Little Red Riding Hood’s Story?

Yoshiro Kimura, designer of Little King’s Story, developer of several Lovedelic greats (Moon, UFO, L.O.L, Chulip, Rule Of Rose) and friend of Lovedelic Life has given a rather excellent interview with N-Sider.com. The Q&A mostly focuses on the making of Little King’s Story but it also briefly discusses Kimura’s concept for a new game (pictured) that appears to be based on Little Red Riding Hood.

I personally hope that this idea goes into production very soon. The world famous fairy tale is extremely suitable for videogame form (I’m thinking survival-horror…) and the mixture of children’s fable and subversive sexual metaphor would make it the ideal follow-up to Kimura’s controversial Rule Of Rose.

Too Much Tingle

Kotaku has a nice little report about the new Tingle games, including some fantastic Famitsu scans.

Game number one is a full sequel to Freshly Picked Tingle’s Rosy Ruppeland, this time called Color Changing Tingle’s Love Balloon Trip. The theme this time, it seems, will be love. So instead of greedily scouring the world for money he’ll be looking for a life-partner. I use this non-gender-specific term intentionally, of course, because of the general assumption that Tingle is gay. Preview images for the new game suggest that Nintendo will be setting the record straight by setting him up with a string of attractive women but I wouldn’t be surprised to see a hunky man-shaped twist toward the end of the game. This is a Tingle title, after all, and it’s bound to have some risque element to it… Unless the game has been specifically designed to break America by nixing the one problem that most yanks seem to have with the character.

Game number two, meanwhile, is less expected but no less welcome. It’s a DSiWare title appropriately named Too Much Tingle and seems to be a wacky collection of mini-games and utilities. There’s a fortune teller, a stopwatch, a calculator, a coin toss and, weirdly, a dancing marionette. Each one comes with its own unique twist, like the calculator that is designed for men and women to split the bill for their meal… And not necessarily equally.

Those of you who own a Japanese DSi will be pleased to hear that Too Much Tingle is already available for 500 Nintendo Points. The rest of us will have to wait for confirmation of a worldwide release.

First Welcome Home Chibi-Robo screens

Tingle returns

As many of you are no doubt aware, a new Tingle game has been announced by Nintendo and already has a teaser website that you can view here. While details are scarce, we do know that the game is heading for the DS and that, going by the illustration style, it is likely to be a sequel to Freshly Picked Tingle’s Rosy Rupeeland. No idea if Vanpool is the developer but the familiar art style, and the fact that the studio hasn’t produced a new game in ages, suggests they will be. We should know more on Thursday when Nintendo launches a a trailer for the game.

And in other news: I received an email from Yoshiro Kimura (designer of Little King’s Story) this weekend saying that he and Kazuyuki Kurashima are fans of Lovedelic Life. Aptly enough, Kurashima is actually the voice of Tingle as well as the monster designer on Rupeeland and LKS.

Kimura and Kurashima, Lovedelic Life extends a hearty Kooloo-Limpah! to you both!

Art Style x Bit Generations

Some clever and talented person on Deviantart has created an image that shows what the Art Style DSi games might look like if they had been released in boxes and in the same theme as Skip’s previous experimental series, Bit Generations. The results are suitably stylish and leave me a little bit cold toward the whole digital download thing. On the one hand I’m grateful for the fact that DSiWare has allowed for these games to get a UK release where the Bit Generations games didn’t, but I sure do miss the tangibility of a lovingly designed and crafter physical product.

I guess if I was feeling really sad then I could save all my Art Style games to seperate SD cards and package them up in boxes made from these mock-up packages. Thankfully, though, my obsession hasn’t quite escalated to that level of fanatacism yet.

Thanks to the ever-interesting Tiny Cartridge for the heads-up.

New Chibi-Robo due in 6 weeks!

No, not the Wimake of the original Chibi-Robo. This is actually an entirely new game that’s heading for the DS and is, shockingly, just a few short weeks from release. Nintendo has released zero information about the game, other than the title, which is Welcome Home Chibi-Robo. No screenshots have yet been shown but Play-Asia does have a logo, which you can I’ve unashamedly borrowed. Can anyone work out what Chibi is carrying there? It seems to be some sort of vacuum cleaner to me.

With the release so close I would expect an official website to go online any day now, probably on the day of the Wiimake’s release this Thursday.

I’m personally very excited about this. Yes, I love original titles but I also like to see my favourite characters appear in new adventures. I actually watched Nintendo’s E3 conference over the net last week and though I was thrilled to hear about the sequels to Mario, Metorid and Golden Sun, I really had my fingers crossed for a new Chibi-Robo game. The announcment didn’t come and I gave up hope only to see this new DS game stealthily announced via Nintendo Japan’s online schedule. What a nice surprise!

Thanks to both Tom and Quinton for letting me know about the new game!

ChibWii-Robo

In just three weeks time the Wii remake of Chibi-Robo will be released in Japan and Nintendo has now launched an accompanying website in preparation. As is the norm with these things it looks as though Nintendo will drip feed various bits of information right up until release, but we can already see from the screen to the left that motion controls will be incorporated to a degree.

Chibi-Robo is, without doubt, my favourite of all the Lovedelic legacy games so I’m super excited to see it get a second chance on Wii… The GameCube version was overlooked for a number of reasons, not least the fact that it was released very late in the system’s life. Let’s hope this version gets more attention and that an English language release isn’t too far away.

Teacher’s Pet Projects

The What’s New section of Route24’s website has been updated and, if I understand the Babelfish translation properly, it indicates that three new iPhone games are currently in the works. From what I can work out, Kenichi Nishi has been lecturing at Kyoto-Seika university for some time now and has recently dividied his students into three teams who will each develop their own iPhone game under his guidance.

I’m not sure whether these projects can truly be counted as Route24 games but the blogs for each one do at least acknowledge the company’s involvement. Interestingly, the situation is somewhat similar to the way in which Skip’s Bit Generations series came to be as that too originally began life as a series of student project…

Nevertheless, each one is intended for a worldwide release so I’ll be sure to download them and report back as soon as they’re available.

Old Vanpool Interview

While idly browsing a few websites today I came across an interview with Vanpool at Nintendo’s official Tingle website. It’s quite old now but I thought this Q&A might be of some interest to fans of the game. It gives a little insight into the development process, the future of the brand and how Tingle was distanced from the Zelda series, which he actually originates from.

And while we’re on the topic of Vanpool. Did you know they did the sounds for Little King’s Story? Thanks to Quinton A. Klabon for sending the credits video that reveals the little nugget of info. Skip to 08:13 to avoid ending spoilers.

The Little King That Could

Little King’s Story launches in Europe today, before any other territory in the world! It really is a remarkable occasion.

I obviously recommend that you buy it right away if you have a PAL Wii. But don’t take my word for it. A couple more positive reviews are up to read from some of the UK’s most respected videogame sites. NowGamer gives it 8.2/10 while Eurogamer gives it an equally excellent 8/10.

The latter has also reviewed Europe’s latest ArtStyle games but hasn’t been quite so generous. CODE gets 7/10 while AQUITE gets 3/10, which is way off the mark in my opinion and, if you’re a puzzle lover, I urge you not to be put off by that score.

Will you be playing Little King’s Story over the following month? Would you like me to start a Discussion page like the one for Captain Rainbow? Let me know in the comments below.