Phew, been a busy week…as a result, obviously I wasn’t able to get my latest non-Tribune article out as soon as I’d hoped. It’s nearly done, though, so next week for sure! In the meantime, why not catch up on the latest oddball goings-on within the gaming community?

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This one gets top billing simply for being the most unexpected announcement of the week – buff-dude-centric PSP remake Zero Cho Aniki is, believe it or not, being localized next spring, a first for the series (likely download-only, though). While the Cho Aniki games aren’t widely praised for how they play, I’m still tempted to pick this up just to reward Aksys’ chutzpah for daring to bring this our way. I can’t wait until the far right gets ahold of this one…nobody will even remember what Mass Effect and Grand Theft Auto are after the howling to ensue. (DToid coverage here.)

If you enjoyed Gradius Rebirth but wished that the game had been tweaked a bit more, this might just be your lucky day, as Konami has just patched it – the most notable changes are to the visuals and the scoring system. Good to see a shmup developer catering to its fans’ needs even after the game has been out awhile…in the meantime we’re still waiting for Dai-Ou-Jou’s bug fixes after close to a year. Rrgh…

If any of you were holding off from pre-ordering Mushihime-sama Futari because you wanted to snag the Limited Edition (and if you haven’t done so yet, this had BETTER be your excuse), well, now the time to delay has passed, as it’s available pretty much everywhere by now. Regular or Limited, import this beautiful (and region-free) shooter and support one of the few remaining shmup-focused developers out there!

Speaking of region-free shooters, Darius Burst for the PSP now has official boxart, and has also seemingly had its release date moved up a bit, so it might be out a bit earlier than originally expected. C’mon, you’ve always wanted something called Tuna Sashimi.

On the run-n-gun front - well, actually I guess it’s more “run-n-spit” – someone out there is at work on a hi-def remake of Toki, the story of a sneaker-wearing ape who solves his problems via, er, homemade expectorated projectiles. Word on the street is that the PC and XBLA will be the recipients, and the artwork and animation look rather nice so far – let’s hope it plays equally well! (DToid coverage here.)

While not really a shmup, or even a game, Hell is Other People, highlighted by Mr. Burch, is an interesting concept – you battle against “ghosts” of previous players, in increasing numbers, who in turn battled previous ghosts themselves (all the way back to the designer), and will thereafter become a ghost yourself. Sounds like a decent time-waster if nothing else.




A few new bits of information have been revealed about Super Street Fighter IV, as follows – 1) At first they were tempted to call it “SF4.9” or something like that. 2) Despite the Gamestop-listed price of 40 bucks, apparently pricing is not yet final (though the fact that Japan is getting the re-released Tatsunoko vs. Capcom for a bit cheaper is encouraging). 3) There will be new stories for all of the characters, including the old ones. 4) Seth will apparently be even nastier this time around. Yep, so now we…wait, what was that last one? Also, the SFIV soundtrack, along with a few others, is now available on the Capcom Store – if you [s]didn’t get the game’s LE version[/s] buy it, you can get a quarter off the Mega Man 9 soundtrack while you’re there.

The Tekken 6 launch is nearly here, and if you’re in Northern California you might want to attend a launch party for a shot at some nifty prizes and such. Also, while it’s a bit late to mention, there’s another Namco-themed tournament happening in Austin, so you might want to stop by if you’re in the area. Finally, as it turns out, the short clip of Lili and Kazuya’s alternate costumes in action, linked in a previous Tribune, is actually only a small part of a lengthy trio of “Game Night” videos focused on the title – if you want to see the entire thing, they’re available here, here, and here.

Paul Soth continues his coverage of Seasons Beatings with entries on Day Two and Day Three, featuring lots of pictures (best part: getting Daigo Umehara to autograph a copy of Shaq-Fu), and even a separate gallery of some of the joysticks people brought with them. Be sure to stop in and catch up on the action. Elsewhere, set aside a few minutes to watch a nutty Justin Wong comeback at Marvel vs. Capcom 2 (good thing that Storm of his survived at the beginning!).

A sorta-NSFW figure of Suzuhime, one of the characters from Samurai Shodown: Edge of Destiny, can be viewed here. Fighting game women rarely seem able to handle weapons and clothing at the same time, don’t they…

A small-time story, but still nice – after a Maryland University student’s hometown in Georgia was largely destroyed by flooding, some of her fellow Terrapins decided to help out by organizing the “Peach Bowl”, a Smash Bros. Brawl competition to raise money to help the rebuilding effort. Only a few hundred dollars were raised, but if you’re going to play games you might as well do it for a good cause!

Be sure to check out this amusing article about some of the silliest backstories in fighting games (credit to Kotaku for the original link) – heck, it’s worth it just to watch Roger Jr.’s Tekken 5 ending. Also, people just seem to keep [url=http://kotaku.com/5384019/look-everybody-its-a+me-m-bison ]drawing[/url] (and [url=http://kotaku.com/5384486/the-hadoooooooooooooooooooooooooooken-song ]singing[/url]) rather funny Street Fighter-themed stuff lately, and I, in turn, keep linking you to it.




Two new 3D Dot Game Heroes trailers are out – here’s the first (DToid coverage here) and the second (wherein Spelunker attempts to explain some stuff to you…if you can read Japanese), as well as some boss fight footage, to fully supply your latest dose of blocky silliness. Meanwhile, Herr Sterling has discovered yet another reason to like the game – even the loading screens are parodies of older titles’ cover art! Quite a few are particularly difficult for Western gamers to spot, but thankfully a fellow DToider posted a link to comparison shots in the comments. Cheers to the developers for taking their vision ever further!

A trailer for Yggdra Unison, the cell-phone-to-DS port out in December, has also appeared, and shows off a system where the player needs to write numbers on the touch screen in sequence to activate “union” attacks – hopefully the character recognition is better than it was in Scribblenauts (or, even better, includes a “keypad” option in case it isn’t).

Some additional impressions of SMT: Strange Journey have been posted – the most interesting bit is the new way that exploiting enemy weaknesses works, which is a bit more complicated than usual. A few more tweaks being applied to Persona 3 Portable have also been revealed – for one thing, the “part time job” option is here, which allows you to earn money and boost parameters at the same time, as well as easier ways to keep your characters from getting fatigued and keep skills when fusing Personas. Atlus sure knows how to tempt the Faithful when it comes to minor-but-still-appealing tweaks like these… Finally, one of the Siliconera head honchos posted a lengthy musing about what made Persona 3 and Persona 4 special to him in different ways – a worthy read, but as the top of the article says, Beware of Spoilers if you haven’t beaten one or both yet.

The latest tank-centric batch of media for Valkyria Chronicles 2 has reported for duty, bearing a short video of a tank in action as well as an introduction to the mechanist character who maintains the fleet.

This one caught even me by surprise – Adventures to Go! is a PSP SRPG in which you can apparently “tweak” certain aspects of the randomly-generated dungeons to your own preferences. Off the cuff it reminds me of My World, My Way on the DS – the game is available only at Gamestop (a short statement from the company on that decision is here), and obscure enough that I only just heard of it even though it’s out next week, but I’ll probably wait for some impressions before dropping any cash.

Some more stuff for the Lunar fans – if you have access to the Japanese PlayStation store a demo of the PSP remake is up, and even if you don’t the front page has a ten-minute preview video of that very demo. If you can’t get enough of talking cats and near-useless fat-guy party members, this is your lucky day!

Alongside the aforementioned Zero Cho Aniki on PSP, Aksys is also bringing over Mimana Iyar Chronicles on the DS at around the same time. The sprites look rather nice, though I honestly don’t know a heckuva lot else about it.

If you (like me) are still hesitant to try out Wizard of Oz: Beyond the Yellow Brick Road, Siliconera has a nice set of gameplay impressions that give a decent idea of how the thing works. I’m tempted just by the novelty factor alone, but I’ve got tons of other RPGs to work through as it is…

Gamasutra has an interview with a pair of the higher-ups at NIS available for viewing – the two discuss several different topics, from the company’s visual style and defining mechanics to hiring practices to long-term business strategy. Credit to Siliconera for the original link.

On a related note, if you were one of the folks hoping for a UMD release of Holy Invasion of Privacy, Badman!, it looks like your opportunity to make it happen has arrived! Head over to that link and pre-order the game for 20 bucks – if NIS gets 1,000 pre-orders by November 13th, the physical version will go forward. As the site says, though, multiple orders (let alone cancelled ones) won’t help, so make sure you go about this the “honest” way. DToid coverage here.




Remember the Muramasa art contest that was running up until a short while ago? Well, the winners’ pieces are up! Congrats to the victors! Also, a quick note or two on the game’s U.S. sales figures can be found here and here, though apparently some retailers are giving the game grief over in Europe...hopefully it can triumph in spite of this.

While I wasn’t personally particularly fond of the first one, apparently enough others were, for not only is Prinny getting a budget re-release in Japan, but a full-fledged sequel is coming to the PSP as well. At this point NIS won’t even let us see the entire title, but I’m sure that plenty more info is on the way – hopefully they can keep the original’s level of challenge and charm but exorcise the cheap memory-based frustrations this time around. (DToid coverage here.)

Well, would you look at that – Atlus is releasing a bunch of its PSP games, from older titles like Riviera to newer items like Crimson Gem Saga, for download on the PSN. That’s sure nice of them – though of course they can’t help but reveal that they’re only doing it because they can’t take any more evil laughter over undersupplying us. Insert that “Oh, You!” image meme in here someplace to complete the effect. (DToid coverage here.)

While the recent “official” announcement for Rocket Knight was indeed rather silly, at least we (eventually) got some new screens out of it. The front page also has fresh screens of the WiiWare La Mulana port/remake, as well as a link to a nifty gallery of Critter Crunch production art.

It was announced recently that the upcoming Fate/EXTRA would include a figure with “limited edition” copies – some pictures have emerged, and the bunch at Kotaku have wasted no time in…er, analyzing it.

On the front page Mr. Holmes keeps us updated on the latest Twitter announcements concerning Super Meat Boy – this batch features some info on playable characters, level count, unlockables and a bit more. Mr. PerLee also has a short piece describing how CommanderVideo of the BIT.TRIP games ended up as a guest character.

Since getting Cho Aniki in the US just isn’t enough, here’s one more small step for some really huge dudes (and a polar bear) – Muscle March is coming to Germany, so make sure your bikini briefs are properly starched in preparation! On a similar note, it looks like some unexpected support is building for that other weird Japanese Wii game featuring the cat in funny headgear – who knows if anything could actually come of any of this, but my imagination’s certainly having fun with the possibilities. (DToid coverage here.)

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Gonna keep this short, as I really want to finish this next bugger: as always, though, I’ll make the time to say thanks for reading, and until next time keep gaming obscurely.