Hey folks. I've noticed recently that my readership has grown, and since I am considering doing this blogging thang seriously, I've registered a domain, and now host on my own server.
Please redirect your -bilingual gamer- fix to this website. This will be the permanent home of -bilingual gamer-, and over the next couple of months, it will grow, transform, and possibly be reborn. By which I mean, I will vamp up the site design, have a feature every week or two, and various backend stuff.
One thing won't change, however. And that is - -bilingual gamer- will be the spot to visit for the latest rumblings out of Japan, with the earliest most up-to-date news and the most natural translations.
Good-bye, and welcome to the new -bilingual gamer-
Nearing its release of August 23rd, TV commercials for Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Ring of Fates began broadcasting across Japan today.
The first one showcases the multiplayer mode, or how an actress and marketers have fun on the weekends, getting together to play DS, 'cos we're all gamers now in this day and age! See that look of amazement on the woman's face at the start? She ain't looking at the game - she's checking out her bank statement after this commercial aired.
The second commercial showcases gameplay in the single-player mode, and has less propaganda. The lack of marketing push-push in this one seems even...unnerving. As if Square-Enix just knows you'll go out and buy it, pretty woman or not.
Without further ado, check them out, and don't hesitate to post a comment! The lonely comments section needs a good ol' troll right about now...
According to +D Games, Square-Enix will hold a special event commemorating the 10th Anniversary of Final Fantasy VII, from August 31st to September 3rd.
It will be held at "Spiral Garden" in Aoyama, Tokyo (a trendy area where a gaming otaku would probably not step into...zing!), and will showcase concept artwork and illustrations from FFVII as well as its milk-offs, err, spin-offs Before Crisis - Final Fantasy VII (for cellphones), Final Fantasy Advent Children, otherwise known as What Spirits Within Should Have Been, Dirge of Cerberus - Final Fantasy VII (known in some circles as Vincent Fanservice), and finally the upcoming PSP title Crisis Core - Final Fantasy VII, slated for a September 13th release.
Square-Enix will also be showing off promotional videos of each title, catering to the nostalgic crowd, thus making the ever-hopeful clamor even more for a Final Fantasy VII remake.
With its release date of October 4th confirmed by Famitsu today, comes a flood of information on Archaic Sealed Heat for the Nintendo DS. Developed by Mistwalker, headed by the "Father of Final Fantasy" Hironobu Sakaguchi, known for his work on Xbox 360's Blue Dragon and Lost Odyssey , ASH (for short) is a strategy RPG that has been building a lot of hype amongst the community ever since its announcement way, way back.
Nintendo's official site for the title now features more content than last reported. With two sections so far - "Story" and "Character", the website features a sort of prologue of the story as well as various character portraits and info on some of the classes featured in the game.
Here's a quick rundown of the "Story" section, by yours truly:
"In the 112nd Year of the Continent, September, lies the kingdom Millinear, surrounded by lush greenery.
The day the Princess Aisya turned 17, a ceremony for the royal succession was held.
The Regent Bullnequ, who nurtured Aisya after the passing of the last king,
wished more than anyone else that Aisya, now that she had matured, would take up the throne of the kingdom.
And there, at the ceremony of the nation, Aisya and Bullnequ, as well as her citizens cheered on.
As she was about to receive the ceremonial artifact, the armband of Millinear, things turned for the worse.
All of a sudden, a heretofore unseen giant wyrm, covered in flames, appeared out of the sky and attacked the kingdom.
The cheering turned to screams, and the beast's unearthly sounds echoed throughout the land.
A castle shattered and destroyed by flames, the noblemen of the House preparing for their deaths, and voices overshadowed by the fire.
Aisya looks on the scene, lost for words.
All that is left is destruction and ash.
As ash falls from the blue sky and covers the land like snowflowers, a wind blows, sweeping the ash away. As she sees this, Aisya is taken to despair.
She puts on the only thing left from the fire, the armband of Millinear, and returns to the castle, where beasts born of the flames attack her.
There, she finds Bullnequ and her other companions, reborn with the body of ash, surrounding to aid her.
Aisya then decides to embark on a journey to uncover the mystery of the fiery wyrm and to find a way to return the peoples' body from ash, the warriors of ash following close behind her."
Phew! That was one long translation! Here's hoping readers appreciated all that work...
The other section contains character information, including some of the classes that help out the team. So far out of the ten slots seemingly available on the site, four of the characters are revealed - Aisya, Bullnequ, Dan, and Emu. And out of the seven slots available for classes, there are five filled up so far - the white and black mages, the "itemer", the battler, and the stealer.
The title looks to be a solid strategy RPG, with an epic story and characters, on top of a gameplay that looks to utilise class management for its battling.
Importers beware! This title will utilise a lot of text, but does anyone listen to my advice anyway when it comes to AAA titles? A stateside release is still unconfirmed, but it is undoubtedly being prepped for release down the road.
Square-Enix has just opened up a portal site for all things chocobo. Currently only a bare-bones website, it hosts two separate sections: "Game" and "History." The History page has a listing of all past Chocobo games, such as the Nintendo DS title (known outside of Japan as Final Fantasy: Chocobo Fables), as well as older Mysterious Dungeon games on the original PlayStation.
The "Game" section takes you to the official site of the upcoming Wii game, Chocobo's Mysterious Dungeon: Labyrinth of Forgetting. The page features only two sections so far (Story and Specs), and everything else displays a "Coming Soon" animation.
Opening up a portal site for chocobo games? That only means one thing - more and more chocobo games to milk, err, follow. Keep an eye on this site!
Capcom's second Bio Hazard entry on the Wii, known outside of Japan as Resident Evil: Umbrella Chronicles has now been dated and priced for Japan, according to +D Games. The first game to use Nintendo's Zapper peripheral, Umbrella Chronicles will be shooting into stores across Japan November 15th. Priced at 7340 Yen, it suggests that the title will ship with the Zapper peripheral, but this is not confirmed yet.
Umbrella Chronicles has been the recipient of mixed vibes from different gamers. It is an on-rails shooter, featuring scenes and characters from the Resident Evil series, and ever since the Gun Survivor series by Capcom, gamers have been wary of on-rails shooters.
We'll see how the title is received once it hits Japan. A release date outside of Japan has not been announced so far, but we shouldn't have to wait long.
Just moments ago on Koei's official site for Sengoku Musou Katana, the slash-tastic Wii game based on the Dynasty Warriors franchise, a new trailer was uploaded.The promotional video shows a lot of gameplay, including rifle-targeting and horse-riding, apart from the Wii remote-controlled swordplay. Upon close inspection of the trailer, it seems the levels have mission-based structures to them, such as "Defeat 100 soldiers within 3 minutes," and "Beat the race on horseback," etc. Also, the game uses a targetting-system for your sword attacks, to create chains of attacks.All in all, Koei's Wii entry into the franchise, set to be released in Japan September 20th, looks like a lot of mindless button-slashing (err, is that the new-gen version of button-mashing?), and though they've milked the franchise for years, it still manages to find an audience.Check out the trailer on the official site by clicking on the "PV" button on the front page.
Koei's Opoona, a quirky space-themed RPG that had been picked up by the blogosphere, had seemed to disappear from the consciousness of savvy gamers, possibly remembered as "that nunchuk role-playing game." It had been announced fairly soon after the Wii launch, and garnered some attention from blogs, with loads of screens and a few videos. And then...nothing was heard.
We now know why - Koei has said in a statement via +D Games, "We apologise to those people looking forward to the game, as well as to those involved. However, we have reached a conclusion that the development needed a little while longer to polish up and reach a level that would be more rewarding to gamers."
So there you have it - it's been delayed. Initially scheduled to be released September 27th in Japan, it now has a date of November 1st. Hey, that's not too bad, right? Gamers with import-friendly Wiis will have to wait a little longer to get their mitts on this whimsical, if not downright weird, game.
According to a lot of reports from Japanese gamers who got their hands on the finally-translated Oblivion for the Xbox 360, they are finding that the text in the game is extremely difficult to read.
Considering that Oblivion is one text megathon of a game, this must be tortuous for the Japanese who have waited more than a year to play the game. Even back when it was released in the Western world, posters on the 2chan forums were helping each other translate the game from import copies. This is one eagerly awaited game for Japanese 360 owners.
Unlike the famous Dead Rising and Lost Planet "small text" isses on standard-def tv sets, this particular issue is not about the text being small - it is more of an issue of the text itself being unreadable (well, difficult to be read at the least). We all know what Japanese writing looks like - imagine those characters being squished up and unclearly displayed.
Bethesda Softworks has apparently heard the cries and is working on a patch, but when that will come through is still uncertain. Quests are difficult to follow, as long as the text is difficult to read, and there are great chances of gamers making errors of judgement on what the kanji characters represent.
Let's just hope that when a Japanese gamer is told to "close a gate of oblivion", they don't think that they have "an oblivious chance of a date."
Sorry to all the readers that expected updates throughout E3 and beyond! My broadband went belly-up (or maybe that should be belly-down...?), and on top of that I got busy with various enrolment procedures at uni, and first week of the semester was a bit chaotic...
Rest assured that updates will keep on coming, and hopefully a feature or two on the horizon. Also, I plan on heavily revamping the site over the next couple of months, so look forward to a new snappy look!
