Gamesugar

November 8, 2010

Q&A – Konami Talks No More Heroes: Heroes’ Paradise

No More Heroes: Heroes Paradise
No More Heroes led a series of unique and alternative experiences offered by the Wii when it released in 2008. The story of Travis Touchdown’s quest to survive the streets of Santa Destroy in order to rise to the top of the United Assassins Association, if only to get the girl, represented a wave of punk sensibility rarely seen in the industry and also exclusive to Nintendo’s console.

Marvelous Entertainment broadened the chance for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 owners to share in the bloodletting with the Japanese release of Heroes’ Paradise this year, and many of us have patiently waited to learn which publisher might plan to bring that HD love our way.

Recently it was revealed that Konami would answer the call, announcing a Move supported PlayStation 3 version. Not unlike starving dogs, we hungered for more details.

Luckily for us, both Marvelous and Konami production team’s Tak Fuji have merged forces not only to bring Heroes’ Paradise to North America, but also to answer our most pressing questions – as well as leaving us all with one I know many of you will offer answers to.

Get your Heroes’ Paradise fix after the break.

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July 15, 2010

Your No More Heroes 2 Overdose

No More Heroes 2
On the short list of import worthy releases from Japan, the Hopper’s Edition of No More Heroes 2 that Famitsu recently revealed for an October 21, 2010 release is in a league of its own.

Compensation for the wait for more Travis Touchdown offers up one very shiny yellow box that includes the game, an artbook, soundtrack cd, and an additional bonus DVD.

Our friendly neighborhood Marvelous Rep tells me that the added DVD contains two “animes”, one about the events of the original No More Heroes, and another detailing events during the three year space between the two games – plus a documentary about the Japanese voice actors.

Both the regular release and this hopped-up edition also offer a No More Heroes comic as a pre-order present.

July 7, 2010

Catching Up With Little King’s Story

Filed under: Editorial Rants — Tags: , , , , , — Jamie Love @ 8:07 am

Little King's Story
It only takes a few quick minutes to be bitten by and become smitten with Little King’s Story. Words like magical and charming get tossed around plenty with videogames, and certainly I’m as guilty as anyone in generating hyperbole when the right title sways me. This time around I want to suggest that both those words apply, insomuch as Cing offers an earnestly heartfelt passageway into the storybook premise, preying on the lingering traces of childhood imagination by not drowning the player in cuteness. It’s a fine line, a complete matter of opinion, a general sense of using only so much narrative tradition as is required to feed the play of the game itself, and allowing space for results and rewards that help the narrative and play blossom together to put an earnest smile on the player’s face.

A young boy follows a pack of pastel colored rats into a ragged kingdom, sparsely populated by a handful of idol subjects and a few cows. It’s a tiny Kingdom for a tiny King, captured in scenes of colored pencil sketches that curiously remind me of the shorts the National Film Board substituted for cartoons during my early morning Canadian television years. The result is an introduction I immediately wanted to show to others, and I certainly dragged more than a few people to watch it, after taking so long to finally dive into the game myself.

Like plenty of others, I allowed Little King’s Story to pass me by when it originally released for the Wii late last year. I’m at a loss for a good reason aside from the sheer volume of titles vying for attention, but recently I’ve wondered if the cute aesthetic played into it – that the visual style that proved love at first sight didn’t punch through the box art hard enough to mark the importance of the title.

Despite the dismal sales associated with third-party Wii releases, the game is already on plenty of must play lists, and all I can do is add a voice to the choir, affirming the game’s worthiness of that praise, and perhaps alleviating a bit of guilt for not having done so sooner.

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June 30, 2010

Catching Up With Half-Minute Hero

Filed under: Editorial Rants — Tags: , , , , , , , — Jamie Love @ 1:45 pm

Half-Minute Hero
While perfectly suited to quick traveling bouts of play, it wasn’t hard losing an entire day to Half-Minute Hero when I finally caught up with the 2009 XSEED PSP release last week. The game offers four primary modes of play, allowing it to boast a marketing pitch that unites a shooter, RPG, and RTS on a single UMD, all thematically tied together by the thirty-second hook that makes this release the bat-shit crazy and addictive game it is.

Evil Lord 30 mode sunk its teeth in the deepest, an RTS campaign wherein players partake in a summoning spree while guiding the vainest Evil Lord in existence toward returning the only woman he may love more than himself back to human form after being transformed into a bat.

Each quick stage along the path to victory allows players to summon four monster types and seek out elemental gods to overcome armies while blood crazed techno-rock music breathes heavy in the ears – I want to suggest it’s that heavy sort of breathing you get when more familiar gaming tunes go bar hopping with the Future Sound of London.

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May 13, 2010

Gamesugar’s Mango-Cherry Flavored Heroes Paradise Contest!

Filed under: News Feed — Tags: , , , , , — Jamie Love @ 8:08 pm

Heroes Paradise
Not only is that the most fun I’ve ever had writing a post title, but it also means Gamesugar has a sweet contest for all of you!

As you may have heard, the release of No More Heroes: Heroes Paradise in Japan was accompanied with a pre-order bonus of erotica art portraits featuring the lovely ladies of No More Heroes – Sexy Cherry flavored for the PlayStation 3, and Sweet Mango for the XBOX 360.

Given that I’m pretty excited about the Japanese release, and suspect I’m not alone in pulling for it to put in an appearance here in North America, Marvelous Entertainment has offered us the chance to give a treat to the fans out there that want to see that happen. As a result, Gamesugar has received sets of the Mango/Cherry erotica portrait pre-order bonus to giveaway to 5 lucky readers. Those 5 winners will be receiving a copy of both the Mango and Cherry portraits together – it just didn’t seem right to split them apart.

What do you need to do to win? Read on to find out!

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April 21, 2010

Check Your Enthusiasm – Arc Rise Fantasia

Filed under: News Feed — Tags: , , , — Jamie Love @ 1:10 pm

Arc Rise Fantasia
If you’d asked me how I felt about Ignition Entertainment at E3 last year, I would have been fairly optimistic – the company genuinely seemed “in it to win it”, grabbing Muramasa away from XSEED and focusing on a social media push that worked pretty damn hard to spread the word and help that title perform long after its release.

Even now, the willingness of gamers to love a bad game for being bad, as in the case of Deadly Premonition, makes it appear as if Ignition is on the ball.

But let’s talk about Arc Rise Fantasia.

Siliconera posted IGN video from the game yesterday, with a pessimistic appraisal of the work so far seen in the dub of the title – producing a landslide of comments from gamers who have every right to rage when a game that is anticipated is so instantly derailed by an apparent lack of respect for the source material.

What remains is some of the worst voice-over work I’ve yet heard in a videogame, and I survived two Magna Carta titles.

I don’t use the phrase “affront to God” often, but I’m backed against a wall here – particularly when the potential for XSEED to have done an English voice track while still offering the original Japanese one was on the table.

But don’t take my word for it, check it out for yourself after the break – and please give your own two cents, because it’s increasingly obvious that feedback from you needs to be continually ringing in the ears of people who let things like this happen. And also because the possibility of Ignition handling Heroes’ Paradise at this point makes me feel a bit ill.

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