Though Nintendo revealed several U.S.-bound DS titles this past week — Professor Layton and WarioWare D.I.Y. for example — there remains dozens of first-party games for the handheld that haven’t ventured outside of Japan.
I’ve picked out ten particular Japanese releases, games I’d love to see localized but were absent at E3, just to keep them fresh in your memory, lest you forget about the quality titles you’ve never had a chance to play.
Art Style: Hacolife (trailer above) - At a glance, this Skip-developed title doesn’t seem special, but it’s a surprisingly addictive puzzler and the most compelling DSiWare download to date for reasons you can read about in detail in my preview.
ASH: Archaic Sealed Heat - This turned out to be a mediocre SRPG, but remember the mystery and excitement before anything beyond a few screens was revealed for it? Great concept art! Hironobu Sakaguchi! FMV battles (pre-rendered)! The first game that was so big, it needed a 2 gigabit cart!
Daigasso! Band Brothers/DX/Radio - Released as a DS launch title in Japan and announced for the U.S. as Jam With The Band in 2004, this Beatmania-style game and music composition app is nowhere to be found on Nintendo’s North American schedule. Most stateside gamers will never realize what this Barbara the Bat assist tropy in Smash Bros. Brawl is about.
Facening de Hyōjō Yutaka ni Inshō Up: Otona no DS Kao Training - Yes, this Face Training title requires the now-leprous GBA slot for its camera accessory to help players prevent wrinkles and look younger, but with the DSi’s built-in camera, I figured this was a shoe-in for an updated edition.
Jet Impulse - Another title announced for the U.S. back in the day (as DS Air), this EAD-developed flight sim received solid import impressions, and also features an intriguing Cold War-esque plot that I wish made it to the States.
Jump Super Stars/Ultimate Stars (trailer above) - I’m not a huge fan of Dragon Ball Z, Naruto, or One Piece, but with over 300 characters pulled from dozens of manga series, all thrown into hectic 2D Brawl-style arenas (four-player online matches!), it’s difficult to not have fun playing these games. Licensing issues keep it out of the U.S., though.
Kousoku Card Battle: Card Hero (trailer above) - Other than Fire Emblem: Fūin no Tsurugi, I believe this is the only handheld Intelligent Systems game that hasn’t released in the U.S. since the Game Boy years. I’m not normally interested in card battle RPGs (especially when they’re in 3D), but import impressions for this were favorable. Plus, Nintendo of America recently trademarked Card Hero, so I was surprised to not see it announced at E3.
Pokémon HeartGold/SoulSilver - It’s understandable why Nintendo hasn’t announced this for the U.S. yet — Pokémon Platinum released less than two months ago, and the company is gearing up to ship Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Sky this September — but I hope it comes stateside soon, as the idea of including pedometer-based gameplay in software not focused on walking appeals to me for some reason.
Wander Donkey - Whatever happened to this mystery adventure game? Included in an official list of planned releases back in 2007, Wander Donkey hasn’t done much to prove that it still exists since. Wikipedia has a crazy description of its intended story and gameplay, but it sounds too wacky to be trusted.
Zekkyō Senshi Sakeburein - A four-player brawler in which you control a team of sentai superheroes, yelling moves and special attacks into the mic! Sounds fantastic, right? Too bad it’s exclusive to Club Nintendo members in Japan.
And that’s my list of disappointing first-party no-shows at E3! Were there any titles you hoped to see but didn’t?
Kraken vs. Stegosaurus, Griffin, Jackalope, God, Einstein, and more in this Scribblenauts demonstration.
Apparently, 5th Cell programmed a lot of internet memes into the game, so that should send nerds into a frenzy. Some of the confirmed online fads: Keyboard Cat, LOL WUT, and Longcat (“Longcat drops into the stage inside a cloud and grows tall, then shrinks back into the cloud”).
So, Nintendo didn’t announced the New Super Mario Bros. 2 game I hoped for, but this will do! 2D? Co-op gameplay? Throwing each other River City Ransom-style? New propellor and penguin outfits? I can get on that. And it releases this holiday season, which is nice!
It’s not a game I can take along for a picnic with my wife, but it still looks like something we can enjoy together.
Everyone seems psyched to hear about a new Super Mario Bros. game for Wii, but I’d rather have a new DS release instead (not a big surprise). I wouldn’t mind if it was styled after Doki Doki Panic like SMB 2 for NES, either — in fact, I’d love that. Luigi was boss in that game.
My wife and I had a lot of fun with New Super Mario Bros. It was a great game to take out for sunny day picnics.
Nintendo’s E3 press conference begins in 30 minutes! It’s doubtful that the company will announce NSMB 2, but today seems to be a day when even impossible dreams can come true. Oh, and make sure to follow our Twitter feed for Nintendo conference snarkiness.
The third-person shooter segments and uninteresting cutscenes are worrisome, but it’s still a Contrastlevanoid game, and they’ll never take that away from us. Well, unless they do. That clip with the hero hanging on a box carried by an overhead conveyor while blasting at enemies in the background — that’s the stuff.
This is the last Xbox 360 post I’ll put up here for a while, I swear! If JC were around to keep me in check, and not at E3, this never would’ve happened! Also, if Ubisoft had shown more of No More Heroes 2 at its press conference than a game logo, I probably would talk about that instead.
I have zero interest in this first-person shooter for Wii, but I really like this art featured at Into the Pixel 2009. You can see a larger version of the piece by clicking the image.
Shadow Complex demonstration (jump to 00:40 to skip the embarassing technical difficulties).
I don’t normally talk about XBLA titles here, but I found this 2.5D “Contrastlevanoid”* title super interesting, something that Castlevania producer Koji Igarashi could perhaps learn from. The hookshot and interaction with background enemies are particularly rad.
This seemed like a really strange project for Epic, the leading “bald space marine” game studio, but Epic is just publishing the title. Chair Entertainment (Undertow) is handling the actual development duties.
Apparently, Shadow Complex is based on Orson Scott Card’s novel Empire. I’m surprised that Empire has nothing to do with Card’s Shadow series, though I suppose it would be odd to have an action game based on Bean. Chair, however, is working on an Ender-related downloadable game titled Ender’s Game: Battle Room.
I Am 8-bit’s Tatsunoko VS Capcom E3 shirt (click the image for a larger version).
Capcom is giving away “very, very limited quantities” of this shirt during E3 to VIPs and Unity visitors. For some strange reason, the text alongside Ryu’s rising dragon fist reads as “Hadoken” instead of the more appropriate “Shoryuken”. The back of the shirt has a similar shilhouette for Tatunoko character Ken the Eagle from Gatchaman.
