tag. Ouch! I hope you all picked it up while you had the chance]

I particularly recommend that you pick up Captain Rainbow if you don’t already own it. It’s an absolutely essential Skip game and I can’t believe how cheaply it’s being sold. Personally, I’ll be buying Sakura Note. I’ve been putting off getting the Audio adventure in the hope that an English translation would be announced, but it doesn’t look very likely at this point.

Trouble at Marvelous

There’s been a double whammy of bad news this week for anyone who enjoys the games of Marvelous Entertainment. First it was reported that the Japanese publisher had sold off its 50% share in UK publisher Rising Star Games. And then came the even more worrying news of pay cuts across the board, including a whopping 77% cut for Marvelous CEO Haruki Nakayama.

This, I shouldn’t have to point out, is extremely worrying. For a company to take such drastic measures it must be hanging on by a thread, doing everything it can to stay in operation. It’s doubly worrying in this case, since Marvelous has been one of the few Japanese publishers to consistently develop and release genuinely interesting games – the sort of titles that have been championed on this very blog. No More Heroes, Little King’s Story and Muramasa: The Demon Blade are just a handful of the excellent games that have come from Marvelous and all made their way to UK shores via Rising Star. And it looks as though those types of games may soon become an endangered species.

Sure, Marvelous has managed to bail itself out of trouble this week and has retained an agreement with Rising Star so that the UK publisher can continue to release Marvelous games despite the two now being wholly separate entities. But if both companies are to survive, realistically, then they’re going to have to change the kinds of games that they release.

What do the three games mentioned above all have in common? They all sold very, very few copies. 470,000; 170,000; and 180,000 respectively according to VGChartz. Those aren’t sales figures that can support a big business like Marvelous and the company will have to make some huge changes to turn the situation around. Rising Star, meanwhile, will now have zero interest in keeping Marvelous alive now that it is no longer a part of the same company. So even if Marvelous does continue to create interesting niche games, that doesn’t necessarily mean that Rising Star will choose to localise them.

If anyone has some bright ideas on how Marvelous can continue to create niche games without going out of business then please let me know. Personally I see a dark vision of the future – it has fewer interesting videogames available and even fewer of those on British shelves.

Is a Moon remake likely?

Cubed3 has an excellent new interview with Yoshiro Kimura, in which he discusses the making of Little King’s Story as well as a few other Lovedelic related issues. It’s an interview that’s fueled a rumour about Moon being remade – a subject that’s obviously very exciting for myself and anyone who reads this blog.

But exactly how likely is such a remake to happen? I emailed Kimura-san to find out and here’s what he had to say. Please note – I’ve tidied up the language a little since Kimura struggled to answer a rather difficult question in English.

“Oh, these kinds of rumor happen often. But it is half correct and half wrong. I do have an ambition to remake Moon. But, at the same time, I want to make something new immediately. I love my work both past and future. If I can remake something, someday then I wish it could be Moon or Chulip. But I do not know when I can realize such an ambition.

And I want to know that, if I remake Moon, who would want to play and how many people would love it? It was so nice for me during the Moon days.. it was a very important era of my life. Once I start to remember those days, tears drop from my eyes with happiness. I can honestly talk to people. I want play Moon again also, but it is so dificult for me to build a new version of Moon at this moment.”

There you have it. Kimura-san would love to create a remake of Moon (and even Chulip as it turns out) but it is not worth pursuing unless there is significant fan demand. So if you’d like to see a Moon remake more than a brand new and original project then you’re going to have to spread the word. Blog about it, write letters to games magazines and tell publishers like Marvelous, Rising Star and XSeed that you want to play a new version of Moon, and in English too.
And don’t forget to comment here too. I’m interested to hear if you’d like to play a remake or a brand new game. Let me know.

PS – If you’d like to read more from Kimura then check out the mini-feature he wrote about the making of Little King’s Story for Gamasutra. There are some neat revelations about the changes that were made along the way.

Space*Agency round 2

As noted here, the folks at Tiny Cartridge have worked with Akira Ueda to create a second version of the Space*Agency proof-of-concept trailer with improved English text. Way to go, guys!

From Sakura Note to Space*Agency

So the release of Audio Inc’s Sakura Note came and went without me really noticing. I’ll probably care in the unlikely event that it is released in English but, until then, I can’t see it being much fun to play. Anyone out there own it and disagree? Let me know in the comments below.

Despite Sakura Note being out for just a few weeks, Audio is already cracking on with a new title called Space*Agency – which you can see in the video above. According to Audio’s Akira Ueda, the studio was working on Space*Agency a few years ago but had to put the project on hold to work on various contract games. They’re back on track now but are looking for a worldwide publisher before they can go into full development – hence the proof of concept trailer.

Are you a publisher with a few bob to spare? I’d like it very much if you could fund development of Space*Agency. Audio’s games just don’t get translated often enough.

Farewell, Tao

The most recent blog post on the Route24 website appears to claim that Kenichi Nishi’s dog, Tao, has died.

Anyone who’s ever looked at Nishi’s blog will know, despite the language barrier, just how much Tao meant to him, thanks to the hundreds of photos adorning the website and we can only imagine how bad Nishi must feel right now.

Millions of game designers across the world probably own dogs that have died, of course, but few developers’ dogs are as well known to gamers as Tao. Immortalized in several games – Moon, Giftpia, Chibi-Robo and Captain Rainbow – Tao has a special place in the heart of many a Lovedelic fan, who I’m sure will join me in wishing Kenichi Nishi the sincerest sympathies today.

RIP Tao.

Skip discuss Art Style

Just a quick post to say that you really should get issue 89 of games™* this month. It features a 4-page article on the Art Style series, in which the first six DSiWare titles are reviewed and various members of Skip talk about the making of the series. It’s a short interview but it does have a couple of revelations, including the previously unknown fact that Skip was once working on a Motionplus sports game for the Wii.

Who would have believed that? Not me. Sports games are about as far away from Skip’s usual output as it’s possible to get. But then Art Style Cubello did start out as an FPS, so maybe they would have done something interesting with the genre.

In other Art Style news – the bit Generations title, Digidrive was recently released under the Art Style label, on DSi, as Intersect. I didn’t report on it at the time, since the game is made by Q Games, and not Skip, but I might as well mention it here for completion’s sake.

*Subscribers should have their copy now, while everyone else will be able to buy the issue from this Thursday onward.

Notes On Sakura Note

Ok, I admit it. I’m just not that interested in Lovedelic games at the moment. My retro glands have been pumping LucasArts classics for the past two or three months, swollen with excitement at the new Monkey Island series. And it’s October, so I’ve been indulging in the big Christmas hits like Uncharted 2 while drooling over forthcoming software like DJ Hero, Assassin’s Creed II and New Super Mario Bros. Wii.

But who can blame me? There’s very little of interest going on in Lovedelic Land at the moment. Only Sakura Note seems to show any signs of life and, to be honest, I can’t get too excited about that at present. Fortunately, however, the lovely people at Tiny Cartridge have been doing a fine job of tracking Audio’s project on the new DS RPG and I heartily recommend that you check out their findings here.

Now then, I’ll have one more post for you today but then I’m off back to the PS3.

Relive your childhood with Sakura Note

As is becoming far too common, the wonderful people at Tiny Cartridge have beat me to another Lovedelic related story. This time it’s about a competition Marvelous is holding, in which fans can send in nostalgic photographs from their childhood for inclusion on the site.

I’m not sure if they mean photos that were taken when you were a child or new photos that represent memories of your childhood, but this is a cool idea all the same. If you enter the contest then let me know how it goes below.

ALSO: Tiny Cartridge reports that Audio would very much like to see Sakura Note localised. Which is very good news in the current climate, when the last two Chibi-Robo games and the latest Tingle look set to stay Japan-only.

We’re back!

Well, folks. It’s been a hell of a long time since I last posted here and I really must apologise.

Sorry!

Where have I been? Well, I moved house back in the middle of July and didn’t manage to get the internet installed until this week. THANK YOU very much, Talk, Talk!

So what did this blog miss while I was away? A hell of a lot as it turns out. Here’s everything I can remember:

Welcome Home-Chibi Robo was released in Japan. I have my copy and I can confirm that it is a truly excellent game. It’s a lot like the GameCube version but with great touch controls and some lovely new gadgets. Sadly, I spoke to Nintendo a few weeks ago and they confirmed that there are no plans to release the game in the UK. Happily, however, it’s totally import friendly.

The new Tingle game – Color Changing Tingle’s Love Balloon Trip – was also released in Japan and has also been denied a UK release. My copy hasn’t arrived yet but, from what I’ve read, it seems to be quite a departure from the last game and is more akin to a point-and-click, consisting mostly of locked room puzzles.

Akira Ueda, longtime Lovedelic collaborator and creator of Contact, has announced a new DS game called Sakura Note. The official website has a few screens and some video footage that show off a rather unique art style, mixing 16-bit sprites with digitized photographic backgrounds. Hideo Minaba, who worked on Little King’s Story, is also developing Sakura Note.

Speaking of Little King’s Story. The rather brilliant Wii game has finally been released in the States and is about to be released in Japan, where it is being promoted in a typically wacky way.

Fans of the Art Style games should look forward to issue 89 of gamesTM, on sale at the end of October as, if everything goes to plan, it will feature an interview with several member of Skip about their popular DSiWare series.

And that’s about all I can remember. I’m sure there’s more I’ve missed but it’s been a busy couple of months. If I recall any other news then I’ll post it in the next few days.

In the meantime, I’d like to do something unusual and recommend a few non-Lovedelic games that I’ve been playing this summer. In the last two weeks I’ve been mostly playing Bionic Commando, Batman: Arkham Asylum, Professor Layton And The Diabolical Box, Blood Bowl, Wii Sports Resort, Machinarium, Tales Of Monkey Island and Space Invaders Infinity Gene.

If you have the chance to play any of these games then I suggest you do so. They’re all excellent in their own way.

Oh and look forward to Heavy Rain next year. I finally got a chance to play a little of it and I really do think it will change the way stories are told in games. Believe the hype, as they say.