RPGs Make A Splash At The 2004 Tokyo Game Show
The annual Tokyo Game Show was once again one of the hottest shows in Japan, where game developers from all around the world come to showcase their wares. We got a bigger spotlight on some games that went somewhat under the radar or weren't quite ready for May's E3, and with many of them set to come out next year, it really set the tone for 2005 to be another huge year for games.
The biggest news to come out of the Tokyo Game Show? RPGs are back, after taking somewhat of a back seat to shooters and action titles in recent years. The biggest and most popular games of the show all seemed to be role playing games, and the biggest among those had to be Squaresoft's upcoming Final Fantasy Online. Final Fantasy Online, which is set for release in Japan this December and in North America and Europe in the spring, takes place in the mythical land of Vana'diel, and allows the player to create their own character and enter a vast world filled with monsters, treasures, and most importantly, other players. Final Fantasy Online boasts amazing graphics easily comparable to those of Final Fantasy X, and a world that Squaresoft says is more than ten times bigger, meaning that players will have hundreds of hours worth of adventures available to them from day one. Squaresoft is hoping to have at least two million subscribers worldwide by this time next year. With the subscription fee expected to be $10/month, that seems like it might be a tall order, but it would make Final Fantasy Online one of the most profitable video games in history, and would likely put it ahead of its rival, the recently released World Of Warcraft which had the most successful launch of any MMORPG ever. The game will release first for the Nintendo Wave, but Squaresoft is hoping it'll show up on the PC before the end of 2005. Apart from Final Fantasy Online, Squaresoft was showing off a number of other games at the show, most notably Seiken Densetsu 5, the newest installment in the Seiken Densetsu franchise (aka Reverie Of Mana in the West). The game looks to play much like the classic SNES-CD Mana titles, though with a massive upgrade in graphical presentation. Director Koichi Ishii says that he really wants to capture the classic feel of Seiken Densetsu 2, which he believes to be the most beloved game in the series. The game's three protagonists include a boy named Toma who is a reluctant Mana Sword wielder, a young bookworm named Zanna who enthusiastically joins Toma on his quest, and an older boy named Krigen who has a dark secret. The trailer revealed that the Mana Sword can be wielded by any of the three young heroes, who gain stat boosts and special skills when they're the one wielding the sword and that the player will need to trade the sword evenly between the three to have success in the game. Squaresoft hopes for a spring 2005 release for the game in Japan, but did not announce a release date for the West. Squaresoft also showed off The Bouncer 2, which releases in Japan next month and in the States early next year. A complete Japanese version of the game was playable at the show, and it seems like this time around, the protagonist will actually be working as a bouncer a lot more, though in this case, the protagonist is a "cosmic bouncer", tasked with keeping evil possessed humans out of our realm. Squaresoft also teased Final Fantasy XI, but only with a short preview video that implied that the game may be taking place within Ivalice, the setting of the Final Fantasy Tactics games, and that future information would be revealed at a later show (TGS 2005 most likely).
The other big action RPG title at the show was Enix's Full Metal Alchemist, which generated as much, if not more buzz than Reverie Of Mana and at times had as busy a show booth as Final Fantasy Online. Full Metal Alchemist casts the player as young Edward Elric, an alchemist in training whose attempt to use alchemy to revive his dead mother goes horribly wrong, resulting in the loss of his arm and the transformation of his younger brother Alphonse into a hulking suit of metal. Full Metal Alchemist is developed by Quintet, but unlike Revolution Alpha, which followed an Illusion Of Gaia-like story progression, Full Metal Alchemist is more like Terranigma, complete with a prologue sequence taking place several years before the main events of the game that serves as somewhat of an extended tutorial. Players cast alchemy by entering certain button commands, but must always follow the law of "equivalent exchange", in which something of equal value to the material generated by the spell is given up. Usually this comes in the form of gathered materials, but other times the player may choose to dip into their own life force to cast particularly powerful alchemy. Not too much of the plot was revealed, though it was teased that the player will be coming up against powerful enemies corresponding with the Seven Deadly Sins. Battles in Full Metal Alchemist can turn quite spectacular, with action-packed and intense fighting that goes by at a much faster pace than that of Quintet's previous games. However, there is a tactical element to the fighting as well, requiring that powerful enemies be engaged with careful planning and caution. Full Metal Alchemist is set to be released by the end of the year in Japan, and has been confirmed for the West, but likely won't be ready until well into 2005. It's been announced as a Wave exclusive, but Enix has also stated that they may consider releasing the game for future consoles (perhaps on the Xbox or Katana successors once they're ready?). Enix also showed off Dragon Quest VIII, though that game isn't expected to be out until the summer of 2005 in Japan. The game boasts a cel shaded style and is said to focus on an ancient transformative curse (perhaps the game will have a horror aesthetic?). There was a playable battle segment, and as par for the course in Japan, the game drew a large crowd, but it's clear that Enix wanted to focus on Full Metal Alchemist, as they had far more of that game to show. It's likely Enix will feature Dragon Quest VIII at its own event, possibly during the holiday season. Other RPGs shown off at TGS 2004 included the Katana exclusive Radiata Stories, another action RPG but featuring a massive amount of recruitable characters. The game drew a decent crowd, but was overshadowed heavily by Square and Enix's Wave exclusives.
Enix also showed off, through their subsidiary Treasure, a new sidescrolling action game called Through The Breach. It's a game quite similar to their Troublemakers series, as well as the Gunstar Heroes games and their Katana launch title Way Of The Samurai. It features massive bosses, beautiful cel-shaded graphics, and RPG-esque leveling, and will be released in Japan next year on the Wave and Katana, with no North American release date announced as of yet. Capcom had a huge presence at TGS 2004, with two major announcements: they had begun development on Street Fighter IV, and the sequel to Star Siren, Star Siren Nakama, is set for a 2005 release. Street Fighter IV's existence had already been leaked by rumor sites prior to the event, but the announcement during a Capcom press conference generated major applause at the show. The game is set for a 2005 arcade release, with a console release sometime after. The game looks to be done in the cel shaded style but features the classic Street Fighter gameplay fans have come to know and love. Star Siren Nakama, the sequel to the Wave launch title Star Siren, continues the story of the transforming heroine Saiyuki, with the game's main plot revolving around her recruitment of the Star Souls, four heroines to fight at her side. Saiyuki's friend Mariko was revealed as Star Soul Blue, and the school tough girl Kagata was revealed as Star Soul Red. The identities of Star Soul Green and Star Soul Yellow, the other two Star Souls, had yet to be revealed, but it was shown that players will be able to fight as any of the Star Souls or as Star Siren in battle, and that the game will allow for up to four players at once. In addition to Street Fighter IV and Star Siren Nakama, Capcom also showed off a new Iron Combatant game and a bit of the next generation handheld title Mega Man 9, which has been confirmed only for the iPod Play.
And speaking of the iPod Play, Apple had a major presence at the show, in particular showing off the iPod Play and a number of games. The iPod Play booth was one of the show's most crowded, and games like Deva Station and Soul Calibur II proved very popular. Capcom was present to show off Resident Evil: Desertion, and Apple revealed gameplay footage of Virtua Fighter Infinity as well. iKatamari, which will be a launch game when the iPod Play is released in Japan, looks even stranger than the original Katana game, and was another hit. Steve Jobs himself was there to give a speech at the show, and fans responded extremely enthusiastically. The iPod has been a major success in Japan, and Steve Jobs seemed just as at home in the Land of the Rising Sun as he is in the USA, even stopping to let admirers take pictures with him. Jobs was the closest thing to a "rock star" at the 2004 TGS, an extremely unusual sight at an event normally dominated by Japanese game companies, and the iPod Play's "silhouette" advertisements could be seen all over Tokyo during the week of the show. Apple looks to be trying to get a jump on its future competition, the Game Boy Nova successor which looks to be the centerpiece of Nintendo's upcoming Spaceworld event, and from the looks of things at TGS 2004, they may have succeeded. Apple also showed up a few upcoming Katana titles, including the RPG Runic Convergence and the highly anticipated platformer/puzzler Endotherm. While Nintendo itself was a no-show from TGS 2004 (understandable due to Spaceworld), their partner Sony did show up to hype next year's Ballistic Limit Cross, which sees Ash Beckland leaping between dimensions to fight otherworldly enemies. The short playable segment revealed that in addition to the series' typical first/third person shooter hybrid gameplay, the game will introduce the concept of mid-battle dimension hopping, in order to attack both the enemy and their "ghost" in the alternate dimension. The game and the new gameplay concepts both looked very promising, and we're sure Ballistic Limit Cross will be among the most anticipated Wave games of 2005. Other companies that had a notable presence at TGS 2004 include Tecmo, which showed off Dead Or Alive 4 and Ninja Gaiden Black, both exclusive to the Xbox (which continues to struggle in Japan, though the Techno Angel series has been a tiny bit of a bright spot).
-from a Gamespot article posted on September 24, 2004
-
*Satoru Iwata takes the stage, along with Katsuya Eguchi.*
Iwata: Hello, everyone, and thank you for coming to Nintendo's 2004 Spaceworld presentation. *he bows* The Game Boy Nova has been available for nearly five years, and it has been a very successful follow-up to our Game Boy handheld, released all the way back in 1989. The Nova, which was developed with the help of our longtime partner Sony, was created as a next generation handheld device capable of playing more powerful and diverse games than the Game Boy hardware would allow. It has not even been five years since the Nova's release, but technology has allowed us to innovate in handheld gaming once again, and with the help of Sony, we have once again created a device that represents the cutting edge of handheld gaming, allowing for advanced graphics and new kinds of gameplay, but most importantly, providing more fun than ever before to our players around the world. Please watch this short video.
*A short video begins, showing an 8-bit Mario running across level 1-1 of Super Mario Bros. The video then segues into Mario running across level 1-1 of Super Mario Nova, which featured significantly more advanced graphics and gameplay. Mario stops and looks around, and the world turns into a beautiful 3-D landscape. It's the Mushroom Kingdom, as depicted in Super Mario Dimensions. The gameplay footage now shows Super Mario Dimensions, but featuring significantly better graphics, somewhat close to the graphics of the upcoming Super Mario Shades. The game looks amazing. Once again, Mario stops in place. He begins to look across the field and sees a strange creature transforming into all sorts of shapes and sizes right before Mario's eyes. The footage segues into footage of another game being shown off featuring the creature, which turns into some kind of slime puddle that starts grabbing and flinging enemies, then turns into a fire-breathing dragon attacking a large kingdom full of more enemies. The dragon flies up into the air and turns into a jet fighter plane that zooms over a vast landscape. The game continues to show the creature transforming and venturing through a variety of environments before stopping and turning back just before reaching a large city at night. The footage segues into another game, showing Dante from the Devil May Cry series approaching a large horde of monsters.*
Dante: Let's rock.
*Dante leaps into the crowd of monsters and attacks them in spectacular looking hack and slash gameplay rivaling any other Devil May Cry game thus far. After footage of this game ends, Dante can be shown walking down the street when he spots a box lying in the road. He approaches it, only for Solid Snake to emerge. There's another brief trailer of footage now, showing an exclusive Metal Gear Solid title for the device, with Snake sneaking through a compound and taking out bad guys, before being joined by someone who looks like Raiden. The Metal Gear preview footage is followed by footage of an unnamed Naughty Dog game, with a character in a futuristic looking world. He does something that causes him to go back in time to a sort of Wild West stage, does something there, and returns to the future, which has changed based on the changes in the Wild West World. More game previews are shown, including a Castlevania game which looks like Symphony of the Night but with a new protagonist, a new castle, and MUCH better graphics. Finally, the trailer goes back to Mario, and segues into a preview of a Mario Kart game, showing how beautiful Mario Kart looks on the new console. Mario and friends race into the screen and then the trailer comes to an end, generating a large amount of applause. Satoru Iwata then pulls out a large handheld device that looks much like a slightly less bulky OTL PSP-1000, with colored A/B/X/Y buttons, and a 3DS-like analog stick and D-pad rather than an analog nub and D buttons.*
Satoru Iwata: This is the Game Boy Supernova, our next generation gaming handheld. It has, as you can see, a very large high resolution screen, much larger than the Nova screen and optimal for playing our new generation handheld games. It plays these: *he holds up a round disc slightly larger than the iPod Play's discs* which can store up to 2 gigabytes of digital content, including both games and digital movies.
*Iwata continues to discuss the Supernova's features, before playing a new game on the device...the original Super Mario Bros.*
Iwata: The Supernova will have day one wi-fi connectivity, for accessing the Web and for downloading digital content, including classic Nintendo games. We will have games from the Famicom, Super Famicom, Super Famicom CD, and Game Boy available from Day 1, and hope to have Nova and Ultra Nintendo games available for purchase at a later date.
-from Satoru Iwata's speech, translated from the original Japanese, introducing the Game Boy Supernova at Spaceworld 2004 on October 11, 2004
-
The Game Boy Supernova was the major centerpiece of Nintendo's Spaceworld presentation. Featuring a high resolution screen and the capability of playing 2 GB game discs, it looks to be a direct rival to Apple's new iPod Play. From the games we got to play and see at the show, the graphics are very similar to those of the iPod Play, if not a bit better, with a few games comparable to the Wave in terms of graphical power (though this may have been because of the smaller screen allowing games to look more impressive in low resolutions). Unlike the iPod Play, the Supernova doesn't have a hard drive, but will be able to use SD cards for flash memory (though currently, SD cards above 128 MB are quite expensive, so downloading Super Nintendo CD games to the device will be a challenge). The Supernova's onboard Wifi, like that of the iPod Play, will allow players to play with their friends online at hotspots or near their home router. The analog stick is fairly big but will allow for precise controls in games like Super Mario Dimensions, the very first game announced for the console (which Nintendo says is a remake of the original Ultra Nintendo game, but with new stars and challenges, and a significant improvement in graphics). Other games announced at the show included a new Resident Evil game, a new Metal Gear game, a new Castlevania game, an original Nintendo platformer featuring a transforming protagonist, and a new Mario Kart game. Squaresoft was also there at the show, and promised that they would have an original SRPG available within the Supernova's launch window, and also announced a pair of new games based on their Fairytale franchise. They also announced that a Final Fantasy title was in development for the device, though whether it's an original game or a remake of Final Fantasy VII has yet to be seen. Nintendo did not announce a price for the console as of yet, but said that it would be "competitive" with other handhelds on the market. It's likely that the lack of an internal hard drive will allow Nintendo to release the Supernova at a lower price than the iPod Play, though whether that price will be as low as $200 or as high as $250 is a mystery.
Nintendo didn't just show off the Supernova at Spaceworld. A number of other games were either announced or elaborated on. We saw plenty of footage from the new Star Fox game, Star Fox: Hyperspace, and another teaser for the upcoming Heroic Universe crossover. Nintendo also showed off footage from a new Fire Emblem game, set for release next spring in Japan. We also got the very first teaser for Velvet Dark: Conspiracy, which showed Joanna Dark in contact with a group of young hackers on what looked to be a covert ops mission. This was the first time that the game was given an official name, and has been confirmed for a release sometime next summer.
-from an article posted on Games Over Matter on October 13, 2004
-
Alex Stansfield: What do you think the biggest feature is that sets the Game Boy Supernova apart from the iPod Play?
Ken Kutaragi: There are a number of key differences, a lot of them subtle, that are going to make our games better in the long run. Our discs are 2 GB, theirs are 1.5 GB. Ultimately, that means games are going to be able to be significantly bigger and take advantage of our better hardware. Our memory is expandable, and as the cost of flash memory comes down, you'll be able to store a lot more games on this device and a lot more cheaply than you can on the iPod Play. Our analog stick has a lot more freedom of movement than their analog stick. Their stick has to slide back into the device, so it can't come out as much as ours can, ours can move around more, which means it's more responsive. You'll have more games on our device that can control a lot better. The Supernova also has motion control, it's very subtle, that will allow certain games....it's built-in force feedback, built in rumble and motion control, that lets players feel like they're more in the game.
Stansfield: This will be the first handheld device with a built-in rumble feature.
Kutaragi: That's correct. It can be turned on and off by the player to save battery life, which is another advantage this device has, is a bigger battery and we think about an hour longer battery life when playing games.
-excerpted from an Alex Stansfield interview of Ken Kutaragi, posted on Games Over Matter on October 13, 2004
-
"From what I can tell, the Game Boy Supernova looks to be subtly better than the iPod Play in a lot of ways, but not definitively better in any of them. The graphics? Just a bit better. The disc space? Just a bit bigger. And the analog stick, which was touted as being better than the iPod Play's, actually seems almost identical to that on Apple's device, which is itself somewhat of a marvel of engineering for being so compact and yet able to slide around so naturally. The Supernova IS a more powerful system, but how much more powerful looks to be up to the eye of the beholder, and that eye may have to be quite discerning: if I had to put a number figure on it, I'd estimate that the Supernova is about 20% more powerful than the iPod Play. Will that make a difference to gamers next year if Apple's new device is a hit? Once again, it'll probably come down to games. The fact that the Supernova is launching with a Super Mario Dimensions remake and not an original Mario game is a bit puzzling, but Super Mario Dimensions, at 47 million units sold, is the best selling Mario game of all time and the second best selling video game overall, behind only Tetris. People WILL buy a lot of copies of this, some just wanting to have a portable version of the game and others for the improvements, which, apart from graphical improvements, don't look like much thus far. Perhaps Nintendo is testing the waters for what kind of portable Mario they'll be able to make on this device, and it IS good that they're not rushing something out the door like they appear to be doing with the upcoming Super Mario Shades. We'll likely see lots of Ultra Nintendo and perhaps even Wave remakes on the Supernova, but I think this handheld may need its own original killer app if it hopes to fend off what looks to be extremely fierce competition from Steve Jobs' new iPod, which is already looking to be the most desirable item of the holiday season."
-Alex Stansfield in his Spaceworld wrap-up article, posted on October 16, 2004 on Games Over Matter
