Level 5's upcoming collaboration with Studio Ghibli is called Ninokuni (Another World), and when it hits the Nintendo DS, it will be hitting in the biggest way.
The Ninokuni DS cart is said to be the biggest ever released. It's final size, a specially made high-density 4GB, will double even the largest capacity UMD, which is limited to 1.8GB. What's all that storage space for? Well, if you're a fellow music fan, you'll be pleased with this: world-class composer Joe Hisaishi, composer of the Ghibli flims' scores, is working on a fully orchestrated score for this game, and they're wanting to jam it into this game cart.
So, huge size and music by one of the best film composers ever? Oh, and don't forget about the visuals. If you have, watch the trailer after the jump. I'm really looking forward to this game.
Dale North is Destructoid's Editor-In-Chief, a founding editor, and specialist in Japanese gaming. An accomplished musician, Dale was reporting from Japan during the earthquakes of 2011. Luckily, he got the fuck out alive and is home in America now with his wife and beloved corgi, Einstein. Dale is also a co-founder of Destructoid's sister anime site Japanator. Likes Corgis, Sega Saturn, PSP, iPhone, Photographic tools.
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This is how you combat piracy. You make an amazing game that takes up so much space that it's more economical to just buy the damn thing. Now, my concern is this: Am I going to want to play through 4 gigs of game on a DS?
Nice failure, Dale. I think even my mom knows that DS carts work on GigaBITS, not GigBYTES, which are smaller. 4 Gigabits only equals to about 500 megs. Still, this is the biggest DS game ever, as I think A.S.H was the biggest one I remember at 2 Gigabits.
I'm crying out of sheer joy at this news. Joe Hisaishi's scores are fantastic, and this news makes me so happy i can hardly contain myself. I was already pumped for this, but now i don't know how i'll not buy it when it comes stateside.
@PappaDukes The biggest SDHC is what? 16 gigs? If this game is 4gb, which is now up to speculation, you would have room for 3, maybe 4 games of this massive size.
Sweeeeet. I liked Persona 4 because it was a videogame that felt like I was playing through the plot of an anime series, and this is right up that alley.
@Zaor27 - It's 32 gigs, but I fail to see your point. So assuming I only had a 16 gig sdhc card, by your logic I would only be able to pirate 3-4 games AT A TIME!?
Gonna have to keep my eye on on this one, its loking really great. I'm not always into Level 5 stuff, but is nice to see them continue to collaborate with other studios. I find the collaborations are more interesting than when they're left to their own devices.
Look at the original article. Giga BYTES. Way to attempt to appear intelligent and fail. The only thing that's realistically measured in bits is network traffic.
I wonder if it is even worth it to play the game? The combat looks like Dragon Quest 101. Anyway, this does nothing against piracy. You can't fit it on a flashcart(because your SD card is too small), just use an emulator.
The original article is wrong, Switch is right, it should say Gb not GB. It is bits. It is not 4 gigabytes, there will never be a 4 gigabyte DS game, there will never even be a 1 gigabyte DS game.
In perspective though, it is the same amount of memory as the Wii has internally on a DS card, it's still impressive.
So we should let the fact that neither Dale nor CVG know anything about portable game sizes slide? I mean, I don't even know all that much, but the DS has been out for what, 4 almost 5 years now? It's always been called Giga Bits. Why would won game suddenly balloon to the size of a Wii or Xbox 1 game?
yeah actually DTOID should edit or change this right away before someone from Sony decides to sue because it isn't even close to the size of the UMD's full capacity. Which IS measured in Bytes.
Even though theswitcher is being kind of a douche about it... I believe he is right. The original site does NOT say gigaBYTES anywhere, it just says "GB" which is probably a simple error made by journalists (it's ok guys). Looking at this from a rational point of view, 4 GB is just WAY to big of a jump (unless we are talking about a new change in medium) from the 256 MB (or 2Gb) carts; however 512 MB is CRAZY big for a DS game.
Also, it looks PURDY!
@Jon B
While Gigabit is COMMONLY used for for network traffic, it is still a widely used term in the realm of technology
"What's all that storage space for? Well, if you're a fellow music fan, you'll be pleased with this: world-class composer Joe Hisaishi, composer of the Ghibli flims' scores, is working on a fully orchestrated score for this game, and they're wanting to jam it into this game cart."
Why do I see this as useless? Especially to someone who doesn't even use headphones to listen to DS sounds seriously. Unless I'm playing a rythym game.
Dear People who have NO idea what they are talking about (CLEARLY) Theswitcher is right! THIS DOESNT MEAN ITS 4GB(Gigabytes in a cartridge) It is gigabits.
Nintendo DS games use a proprietary solid state ROM "game card" format resembling the memory cards used in other portable electronic devices such as digital cameras. It currently supports cards ranging from 64–4096 Megabits (8-512 Megabytes) in size.(information retrieved from Wikipedia)
Let us keep in mind
WE CANNOT Discard the possibility said storage space (4 gigabytes) in a ds cart is more than plausible with the use of today's technology I mean FUCK, We can fit 16 gigabytes in a microSD card which is 95% SMALLER than a regular DS cart. So it is possible, not that this is going to be the case but IT IS possible.
I am very sure from how much video is in the trailer, there is 4000000000bytes in it. It would be easy to do today exspecially since 4gig flash cards are only $30.
I would not be surprised if they remade FF7 on DS cause the 4 cds are only 2.1gig
I would have thought it was the video footage that would add up to 4Gb (bits). From what I saw in the gorgeous trailer there is a lot of fmvs. Though would you expect anything less of a ghibli teamup. Also I expect this will cost more than your average ds game. Not because of the size but because of ghibli. Similar to the square tax that seems to be added to ds games
Please rewrite this, it's 4Gb, which means it's not bigger than a UMD. I'm glad to hear they're using a bigger cart though, a lot of games with FMVs suffer because they heavily compress them to fit on a smaller cart. If they could pull off Professor Layton quality videos in a game of this scale it would be epic. Sure, the cart will likely be on the high end of DS prices (39.99 in the US) but with a collaboration like this I'd have a hard time thinking it won't be worth it.
As much as the whole soundtrack thing is nice it's mostly for not since the DS has such a shitty sound system.
Close, but... actually not close at all. There are 1,024 bytes in a kilobyte, 1,024 kilobytes in a megabyte, 1,024 megabytes in a gigabyte...
That means that you're 294,967,296 off. Assuming that you're right...
Those of you wondering why 1,024 and not 1,000... I don't know either, but I'm guessing that computers do pretty much everything in binary (i.e. powers of 2), and 2 to the 10th (i.e. 1,024) just happens to be the closest to 1,000.
Whatever size it is I just hope it is'nt DSi exclusive. I want to make love to this game and then make love to me making love to this game, whilst I watch.
I imagine that, in at least Japan, the game will be priced higher than the average DS game. The size of the cart is an anomaly and not in high demand by publishers. Thus, creating them likely costs more than usual.
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Contest:
2:40 PM on 10.06.2009
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So let's all release this game in North America.
If you were to say 4Gb then I would
THE WORLD MUST KNOW THE TRUTH!!!!
speculations?
Too bad though that the gorgeous score is just wasted on the DS's speakers. I guess its another game I'll be playing with massive headphones on.
I are sad.
GB = Giga Bytes
Gb = Giga Bits
Look at the original article. Giga BYTES. Way to attempt to appear intelligent and fail. The only thing that's realistically measured in bits is network traffic.
The original article is wrong, Switch is right, it should say Gb not GB. It is bits. It is not 4 gigabytes, there will never be a 4 gigabyte DS game, there will never even be a 1 gigabyte DS game.
In perspective though, it is the same amount of memory as the Wii has internally on a DS card, it's still impressive.
So we should let the fact that neither Dale nor CVG know anything about portable game sizes slide? I mean, I don't even know all that much, but the DS has been out for what, 4 almost 5 years now? It's always been called Giga Bits. Why would won game suddenly balloon to the size of a Wii or Xbox 1 game?
Common sense.
It is ~512MB in size, which is still huge for a DS game.
Also, it looks PURDY!
@Jon B
While Gigabit is COMMONLY used for for network traffic, it is still a widely used term in the realm of technology
Why do I see this as useless? Especially to someone who doesn't even use headphones to listen to DS sounds seriously. Unless I'm playing a rythym game.
Nintendo DS games use a proprietary solid state ROM "game card" format resembling the memory cards used in other portable electronic devices such as digital cameras. It currently supports cards ranging from 64–4096 Megabits (8-512 Megabytes) in size.(information retrieved from Wikipedia)
Let us keep in mind
WE CANNOT Discard the possibility said storage space (4 gigabytes) in a ds cart is more than plausible with the use of today's technology I mean FUCK, We can fit 16 gigabytes in a microSD card which is 95% SMALLER than a regular DS cart. So it is possible, not that this is going to be the case but IT IS possible.
I would not be surprised if they remade FF7 on DS cause the 4 cds are only 2.1gig
Ooooh, what a burn...
P.s,. Get avatars.
As much as the whole soundtrack thing is nice it's mostly for not since the DS has such a shitty sound system.
Close, but... actually not close at all. There are 1,024 bytes in a kilobyte, 1,024 kilobytes in a megabyte, 1,024 megabytes in a gigabyte...
That means that you're 294,967,296 off. Assuming that you're right...
Those of you wondering why 1,024 and not 1,000... I don't know either, but I'm guessing that computers do pretty much everything in binary (i.e. powers of 2), and 2 to the 10th (i.e. 1,024) just happens to be the closest to 1,000.
I imagine that, in at least Japan, the game will be priced higher than the average DS game. The size of the cart is an anomaly and not in high demand by publishers. Thus, creating them likely costs more than usual.
@Silverhertz
The game is not a DSi exclusive.