Nippon Line 27/10

27 Oct 2008 at 11:01:48 by Jake Kawaguchi

Welcome to the Nippon Line (formerly known as The Japanese Angle), where I take you on an express train to the bustling central station of Japan’s hectic games industry. New arrivals this week: Final Fantasy XIII gets exposed in Famitsu, GTA IV and LBP show up in Japan, and the DSi pre-launch tension rises to boiling point. All aboard!

New FFXIII info

Getting Square Enix to talk in any detail about its great white elephants (ahem) is almost as difficult as arranging a banjo jam with Shigeru Miyamoto on one of his days off, but Japan’s Weekly Famitsu magazine has The FFXIII Scoop in its latest issue. As well as new screenshots of FFXIII and FF Versus XIII – which are all well and nice but suspiciously lacking in HUDs and therefore possibly not in-game shots for the most part – Famitsu also runs a brief interview (three questions long: that’s how brief) with Square Enix’s floppy-haired character designer Tetsuya Nomura. Disappointingly, all he talks about is the “shyness” of FF Versus XIII’s Noctis character and the “rich girl” nature of the Stella character.

Back to the game analysis, Famitsu points out that in one battle scene (apparently running on actual PS3 hardware, for real!) the defeat of a monster enemy can be inferred as imminent just by looking at clumps of crystals surrounding the battle area: these are in effect solidified flames, and the monster will die once all the blazing fire in its domain turns to crystal. Looks pretty and sounds like a great innovation, but Square Enix only knows when we’ll be able to play it: FFXIII, FF Versus XIII and FF Agito XIII (the PSP game in this sort-of trilogy, which looks the most near to completion) are all listed in Famitsu alongside the vague and dreaded ‘Release date: TBC’ text…


Japan stage: GTA IV vs. LBP

The fact that Grand Theft Auto IV is the cover game of this week’s Famitsu should make the point glaringly obvious, but it’s worth repeating: Western games have never been more popular in Japan than they are right now.

Although you’ve probably played it inside out and upside-down 20 times already, GTA IV is only at last being released in Japan this Thursday. The reason it’s so much later in Japan than everywhere else in the world is that Capcom, the game’s local publisher, has spent months carefully translating and localising the experience to make it comfortable and enjoyable for Japanese gamers. From the positive reaction of the public at TGS to the praise of Famitsu’s reviewers, all four of whom specifically mention the localisation work as being excellent and whose combined ratings deliver an awesome 39/40 rating for the game, GTA IV is on course to top the Japanese charts just as it did everywhere else earlier this year.

Coincidentally, Little Big Planet is also out in Japan this Thursday. The Japanese version of this PS3 marvel has somehow managed to escape the delays affecting the UK/Europe versions, which means Japan gets it one week earlier than the region where the game was produced. (Tokyo one, Guildford nil. Ouch!) LBP has met with another glowing Famitsu review (and a score of 38/40), while the TV ads running on Japanese TV conspire to make the game look as un-English as possible: have a look. Frankly, if that doesn’t sell it to Japan, nothing will. And in all honesty, I fear that nothing will – not because the game won’t interest Japanese players, but simply because it’s on the PS3…


DSi launch imminent

At the time of typing, there are just five days to go before Nintendo unleashes the DSi here in Japan. And will I be getting a DSi? Who knows? I certainly don’t, and nor do any of the shops I’ve pestered. Worse still, there remains no obvious way of making a reservation. The shops I’ve spoken to, including major retailers such as Tsutaya and Yodobashi Camera, still don’t know how many units they’ll receive and as such aren’t willing to accept pre-orders.

Unless this situation changes at some point over the next few days, the scramble for Japan’s allocation of 300,000 DSi consoles could be decided without the buffer zone of safety offered by reservation systems. You know what this means – you might even have done the same thing yourself… yes, overnight queuing before the launch. Great!

Tip for the week: Me to miss out on a DSi at launch and then end up buying one at a MASSIVE PREMIUM on Yahoo! Auctions two days later. Grrr!

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