Japan Gaming Guide

Amiga classic Populous will be coming to the Nintendo DS soon. The original God game saw you battling for supremacy against another deity, helping your followers build cities whilst raining fire and brimstone on the evil God’s minions. There’ll be a 4 player mode as well as all new Godly powers to use against your enemies.

[Read, via DS Fanboy]

The mystery game being developed by Treasure has been revealed as Bangaioh Tamashii – a sequel to the dreamcast classic Bangai-O. We’re pleased as punch that our cries for a Bangai-O sequel have been answered. The game was kind of a twin stick shooter, but with only one stick and a d-pad. The best thing about it was the dialogue. The English translation team were apparently so amused by the placeholder text left by the Japnese developers that they decided not to touch it. It proved an inspired decision – the game stands as a testament to all that is bizarre in the world.

The sequel is a DS title which is a little surprising – the tiny graphics might be a little too tiny on the ‘ol twin screens – but we’ll wait till we get our hands on it to find out. There’s going to be a stage editor and four way multiplayer. Three cheers for Banagi-O – the name doesn’t mean anything!

[Read]

Fans of legendary developer Treasure should keep their eyes on the linked page. A new game is on the way for the DS, and an announcement is just days away..

[Read, via DS Fanboy]

Fish Tank based Theta is the latest aquatic title from Nintendo. It’s official website just launched, with pics and a gameplay movie.

From what we can make out, the player starts off by mixing groups of multi coloured ‘atoms’ together, coaxing them into place with the stylus on the bottom screen. These form ‘molecules’ which then end up either hatching into fish, or luring them into your aquarium, we’re not sure which yet.

The game also features ‘kaiten puzzles’. These look a bit like the game ‘Downfall’, although we’ve heard they can be pretty challenging.

It looks like it might be an interesting puzzler. We’ll give you more news as we get closer to the game’s September 6th release.

There seem to be a lot of watery around games at the moment, what with Forever Blue on the Wii, Wave Race on the VC and of course the depths of Rapture in Bioshock. Maybe all this heat is getting to developers.

[Read]

More good news for DS owners, Majesco have announced that Cooking Mama is getting a sequel. Dining with Friends will up the ante somewhat – this time arround you have a bunch of dinner guests to keep happy. They’ll all let you know what they think of your cooking and are sure to have their own quirks and personalities.

The recipes will focus on cultural dishes this time around, featuring meals such as shark fin soup, and American apple pie. As well as the regular solo-play, there’ll be wi-fi multiplayer for up to four people to get their hands dirty.

You’ll also be able to customize your kitchen, and Mama herself in the new decoration mode.

A new Wii game will also be coming out, the details are yet to be revealed.

[Read]

If you enjoyed the surreal magic of Ouendan and the adventuring of Phoenix Wright, you might want to keep an eye on 13 Sai no Hello Work DS. You have to travel through time to help people that have become disillusioned with their jobs. The hapless career people in need of assistance include a soccer player, a private eye, a TV announcer and a dog barber. We suspect the game will include some stylus based dog shaving – and who wouldn’t want to experience that?

[Read]

The Hudson Soft caravan came to town yesterday. In a blaze of yellow the team showed off their latest titles such as Otoda Master for the DS and Star Soldier R for Wii.

Flamboyant company president ‘Master’ Takahashi was on hand to introduce Star Soldier R, acting as MC for the high score competition. Some of the hardcore fans had been following the tour from city to city to get more chances of grabbing the number 1 spot.

There was also the chance to try Hudson’s shoot-em-up speed tester – a small controller like device with a couple of buttons. Attendees got the chance to see if they could match Master Takahashi’s speed of 16 shots a second, over a 10 second period. In fact the highest score on the day was 233 – pretty impressive – we’d love to know what that guy puts on his cornflakes.

Heading into the caravan itself we were able to try out Otoda Master for DS. There were a selection of objects for making different sounds to attract the game’s pokemon like monsters.

We’re gonna do a separate hands-on with Otoda Master and give you our impressions of Star Soldier R later, so stay tuned if you’re after news on those games.

The tour is still ongoing, and has yet to hit Tokyo, so check out the schedule if you fancy heading along, and competing against some of the most hardcore shoot-em-up players in Japan.

We got the chance to try out Otoda Master at the Hudson caravan tour in Osaka.

It looked pretty fun. You use the DS mike to summon Pokemon Otoda which you can then send into battle against another team of creatures. There are 3 ways to summon creatures – one is to make a noise into the mike, we tried this using bells and banging frying pans which worked fine. Another way is to speak into the mike. This worked pretty well, even our awful Japanese was sufficient to attract a few wee beasties. Thirdly you can summon them using melodies. This is where things went horribly wrong. The event staff presented us with a bright yellow recorder, but unfortunately the music we produced scared every damn Otoda into hiding, so she had to do it for us. It looks like musical people will be OK though, but not us, unfortunately. Having summoned a few creatures we took the chance to send them into battle. The battle we saw was a simple 3 on 3 affair, pretty standard RPG stuff, using the stylus to picking an attack option and target for each of our party, and then watching the results.

Although summoning the creatures was fun we didn’t get the chance to find out if there’s any plot element to speak of – although we can’t imagine this game is going to be as deep as Pokemon. It probably won’t appeal that much to adults the same way that Pokemon does. Having said that it was a lot of fun trying to summon the creatures, and we can see this being a hit in the playground.

We were told that the game won’t be heading to America or Japan anytime soon, because “if you say ‘hello’ not ‘konnichi wa’ no monsters will come”, so importers remember, you’ll need a phrasebook on hand if your gonna ‘catch em all.

Here’s some good news for DS adventure fans. Suspense novelist Nishimura Kyotaro is bringing a new detective game to the DS. The snappily titled Kyoto Atami, Solitary Island of Murderous Traps will put the player in the shoes of a detective, looking for evidence and eventually presenting a case to investigators. Investigations begin on October 11th.

[Read]

August 30th sees the release of One Piece: Gear Spirit for Nintendo DS.

Based on the hugely popular pirate animé, the fighting game will let you play as all your favourite characters. As well as just fighting, you’ll be able to collect over 130 cards and use them to up your stats, RPG style. You’ll also be able to play against 3 friends over wi-fi.

There’s a whole bunch of characters to choose from, and while we haven’t played this yet, any game with a lead character called Monkey D. Luffy is alright by us.
Follow the link and scroll down for the rest of the screens. You can also view the movie of the game at the official site here. (links expired)