I'm sure I'll seem like a Philistine to my cohorts over at Japanator, but I have to admit that Dragon Ball is really the only manga I'm familiar with. I spent a year living with my Dad in France when I was kid, about the time the series was taking Europe by storm. It was the cool thing to do.

Which leads us to 2010 -- eleven years later, I still kind of dig on the plucky Goku, and finding this new trailer for Dragon Ball DS 2: Assault! Red Ribbon Army -- part of Game Republic's Origins series -- was quite the trip down memory lane. While most Dragon Ball games tend to be fighters (the Budokai series, for example) Assault! Red Ribbon is an action-adventure game.

It's important to realize that the Red Ribbon saga takes place very early in the series (to steal a joke from Tiny Cartridge, the "under-9000 era"). Dragon Ball -- without the Z or GT -- was more focused on exploration and adventure than three-volume battles between Goku and Frieza.

So! Assault! Red Ribbon plays kind of like the DS iterations of Zelda: navigation and combat are both controlled by the stylus, with a few button presses for good measure. Other highlights include: playing as Krillin, Yamcha, Arale, and Eighter; smashing dinosaurs in the face; pulling Bulma's top off.

There's another trailer after the jump. Dragon Ball DS 2: Assault! Red Ribbon Army hits Japanese shelves next month, and will probably never make it over here. Shame.

Dragon Ball DS 2: Assault! Red Ribbon Army... [Tiny Cartridge]

Perhaps in anticipation of the (upcoming?) release of Samurai Basara: Samurai Heroes, for the PlayStation 3 and, oddly enough the Wii, or Battle Heroes, a PSP game in the same vein, Kaiyodo is producing a Power Shop set of Revoltech figures from the series.

Localized (poorly) as Devil Kings, Sengoku Basara are a set of hack-and-slash games that take place in the Sengoku period of Japan, featuring Date Masamune and Sanada Yukimura, two historical samurai tasked with killing the sh*t out of tons of dudes. While Sengoku Basara focused, more or less, on Japanese history, Devil Kings eventually turned into a weird, fantasy story that takes place in Hell.

But, anyway, that's not what this post is about; it's about these awesome Revoltech figs of Yukimura and Masamune. And the real story isn't that they exist -- full color Sengoku Basara figs have been on sale for months now. The real treat are these new all-white colorways that go on sale at the end of the month. As with all Revoltechs, these figures are highly articulated and posable.

Hack-and-slash isn't exactlty my genre of choice -- there aren't enough Firaga spells or shotguns for my tastes -- but these Revoltechs are pretty nice looking. If you're more of a thinking man, Kaiyodo is also offering a Professor Layton Revoltech. If you've got a spare pile of cash laying around, you can buy both.

Or, y'know, buy me one. I particularly like the Date Masamune fig.

Pre-orders are available from Otactute and AmiAmi for about 2,400 yen.

Revoltech Sanada Yukimura & Date Masamune [alafista via Tomopop]

I don't know much about Nier except that it's got a hermaphroditic character that cusses like a sailor and that Square Enix is doing something silly with its distribution. It's being released as two different games in Japan: Nier: Gestalt is an Xbox 360-exclusive, and the slightly-different Nier: Replicant is only for the PlayStation 3. In North America, Gestalt is getting released as Nier (no tag line) on both the 360 and the PlayStation 3.

Whew.

With that out of the way, this new trailer reveals a little bit about the game's plot: the eponymous Nier has to save his daughter from some sort of fantasy necrotic melanoma. It's a relatively straightforward premise (hell, I think there's a Brendan Fraser movie to the same effect), but I'm sure Cavia and publisher Square Enix will find a way to muck it up with all sorts of stuff: maybe a forgotten prophecy? I'm due for a good world-saving, myself.

It's really too bad that we don't know much else about the game's combat, because all I really have to go on now is visuals. The trailer above seems to fluctuate from janky to potentially cool in a matter of seconds; I think your mileage may vary depending on how you dig the character designs. Although graphics aren't a good measuring stick for game quality, it's all consumers really have to chew on right now.

Drakengard and Bullet Witch, perhaps Cavia's most high-profile releases, received middling reviews, but Capcom seem to have confidence in the company, and Ben "came away pretty impressed with Nier" when he previewed it earlier this month.

Square Enix also released some screenshots today, which you can find in the gallery below. Some of them feature Nier blasting away some sheep.

I really don't know what to say about that.

In the same online chat in which Tatsunoko vs. Capcom producer Ryota Niitsuma spilled the beans about the potential for another Versus game being announced later this year, he spoke out about some of the franchises that didn't quite make it into the game.

We know that Phoenix Wright was unfortunately scrapped from the game, citing localization and balance problems. But Niitsuma told SiliconEra today that Samurai Pizza Cats and Speed Racer were also on the docket at one point.

"We at Capcom, too, wanted to see the Samurai Pizza Cats in the game. We were in discussion with Tatsunoko Productions to try to get them in the game. It went right up the last minute, but it didn’t go through,” explained Niitsuma. Loosely translated from Catto Ninden Teyandee, Samurai Pizza Cats was picked up by Saban when it was brought to North America in the early 1990s. A quick Google search shows that Disney now owns the rights to the property.

I admit that I don't know much about the show, but I blame Disney for the fact that I don't have the chance to beat Morrigan up with a anthropomorphic cat who simultaneously catches bad dudes and runs a pizzeria. Read that sentence again and tell me that wouldn't have been awesome.

The Speed Racer loss is equally disappointing, but only because I'm more familiar with the show. "They thought about Speed Racer but he’s just a race car driver. It would be hard to incorporate his race car into the game,” Niitsuma continued.

Cop out. Frank West is just a photographer (He's covered wars, you know), but they squeezed him in there just fine.

But seriously. Samurai Pizza Cats.

Capcom Tried To Get Samurai Pizza Cats for Tatsunoko vs. Capcom [SiliconEra]

There's a nasty cliche making the rounds in gaming circles when it comes to the Wii: that so-called hardcore games don't do well on it. I'm not going to get into sales numbers or profit margins -- that's Michael Pachter's job -- everybody needs to grow a pair before next month. Shiren the Wanderer 3 is coming out next month, and it's nothing if not hard.

I'm not very familiar with the series, but I'm vaguely aware that Shiren is a particularly tough roguelike. If you're not familiar with the term (and most people probably aren't -- roguelikes had their heyday in the 80s, although the genre's made something of a comeback lately), the genre is characterized by randomized dungeons, turn-based RPG combat, and permadeath. Thankfully, Shiren promises a story 2,000 years in the making to soften the blow.

But anyway, back to Shiren. Atlus, who's publishing the game in the United States, has released a new trailer focusing on the bosses. It shows quite a bit of combat, but that's not saying much -- turn-based battles are hardly thrillers. The game's no Crysis, but I like the character design, which carries the graphics a long way.

Atlus has also published the last developer blog devoted to the game, which is a good time to point you to the whole series, which covers an introduction to the series, tactics, story and characters, and bosses. You can check them out here.

One of the interesting things about blogging about videogames is that, in a lot of ways, people in the industry make my job relatively easy. For example, while I was playing Borderlands today, Hideki Kamiya started spouting off to Game Informer about a sequel to the well-received Bayonetta. Boom -- instant news.

In an interview for the March edition of GI, Kamiya, who produced Bayonetta, teased that Platinum Games "obviously have love for the work we have created, so I don’t see anything wrong with Bayonetta 2. Personally, I’d like to approach the world of Bayonetta from a different angle, in the form of a spin-off."

Spin-off is a dirty word in most circles, so it's interesting to see Kamiya embrace the idea right off the bat. The obvious choice would be to feature Jeanne in a protagonist role, but there are a slew of dimension-hopping characters to choose from. Not to mention that the environments in Bayonetta are pretty luscious and vivid -- there's no dearth of space to explore.

On the other hand, sequels aren't really Hideki Kamiya's thing. Kamiya cut his teeth at Capcom and has worked on a lot of big name titles, but he made his name as a game director with Devil May Cry. There were three other DMC games, but he didn't work on any of them. In fact, he's never reprised a directorial role -- he directed Resident Evil 2, but none of the other games in the franchise; he directed Viewtiful Joe but not its two sequels (although he wrote the story for them); he directed Okami, but its DS sequel, Okamiden, is being handled by Capcom's Kuniomi Matsushida.

Hell, word is that Kamiya kind-of disowned Okami after leaving Capcom.

In any case, even if a Bayonetta sequel surfaces, it probably won't be for a while, which leaves us plenty of time to speculate: if you had your druthers, what would you do for Bayonetta 2?

Bayonetta 2 Confirmed? [Game Informer]

If there's one thing fighting fans love to do, it's telling Capcom how to run their business. Personally, I think R. Mika should make a Super Street Fighter IV comeback, but that's neither here nor there.

What is both here and there, though, is this quotation from Tatsunoko vs. Capcom: Ultimate All-Stars producer Ryota Niitsuma: "If sales are really good, then you can see an announcement [for another game] within this year," he told Kotaku this morning.

But an announcement for what?

"I would love to do more Versus series, more types of games like Marvel Vs. Capcom 2," Niitsuma continued. "There are all of these possibilities working with other companies, seeing what we could do with them. There are so many game companies I'd love to work with."

Tatsunoko vs. Capcom, which will be released in North America next week, is the seventh game in the Vs. series. Niitsuma calls it a "revival" of the series; besides the recently re-made Marvel vs. Capcom 2 for Xbox Live Arcade, the last Vs. game was Capcom vs. SNK 2, which appeared in arcades in 2001. While this doesn't count as an official announcement, I doubt Capcom would be too happy with Niitsuma running his mouth off if another Vs. title weren't plausible.

Cross-over games tend to be heavy on the fanservice, and it's no surprise that Capcom would take fan requests into account. "We get requests from fans to mix our characters with other video game characters all of the time," Niitsuma said. "Based on those requests we might be able to do something with our characters and another company's characters for a future game," Niitsuma said.

So! Since I know all of you with Wiis are going to buy Tatsunoko vs. Capcom next week, it wouldn't be out of the question to hear about a Vs. game later this year, right? Right. Capcom seems to be listening, so let's hear which company Capcom should work with next.

My vote is for Studio Ghibli: a Jill and Nausicaa team would be awfully cool.

Capcom May Announce New Versus Game This Year [Kotaku via The Tanooki]

Yesterday, as the new issue of Weekly Famitsu hit Japanese news stands, details about two upcoming Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker PSP bundles began to leak out. Sony is selling a Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker Premium Package priced at, roughly, $295 that will include the game, a camo-skinned PSP-3000, and a case.

Konami, the game's publisher, is selling its own, slightly more expensive bundle: the Konami Style Special Limited Edition will include everything from the Sony bundle plus some dog tags, a PSP stand, and a booklet. Only 1974 of these will be created, sold only through Konami's online store.

That's well and good, but the main draw of special edition handhelds is how cool they look. With the cat out of the bag, Konami had to buckle down and produce some pictures. Those pictures are sitting in the gallery below.

To be honest, I'm not really feeling the camouflage skin on the PSP: I think it's a little too busy and muddled. But, hey, the leather case in the Konami bundle is pure class. Wunderkind designer Hideo Kojima is convinced that Peace Walker will lead to PlayStation Portable sales; having so many extras surely sweetens the pot.

Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker and its bundles will be released in Japan in March. European and North American audiences can pick it up at the end of May.

First Look: Metal Gear Solid Peace Walker Special PSP [Andriasang]

You know what's better than accusing Haitian earthquake victims of signing a secret pact with the devil? Buying DLC for Castle Crashers and Alien Hominid HD. Not only are Castle Crashers and Alien Hominid remarkable games, but, between now and Sunday, developer Behemoth is donating 100% of proceeds generated by DLC sales to the Haitian relief effort.

Even better: The Behemoth will match the donation out of their own (probably limited) coffers, effectively doubling your purchasing power.

For the record, there are two DLC packs available for Castle Crashers: The King Pack offers two new characters (the King and an open-visor Gray Knight), some new weapons, and a seal animal orb; The Necromantic Pack also offers two new characters (the Necromancer and the Cult Minion), new weapons, and a dragon (!) animal orb. Each of these will set you back 160 moonpoints, but will result in $4 of aid.

If the words "animal orb" don't mean anything to you, you can pick up Castle Crashers for a cool 1200 points. It's worth it.

On the other hand, Alien Hominid HD is relatively cheaper (at only 800 points) and much more difficult. You might recall that you could play games on Alien's PDA; Alien Hominid's DLC consists of packs of 100 extra games, priced at 150 bananadollars a pop. Once The Behemoth matches your contribution, you're looking at close to $3.75 in aid.

If you're looking for an excuse to add some zest to your Behemoth games, the time is now.

A few weeks ago Hironobu Sakaguchi, famous for his hand in creating Square's Final Fantasy in 1987, remarked that his new company, Mistwalker, was working on a "project for iPhone." I'm not sure re-releasing Final Fantasy I and II on the iPhone and iPod Touch was what he meant.

But that's exactly what Square Enix is doing, as quietly announced today on their Facebook page. It hasn't even popped up on Square Enix' official iPod Web site.

That is literally all of the information I have; mum's the word on pricing and release date. If you're interested, I can only pass on a message from Square: "Stay tuned!"

But, hey, if you're feeling frustrated by the lack of tangible info, take comfort in the fact that the iPhone versions of Final Fantasy I and II feature some absolutely gorgeous sprites. For my tastes, they look remarkably better than the Dawn of Souls versions, and almost as good as the PSP re-releases from a few years ago. Look at some screenshots here.

Discerning fans will notice that the user interface has been tweaked to account for the iPhone and iPod Touch's screens, which is a nice touch. Most complaints about the iPhone have to do with the often-janky controls, but I don't think it'll be a problem for old-school turn-based affairs. All you have to do is select options from a menu.

I don't have an iPhone, but I have to admit that I'm kind of miffed that I just started a Final Fantasy II game on the PlayStation's Final Fantasy: Origins. Serves me right for being a late adopter, I guess.

Last night, I was lamenting to the rest of the Podtoid crew that I've never found a sufficient answer to the Natal Question. It eventually gets compared to World War II, but that's neither here nor there. My point is that every developer you ask is "excited" about Natal, but I've never seen any cool ideas to convince me Natal will be a good platform for videogames.

Enter Arkedo, developers of Big Bang Mini and a new series of Xbox Live Indie Games.

On NeoGAF, CEO Camille Guermonprez posted some pages from a design document for a game called 2-Finger Heroes, designed for Natal functionality. 2-Finger Heroes was supposed to be a side-scrolling brawler. The twist, though, is that players' fingers would control on-screen characters' legs.

If that's not interesting enough, Arkedo would've included a full range of gesture-based mechanics, including certain hand gestures to grab power-ups or arm motions to terraform your environment. Here's the best part -- offensive gestures result in gameplay demerits. Give somebody the two- (or one-) finger salute and face the consequences.

Guermonprez notes that this prototype was whipped up in twelve days, no doubt all the time they could spare from the grueling one-month-one-game schedule they've set up for themselves. He also mentioned that working with Natal represents a step up from Arkedo's comfort zone: "To put it in perspective, after having "upgraded" from the DS to the Wii, we wanted to see if we could do HD games without having everyone going facepalm and telling the world we should have [stuck] to simpler games. It may sound silly, but as Aurélien and I started making games in 1999 for mobile phones, and our first games were in 96X65 pixels resolution, in B&W ... each year we [were] wondering if taking the leap of faith towards more pixels [was] a good idea or not."

Unfortunately, the design's been scrapped. Getting Natal to recognize such precise movements has been a pain in the neck for Arkedo, and "it would have been HELL to localize. Yup, what can be understood as the victory sign in France, could be a terrible insult in the UK, for instance. And we are not even talking about Italian. Oh, the possibilities..."

State of the Natal: 2-Finger Heroes [NeoGAF via Joystiq]

For those of you who have listened to Topher's sage words about the best way to approach the up-coming (but recently-delayed) release of Super Street Fighter IV, you'll be happy to know that there is some toy chest-hardware coming your way, courtesy of SOTA.

The first is a one-of-a-kind Lightning Blanka, an un-used prototype of SOTA's Blanka Resin statue. It's cast in clear blue, with a white lightning bolt detail painted on. What it loses in detail, it makes up in pure metal. I mean, just look at it: it's a 12" resin statue of Blanka, and he's shooting lightning out of his body. Check out Lightning Blank on SOTA's Web site; just get ready for awesome.

The rub? Only one of them exists in the entire world, and it's being auctioned on eBay on February 1st. It's bound to be pricy, but get this: all of the proceeds are being donated to the relief effort going on in Haiti. (For more information about how you can help, go here.)

Ok, so Lightning Blanka might be out of reach, but don't let that stop you: SOTA just announced their Juri figure on their Facebook page. I like the pose and all the detail in the wardrobe (the totally gratuitous side-boob doesn't hurt either), but SOTA's Juri looks a little too wholesome. Juri is a sneaky assassin spider-lady, not the cute girl you cheated off of in Calculus 2 freshman year.

For a closer look at Juri, check out this Facebook album. No release date or price has been announced (you'll notice that it's not even on their website yet), but Juri looks ready to go, so I'm sure SOTA will announce something soon.

SOTA Toys surprises everyone with their new Juri statue; SOTA Toys to auction exclusive "Lightning Blanka" prototype to aid Haitian relief effort [Tomopop]

Another week, another bunch of Rock Band DLC. If had any ideals, I'd refuse to post about DLC since it's obviously just a ploy by the Man to squeeze you for your precious banana dollars; but, apparently, this game is popular. You guys dig on Rock Band it seems. I'm a populist if nothing else.

I'm like, y'know, the Sarah Palin of Rock Band DLC posts on Destructoid.

The "big" news is that there's another Tom Petty pack, but we'll get back to him: what I'm really interested are two Phoenix songs making their Rock Band debut: "1901" and "Lisztomania." Both songs will also be available in Lego Rock Band.

I know I'll lose cred since it was in a Cadillac commercial, but "1901" was one of the catchiest songs of last year (and, to date, my only real experience with Phoenix, even though they've been around for almost a decade). Actually, Harmonix should release a "Cool Songs that were in Commercials" track pack -- it could feature Nick Drake, Seawolf, Architecture in Helsinki, and Blur, off the top of my head.

Rock Band obsessive Nick Chester thinks songs in commercials are lame, but he's obviously wrong.

But anyway, back to Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. Their second anthology pack comprises six live recordings of songs that don't include the words "Oh my my, oh hell yes." Which is too bad, because there's something satisfying about saying "oh hell yes," whatever the occasion. Here's the list (songs marked with + are also in Lego Rock Band):

"A Woman in Love" +

"Breakdown" +

"Century City" +

"Jammin' Me"

"Nightwatchman"

"The Waiting" +

There's also "Blue Jeans" by Silvertide available this week, but nobody's ever heard of them.

Individual tracks will be available on the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and the Wii for $1.99, or however much moon money you need to make $1.99 on the 360 and the Wii. The Tom Petty track back will set you back a ten.

Ok, let's be perfectly honest here: this Professor Layton Revoltech figure is on-fire hot. If I had a saltier lexicon, one surely unbefitting of a gentleman like Professor Layton, I'd say it was sh*thot. At the very least, I would explain the extent which it is so Raven.

Brass tacks: This buddy comes courtesy of Kaiyodo's Revoltech Yamaguchi line of figures. He's five inches tall, fully articulated, and comes with a handful of accessories: two faces (thinking and "I've got it!"), a coterie of hand gestures, his trusty notebook, a brick-patterned stand, and a cuppa, as well as a table and chair in which to enjoy said cuppa.

I have to admit that I don't know much about Revoltech -- most of my collecting is done chez Kid Robot and tokidoki -- but Tiny Cartridge says the good Professor will only set you back a reasonable $26. I'm not even sure where you can pre-order this lovely package -- I find my lack of Google-fu or Japanese language skills disturbing in this case.

The good news is that if any of you fine readers knows more about importing Japanese figures than I do, you can enlighten me about how to get my grubby, gaijin mitts on one. Even better news -- Professor Layton goes on sale in March, which is just in time for my birthday.

Which is actually in May, or whenever this figure goes on sale. Whichever comes first.

The new greatest figure ever made: Revoltech Professor Layton [Tomopop]

[Update: Pictures in the gallery! Also, reader Salty Soil has helpfully pointed out that pre-orders are available at AmiAmi. You can also snag this guy from Otacute and Hobby Search.]