Guild01: Suda51, Yoot Saito, and Yasumi Matsuno collaborate for variety 3DS project

No More Heroes creator Goichi ‘Suda51’ Suda and Yoot Saito (Seaman, Odama, SimTower) working on the same project set to be published by Level-5?! Whaaatttttt?

And Yasumi Matsuno — who helmed such games as Vagrant Story, Final Fantasy Tactics, and the Ogre Battle series — is also contributing? Even weirder, Yoshiyuki Hirai of Japanese comedy group America Zarigani is also working on this for some reason.

They’re all listed as creators for Guild01, a 3DS title that includes four separate games. Here are Famitsu scans (click for bigger version) and details for the titles, which I grabbed from NintendoEverything and Andriasang:

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tags / guild01 / goichi suda / yoot saito / yasumi matsuno / yoshiyuki hirai / rental bukiya de omasse / kaiho shojo / air porter / crimson shroud / imports / nintendo 3ds / 3ds / level-5 / ec

Kojima, Suda51 talk Love Plus

Ridiculing Japanese dudes with Love Plus girlfriends seems passé now that mega-blog BoingBoing joined in, but this Famitsu excerpt merits mentioning because it brings Metal Gear Solid creator Hideo Kojima, No More Heroes director Goichi Suda, and Love Plus together in one story.

This is Kojima relaying the tale (translated by 1UP):

“I was talking with Goichi Suda earlier, and [he] told me about this guy he saw who went to a movie theater by himself but bought two tickets. Suda was curious, so he went in with him and saw him take his DS out of his backpack, open up the case, and place it in the seat next to him. He had his ‘girlfriend’ on the screen!”

Two amusing conclusions you can glean from this story:

1. The “guy” was probably Suda himself, or
2. Suda spends his nights following guys into movie theaters to investigate their love lives and later share their secret shame with his friends, as if these introverts are the real weirdos

That’s right, Goichi Suda, I’m on to you.

Import: Love Plus

See also: Three minutes of petting in Love Plus before a kiss, Love Plus Official Guide, Unrequited Love Plus, Gamers try out Love Plus

[Image via tngd]

tags / goichi suda / hideo kojima / konami / famitsu / love plus / imports / ec

Stuff we liked in 2008: No More Heroes

We’ve already started being inundated with end-of-year countdowns and retrospectives, all of which do their best to quantify the best/worst experiences of the year. We thought we would do something different — less organized, and less pretend-authoritative. Basically we’re just going to post things we liked this year.

Games, news stories, videos, whatever we can think of that we determined to be rad in 2008.

And I loved the shit out of No More Heroes. It just hit the spot for me in a way that pretty much nothing else this year did. The juxtaposition of ultimate badassery and humiliating awkwardness displayed by Travis Touchdown resonated with me. The pixel-based UI looked wonderful. The soundtrack was fantastic. And the button/waggle controls were the best experience I’ve had with the Wiimote yet.

I expect to get a bunch of comments about this saying that I’m wrong and that I didn’t actually like No More Heroes because it was terrible. But I honestly enjoyed even the parts that other people didn’t like, like the mundane part-time jobs, t-shirt collecting, and driving around the city. It was probably irrational, but the game just worked for me. I was a Suda fanboy before, but now I’m a fanboy and I actually like Suda games for real.

tags / goichi suda / marvelous / ubisoft / jc / stuff we liked / no more heroes

Suda Not Directing NMH 2

Game designer and Grasshopper Manufacture president Goichi Suda (Suda 51) says that the assistant director for the first No More Heroes game, Toshihiro Fujikawa, will direct No More Heroes: Desperate Struggle.

Speaking with Nintendo Power, Suda revealed that he’ll once again write the sequel’s script, but will “watch over the game as an executive director” this time around.

Fujikawa has previously served as the assistant director for several other Grasshopper titles, such as Samurai Champloo and Killer7.

Suda explained the Desperate Struggle subtitle:

“There’s a word in Japanese — shito. Shi means ‘death,’ and to means ‘fight.’ When I tried to find an English translation on the Internet, it came up with Desperate Struggle.”

He also shared some hints on NMH 2’s story:

“This time, Travis [Touchdown] is looking for revenge. It’s a serious fight this time, and the word shito reflects that.

There’s a series of Japanese movies called Jingi Naki Tatakai that are about the yakuza. They’re really famous in Japan — sort of the equivalent of The Godfather. They focus on the relationships between members of the Yakuza.

The subtitle for the second one is Hiroshima Shito Hen. That roughly translates to The Desperate Struggle of Hiroshima. Inspired by that, I wanted No More Heroes 2 to be The Desperate Struggle of Santa Destroy.

There’s a really intense fight in Hiroshima Shito Hen, and I wanted to sort of recreate that in No More Heroes 2.”

XSEED Games and Marvelous Interactive are slated to co-publish No More Heroes 2 stateside in January 2010.

See also: NMH DS’s inspiration, The Yakuza Papers, Vol. 2: Deadly Fight in Hiroshima.

tags / xseed / marvelous / nintendo power / no more heroes / desperate struggle / hiroshima shito hen / goichi suda / toshihiro fujikawa / ec