Hudson only announced Alien Crush Returns for Japan, but it’s a shoe in for an international release. The first concrete clue that it’s going to appear in another region is it just got rated by the OFLC. Hudson wouldn’t invest resources to localize the WiiWare pinball game into English if they didn’t have plans to release it everywhere. I think it’s safe to say we’re getting it, probably soon.

However, it isn’t the only Wii or WiiWare game in Hudson’s hands. Bomberman Blast was also rated by the OFLC, which is probably the Bomberman Wii/WiiWare game. There is also something brand new called Pit Crew Panic. It’s being developed in Japan, but Hudson’s official site doesn’t even say it exists. I’m minimally curious about Pit Crew Panic, but more eager to shake the table in Alien Crush Returns.

Images courtesy of Hudson.

Birdo / Catherine from Super Mario Brothers 2 / Doki Doki Panic respectively.

Little Mac from Mike Tyson’s Punch Out. In the videos he starts out overweight, but Nick can make him thin by training him in the ring.

Takamaru the star of Nazo no Murasamejo (Mystery of Murasame Castle).

Crazy Tracy from Link’s Awakening.

Famicom Wars soldiers from various Famicom Wars / Advance Wars games.

The novel twist in Captain Rainbow is Nick has to choose between granting these downtrodden characters a wish and using the wish to boost his popularity of being a superhero. Wishes are in the form of stars. Nick can earn stars by collecting sparkles from helping Nintendo’s forgotten characters and completing an action sequence. You have to earn the wish so you get to decide if you want to brighten Birdo's day.

Images courtesy of Nintendo.

Rhythm Heaven can appeal to their causal market and to core Nintendo fans so I don’t think Nintendo will risk releasing a game with Japanese sings. At the very least Nintendo will have to adapt the idol game with English lyrics and a new English singer. I haven’t got too far into Rhythm Heaven yet, but I’m wondering how much of the game Nintendo will have to change. The difference shouldn’t be as great as Elite Beat Agents and Ouendan, but Rhythm Heaven will have to go through significant localization when/if it comes out. Would you mind if Nintendo Westernized some of the games?

At E3 I was told the plan was to release Rhythm Heaven this winter, but the date on Nintendo’s page is TBA. Hopefully, they don’t can it at the last minute like DS Air aka Jet Impulse in Japan.

Images courtesy of Nintendo.

Images courtesy of D3 Publisher.

Afrika is a photojournalism game and Sony sells cameras. Guess what kind of cameras Eric can choose from in Afrika? Eric is the dude with the beanie in the backseat of a Suzuki Jimny. Yeah, there’s more product placement in Afrika. With these marketing tie-ins I’m surprised that Sony hasn’t announced the game for other regions outside of Asia. The importing route is always an option, but Afrika is text heavy. The game gives out missions by e-mail with specific settings and animals you need to capture in a photo. These instructions are in Japanese and are likely to be a potential headache for importers who are not familiar with the language.

Images courtesy of Sony Computer Entertainment.

Anis starts every level with a whip and an empty item slot. The whip can be used to activate switches and grab monsters, but it can’t kill them. Usually, you need to clear all of the monsters to get the gold exit key. The last monster drops the key for Anis to pick up. Once it’s in your possession you can bring it to the gray locking cube to open the door. The last monster key drop is cleverly used in one stage where Anis starts out with a sword right next her. You can immediately slash the wolf-like creature guarding the lockbox in front of you, but doing this only makes the stage harder to clear. You need to use cannons to shoot Anis over a pit of spikes and into a line of beast creatures. Then you need to use a different cannon to shoot Anis back to the starting point and right into the wolf-creature at the starting point. If you killed the beast earlier the key will appear across a pit of spikes and not conveniently next to the lock.

Being shot from a cannon and crashing into beasts is one way to kill monsters. It’s not the typical way to get the job done in Steal Princess. If you want to slay monsters you need arms, such as a sword, bombs, or a lance. The weapons in Steal Princess are color coded. A red sword can only wound red monsters. A blue lance can only phase blue monsters. A green bomb… well you get the idea. Some weapons also have usage limits too. In one early level Anis needs to hit switches to blow up crates to uncover a ball and chain. When you hold A down Anis swings the chain and prepares to lob the iron ball at a beast. But you need to be careful since the ball can only be thrown once. You need to wait for the patrolling beasts to vertically line up so you can hit both of them with one swing. The other limit is Anis can only hold two items. One slot is taken up by her whip. Climax seemed to design Steal Princess this way to make levels where players search for and swap colored swords to vanquish all of the monsters.

Steal Princess blends platforming into the tiny rooms. Anis needs to nimbly move past vanishing platforms and vault over spikes. Monsters can be helpful here since Anis can pick up a monster with the whip, throw it into the spikes, and use the creature as a makeshift platform. The whip is also used to swing across platforms by latching onto glowing orbs. These sections can be a little tricky since the game attempts to target next orb for you unless you’re controlling the game with the touch screen. You can poke the light orbs manually for easier jumps. However, I’m not keen on playing Steal Princess with the D-pad/stylus combo. With this control scheme you use the L button to jump, walk with the D-pad, and pick up/attack by poking things. The problem is if you miss tapping a spider Anis will drop her weapon.

Each room only takes a couple of minutes to clear and a boss prevents you from progressing to the next area. The first boss is a bat sitting on top of a spinning, spiked ship. You can’t reach the floating ship by jumping alone. Anis has to latch on with the whip and pull herself up. Once you’re riding the platform with the bat you can hit it once with the sword. The bat retaliates by knocking Anis to the ground with a tornado. Back on the ground, the ship shoots purple sparks. You need to dodge these while you wait for another opportunity to climb up with the whip. After a few sword strikes Anis is awarded a heart container and a path to the next area.

All of the elements in Steal Princess are elementary, but Climax did a fantastic job creating levels that made me think and challenge myself to race through them. Depending on your time you can earn a bronze, silver or gold medal. If you want to play Steal Princess like a time attack game you can, but you need to forego picking up precious gems. Skipping the animation where Anis holds a garnet over her head shaves seconds of your time. Gems can be traded for gold which can be used to purchase items for the create-your-own-stage Landmaker feature. When you start Steal Princess you can’t even place monsters in custom stages. All you have is the boring lockbox, exit gate, and two map templates. The level creator is pretty robust, but you can only save six stages on the cartridge. Unfortunately, DS carts don’t have unlimited storage.

Marvelous hasn’t said anything about releasing Steal Princess internationally even though they already confirmed Avalon Code. Steal Princess didn’t look like a difficult game to localize, but after playing it I understand their reluctance. There is a fair amount of text to translate and voice acting to redub. However, if you just don’t care about the story Steal Princess is an easy game to import. You get some puzzle tips from Anis’s fairy friend on the top screen, but most of the levels are intuitive enough where you can figure out everything on your own.

Images courtesy of Marvelous.

Right around when the Wii launched inXile announced they were bringing Line Rider to the Wii and the DS. That was in 2006 and we were supposed to get the game in spring 2007. During the past two years inXile has quietly been working on the project and now they are ready to talk about it. I asked Chris Keenan, Producer at inXile, what took so long to bring Line Rider to consoles and what makes Line Rider 2: Unbound different from the free to play game that’s already online.

The console version of Line Rider has been in development for quite some time. What extended the project development time? Were there difficulties in making the Wii or DS version?

Chris Keenan, Producer at inXile: It has.  We really wanted to get it right.  Development on Line Rider was interesting because there was a large amount of feature creep.  Once we started working on a feature, it would spawn ten new ideas on things we could add to the game to make it better.  It was hard to not include some of them in the schedule, since we could directly see how they would positively impact the game.

There are always difficulties that show up when developing any game. Specific to Line Rider, the DS gave us some issues early on.  We had a very determined team working on it so they were temporary problems.  We had to be very clever on the DS due to hardware limitations.  It also took quite a bit of work to get the track/puzzle sharing component of the online back-end up and running well.  We wanted to give players a chance to show off and trade their creations and have all of this in one specific place (www.linerider.com).  It took quite a bit of back and forth with Nintendo to come up with a system that works for everyone and follows the guidelines that they’ve set. 

One thing that surprised me about Line Rider 2: Unbound is there is a story mode. Can you tell us about it and why you felt Line Rider 2 needed a cohesive narrative?

The flash version of Line Rider was such a new style of play when it was released.  When Bostjan (the creator) put it on DeviantArt.com, it was the only game of its type on the internet.  As soon as we knew we were going to put it on the Wii and DS, we asked the entire company to come up with ideas on what we could do with the property.  There weren’t any other titles out that we could compare it to for ideas, so we could be as creative as we wanted with it.  Early in development, we created an awesome puzzle mode and knew that we wanted to link them together in a series of obstacles to challenge players.  As players complete these puzzles, they are rewarded with unlockables and cut scenes giving them a glimpse into the Line Rider’s world.  We wanted to keep it very light and playful.  The cut scenes turned out great and have a mischievous Roadrunner/Wiley Coyote feel to them. 

Will the PC, DS, and Wii versions of Line Rider: Unbound have different tracks?

The DS has different tracks from the PC and Wii.  Those two versions have the same puzzles that fans will try to solve. 

What's it like working with TechDawg? Did he have any input on the controls too?

Working with TechDawg was a blast.  It’s amazing how his brain works in relation to Line Rider.  When we started production on the puzzles, I would play around with them and they were good.  Then I’d see a TechDawg video come out and it would be absolutely unreal.  It was at that point that we decided “why not have TechDawg create these maps for the players?”  I called him and asked if he’d be interested in coming out to Newport Beach for a few weeks.  He flew out and we talked Line Rider, game and puzzle design and he got started making maps.  When he handed off the first one to me, I looked at it and thought “oh yeah, he gets it.” 

Since he has a family in Michigan, he couldn’t stay for too long.  We would continuously send him builds for evaluation and track making.  I knew he would try wildly creative things that I would never think about so having him on board was a huge benefit to the game.  TechDawg is a power user so we wanted to make sure there was enough content and depth to keep him happy while maintaining an easy to use control scheme. 

Thinking of the controls drawing with the stylus seems like a natural fit for Line Rider 2: unbound, but I'm not sure about free handing masterpieces with the Wii. How are you dealing with issues like remote accuracy?

The issue of remote accuracy on the Wii was one of our biggest risks on the Wii.  Because of this, I wanted to make sure the team tackled it early on in development.  I’ve played way too many Wii games where the controls were washy and non-responsive.  The goal was to make it feel like pen on paper.  I believe we succeeded in making the input feel responsive.  This combined with some new tools, like the Bezier curve line and menu navigation UI, help to compliment the players input. 

How does the online component work? I heard users can upload levels via Nintendo Wi-Fi, but how will people be able to sort through the database to find quality creations?

From within their Wii and DS, players will be able to upload and download tracks.  I can hop on my DS or Wii, create a puzzle or track and upload it to the linerider.com website.  When I go online, I can create my own personal page that will link up to my console.  From my computer, I can manage the tracks in my personal repository, write messages to my friends and view other tracks or puzzles that others have uploaded.  The DS also has wireless capability so we can trade track through this method while in the same room with each other. 

We’ve spent quite a bit of time refining the website so that players can share their creations easily.  Using the DS as an example, I can choose to upload the track to my personal page or to www.linerider.com.  If it goes to the Line Rider website, it will be moderated for inappropriate content by us, and then placed on the website.  Players can vote on their favorite tracks that they’ve downloaded and this will push them higher in the list.  You can sort by favorites, time or other filters when trying to select a track.

If I design a Line Rider 2: Unbound level on the Wii will I be able to play it on my DS or PC? Is created content cross platform?

The content won’t be cross platform in Line Rider 2. 

Is there any connectivity between the DS and Wii releases of Line Rider 2: Unbound?

We decided against this early in development due to the difference in the math systems that the Wii and DS use.  Line Rider has such a focus around physics that the minute differences in the fixed point system of the DS and the floating point in the Wii would cause tracks to playback differently.

Will TechDawg or any of the Line Rider 2: Unbound team upload levels for the community?

Absolutely!  Even after almost 2 years of development and countless hours of bug testing, we are still having a blast playing Line Rider 2. You will certainly see new content available from TechDawg and the team here at inXile. 

We will also automatically send the community tracks through Wi-Fi.  In the content sharing section of the game, there is a “favorites” tab. This will be new content provided by us.  We have a few slots to fill so it will rotate with intriguing fan created content, new TechDawg puzzles or tracks or those created by our in house team. 

Have you thought about releasing Line Rider 2 on any other platforms? I think it could be a good application on the PS3/PSN if you support the PlayStation 3 YouTube API.

We certainly aren’t ruling anything out. Thanks for the interview!  That was fun!

Images courtesy of inXile.

I just started the US build of Disgaea 3: Absence of Justice and in the first five minutes or so NIS America brings up the “All your base are belong to us” joke. A trio of Prinnies step into to Mao’s chambers needling him to go to school. Mao is busy reading a manga where the hero shouts “for great justice”, the last line said by the Captain in Zero Wing. Yeah for internet humor?

Images courtesy of NIS America.

Images courtesy of Atlus.

But seriously, what’s up with all of the character towels this summer? Cospa has Ar Tonelico II towels too with the Reyvateils wearing towels.

Images courtesy of Atlus.