I was pleased when Level-5 and its partners revealed their plans to bring soccer RPG Inazuma Eleven and its accompanying anime to Europe, but it looks like the developer also has plans to release it in North America. Level-5 filed a trademark for “Inazuma Eleven” with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office last week — just for the games and not for the cartoon tie-in.
In case you’ve never seen the game, here’s a multiplayer match played with the first Inazuma Eleven (it looks a lot like EyeShield21 DS, except you control the entire team):
Destructoid spotted a trademark application from Taito for the title “Pet Shop Mama,” speculating that Taito could be planning another spinoff for the Cooking Mama series, which now also includes Gardening Mama. Another trademark was registered for “My Pet Shop.”
I’m pretty sure that the game Taito intends to label with this title is Pet Shop Monogatari DS, a pet shop RPG announced at the same time as Space Invaders Extreme, Arkanoid DS, The Legend of Kage 2, and Exit DS.
Pet Shop Monogatari, a sequel to a long-running portable franchise, features art in the same style as Cooking Mama, so it wouldn’t be too hard to rebrand it as a Mama game.
A trademark isn’t confirmation of any plans, of course, but since I don’t think anybody else cared about this game, I don’t have to tell anyone not to get their hopes up.
UPDATE: As reported in this later post, My Pet Shop was chosen over Pet Shop Mama.
