Japan Gaming Guide

Star Soldier R on Wii was the real crowd puller at Hudson’s Caravan tour of Japan. The game will be instantly familiar to series fans with the level design and enemies matching previous titles closely. The designers have gone out of their way to make a hardcore shoot-em-up, eschewing the idea that gamers need a break from the action every so often – Star Soldier R players will face a non-stop onslaught of enemies – and if they don’t like it, tough luck.

Attendees at the event were able to take part in a high-score tournament. Competition was intense. Some players had followed the tour from city to city to get more chances of hitting the top spot. The event was hosted by Hudson president ‘Master’ Takahashi, who’s legendary trigger finger can fire off 16 shots a second, enough to polish off even the most stubborn end of level boss.

The game looked pretty nice – the on screen action was very smooth, lots going on. Most players at the event opted to use the classic controller rather than the Wiimote, no need for motion sensing here. This is a simple shooter, blast your way to the top of the screen and then fight the boss. No going in close to enemy shots to increase your score as far as we could see, just blast blast blast. Nothing wrong with that though. We recognised the multi-shot weapon from previous versions of the game, but didn’t see the electro shot or the, er, green wavy thing. The competition used a special restricted two minute game mode though, it may be that the usual power ups are included in the game proper.

So if you’re a shoot-em-up fan, Star Soldier R is on the way. In the meantime try out some of it’s predecessors on the Virtual Console – Star Soldier, Super Star Soldier and Soldier Blade are all a few Wii Points away.

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.

Those of you that were successfully using Datel‘s Freeloader to play games from different regions on the Wii could be in for a shock if you download the latest firmware update. The update stops Freeloader from working, and Nintendo have no plans to correct the issue. We guess Nintendo president, Hiroshi Yamauchi is too busy counting his enormous piles of money to care.

So remember folks, Nintendo wants to bring everyone together to play Wii, but not people that go shopping on holiday, work abroad, or speak a different language to those around them. If you’re thinking of getting games or hardware from a different country – buy a PS3 or a 360.

[Read, via Joystiq]

IGN had the chance to try out Samurai Warriors Katana for Wii. Koei’s new title is the latest game to utilize the Wiimote as a substitute sword. They seem pretty positive about the game, with a few reservations. Check out what they thought here.

[Read]

Sneaking onto the Wii Virtual Console last week was a game you probably won’t be familiar with, based on a sport you might not have heard of. We try to pick the most obscure titles for our VC reviews, figuring that you can already find reviews of the most popular titles if you look for them. So here goes with Appare! Gateball for the PC Engine.

Gateball is basically a Japanese version of croquet. The rules are similar – players use mallets to hit balls through hoops. If you get your ball through a hoop you get a point and another turn. If you hit another ball, you get to put your ball next to it, and whack it in the direction of your choice – through the hoops if it belongs to your team, out of the play area if it doesn’t. Teams are divided into red and white, the team with the most points at the end wins. Simple.

Now Gateball is a sport that anyone can play, and like all such sports it’s very popular among the elderly. Appare! Gateball pits a team of old timers against a team of young whipper-snappers. Age against youth in a bitter fight for bragging rights.

One thing that’s really good about this game is the characterisation. You choose your team from a selection of bizarre looking people, most of whom are very much the wrong side of 40. It gives things a sense of fun, and makes the game a bit more interesting than a plain old croquet simulator. There’s an Elvis impersonator, a fierce old lady with a broom (who wouldn’t look out of place in Biohazard 4), and a cuddly old gent, all of whom play largely identically.

The game itself is fairly primitive, but surprisingly fun for a short while. You aim with a cursor, then have to stop a moving power bar to play the shot, and it’s pretty enjoyable. Honestly! OK, it’s enjoyable for a couple of games, and then it starts to get a bit repetitive. There’s really not a lot to it. The game has a few options, but most of them don’t make much difference. You can choose to play on clay or grass, which doesn’t seem to make much difference other than the colour of the pitch. There’s the choice of simulation mode or action mode, simulation mode being the same as action mode but without the power bar. You can choose the difficulty and match length, but since the easiest setting is too hard, and the shortest length too long, these aren’t too much of an asset to the game.

So is it worth a download? Well, it’s basically 600 points for the chance to laugh at some cartoon pictures of old people. We found this pretty funny for twenty minutes, but doubt we’ll ever play it again. If you want a very briefly amusing twenty minutes, and the chance to learn an entirely new sport then give it a shot. If not, there are a lot of excellent VC games out there to choose from.

Forever Blue/Endless Ocean comes out August 2nd in Japan. The diving game scored 35/40 in Famitsu and looks pretty exciting to us. Gametrailers have posted a gameplay video and trailer for the game.

The trailer shows off a few things you’ll be doing, swimming with dolphins and sharks, we also see whales pass dramatically overhead a few times during the video.

The gameplay video shows the diver swimming around a coral reef, catching fish (with the Wiimote we presume) and interacting with other marine life. We also see some interaction with another diver. We’re not sure exactly what the gameplay is going to involve here, but the Japanese menu options include “command 1” and “command 2”. Whether that means issuing commands to other wi-fi players, or to AI helpers remains to be seen.

We definitely want to check this game out, it’s been a long time since Ecco on the Megadrive, and nothing since has really captured that underwater feel quite like this might do.

[Read, via WiiNintendo]

The Virtual Console schedule for August has just been announced. A few good games in here, Super Mario USA, Street Fighter 2 Turbo and Sonic the Hedgehog 3 are the standouts. We’ll try and check out some of the more obscure titles and let you know how we get on with them later in the month.

Famicom (500 points)
Kekyoku Nankyoku Daibouken (Antarctic Adventure)
Super Mario USA (Super Mario Bros 2 outside Japan)
Volleyball
Spelunker

Super Famicom (800 points)
Street Fighter 2 Turbo
Otogirisou

Megadrive (600 points)
Crackdown
Sonic the Hedgehog 3
ESWAT: City Under Siege

PC Engine (600 points)
Gradius
Image Fight
Adventure Island
Ordyne
Drop Off

[Read, via Wiiha!]

The world’s most popular robotic cat is about to make his Wii debut. Sega will be bringing Doraemon onto the Wii. The game is expected to be a minigame fest – as often seems to be the case with Wii games. Doraemon Wii: Himitsu Doguo Kettei Sen is coming out this winter.

Sega’s other little blue friend, Sonic, is in the hands of Bioware, currently working on Sonic RPG.

[Read]

Fans of shmups will want to keep an eye on Blast Works. The abstract side scrolling shooter is a Wii port of Tumiki Fighters, a freeware PC game, available here. Siliconera interviewed the game’s creator, Kenta Cho – follow the link if you fancy reading it.

[Read, via WiiFanboy]

Anything on tonight? If you own a game console you probably don’t care. It’s not as if you’ll be bored with all those games to play is it? What would you be doing with the time you spend gaming if you didn’t have a console? Writing that novel? Finishing your homework? If you’re honest, the chances are you’d be watching TV.

Now imagine you’re a TV executive. Your ratings are your lifeblood. As gaming expands your ratings drop and drop until.. ..you get cancelled.

Not a good scenario. So Japanese TV execs are pretty livid about the success of the Wii. Last week not one Japanese TV company was able to get a decent bite of market share – and they are laying the blame at Nintendo’s feet. The time people spend playing together as a family, is time they aren’t spending staring at a box, being spoon-fed trivia and advertisements for questionable products.

This got us thinking. We’ve been seeing a lot of anti-game coverage in the media recently. Is this simply regular journalism, or are these people feeling a little bit threatened by gaming’s rise as a medium?

TV viewing figures are dropping, magazine sales are falling, and nobody is going to church any more. Maybe they’re all just a bit jealous of the games industry. Time to activate smug mode; at least until 3D-Virtua TV arrives and renders the industry obsolete.

[Read]