The Week In Japan: Wii Dissing, R4 Snitching
Plus: MGS Peace Walker demo, leaked Nintendo retailer briefing.
Another week, another set of stories from the land of the rising sun. Each week, SPOnG takes a look at the developments happening in Japan and rounds up some of the things you might have missed.
First comes a (somewhat polite) diss of the Nintendo Wii, from Square Enix employee and Nier director Yoko Taro. Writing in a blog post dated 4th October, Taro explains his interest in seeing the trailer for his game at the Tokyo Game Show's Square Enix Theater. It was then that he saw, afterwards, a trailer for Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: The Crystal Bearers. His reaction?
"To be honest, the graphics in Crystal Bearers are hard on the eyes. Bearers' graphics are well done, I get the feeling that you could call them the highest level for Wii. However, SD graphics are just painful. This is the limits of the hardware, so you can't do anything about it."
Me-ow. Konami released a demo of Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker for the PSP on the 8th October, giving players a taste of the action in case they missed it at TGS. If you have a Japanese PSP and are looking for a little more Tactical Espionage Action featuring multiple Snakes, then be sure to pick this up.
Kotaku reported on the 5th October that Nintendo are offering a service whereby anonymous shoppers can tip off the manufacturer about shops that are offering the legally-iffy R4 Revolution device. The cartridge allows for 'data' (read: homebrew and, mostly, illegal ROMs of games) to be loaded from a Micro SD card onto a Nintendo DS. Tokyo's Akihabara and Osaka's Den Den Town are rife with people selling the products even today, despite many companies (including Nintendo) cracking down on its distribution.
Andriasang caught wind of a few new releases heading to Japanese stores, thanks to a Nintendo retailer briefing that ended up being leaked. Among the titles dated, Tales of Graces will be hitting stores 10th December, and is being accompanied by a white Wii console bundle. New Super Mario Bros. Wii will be hitting 3rd December, alongside some blue and pink Wii Remotes.
The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Track on DS is arriving on the 23rd December, while a new Pokemon game is being released on the 5th December. Called Poke Park Wii -- Pikachu's Big Adventure, the game is an action adventure title that sees you "working through a variety of attractions while strengthening your friendship with Pokemon". Looks like the twelfth month is going to be a packed one for many Japanese gamers.
Finally, because we love it so, SEGA released the second part of the Tokyo Game Show trailer for Valkyria Chronicles 2 on PSP. Enjoy!
First comes a (somewhat polite) diss of the Nintendo Wii, from Square Enix employee and Nier director Yoko Taro. Writing in a blog post dated 4th October, Taro explains his interest in seeing the trailer for his game at the Tokyo Game Show's Square Enix Theater. It was then that he saw, afterwards, a trailer for Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: The Crystal Bearers. His reaction?
"To be honest, the graphics in Crystal Bearers are hard on the eyes. Bearers' graphics are well done, I get the feeling that you could call them the highest level for Wii. However, SD graphics are just painful. This is the limits of the hardware, so you can't do anything about it."
Me-ow. Konami released a demo of Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker for the PSP on the 8th October, giving players a taste of the action in case they missed it at TGS. If you have a Japanese PSP and are looking for a little more Tactical Espionage Action featuring multiple Snakes, then be sure to pick this up.
Kotaku reported on the 5th October that Nintendo are offering a service whereby anonymous shoppers can tip off the manufacturer about shops that are offering the legally-iffy R4 Revolution device. The cartridge allows for 'data' (read: homebrew and, mostly, illegal ROMs of games) to be loaded from a Micro SD card onto a Nintendo DS. Tokyo's Akihabara and Osaka's Den Den Town are rife with people selling the products even today, despite many companies (including Nintendo) cracking down on its distribution.
Andriasang caught wind of a few new releases heading to Japanese stores, thanks to a Nintendo retailer briefing that ended up being leaked. Among the titles dated, Tales of Graces will be hitting stores 10th December, and is being accompanied by a white Wii console bundle. New Super Mario Bros. Wii will be hitting 3rd December, alongside some blue and pink Wii Remotes.
The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Track on DS is arriving on the 23rd December, while a new Pokemon game is being released on the 5th December. Called Poke Park Wii -- Pikachu's Big Adventure, the game is an action adventure title that sees you "working through a variety of attractions while strengthening your friendship with Pokemon". Looks like the twelfth month is going to be a packed one for many Japanese gamers.
Finally, because we love it so, SEGA released the second part of the Tokyo Game Show trailer for Valkyria Chronicles 2 on PSP. Enjoy!
Companies:
Konami Nintendo SEGA
Games: Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: The Crystal Bearers Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker Valkyria Chronicles II
Games: Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: The Crystal Bearers Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker Valkyria Chronicles II
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Comments
YenRug 9 Oct 2009 13:06
1/2
Yoko Taro would do well to remember that there is plenty of evidence to show that a lot less than half of all 360/PS3 owners actually have their systems rigged up to display HD, due to either not having a HDTV or having the correct cables to display on one. So, whilst his own product might look absolutely glorious in HD, most people aren't going to see it.
deleted 9 Oct 2009 22:24
2/2
@YenRug
I think the point was tho that 360/PS3 SD graphics still far outweigh that of Wii SD graphics obviously because of hardware limits, I think a good example would be to run RE4 on Wii in 480p vs RE5 on 360 480p, you WOULD see a big difference, regardless of the consumers chosen visual set quality.
All that AA, AF, Triple cores and huge VRAM goes a long way :-)
I think the point was tho that 360/PS3 SD graphics still far outweigh that of Wii SD graphics obviously because of hardware limits, I think a good example would be to run RE4 on Wii in 480p vs RE5 on 360 480p, you WOULD see a big difference, regardless of the consumers chosen visual set quality.
All that AA, AF, Triple cores and huge VRAM goes a long way :-)