Nippon Line 24/11



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Welcome back to the Nippon Line, an express service running all the way from Japan’s games industry to your computer terminal. Leaves on the line this week: early White Knight Chronicles advertising, a one-two punch of Street Fighter IV news, and more on Yuji Naka’s upcoming Wii rhythm-action extravaganza. Get!


White Knight Chronicles: The Big One?

I think White Knight Chronicles could be massive for the PS3 in Japan. Level-5’s RPG is out here on Christmas Day (which, trivia fans, is not a national holiday in this part of the world, although the Emperor’s Birthday on December 23rd is) but the promotional buzz has been quietly humming for a few weeks already. Pretty soon, it’s going to be amplified from a buzzing hum to deafening snap of static-driven feedback: I can just sense it.

The obvious indicator that something big is afoot can be seen with a trip to any convenience store in Japan – all of them have posters advertising the not-quite-imminent-yet launch of White Knight Chronicles. You can reserve and ultimately buy the game at most conbinis, too, so they do have a vested interest in pushing Level-5’s latest opus. But still, starting to promote a game two months before it’s due to appear (which is exactly what my local branch of convenience store chain Lawson did) is a clear sign that retailers believe they can drum up huge numbers of reservations.

But where White Knight Chronicles is concerned, I have absolutely no reservations (Get it?). The game’s developer has been incredibly successful in Japan during recent years: Rogue Galaxy was an excellent swansong for the PS2, the Professor Layton and Inazuma Eleven series are going strong on the DS, and next year’s Dragon Quest IX (which, I predict, will become the biggest-selling DS game yet in Japan) has Level-5’s talented mitts all over it.

White Knight Chronicles is just what the PS3 needs, and at the right time too. There are about 2.5 million PS3 owners in Japan at present, yet how many killer/triple-A/10-out-of-10 locally-produced RPGs do they have to choose from? By my count, one: Namco’s Eternal Sonata. So while Final Fantasy XIII will possibly be released before, say, 2028, White Knight Chronicles could easily sneak in to claim 2009 as its year. Time is on its side, and so are the conbini people.


New playable SFIV fighter and bonuses announced

Who is the newcomer? Go on, have a guess… WRONG! (Seriously, why did you think Jackie Chan would be featured in a Street Fighter game? Have you lost it completely?) It’s actually Gouken – that big bad dude – who Capcom has just confirmed will be playable in the PS3 and Xbox 360 versions of the mighty Street Fighter IV. He starred (in the same sense that Ricky Gervais “starred” in Night Museum) in the SFIV coin-op, but only as a CPU-controlled fighter. Come February 12th, though, we’ll all be able to show Ryu that Gouken is in fact The Boss and tease him mercilessly for the ‘kid who’s just had his first karate lesson’ way in which he wears those coloured headbands [What’s wrong with a selection of accessorising headbands Kawaguchi? – Ed]. His own dodgy-looking ponytail aside, hurrah for Gouken!

In other SFIV news, for the first print-run of the Japanese version Capcom will be including SFIV anime DVDs with every copy of the game. (Not sure whether this applies to territories outside of Japan, but those of us here in Tokyo are sorted – naanaa-na-naanaa!) The anime in question is a 60-minute special that was originally shown at this year’s Tokyo Game Show, and it looks pretty damn good. Almost the entire SFIV cast appear in this anime film and, surprise, they fight a lot. Obviously the main attraction is the game, but I’ll make sure I’m there at launch to land a bonus DVD. Check out this screenshot of the anime to see what you’re getting/missing.


Let’s Tap! gets musical credibility

You might remember my hands-on impressions of this upcoming Wii curio at October’s Tokyo Game Show (if you don’t, click here before we go any further). I’m really intrigued by how Let’s Tap! is going to turn out, and with less than a month to go until it debuts in Japan news of features and other details are finally appearing in the Japanese press.

The most interesting titbit concerns the game’s musical selections. Let’s Tap!’s developer, Yuji Naka’s Prope studio, has hired nine noted videogame music composers to produce a total of 20 original tunes for the game’s Rhythm Tap mode. Members of the Let’s Tap! Supergroup include Shinji Hosoe, the genius composer behind the music for Namco’s Ridge Racer; Masaharu Itawa, of Final Fantasy Tactics and Ogre Battle soundtrack fame; and Naofumi Hataya, the guy behind Space Channel 5’s funked-up musical wonders.

You can hear a few choice cuts from the Let’s Tap! mix on the game’s official Japanese site. From the new screenshots just released in Japan (one of which is presented here for your inspection), it seems that the game’s Rhythm Tap mode will be a simple-but-groovy tap-along-to-the-beat kind of thing for up to four players. Bring it on, Prope: I’m ready to tap.


Tip for the week: Let’s Tap! to be SEGA’s hippest game since Space Channel 5 (albeit not quite as sexy).