Nippon Ichi Wants To Make Games Other Than Disgaea That Sell Just As Well

By Spencer . October 20, 2009 . 9:12pm

Seems like there are a lot of Disgaea games and ports these days, but Nippon Ichi plans to expand beyond the Netherworld with Zettai Hero Kaizou Keikaku (Absolute Hero Modding Project).

“Placing our fortunes on nothing but Disgaea wouldn’t be right at all,” Souhei Niikawa, COO of Nippon Ichi tells Gamasutra in an interview. “For example, we want to grow this new game [Zettai Hero Kaizou Keikaku] in the same way that we’ve grown Disgaea. We want to make games that are different from Disgaea, of course, but sell just as well as that.”

Unlike the bulk of Nippon Ichi’s games this PSP title is not a strategy RPG. Absolute Hero Modding Project is a dungeon crawler with a similar art style and an emphasis on random levels. Since Nippon Ichi is hoping this game will be their next big series we’re pretty much guaranteed to see Zettai Hero Kaizou Keikaku overseas.

Be sure to read the full interview, it discusses how throwing found its way into the Disgaea series.

TAGS: Highlight, NIS America, PSP, Zettai Hero Kaizou Keikaku

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denpanosekai

Whaaaa? How did I miss the Zettai Hero news? Sounds like my kind of game.

eliel

sweet i hope they put some game play vidz up soon, i still support this 100%

Ereek

Good luck, NIS!

nyoron

So I just looked into Zettai Hero and apparently there's a collaboration going on with Dengeki Bunko. Taiga, Horo, Shana, and Dokuro-chan are all in this as customizable parts. Awesome!

http://dps.dengeki.com/2009/10/14/p3279/

...they're going to get cut for the US version aren't they ;_;

denpanosekai

PIPIRU PIRU PIRU PIPIRU PIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII

shirokiryuu

Wow! That's really cool! Yeah, it probably won't be avaliable in America, but there's always hope =(

JeremyR

The thing with Disgaea, is they sort of took an existing gameplay concept (the standard SRPG, I guess starting from Tactics Ogre), and added a ton of content (and polish to it)

Sort of like what WoW did to MMORPGs.

Their post Disgaea SRPGs which didn't sell all that well, went sort of off into more radical directions. Like no grid or something.

So anyway, I think they need to do what make Disgaea great. Take some sort of gameplay, and add a ton of depth to it. Maybe that's what this will do to the dungeon crawler, but that seems even more niche than SRPGs. They should have tried making a fighting game or monster hunter clone.

Ereek

I think you're forgetting that La Pucelle was released by NIS first. If anything, La Pucelle took from existing SRPGs, and Disgaea is basically a copy of La Pucelle with job classes and the Geo Panel system over "Purification."

Actually, more than that, Eclair is basically a copy of the heroine of Princess Crown. It's hard to say if it was meant to be a homage or a humorous take on her, though.

Mr_Qoo

I don't think Disgaea is terrible by any means and it may have taken an existing gameplay concept somewhere different than usual...but what they really ended up with was turn an SRPG into a math class. It's still entertaining and fun. I think it's very apparent that it's basics are complete number crunching and grinding in my eyes. I have always considered Disgaea/La Pucelle Tactics/Phantom Brave/Phantom Kingdom as sort of SRPG-light. Not that they don't pose the challenges but they tote more of a fun, amusing, silly story. It's good in it's own right, but I feel like I'm coming off as bashing it too much.

If adding that "depth" was worth sacrificing storyline's that games like Tactics Ogre, Final Fantasy Tactics, and Front Mission can and do offer I'm not sure I could ever like NIS stuff most of all the SRPGS.

On to the topic...:P I'm still very interested in this game and I remember seeing a post a while back on SE. I'm excited to watch some videos and see how it plays!

@Ereek: Princess Crown rules.

shirokiryuu

Although I've only played a few of them games, and have some on my shelf to play later, I really respect NIS, even more after reading the interview.

Kuronoa

I'd buy Zettai Hero. It's good that they want to expand the number of flagship series. Maybe they could try out other genres too on the safe side, Prinny was a rather fun (but really hard) platformer and I wouldn't mind more of that in the future.

Mr_Qoo

Prinny was a great step away from their SRPG games. Really good platformer indeed. If they can make a great platformer, who is to say they cannot make the jump to other genres.

Kuza21

If they ever plan on making bigger sales then they need to start to revamp graphics and a bit more polish on the games of the future. As much as I love Disgaea, I was completely disappointed when Disgaea came out with PS2 graphics for the PS3, That was a waste of a Blu-Ray disk IMO. Simply put, if they want more sales they need to step it up with graphics and keep gameplay fresh in order to make their games sell better in the future. Lets face it, as good as this game may be, it looks so much like Disgaea, that if it was just a screenshot of it and It was said that it's disgaea then we all would believe it!

Marcus70

I'm glad they're trying to expand their line-up; however, I'm really looking forward to their next internally developed console SRPG (i.e. Disgaea 4 or something else). I know that they're going to localize the Last Rebellion (Hitmaker) and Atelier Rorona (Gust) in 2010 and later (hopefully) localize Trinity Universe (Nippon/Gust/Idea Factory) and Ar Tonelico III (Gust). Since none of the four titles I've mentioned are SRPGs, it looks like it will be a long wait to get my SRPG fix from Nippon Ichi again. I started purchasing Nippon Ichi's titles for the SRPG component back in 2003 and I would like to continue purchasing good SRPGs from Nippon Ichi (in HD) in the future.

wildarms

Good i was expecting some good news of NIS, i like that they wont stuck up in disgaea till the infinite -cough-finalfantasy-cough- and use its charms on other kind of series as well, im expecting great,crazy and funny dialogues xD

MelodyKitn

I must admit.. they could make a game of dancing characters, so long as they use their art style I love so much, and I'd still shell out money to buy it.