Games

[icycalm]

Recap is quite taken with this upcoming RPG by Starfish (or "SD Starfish"), and his enthusiasm has been quite contagious to me as usual.

http://www.s-f.co.jp/soft/ps2/elminage/




http://www.famitsu.com/game/coming/1211058_1407.html

It looks about as old school as it gets; basically Wizardry with a sparse, elegant artstyle and high-res graphics. But I'll just let Recap do the talking here:

Así, a lo tonto, Starfish (o "Starfish SD") se está convirtiendo en una de las compañías más interesantes del panorama actual. Las muestras del cariño de esta casa hacia los conceptos clásicos vuelve a ponerse de manifiesto con el anuncio vía Famitsu de un nuevo RPG con gráficos bidimensionales.

Un ilustre reparto en la labor de diseño, planteamiento que recupera el sabor más clásico de los RPG para ordenador (Wizardry, etc.) y una plataforma de destino (PS2) que nos permite respirar tranquilos hacen de este Elminage uno de los lanzamientos más prometedores para el próximo invierno.

http://postback.geedorah.com/foros/viewtopic.php?id=525

http://insomnia.ac/archive/games/playst ... /scan1.jpg
http://insomnia.ac/archive/games/playst ... /scan2.jpg

It's set to come out in January, though since this is a Starfish game who the fuck knows.

[Macaw]

Funny how the Bards Quest/Wizardry type western-style RPG genre is only being kept alive by Japanese developers these days (and basically for the past 5 years)

Looks cool.

[icycalm]

It's one of those things that happen, I guess. The Americans invent shooters and then the Japanese come in and take over. The Japanese invent RTSes and then the Americans adopt them and evolve them. It's a shame because having two different cultures work on the same concept can lead to vastly different designs. Just look at Pikmin, for example.

[CosMind]

Just look at Pikmin, for example.

indeed. pikmin is by far my favorite rts to date. nice to see that "other culture" come and mix up the pot that was (and still is, for the most part) a cluster funk of warcraft iterations (yeah, i know warcraft wasn't the first, but it's the one that popularized that redundant rts design - so i'll use it for the sake of recognizability ;) )

shamefully, the fp dungeon crawl genre stays in japan. rare occurances of float overs like etrian odyssey (yggdrasil labyrinth) are shocking to say the least.

edit

odin sphere is another great example of the japanese injecting alternate life into the rts genre.

[icycalm]

New screens up on the official site. Click on the right-most icon of the navigation bar.