Namco X Capcom X NIS X Gust X The Whole Universe

B:L

This has turned into a general mash-em-up thread.



Chaos Wars: Shadow Hearts and Growlanser and Gungrave OH MY!! (PS2)

Well, actually, it has those plus Spectral Force and a bunch of other stuff, coming out in the US in May.

From the wiki:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaos_Wars

Chaos Wars is a tactical role-playing video game that was released by Idea Factory for the Playstation 2 in Japan in 2006. Promotional art for the game is by Nishimura Kinu. Currently, the North America release is scheduled for April 24 of 2008.

Chaos Wars is a crossover between several companies' console role-playing game series: Aruze's Shadow Hearts, Atlus's Growlanser, Idea Factory's Blazing Souls, Gakuen Toshi Vara Noir, Spectral Force, Spectral Souls and Hametsu no Mars, and RED Entertainment's Gungrave and Samurai Police/Shinsengumi Gunrouden.

The game's opening theme Shūtan no Ou to Isekai no Kishi ~The Endia&The Knights~ was done by Sound Horizon.

In the same vein as Namco X Capcom, we've got a veritable mashup of different anime games and genres into one crazy tactical RPG.

Full trailer:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o1C7pRaq_mM


That's the good news. The bad news?

It is a GameStop exclusive: http://www.gamestop.com/chaoswars

Since we haven't gotten Disgaea 3 yet and we're never gonna get Namco X Capcom, I'd say this is a sweet deal.

---

Edit: Well, it's no Namco X Capcom...


CROSS-EDGE (PS3)

http://kotaku.com/387992/capcom-nippon-ichi-namco-bandai-gust-and-idea-factory-team-for-rpg




Not too many details yet, but it appears to be a side-battling action RPG...which looks a LOT like Valkyrie Profile.

---

And a new Capcom/anime crossover versus game!?

Wearingglasses wrote: »

http://kotaku.com/5010122/capcom-vs-legendary-anime-company

The upcoming issue of Famitsu announces an interesting 2D fighting game match-up: Tatsunoko vs. Capcom: Cross Generation of Heroes. Yes, that Tatsunoko, you know, the studio behind TV anime Speed Racer, Casshern and what Westerners know as Robotech.

Ryu, Chun Li, and the iconic characters of Capcom clash with classic anime series made by Tatsunoko: Gatchaman, Speed Racer and others.

I wonder if Superbook is in this.

To see the list of stuff Tatsunoko has done, go here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tatsunoko#Anime_series

Schide

Shadow Hearts? Count me in.

totally

Boners, ruined pants, epilepsy, etc.

2008 appears to be the year that all the good games come out in.

Dartboy

I heard Namco x Capcom kinda sucked, though I hope this is good.

Xagarath

Oh, flaming damn.
No way is this getting a PAL release.

And since it's probably the nearest we'll ever get to another Shadow Hearts game, I want.

B:L

Dartboy wrote: »

I heard Namco x Capcom kinda sucked, though I hope this is good.

Namco X Capcom seemed decent, at least visually. It was mostly marred by it's strange "action" combat system.

This game appears to be sticking to the Disgaea tactical RPG roots.


But don't take my word for it. Check out this glowing review that I found:

This is some Biblical Shit right here, up there with the events of Ghostbusters 1.

Small, unknown to these forums web sight "Insert Credit" reports that some company (described as a "bunch of assholes" by Internet Personality Tim Rogers*) O~3 is bringing Chaos Wars to the United States.

Now, you may be wondering, "Why does TOLLMASTER believe this is worth a post on our forums--especially with such an attention grabbing, information lacking title?"

I'll tell you: because this is the single most brass-balls type moment in the history of gaming, the only gaming event which could even DARE TO COMPARE would be Vic Ireland's infamous translation company Working Designs going under for attempting to get permission to bring over a PS2 Goemon game and getting the middle finger for a matter of years.

What, exactly, composition does it take to make one of the most horrible-but-awesome video game decision ever? Let's go through a handy numerical list of ingredients of disaster:


1. It's a strategy RPG by Idea Factory, which is in and of itself an already fucktarded, hardheaded decision on the part of anyone. I disclose to everyone in any relevant posts I make on this here Internet that I am evangelical in my support of Nippon Ichi America at times, but even I have to question the logic to bring over not one, not two, but THREE of their games. Strategy RPGs are already a niche genre--RPGs themselves have only recently started to gain respect in the mainstream, and strategy RPGs are a genre that caters to a specific hardcore subset of that genre. Idea Factory games are one step further: they work unlike any other company's games, and then proceed to hide their workings behind obtuse and obscure menus and commands.

This is to say nothing about Idea Factory's quality. The highest of the three titles to get to America has a 65% average in Game Rankings. Considering today's press, it's hard to get a ranking below 75% or so unless you're a shovelware developer creating Spongebob Squarepants titles, but having three out of three titles rank 65% and below really says something about a company. It's only fair to bring up that yes, these are niche games for a (very) small subset of the gaming population, and that these games were all ported to the PSP such that they were made nigh unplayable, but even being cognizant of this, the fact remains that among even hardcore fans, Idea Factory is almost synonymous with "bad, lazy games." A (sadly true) joke I've heard among SRPG fans is that Idea Factory's best game was a PS2 fighting game based on their characters--created by another company.


2. This should be a licensing nightmare, so much so that I posit the idea that we are living in a New Age, where copyrights flow like water. What, exactly, IS Chaos Wars? It's an SRPG that has characters from:

Atlus
Red Entertainment
Aruze
and Idea Factory's
games. These kind of compilation/co-operation titles are not uncommon in this day and age, with Sega appearing on Nintendo systems, with Nintendo characters, but generally they are kept out of American shores because of the tangled web of laws and legal agreements. For instance, Namco X Capcom, a critically-acclaimed SRPG with characters people will actually recognize, didn't make it over supposedly because those two companies couldn't figure out the licensing rights in America. That a game inspired by that matchup, with even more licenses to contend with, is coming to America is not only shocking, it's ground-breaking. The reason no "true" Super Robot Wars game has ever arrived on American shores is because it was a licensing nightmare much akin to Chaos Wars; one company owns this property, and has control of it in America, and won't necessarily agree to the same multi-million dollar agreements made in the parent country. Chaos Wars arriving in the United States breaks all the fucking rules.


3. The cast selection is batshit insane, in the best, worst way possible. Namco X Capcom had an eclectic cast of characters, sure, but there were common undercurrents--a lot of those characters were born in the earlier days of video gaming, and Dig Dug Guy meeting up with Ghosts n' Goblins Guy makes sense in the way that Mr. T and ALF being in those collect call commercials made sense.

But this compilation of characters features far, far, far more obscure characters, from relatively niche and small companies, featuring characters that almost no one is familiar with and whom only an infintismal section of the population are actually familliar with. In many cases, even the niche companys' most popular characters are unrepresented, leaving even more obscure characters in their place.

Wikipedia wrote:

Chaos Wars is a crossover between several companies' console role-playing game series: Aruze's Shadow Hearts, Atlus's Growlanser, Idea Factory's Blazing Souls, Gakuen Toshi Vara Noir, Spectral Force, Spectral Souls and Hametsu no Mars, and RED Entertainment's Gungrave and Samurai Police/Shinsengumi Gunrouden.

That's the official list. I bet half of you don't recognize a single series from there; and for those of you who do, you'll recognize that this list is, well, pretty strange. Growlanser characters meeting up with Idea Factory's SRPG characters, yeah, I can see that. Standard fantasy setting, both SPRGs, the makings of a nice (if niche) crossover. But the rest starts, in Dante's words, "getting crazy." And Growlanser is kind of a small series, even for a smaller company like Atlus; if they are co-operating for combined Star Power, why not have Persona characters, or Shin Megami Tensei characters? When someone says "Atlus" no one thinks Growlanser, I mean. Shadow Hearts is an RPG, so it makes sense in a sort-of way to have it with other SRPG characters, but that's a series that is more or less a response to standard fantasy RPG settings, where instead of fighting a demon lord in his castle you talk to Al Capone's sentient cat. That kind of shit is not thematically linked! And the big grandpappy of all is the final entry, RED Entertainment. They're the guys who did Sakura Taisen, in case you're wondering, and yeah, Sakura Taisen is, wouldn't you know it, an SRPG with characters the intended audience recognize! Is that game represented here? No! Who is then, you may ask?



These guys, from the John Woo on steroids game Gungrave: Overdose. The man in the middle is named Beyond the Grave, in all seriousness. He carries a coffin filled with anti-tank cannons and missile launchers in it. He is dead, brought back to a kind of half-life in a nearly invincible form by advanced, illegal science methods developed by a militant gang in a future dystopia.

Why is this man brought to a world where the slimes have happy faces on them? I bet Beyond the Grave would have a few words about this, but he can't fucking talk so we'll sadly never hear him opine about how the anthropomorphic cats remind him of that one time he killed an entire army. It's the video game equivalent of Archie Meets The Punisher.



Now, in no way am I telling you not to buy this game. In fact, please buy this game. Yes, it will probably be terrible, with characters you probably don't recognize, and who really really really really really really don't fit thematically, at fucking all, but O~3, whoever they are, are the Bravest Fucking People ever. I am told that one of the Ayn Rand books dealt with a company led by an insane motherfucker who decides to build a bridge out of a new kind of metal, when all the other companies decided to be cowardly and not stress-test this new metal out on a major engineering task. That's what O~3 bringing Chaos Wars to the United States is: a badass yet insane exercise worthy of being chronicled in a meandering, pointless epic by Ayn Rand.

So, buy this game if you like SRPGs. Buy this game because Tim Rogers claims there are totally tits in it sometimes. Buy this game because one of the hidden characters is a motherfucking rockabilly ghost haunting an electric guitar. Whatever you have to do, just buy this fucking game. Leave behind the barren wasteland of the old industry behind, and enter into the Twilight Zone, beyond which strange things are known. Take the key and unlock the door; see what fate might have in store.

Xagarath

Oh, fine.
Added to my "reasons to buy a US PS2" list.

Sheep

I'd buy it, but O3 still owes me the Karous/Radiligy/Chaos Field compilation.

EDIT

Those fuckers.

B:L

OP updated with something completely different.

Or actually more of the same except x10.


CROSS-EDGE (PS3)

http://kotaku.com/387992/capcom-nippon-ichi-namco-bandai-gust-and-idea-factory-team-for-rpg




Not too many details yet, but it appears to be a side-battling action RPG...which looks a LOT like Valkyrie Profile.

JJ

gamestop exclusive? lol wut

Aroduc

Dartboy wrote: »

I heard Namco x Capcom kinda sucked, though I hope this is good.

It was alright. It had a lot of potential to make the combat really interesting with its kind of quasi Valkyrie Profile engine, but unlike VP, you couldn't mix and match characters around to create wacky combos and every single enemy was basically the same. No flying ones or super heavy ones or whathaveyou. You were more or less doing the same combos on stage 3 as you were doing on stage 30, which gets old fast. Almost all of the later stages are also giant tortuous clusterfucks. Just too many enemies and too many characters all thrown at you at once.

B:L

Aroduc wrote: »

Dartboy wrote: »

I heard Namco x Capcom kinda sucked, though I hope this is good.

It was alright. It had a lot of potential to make the combat really interesting with its kind of quasi Valkyrie Profile engine, but unlike VP, you couldn't mix and match characters around to create wacky combos and every single enemy was basically the same. No flying ones or super heavy ones or whathaveyou. You were more or less doing the same combos on stage 3 as you were doing on stage 30, which gets old fast. Almost all of the later stages are also giant tortuous clusterfucks. Just too many enemies and too many characters all thrown at you at once.

Have you heard anything about Cross-Edge?

It looks like the Valkyrie Profile combat system with multiple characters in a side-view, and plenty of combos. It seems to address that problem you just listed for Namco X Capcom.

Houk the Namebringer

I hope Cross-Edge is good. I love the idea of teaming up Morrigan with Etna, but Idea Factory is great at cocking shit up.

Schide

Ok, so Joachim is in this. That is good.

Xagarath

Although not on a system I own, this is also interesting.

Glenn565

Oops, this isn't the other Cross over RPG thread.:oops:

MinionOfCthulhu

Dammit you got my hopes up, thinking it was a new Namco X Capcom. I've never played any of the series in the stupid game that is actually coming out here.
(except for Gungrave I guess but I guess it's too much to ask for for the only game I know of to not suck)

Strifer

I can put up with a lot. I'd like to see how far Chaos Wars will go to break me.

EDIT: Assuming it gets a PAL release.

B:L

MinionOfCthulhu wrote: »

Dammit you got my hopes up, thinking it was a new Namco X Capcom. I've never played any of the series in the stupid game that is actually coming out here.
(except for Gungrave I guess but I guess it's too much to ask for for the only game I know of to not suck)

Umm...Cross-Edge IS basically the new Namco X Capcom...except it's Namco/Bandai X Capcom X Nippon Ichi X Gust X Idea Factory...

Houk the Namebringer

B:L wrote: »

MinionOfCthulhu wrote: »

Dammit you got my hopes up, thinking it was a new Namco X Capcom. I've never played any of the series in the stupid game that is actually coming out here.
(except for Gungrave I guess but I guess it's too much to ask for for the only game I know of to not suck)

Umm...Cross-Edge IS basically the new Namco X Capcom...except it's Namco/Bandai X Capcom X Nippon Ichi X Gust X Idea Factory...

Although it's sounding like it doesn't have the sheer volume of characters, which is kind of a bummer.

cj iwakura

The other bad thing about Chaos Wars is, well, Idea Factory.


I liked NxC for the most part.

Crazy repetitive, but good music, and it's fun to play.

B:L

Oh dear lord, I just took a look at Chaos Wars' credits:

The CEO is Chris Jelinek.

Voice Actors on this game include.....

Quest Jelinek
Tyler Jelinek

Special Thanks go to...

Kay Jelinek and Lee Jelinek


VA's also include Joe O'Donnell
Voice Caster is...Joe O'Donnell.
Voice Director is....yep, you guessed it, Frank Stallone...I mean, Joe O'Donnell.

Bursar

I don't know whether to laugh or cry.

Xenogears of Bore

crlaf.

cjeris

I posted a longish initial impression (after 6 hours or so) of Chaos Wars in the Chaos Wars thread.

I've seen worse, but it ain't good.

edit: onoz how will I recognize cj iwakura posts without Minato Arisato avatar?

acidlacedpenguin

I like when Tim says things.


it'd be nice if that cross edge would find its way to us weeaboos in North America.

B:L

cjeris wrote: »

I posted a longish initial impression (after 6 hours or so) of Chaos Wars in the Chaos Wars thread.

edit: onoz how will I recognize cj iwakura posts without Minato Arisato avatar?

Umm...this IS the Chaos Wars thread?


Anywho I'll quote your review here:

cjeris wrote: »

So I'm a few hours into this game, and it's not very good.

The game system is basically entertaining. It's a standard SRPG system with the following features:

- Free movement as in Phantom Brave, although they didn't bother to do the computational geometry to display movement ranges shortened around obstacles, so sometimes the display says you can move to a place, but you can't. Also some abilities won't trigger based on your relative altitude to the enemy, but there's no way to find that out in the user interface. Since you can cancel movement if you haven't acted yet, this isn't usually a problem.

- Active-time battle as in Final Fantasy Tactics (rather than player-phase, enemy-phase), but with much finer time resolution; a character's wait time depends on the distance they moved and the specific action they took, although there are not enough ways to see the exact wait time for a given action.

- HP and SP recharge some every round. Damage taken is divided into temporary (red; most of each hit) and permanent (black) damage. Red damage will heal over time at a certain rate that depends on your statistics; black damage stays until healed by ability or item, or the battle ends. So you must gang up on your enemies to take them down -- a one-on-one duel is a slow, tedious process. This is made easier by

- Several mechanics allow characters to act outside their turn in exchange for a unit of "S gauge", which is built
up by dealing or taking damage. The most important one is a team attack: when one character acts, other characters with at least one S-gauge unit, and enough SP to use one of their abilities, can spend one S-gauge unit to act immediately afterward against the same target. You can chain all five of your active characters this way if you have enough SP and S-gauge. Some characters also have an evade-and-counter ability which consumes S-gauge to act on an enemy turn.

- Conserving SP is important, because there is no vanilla "Attack" command. Every ability a character uses must be equipped and consumes SP to use, which limits the number and strength of attacks you can use until your turn comes around again and recharges some of your used SP. Abilities master slowly over time, and can be unequipped and transferred to another character, retaining their accumulated mastery points. Unfortunately there is one extremely annoying wrinkle in this system:

- Occasionally equipped abilities randomly (permanently) mutate when you use them -- not in general to something much better or worse, just different. The problem with this is that, at least as far as I've gotten, there is no shop where you can buy new abilities, which means something you found useful may be gone forever. I've restarted a battle because one character had (among others) Sword Attack (5 SP, standard attack) and Cross Cut (7 SP, slightly stronger), and the Cross Cut decided to mutate to a second Sword Attack. You can "lock" abilities so they never mutate, so I just went through and locked all my characters' abilities. I think this is a very stupid game mechanic.

- Characters can spend one S-gauge unit to enter a "Realize" mode, which is a lot like Yuri's fusions from Shadow Hearts, although each character only has one: your stats are substantially boosted and you acquire one special (very expensive in SP) ability, but you can only stay in this mode for a few turns, typically three. If you're making enough S-gauge from attacks, you can re-enter Realize on the turn after you leave it.

- There are no discrete experience levels; instead characters' abilities may randomly improve a tiny bit each time they act, and each character is assigned a "Rank" based on their total ability improvement. I haven't yet figured out what gives each character's improvement profile its distinctive shape, or whether I can turn a mage into an effective swordfighter merely by having her practice swordfighting. A character's rank is not always a good guide to their relative strength.

So, what are the problems?

- The plot, so far, is a nonentity. I was more or less expecting that.

- The graphics are done about to the NIS standard, which is okay in a game with NIS's sense of style, but I don't think Chaos Wars quite measures up to that.

- The music varies from "acceptable, but already overused after five hours" (the turn theme associated with the main original characters, Hyoma and friends) to "hey, that was good in the original game, but it doesn't sound quite as good here" (the Shadow Hearts characters' turn theme) to "brain-sucking elevator music" (the background music of your base while you're not doing anything else). It's really disappointing.

- You seem to be expected to do at least a few grinding random battles in between story episodes. Unfortunately, the grinding battles are, so far, completely formulaic and uninteresting random maps with predictable enemies that have uniform sets of abilities. No interesting tactical situations, no real challenge. The story battles are not much better, although Gaizan (the fourth or fifth story battle) at least hit hard enough to make me think for a moment.

- Every time you choose a mission (either a plot mission, or a random-battle mission) from your home base, the list of available missions is freshly randomized when you get back: the only thing that is guaranteed stable is the next main-plot mission. This jars my suspension of disbelief somewhat, and makes it impossible to do two missions each of which you'd like to try.

- The game is slow in several senses. The system requires a lot of button presses to execute each action, and you have to explicitly select "Standby" at the end of each character's turn. If it's not the most button-pushy RPG I've ever played, it's close. It also chugs like a dyspeptic pig: many, many actions cause perceptible loading delays, including a bunch that have no business doing any such thing (the game has to load the tiny little animation from disc when a character pops into or out of Realize mode). And the delays for things you do expect delays for, like memory card checking or saving, or loading a new level, are longer than they should be. It's irritating, and all adds up to a substantially lower fun-to-time-spent ratio.

- The translation isn't bad like Symphony of the Night, but it isn't great. I haven't even tried the English voices -- this game isn't from an A-list publisher or Atlus, so I assume they're terrible. Although my Japanese is limited and rusty, it's good enough to reveal that the English script translation, in addition to not flowing that well in English, often fails to convey either the literal or the idiomatic meaning of the original text. (For instance, when a samurai character joins you near the beginning, his last line, "Kochira koso, yoroshiku onegai shimasu" becomes "Thank you for your offer to join swords." I can maybe see what they were thinking, but, uh, no.)

- The voices also vary wildly in volume even within the same character's part in the same scene, so that one line can be at the proper level and the next is too muffled to hear over the background music. That's just sloppy.

- Finally, the localizers apparently didn't bother to look up the spelling of characters' names in origin games that have appeared over here, so instead of Yuri, Karin and Nicolai from Shadow Hearts 2, I see Uru, Karen and Nicole before me. Again, just sloppy.

- I've already encountered one really egregious (but not gameplay-affecting or save-destroying) bug: in your home base, when you walk up to the encyclopedia wall, sometimes the background graphics for the book pages appear completely garbled, which makes the text impossible to read. Walking around and doing something else for a moment (like browsing the available missions, or talking to another character in the base) often fixes it. But seriously, how does this get past QA?

So, the bones may be good, but there are so many defects in execution that it's really not that fun to play. It's too bad, because I was looking forward to seeing Yuri and friends in another game (really bought this for them -- I haven't finished Growlanser II, or really started III or V, and those are the only other titles I own that might have characters in Chaos Wars). But my verdict is, if you haven't already bought it, don't put yourself to the (apparently considerable) trouble of finding it.

It's a really, really sloppy port, but I'm still having fun with the game.

I have no idea what went through the heads of O~3 to think that they'll do decently with this kind of barebones staff. Trying to penetrate the Atlus/NIS niche market?

Maybe it's just a bunch of Working Designs fans.

cj iwakura

O3 obviously need to stick with shmups; the genre that welcomes awful localizations.

cj iwakura

Warning: not safe for ears.

Shikigami 2's been dethroned.

B:L

cj iwakura wrote: »

Warning: not safe for ears.

Shikigami 2's been dethroned.

KEEE KEEE
KEEE KEEE


I think the problem is that people expect an anime dub. Not an American cartoon dub, which this is totally reminiscent of.

Zombiemambo

Nah, I still think Shikigami takes the cake.

cj iwakura

It's still debatable whether or not Shikigami was deliberate(like III's definitely is).

Chaos Wars just reeks of laziness.

Freakle

lol yes VA in Chaos Wars is absolutely AWFUL. It sounds like a group of middle school kids got together and decided to voice their own game.

KiTA

Freakle wrote: »

lol yes VA in Chaos Wars is absolutely AWFUL. It sounds like a group of middle school kids got together and decided to voice their own game.

Is t.. is there the option of turning that OFF? Japanese VA track or something?

Geo

I actually don't think the american VA's are that bad. Nothing outstanding, but not nearly as bad as what I expected. It's a pretty fun game, but so far it's been incredibly easy, as I find in most SRPGs. I've never had to do any grinding and I'm going straight into main quest missions without having to heal or sustaining any real damage. Battles do seem a bit slow, but I've found that tapping th shoulder buttons will skip a lot of animation.

What I really like about the game are the skills. All the characters have a couple innate traits that help determine their effectiveness in the battle. Equippable items also have different traits. Battle skills will occasionally shift into different ones, allowing you to develop new attacks. This could have been a very bad thing since you could potentially shift out a really good attack for a really bad one, but there is an option to lock skills. The Realize ability also adds more skills to your characters when activated. One particularly useful skill that two characters have is in their realize form they can dodge and counterattack enemies if you enter a very short button combo.

Edit: Oh wow. Ryoma's Critial Attack reminds me of Musashi Gundou. I really hope you can get him on your team.

cj iwakura

So guess who's bringing this to America.

X-Edge
X-Edge just seems to have NIS America all over it. It features characters from Disgaea, Mana Khemia, Ar tonelico, Spectral Souls, and the Atelier series. I mean, come on, there are even Prinnies. When should we expect to see it in North America?
NISA: X-Edge is an interesting project since it's a collaboration between 3 different companies. It's pretty funny to see a little Prinny fight characters from Darkstalkers like Morrigan and Demitri.

The release date isn't finalized yet, but it's going to be in March 09

But wait. THERE'S MORE.

A little birdie told us that someone was finally getting brave enough to localize a game in the Sakura Wars series, mainly the fifth game in the main series for the PS2. Would that be NIS America, and what can you tell us about the game?

NISA: Haha, your birdie knows too much. Let's just say the game is in the works by an undisclosed company. I've heard somewhere that the game should come out in '09.

Sakura Taisen in the US? I never, ever thought I'd see the day.

If not NISA, then who? Atlus? XSeed?

Aksys?

B:L

cj iwakura wrote: »

Sakura Taisen in the US? I never, ever thought I'd see the day.

If not NISA, then who? Atlus? XSeed?

Aksys?

Destineer.

O3 Entertainment.

Phoenix Games.

Schide

cj iwakura wrote: »

So guess who's bringing this to America.

X-Edge
X-Edge just seems to have NIS America all over it. It features characters from Disgaea, Mana Khemia, Ar tonelico, Spectral Souls, and the Atelier series. I mean, come on, there are even Prinnies. When should we expect to see it in North America?
NISA: X-Edge is an interesting project since it's a collaboration between 3 different companies. It's pretty funny to see a little Prinny fight characters from Darkstalkers like Morrigan and Demitri.

The release date isn't finalized yet, but it's going to be in March 09

But wait. THERE'S MORE.

A little birdie told us that someone was finally getting brave enough to localize a game in the Sakura Wars series, mainly the fifth game in the main series for the PS2. Would that be NIS America, and what can you tell us about the game?

NISA: Haha, your birdie knows too much. Let's just say the game is in the works by an undisclosed company. I've heard somewhere that the game should come out in '09.

Sakura Taisen in the US? I never, ever thought I'd see the day.

If not NISA, then who? Atlus? XSeed?

Aksys?

Hahaha. I've been going through the Sakura Wars LP on SA this past week. Having a Sakura Wars game in the US would be...tempting. Unfortunately all the awesome dialogue from the LP would be in it, obviously.

Aroduc

I remember when GA was being worked on by an undisclosed company and due out within a year.

That was three years ago I think.

Maybe longer.

cj iwakura

I'd get that if it actually came out. It might even catch on with the space-sim crowd(but highly unlikely).

cj iwakura

The Perfect Collaboration Of Five!!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rDek6SPFuhU

http://nisamerica.com/games/crossedge/

Some of the VA is hilarious, and not in a good way.