CS Console War Battle Plan: Nintendo

I see you’re back for more, private. Welcome to part two of the CS Console War Battle Plans. Last week we gave Microsoft the secrets to winning the war. That’s just how we roll. All who know us best will know that Club Skill is a neutral party that wishes prosperity for the entire industry, so this week we’re giving the Nihongos over at Nintendo some extra artillery. Captain Mario is already getting ready, cleaning his overall buttons. Sargent Samus is locked, loaded, and awaiting further orders. If you detect any lame Wii jokes whatsoever soldier, feel free to grab my gun and pull the trigger without hesitation. Now huddle around troops, as there’s a battle afoot and we’re not gonna win without a planned attack.

Nintendo’s Wii

At E3 2005 Nintendo revealed their entry into the next, or as they would say, “new” generation of video game consoles. Codenamed Revolution, the goal of this system was to deliver a fresh new experience to gaming that none of the rival consoles could emulate, and thus bringing non-gamers into the industry with it’s simplistic and intriguing controls. Speaking of emulation, in 2005 it was also announced that the Revolution would allow users to purchase and download games from Nintendo’s past eras of the NES, SNES, and N64. Later on it was revealed that SEGA Genesis/MegaDrive and Hudson Turbografx16 games would be available on Nintendo’s Virtual Console. The Xbox 360 has had a year’s head start, and the Revolution, now named Wii to symbolize the remote controller and the no longer exclusive industry, is ready to enter the homes for the holidays around the same time as Sony’s PlayStation 3.

It’s going to be a busy holiday season, and Nintendo needs to secure a spot on many a wish list.

Nintendo’s booth at E3 2006

 

What They’ve Done Right

Nintendo has brought out the big guns. At launch we can expect two of their major franchises and have hopes for a third: The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, Metroid Prime 3: Corruption, and possibly Super Mario Galaxy. On top of that they have other projects in the works, like Super Smash Bros. Brawl, along with titles from Kirby, Animal Crossing, and Donkey Kong.

A problem that the GameCube faced throughout it’s lifespan was that people never knew when they were getting the characters they bought the system for. The only ‘true’ Mario titles were Sunshine and the Paper series, with Mario Kart: Double Dash!! and the sports titles as backup. Metroid had the Prime series, Zelda had Wind Waker, Star Fox had the weak Assault and Adventures, Donkey Kong only had Konga and Jungle Beat, and apart from SSBM and AirRide, Kirby didn’t make an appearance on the GCN at all. Even so, that’s still a good number of games. But the problem that GCN owners had was that they didn’t know when these games were coming at the time. Nintendo wasn’t very good at saying, “This is what’s coming out and this is what’s coming down the pipe.” People bought the GCN expecting those games to deliver because they had the Nintendo brand, but unfortunately many of those games were sub-par. With the Wii, everyone knows what’s in the pipeline out and the fans are excited.

Maybe the first game to sell one console and boost another?

Nintendo is realising their mistakes from the last generation; Nintendo online was an oxymoron until the DS’s WiFi Connection. Now they’re fully integrating online play into their games with WiiConnect24, which will allow developers to send new add-ons to games through a twenty-four hour connection to the player’s console. With pre-paid points or credit cards, gamers can buy NES, SNES, N64, Genesis/MegaDrive, or Turbografx16 games and save them onto an SD card or hard drive. This opens up many possibilities with the Wii remote and favourites of the past.

And finally, Nintendo nailed E3. Going into the show people had doubts about whether Nintendo had the firepower to take down Sony and Microsoft’s graphical beasts. Sony and Microsoft’s press conferences (Sony’s especially), gave everyone what they wanted: the straight facts. Release date, price, games, it was all spoon-fed to the press. Nintendo instead worked on a different route, deciding to instead tease everyone until the were hyped about the announcements. Nintendo let everyone know their vision for this generation and slowly let loose information. And when you got out onto the show floor, the lines aorund the Nintendo booth were packed and the Wii still had a sense of mystery about it. That, plus things like the secretive Super Smash Bros. Brawl trailer got people hyped for a machine that was only a murmur before. Gamers and developers are now excited, wanting to see what the controller can do, and waiting on Nintendo’s next move.

 

What They’ve Done Wrong

The motion sensing Wii controller is supposed to introduce a new control scheme that will get even the most adamant non-gamer into videogames. This is all well and good, but some game developers have no desire to change. The Wii also has GameCube controller ports and the system’s Virtual Console controller, but Nintendo is trying very hard to push the remote-style controller. The head behind Castlevania, Koji Igarashi, has stated that the series is not fit for the Wii on many different occasions. “…I’ve noticed that Castlevania might not fit the controller. Wii is targeting some short gameplay, whereas Castlevania is a longer game. Once you get into the game you’ve been playing for so many hours it doesn’t really fit with Wii.”

Even more evident of his feelings surrounding the controller were this statement; “When it comes to Wii, obviously the controller has a unique feature, but I just can’t come up with a good idea that utilizes it. I mean, clearly you can with a lot of time.” It seems that no one has told him, “Hey, you can use a normal controller too!” and that could potentially lose some third-party series for Nintendo if developers go exclusively to another system due to misinformation.

“Oh yeah, we have that controller too…”

The secrecy helps in some cases, but in others it’s just annoying to the consumer. For instance, The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess will be sold on the Wii and on the GameCube. Some future Wii owners are concerned that the Wii’s remote will not feel as comfortable as the GameCube’s controller, so they are debating about which version to get. Again, the Wii has ports for GameCube controllers, but Nintendo has yet to confirm that the Wii version will have the option to choose between each control scheme.

The Wii’s Wi-Fi setup has caused confusion, also. Look around the Internet and some sources will tell you that the Wii can go online using Nintendo’s WiFi USB Connector, which a lot of current DS owners already have. Nintendo has neither confirmed nor denied this. Suspense is great, but there is a fine line between hype and confusion.

 

What They Need to Do

Nintendo has put themselves in a bind in some cases around the Wii. As with the controller, most likely the reason they aren’t pushing the GameCube and VC controllers is because they fear the consequences. If developers start ignoring the Wii remote it will become another failed Nintendo peripheral, and they can’t afford for that to happen. The way to counter this is to deliver some great games at launch that really make the Wii remote shine. After the possibilities are opened up and developers are aware that this can truly enhance gaming like Nintendo claims, there is no longer a need to shove the remote down their throats. Then you can tell them, “Yeah, but if you really want to go back to these controllers you still can”. We really don’t need to play Madden with the remote, but if we’re going to, we also want the option of playing with a normal controller.

If done right, an online Smash Bros could achieve greatness.

The biggest problem is online play. It’s great that Nintendo is embracing it, but now they’re not sure how to make it work. There is one main factor that’s messing everything up: Gamers want Xbox Live features for multiplayer, but Nintendo wants to keep it simple, and above all, free. You can’t have both. Under a free service, Nintendo can’t as easily enforce rules against misconduct or swearing over voice chat. Nintendo has always been and probably always will be a family-oriented brand. They can’t afford little Timmy being cursed out by Pikachu on Super Smash Bros. So their solution with this on the DS was to use friends codes to enable voice chat. This didn’t bode well with gamers who wanted more freedom. Nintendo needs to set up different types of rooms for different age groups. A kids’ room can have voice chat diabled in online matches unless someone is registered on their friends list and vice versa, and an adults’ room can have free for all voice chat. The Wii should have different profiles for each user, and each user should have control settings when it comes to online play. This hurdle can be overcome in many different ways; Nintendo needs to just put their minds to it.

And most importantly, keep the hits coming. Don’t make the same mistake as the what happened on the GameCube and keep your all-stars buried in a vault somewhere. We love our Marios and Zeldas, so keep giving them to us.

 

Final Analysis

You’re back in the race Nintendo, and if you correctly play the cards you’ve always had since the days of the NES, you could possibly come out of this battle on top. The games are what you’ve got, and with the graphical powers of the PS3 and 360 it may be all that you’ve got. So you’re going to have to deliver big to take them down. But you’ve come prepared; you have the deadly Nintendo All-Star Army on your side. Use them well and you may just become the ruler of all consoles once again.

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CS Console Wars Battle Plans

Microsoft – Nintendo – Sony

CS Console War Battle Plan: Microsoft

The gloves are on and the stage is set. The consoles wars of two-thousand-and-six are underway. What’s that private? You say that they are just games and you shouldn’t care about which company does better? Stop all that hippie nonsense, soldier! You and I both know that you have your favorite company, and you wish for them to slaughter the competition. The fanboys have picked their sides, and they’ll be gloating by year two-thousand-and-ten if they have the supreme ruler of the consoles. Gloating is not an option if you’re a yellow-bellied fence rider, soldier. Yes, I do know that these companies will never give back to me. And I guess you’re right when you say that this is all pretty stupid to care about a big corporate company. So I- Wait. Stop your treason, private! This is war private, you can take all of your ideals someplace else. Now, back to war. We’ve constructed battle plans for each console company here at the Club Skill HQ. We’ve outlined what each company has done right, done wrong, and needs to do to win this round. First up we have the Xbox 360, since it was released first. The other two will be randomly picked to see who goes second and third. Read up soldier, the future of your thumbs is in the wake.

Microsoft’s Xbox 360

On November 22, 2005, the first fighter in the console wars came out headfirst, guns blazing. Unless you were playing Microsoft’s clever online riddle “Ourcolony” game, The Xbox 360 came out of nowhere. One day people were having fun playing Halo 2 on Live, and the next there was a MTV special unveiling a brand new console. A week later, E3 fed you all the 360 info you didn’t know already. Microsoft delivered a swift blow to the gut to their competitors by launching a legitimate next-gen console so early. If we didn’t see it coming, it’s not too hard to believe that Nintendo and Sony didn’t think they would have it looking that good so soon either. So for the few who could find them, the Xbox 360 was the hot item for the 2005 holiday season. The mad dash from consumers to get into the next-gen is over now though, so Microsoft is going to have to deliver to insure that interest stays in their direction with the Wii and PS3 heading to the shelves.

The Xbox 360 Zero Hour event.

What They’ve Done Right

The 360 has an image. Most people accuse the Xbox 360 of being the reincarnation of the Dreamcast because of the similarities between the two. But, the Dreamcast had two major downfalls that the Xbox has already been able to overcome. First of all, the Dreamcast came at a time when people were not ready to buy a new video game console. The success of the 360 so far defeats that problem. Secondly, Sega never gave the Dreamcast an image. It was a box that played games. Microsoft has given the 360 a “Remix/ New-Age generation” image. Even if you think it’s tacky, you can’t deny that it’s there. Think of the 360 and you’ll realize how much of an impact their marketing has. You don’t think of little kids playing an Xbox 360, you think of college students wearing indie clothes and being too sexy for themselves, laughing as they pass around a controller. They’ve been able to drill the thought into your head, “This is a cool, mature, gamer’s machine,” and that sells. Little Billy wants one so he can be cool, and Big John in college will buy one because he want to have a cool looking dorm.

Dead Rising, one of the 360 titles that contributes to the mature image.

Microsoft also has good relationships with third-party developers. They currently have the kind of relationship that Nintendo is trying to regain. They support and monitor projects done by outside developers, and this support brings a constant flow of games in for the 360. So far the console hasn’t had a drought when it comes to software. Even in the boring gaming days of summer, Dead Rising is about to be released in the US. A steady stream of games is what helped the success of the PS2 last round, so it’s important that Microsoft keeps this up. They’ve also proved why Xbox Live is worth that moolah you pay every year. Microsoft has established the Marketplace, the Xbox Live Arcade, the Gamercards, and the overall community. Now they’re working on Live Anywhere, which will let you take your stats with you. Gamers get the feeling that Microsoft cares, and that they are constantly trying to improve themselves. If gamers feel like you care, they have no problem dishing out more money for better improvements. Microsoft understands this, and so they are trying to keep the Live community as close-knit as possible.

 

What They’ve Done Wrong

Earlier I said that Microsoft has the kind of relationship with third-party developers that Nintendo is trying to get. Replace that “third-party” with “first-party” and the roles are reversed. In the age of expensive next-gen games, it’s going to be hard to convince developers to keep their games on one system when they know they can just as easily port it to the others and make double their money. In this case, a lot of 360 titles will be ported over to the PS3.

And as far as the games go, they need to widen the spectrum. Nearly every game announcement on the 360 is an FPS, Sports, or GTA-clone title. Yeah, the mature image is great for the hardware. After awhile though, I will have shot enough Nazis, aliens, police officers, and socc-er- footballs to not care anymore

The marketplace is great, but it helps when people know when the content is out. So far, every major release in the marketplace has been followed by two or more weeks of speculation and guesswork. People like to know when they’re going to spend money so they can plan ahead, don’t announce an add-on for a game and then not tell your consumers when it’s coming out.

For future reference keep Peter Moore in a nice padded room, preferably with duct tape on his mouth. He’s a nice a guy, and he has nice intentions, but when he talks it’s like a train wreck waiting to happen. “Next-generation games will combine unprecedented audio and visual experiences, create worlds that are beyond real, and they’ll deliver story lines and gameplay so compelling that it’ll feel like a lucid dream.” We’re still waiting on that lucid dream, buddy. I see your point, but it doesn’t make it any better.

Mr. Moore says, “Yaargh, blah smackitysmackity.”

 

What They Need To Do

Microsoft needs to establish some first-party juggernauts to take on your Metal Gear Solids and Super Smash Bros.’. They need more system sellers, and instead of banking on the Halo 3 hype machine they need to get started immediately. The multiplatform route worked for them in the last generation because the Xbox was arguably the most powerful system. If a game was released on the PS2 and the Xbox, you could justify getting the Xbox version because it looked better. This will apply for Sony in this round if the PS3 is all it’s cracked up to be. The 360, like the Wii, needs games that people will have to buy the system to play. They can only ride the Halo gravy train for so long.

Don’t announce Live Marketplace features unless you have a release date to go with them. Developers will argue that the speculation creates more hype, but you can get just as much hype by releasing it a month later then normally but at least giving a release date. Most consumers would rather have Street Fighter II announced on June 20 for a release on July 15, then have a June 30 release that everyone speculated about until three days prior.

Other then the wacky release dates, the Marketplace has been a success.

If see that your games are all starting to fall into the mainstream category, work on some other properties. Look for some RPG, Adventure, or Action games being developed and try to get a piece of the action. If all else fails, Microsoft needs to get started on their own. The 360 has a nice constant release of games year round, but it needs more in the constant release. People who would not buy a 360 because it doesn’t suit their taste may change their mind if Microsoft can find/create the next great gaming icon.

And let J.Allard do all the talking from now on.

Final Analysis

 

So far so good. Your problems are minimal, Microsoft. There was a slight slip-up with that Core vs. Premium fiasco, but now that that is over you seem to know where you are in the industry and you’re staying that way. Remember what got you there, don’t throw all of your chips on Halo, and keep the consumer first. You’ve got a good chance to win this thing. We can’t wait for that lucid dream.

Stay in shouting distance! Next Wednesday we’ll take a look at the house that Mario built, Nintendo and the Nintendo Wii. Awesomeness ensues.

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CS Console Wars Battle Plans
Microsoft – Nintendo – Sony

E3 First-Look: Resistance Fall of Man

“Oh, another first-person shooter” is how most gamers and journalists react to 50% of the titles seen at E3. Nice eye-candy for sure, but after shooting your third alien from an unknown planet who’s come for an unknown reason the fun factor wears of. FPS’s are starting to all look the same. “‘Not I,’ said the cow” if you talk to Insomniac Games, creators of the Ratchet & Clank series. They’re trying to make Resistence: Fall of Man so fun that you be in a alien-ridden Eurasia taking down extraterrestial scum, and you’ll like it damn it.

Resistance takes place in the 20th century, changing up the past. Europe and Asia have been all but demolished, sorry Brits, by mysterious alien forces. The Queen’s army is down so only a small ragtag crew remains to fend off the beasts. The U.S. comes to the rescue, sorry Brits, with ranger Nathaniel Hale who joins the resistance. You must play as Mr. Hale and restore peace in order to the land.

The E3 demo is set in the underground base for the humans, and the aliens have found thier way in. They jump and snarl everywhere and you must take them down before they get too deep into the compound. If you see creatures jumping on top of your crew, don’t stand there and watch. The game will have “hero moments” so you can shoot that nasty critter off his face. Weapons have a primary and alternate fire, and different types of grenades are in-game. It’s from the Ratchet & Clank creators, so you know it’s diverse in the weaponary. The hedgehog is a grenade that explodes into spikes that cover an area. The auger has a normal shot and a shot that drills through walls. The weapons all give off a sick sense of glee win used correctly.

And yes, the graphics are pretty. Though not yet too far from something we could see on the 360, Resistance’s realism cannot be denied. The colors come from the “dirty futuristic FPS” palatte of greys and brown. Glass shatters, dust flies, and all this happens with the sounds of bullets whizzing past your ears and shrieks from unknown foes surround. The lighting and textures on the walls and floors is downright amazing. Since most of the monsters are actually mutated humans, it’s downright creepy to see them walking up to you. The have coils that stick out of their backs and it best to aim for them while atacking. Yeah, they kinda look like the monsters on all of the Gears of War ads, but it was cool enough that we didn’t care. Resistance puts you into the experience. The final game will also feature 32 player online matches, and two player co-op.

Insominiac will have to do something to set Resistance: Fall of Man apart from the rest of the FPS fare. This PS3 launch title looks promising so be sure we’ll keep you updated. More screens at the image gallery.

E3 First-Look: Metroid Prime 3 Corruption

Samus may be the greatest video game heroine of all-time. Some may argue lady Lara Croft takes the crown, but no one can deny the shock on testosterone filled males all over when their hardcore bounty hunter let her hair flow all the end of Metroid for the Nintendo Entertainment System. She’s been in a contender for best game ever: Super Metroid. She was the star in the most graphically impressive Gamecube titles: Metroid Prime and Metroid Prime 2: Echos. And she was just recently released in the Nintendo DS hits: Metroid Prime: Hunters, and Metroid Prime: Pinball. With the Wii, Nintendo is trying to make gamers become one with the bounty hunter. In Metroid Prime 3: Corruption players wield the Wii remote and nunchaku to control Samus’s gun arm as they blast away those space pirates. Here is all we know about the title.

Similar to Ubisoft’s Red Steel, Samus’s movement is controlled with the analog stick on the nunchaku while her targets are pointed at with the Wii remote. The in-game hub will remain the way it has in the other Prime games with the exception of the beams displayed in the lower right-hand corner. Instead of you being able to switch between each beam, each one you get will eliminate the previous like in Super Metroid. In the E3 demo, Samus’s grappling beam is used to pull away enemy weapons. Many other beams and upgrades will make a comeback, like the X-Ray and Thermal Visors. New ones will also show up, like a beam that can shoot throw solid walls. The Screw Attack and Wall Jump will be more deeply intergrated into the adventure also.

Metroid Prime 2 made the mistake of trying to combine the Prime lock-on system with multiplayer and ended up failing. The Corruption team is dumping the local multiplayer in order to completely focus on the single-player adventure, though they have not completely denyed the existence of WiiConnect24 support. Scanning is back, but it’s less tedious now. The difficulty and amount of backtracking have been reduced for the third installment. Like in Metroid Prime: Hunters, you will have control over what planet you go to. You can fly back in forth between planets at any time. As far as graphics go, real picky people will notice the differences. Light is shinier, shadows are darker, textures are more texturized. The main difference is the fact that enviroments are more complex. Especially in areas with a lot of machinery, you’ll notice that a lot more is happening around you. This helps contribute to the feeling of a living, breathing, world.

Not much information is known about the last Prime title, Metroid Prime 3: Corruption, but be sure that we here at Club Skill will spoon-feed you the updates as they come. We’ll also have a review for Prime when it comes out with the Nintendo Wii.

E3 First-Look: Super Mario Galaxy

Ok, Mario is back. No, this is not a rumour. No, this is not an odd third-party cameo. Yes, it was pretty funny dunking on Shaquille O’Neal while wearing those overalls in NBA Street. But it’s time for a new standalone game for Mr. Mario, and Miyamoto-san gives us Super Mario Galaxy for the Nintendo Wii.

The old standbys return: mushrooms, Toads, Goombas, and more. But the new deal with Galaxy is that Mario is now in space. The E3 demo starts up with Mario trapped in a sort of bubble in space, and you have to tap B to get him out. Once you pop out of the space bubble you enter the first area, Star World. In Galaxy, Mario must shoot to different planets to collect 100 star shards in order to complete a star. At the end of each little area, there is a star-shaped portal which will launch Mario into orbit and land him on another planet. From what we’ve seen so far, each planet is like a minature area in Super Mario 64. This is not a problem though, because the sheer number of planets and astroids is mind-boggling. It’s very cool to be shooting across space and end up landing on a different planet upside down. Galaxy changes the perspective a lot from planet-to-planet to make the player really feel as though they are qareening through space.

You can’t really change Mario’s graphics too much, he isn’t meant to look like an actual Italian plumber afterall. However, Nintendo managed to go around this problem by giving Super Mario Galaxy a “candy neon” glow when it comes to character models and scenery. Everything gives off an inviting glow, and this effect will really look nice on a HD TV if you currently own one.

The nunchaku is used for motion, while the “Wiimote” is used for certain specific actions. Shake the remote to do Mario’s spin attack, point at bells to make musical notes fall out, or point and select a Star to jump to it. Mario’s jump and attack are both fixed to the remote’s A and B buttons respectively. The controls take some getting used to at first. Mario vets are used to all of the icon’s actions being on the same controller. But once you get used to the new configuration, word is that Galaxy is a fun take on Mario’s hop and bop ways. The game will also have a multiplayer mode that allows one player to be Mario and the other to help out with the remote.

Miyamoto-san is very enthusiastic about this title because he’s always looking for a way to take Mario to new places. Super Mario Sunshine armed the plummer with a water-pack, and even though the graphics were nice and the gameplay solid, Mario fans were split down the middle when it came to who liked the game. Maybe it’s time to shoot the little guy out into the stars, to go where no plummer has gone before. For now you can check out more screens and the trailer at the game page. We’ll have a review with (hopefully) less puns at launch.

Lost in Blue

Hunt for your food, manage resources, make fire, survive as long as possible. Oregon Trail this is not. This is Lost In Blue for the  Nintendo DS, a new innovative game for the Tom Hanks at heart who want to see what it’s like to be cast away on a desert island.
Lost In Blue is the sequel to the barely-heard-of GBA game Survival Kids. After getting washed ashore, a teenage boy tries to survive by himself on this island. You must keep yourself (and your little marooned girlfriend) healthy, full, fit, and hydrated. This translates into compeleting minigames for you, which are made to utilize the DS’s Swiss army-like features. Aim your arrow and hunt ‘yerself some deer with the touchscreen in first person, rub sticks together to make a fire and use the Mic to blow some sparks, Milk animals and much more.
Graphics this time around are 3D, a selling point in and of itself with it comes to current DS games. Though not exactly KOTOR, the 3D is a nice boost from the regular Gameboy-esque fare from past titles. Skip past waterfalls and nice little landscapes which help the game give the feel of your own little island.  Hopefully, to add to the experience, the developer won’t add music; Just atmospheric sounds to add to the feeling of being on the island.
Lost in Blue is aimed at the more patient type of gamer, following allowing the same lines of the cult favorite farming/life sim Harvest Moon and the Gamecube’s classic animals-with-rosy-cheeks sim Animal Crossing. Action fans will likely point and laugh but fans of other games similar will be picking this one up when it hit’s the shelves.
With games like Lost In Blue, Pheonix Wright: Ace Attorney, Trauma Center: Under the Knife, and Nintendogs all ready to launch on the DS; Every gamer that ever saw those quirky Japanese titles and wished to their fairy godmother that they could land stateside is in heaven right now. Along those lines they also have a new Harvest Moon and a port of Animal Crossing mentioned earlier coming up later on. The DS, I believe, as officially earned the title ‘ Best Console For Japanese Wannabees’ like myself. Lost In Blue gets it’s goat milk lovin’ self onto your DS this September.

Tales of Phantasia

“Name the great RPG series of our time. Final Fantasy, Xenosaga, the Mana series and too many others to condense into an opening paragraph. Another in Japan is right inbetween that cult and mainstream status of RPGs, and that’s the Tales series. Tales of Phantasia is finally coming from across the pond to the United States and is mixing the RPG scene up with a new real-time control scheme. No more waiting for turns. This time around, the Tales series comes to the Gameboy Advanced and could turn out to be a memorable little adventure.

The story is straight fantasy-fare. Young Cress Albane finds out his village is destroyed and goes on a journey through space and time to find the evil doers who commited this crime. So far this is normal stuff. As said earlier, what sets this apart from normal RPG’s is the new Linear Motion Battle System. Namco’s new battle scheme has the player using the directional buttons to fight instead of waiting to press the “attack” button. You move tCress and attack while the other characters in the party are controlled by the CPU. This may lead to a few annoying deaths but is meant to give the game more of an action feel then that of the traditional RPG. Another new approach is the use of the addition of cooking. Instead of stocking up on potions from the local item shop, you must find recipes and gather ingrediants so you can create your own healing items. Finnaly if you meet an enemy in-game it’s added to the Monster Dictionary, a file that includes all the information on a creature including strengths and weaknesses.

So far the graphics are normal for the GBA, with little sprites running around the screen like colorful cottonballs. In-battle animations are top-notch though, and impressively fit onto the small cartridge Our hero Cress isn’t the only character by the way. He’s joined by his neighbor: archer Chester Barklight, and Mint Adnade, the girl of the group is to no surprise: the white mage.

Roleplaying games are welcomed on the Gameboy and titles with a name behind them even more so. Namco wants Tales of Phantasia to break out of the pack and offer a new type of RPG to gamers. Real-time battles and cooking up your health items? It will be interesting to see how this one goes. More info closer to release.”