A few days ago, 1Up revealed that Marvelous Entertainment (famous for its Harvest Moon and, more recently, for publishing Grasshopper's No More Heroes) have announced a new DS game called Sakura Note. Japanese DS games are a dime a dozen, but very few of them have quite the pedigree that Sakura Note boasts:

• Music: Nobou Uematsu (Final Fantasy, Lost Odyssey)
• Design: Akira Ueda (Super Mario RPG, Contact)
• Scenario: Kazushige Nojima (Final Fantasy VII, VIII, X)
• Art: Hideo Minaba (Lost Odyssey)

The game is a story-driven adventure game that takes place in two towns. Players control a young boy trying to figure out why a band of ghosts is tormenting Nanami, the pretty new girl at school. This mystery seems to be linked to the fact that the cherry blossom trees in one town are thriving while the sakura in the other are withering away.

The battle system has been stripped down to a two-button affair (it's an adventure mystery game, after all), and most of your enemies seem to consist of giant pigs. If you win, you can collect the pigs' tears, which are used to progress the story and unlock new "episodes." Tears can also be collected by talking to townspeople, depending on how tactfully you navigate the conversation. The town's dogs and cats also seem to have some bearing on the story: they are controllable characters for some portions of the game.

Sakura Note is being pitched as an "everyday fantasy" game, which is reflected in the short trailer below the jump, which features a mix of gameplay and real life. Sakura Note will hit Japanese shelves on November 5th, and, judging by Marvelous' healthy relationship with Xseed Games, a Western release doesn't seem too far-fetched.

[Via SiliconEra]

Legacy Comments (will be imported soon)

Harris Hatsworth

I want it.

Kylehyde

Looks great.

mr spooky

Monodi

I just don't want Reggie go all boar shit saying stuff like "it's too japanese"

And I know this is a MMV/XSEED game, but it still could happen.

Los255

"Music: Nobou Uematsu (Final Fantasy, Lost Odyssey)"

(Obligatory "FAP" post). Looks interesting.

Wasn't Marvelous SUPPOSED to publish Muramasa? They're doing good in eyeing out interesting games.

Monodi

@Los255

MMV decided to not publish it by themselves because they had a lot of stuff to handle. Ignition however arrived to save the situation.

Amaru

AWESOME. Hopefully this doesn't turn out like Blue Dragon lol!

kalidanthepalidan

Sounds pretty interesting. Hopefully XSEED will bring it over here.

kingtobo

Definitely needs to come here.

Dan CiTi

The DS is always out of control with games. To a point where it never seems like a definitive list of what DS games I should play/own/download can't exist for long.

BenHaskett

You can really see the Contact in this game.

I can't wait, it'll probably be awesome (Contact certainly was, IMO)!

@ Dan CiTi -

I know, right? It seems like we can't go a single day without eight potentially bad-ass DS games being announced. Just in the last few days, we've got Okamiden and Sakura Note, and there's an endless amount of games already in the pipeline.

In this month alone, we've got--IMHO--at least three high profile DS games coming out (Scribblenauts, Mario & Luigi, Kingdom Hearts).

Insanity.

Batthink

Fingers-crossed that the trailer music gets included in the game...