The Japanese Angle 29/09

30 Sep 2008 at 11:36:42 by Jake Kawaguchi

Welcome again to The Japanese Angle, where I find some shade from the rising sun and evaluate recent events in Japan’s games industry. This week: the dawn of Studio Ghibli games, Gardening Mama, a ‘free’ PS3 MMORPG, a new DS, and more…


Studio Ghibli Vs. Level-5

First up, some news to warm the hearts of anime-game collaboration enthusiasts the world over: Hayao Miyazaki’s Studio Ghibli is teaming up with the hugely talented Level-5 (see Professor Layton, White Knight Story, etc.) to produce an original Ghibli game for the Nintendo DS.

The game in question is called Ni No Kuni – literally, ‘Another World’ – and it’s due out in Japan at some point next year. (Incidentally, it’ll be Level-5’s tenth game; the developer has been going since 1998 and debuted with Dark Cloud, a likeable PS2 RPG.) The basics of the game and the art direction are being looked after by Level-5, while the animation sequences are all the work of Studio Ghibli. 

Probably the most interesting thing about Another World is how it revives an old-school computer game gimmick: each copy of the game will be bundled with a book (as in, a book; you know: lots of sheets of paper bound together) that players need to consult for magic spells and other tips. Without it, progress through Another World will apparently be difficult or near impossible. Level-5 is also trying to decide whether to include a special looking glass that can reveal otherwise hidden text on the pages of the book. You might be told at one point to turn to a certain page and look for secret spells, which only become visible when seen thro lens. Input andslelss, wpic gn win.

Of course, this is all a very clever way of getting kids to read more without also telling them to stop playing games – Another World might just remind everyone that games and books can co-exist, and even complement one another. And Ghibli’s involvement (in Japan, at least) will guarantee excellent sales.


Angel Love Online

You probably know Angel Love Online in its PC form, as Angels Online. It’s been on the market for a couple of years and is reasonably popular around the world. It’s now also available to Japanese PS3 owners, via the PSN PlayStation Store, where it can be downloaded free of charge. The Taiwanese developer of the game makes its money whenever users buy items in the game, but the free admission is a sure way of attracting as many users as possible. And some of them, if not all, will inevitably get hooked.

Perhaps Angel Love Online isn’t a big enough name to really put this system to the test on the PS3, but if a bigger IP came along and adopted the same model, the potential for console MMORPGs in the hi-def generation is obviously massive.


Mama stops Cooking, starts Gardening instead

What better way to follow-up a million-selling cooking game than with a gardening sim? It makes perfect sense, especially as Taito is retaining its now famous Mama character as the star of Gardening Mama and has kept the cutesy graphics intact. According to Famitsu, this new DS game will be released in Japan before the end of the year.

Gardening Mama is full of touch-pen functions, as you’d expect: you’ll get to tap the screen to water flowers and plants with a virtual hose, for example, and you’ll be able to plant bulbs exactly where you think they should go on a touch-screen full of virtual soil. These and other factors will then have an effect on how Mama’s garden grows, with the object of the game being to cultivate an idyllic patch of garden that you can call your own. In essence, it looks like a dumbed-down Shikitei.


A new DS, please

The big hardware news from Japan is nothing to do with what’s happening now, but rather focuses on what is likely to happen in the near future: the Nihon Keizai Shinbun (Japan’s equivalent of the FT) last week reported that Nintendo would launch a new version of the DS Lite hardware in Japan before the end of 2008, complete with built-in camera and audio playback functions.

According to the Nikkei, the new DS will be released in Japan before it shows up in the rest of the world, and Nintendo hopes to have a few hundred thousand units available at launch. The pricing of the revised hardware will be “less than 20,000yen”, which in all likelihood means 19,800yen (£103) – just like “less than £20” in a UK product press release tends to mean £19.99…

At any rate, Sony’s PSP-3000 (priced 19,800yen – coincidence?) will be available in Japan on October 16th and the PSP has been on the up all year, so Nintendo needs to do something to ensure that it holds on to first place in the Japanese market.


Japanese hardware sales report

My tip for last week (“the next round of Xbox 360 sales to revert to sub-10k levels”) wasn’t too far off from the truth. 13,777 Xbox 360s were sold in Japan last week, and while that figure clearly isn’t smaller than 10,000, it does represent the kind of drop from the previous weeks figures (which pushed towards 30,000 units) that I expected to see.

The Xbox 360 conversion of brilliant-looking arcade shmup Raiden IV will be released on the 360 in Japan this Thursday – but even though I’m excited and plan to buy the game, (and a few thousand shmup-heads here probably feel the same way about Raiden IV), it’s the only new Xbox 360 release this week. So, if you don’t mind…

Tip for the week: last week’s tip to happen, one week late.

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