KORG DS-10 Plus isn’t a sequel, but rather a revamped version of the original application, with new and tweaked features implemented in order to create a more complete experience. Performance has been enhanced in Plus, with 12-voice polyphony, 4 tracks for the analogue synthesiser simulator, and 2 drum machines, along with enhancements to existing controls, including the ability to mute per track and edit/play enabled in song mode.

As an added bonus for DSi owners, KORGT DS-10 Plus allows for 2 effect layers when played on Nintendo’s more powerful version of the DS hardware.

“We are extremely pleased to build on the success of the original KORG DS-10 with the KORG DS-10 Plus,” stated Jun Iwasaki, President of XSEED Games. “Musicians and gamers alike banded together for the original, and we believe the enhanced KORG DS-10 Plus will help bring that community even closer together as anyone with a desire can create professional-sounding original music with a portable device.”

XSEED is bring KORG DS-10 Plus to the North American DS and DSi early next year.

Who knew a game that seemed like a three-note joke could accomplish so much?

Loved
Brave Design: Half-Minute Hero was made by developers with guts. They created an homage to 16-bit top-down Japanese role-playing games, but sped up the pace to force you to rush from the start of an adventure to the defeat of a boss in 30 seconds, daring to fill the script with comedy and automate the battles. The main gameplay is the time management of rushing the hero from town to battle to, maybe, secret hidden cave, levelling up in the blink of an eye and strategically spending quickly-earned money to pray to a money-hungry goddess and buy the time to get the clock back up to 30 seconds.

And that’s just the first of the game’s three main modes, the others doing similarly mad takes on side-scrolling shoot-em-ups, real-time strategy games and whatever you call the genre that involves escorting a sage through a dungeon with the help of carefully laid traps to keep enemies at bay. All of the four modes run on 30-second timers, each offering a different angle on how to extend the clock.

Your Time, Not Wasted: The game is fast, sometimes too fast. Most quests go from title screen to credit-rolling in 90 seconds — if you’re slow. You don’t have to press buttons during battles because, well, you don’t have to think too hard about pressing them even in the many major Japanese role-playing games. So, in Half-Minute Hero, you’re spared as the battle screen switches the view to a side-view and rushes your hero from left to right, mauling or being mauled by his opponents. Conversation is brisk and funny. Levels are unlocked fast and furiously. And levelling-up is accelerated in every mission you play. Soon enough, the player is levelling from zero to 20 and upgrading armour five times in just a minute. Makes you wonder why you ever had to spend 50 hours doing that.

Splendid Variety: The JRPG mode is the game’s main attraction. It’s called Hero 30 and is a strong entry in its own right, offering more than 30 quests before its conclusion and branching off in different directions depending on decisions you make during the adventure. The other three modes are entirely different, but each retain core values of the game and the JRPG genre. All are funny. All involve characters who don’t take themselves too seriously. And all offer different ways to level up, access optional levels and experience that ever-satisfying progression from weakling to superstar that typifies a great role-playing game.

A Progressive Look Back: Half-Minte Hero’s graphics may look 16-bit, but so many enlightened touches have been applied to them. For example, the pixelated sprite of the main character in Hero 30 changes depending on which head, chest, foot and hand items he’s been equipped with. The music is a bravura tour of RPG emotion, hitting all the beats of triumph and sorrow from track to track, the music rotating for each of the game’s quick levels. Even when the developers are pretending to be annoying—like when they roll the credits at the end of every Hero 30 level—they can’t help but respect a modern gamer’s needs by letting those credits be accelerated.

Wonderful Imbalance: Half-Minute Hero is mostly too easy, which would be a problem if completing it didn’t require going through more than 120 separately laid-out levels. It’s tempting to criticise how, in the RTS mode, the evil lord that the player controls can get caught in a corner and mauled by enemies even when it seems that the controls should enable some type of escape. Some of the fourth mode, Knight 30, seems like it’s been made to be broken as a level or two appear to be beatable in normal mode if the player does little more than have the protagonist stand still. But it’s hard to object, because those rough edges—that apparent sloppiness—fits the spirit of a game that is having so much fun with its trappings and is so quick to move on to the next quest and crack more jokes that it is hard to mind.

Hated
Throwaway Level Design: Despite what I just wrote about the imbalance, the game’s shoot-em-up mode, Princess 30, does disappoint. Completion of it, Evil Lord 30 (the RTS) and Hero 30 (the RPG) are required to access Knight 30 and the amazing final two unlockable modes that I will not spoil. The conceit of Princess 30 is that the Princess needs to leave her castle, find some medicine for the king and get back home by curfew. It’s funny, especially because she turns from docile to destroyer as soon as she picks up her crossbow—and because of the inane logic of the plot that has her fetching bitter grass to heal dad because everyone knows good medicine is bitter—but the whole thing disappoints because the levels are barely distinguishable linear rushes. Zip out of the castle with the shooting button spammed. Zip back in. Not enough changes to keep this mode as strong, so woe to the player who leaves most of Princess 30 to be played on its own. If you get the game, mix the Princess levels in.

I thought the appeal of Half-Minute Hero wouldn’t last. And if all of the levels were as quick and sometimes-silly/broken as those of Knight 30, Evil Lord 30 and Princess 30. But Hero 30 takes this one over the top. Level design in Hero 30 is clever, full of hidden secrets, fun gameplay twists and everything else that a good RPG can have — brilliantly packed into quests you can hope to clear in 60 seconds.

If more developers want to mess with conventions like this, please, please do.

(Half-Minute Hero was developed by Marvelous Entertainment and published by XSeed for the PSP on October 13. Retails for $US29.95. A copy of the game was given to us by the publisher for reviewing purposes. Played all quests to completion, except the bonus, crazy final post-completion one. Took me 12 hours, 15 minutes, 8 seconds.)

Confused by our reviews? Read our review FAQ.

What Is It?
The Wizard of Oz is a newly announced (today!) game for the DS coming this fall from publisher XSeed. It’s a turn-based 3D role-playing game that was released in Japan by developer Media Vision and publisher D3 as the anagrammatically challenged RIZ-ZOAWD. It is based loosely on L. Frank Baum’s book that was turned into a classic movie. Players explore a 3D overworld and participate in turn-based battles in a separate battle screen, as you’d expect a conventional DS Japanese RPG to work. No party attacks or summons in this one. All stylus control.

What We Saw
Before playing XSeed’s Half-Minute Hero and under secret embargo a couple of weeks ago, I took control of Dorothy at the start of the game, made sure she wasn’t in Kansas anymore, followed the Yellow Brick Road (how am I doing with the film references), learned to pet Toto and fight enemies made of jelly before finally finding the Airy Scarecrow and adding him to my party.

How Far Along Is It?
The game was released in Japan several months ago, but the build I played, localised into English was still on a development cartridge. It will be released in the fall.

What Needs Improvement?
Toto Involvement: I’m no Oz expert, as you can tell, so I’m unshackled from any desire for this video game adaptation to be true to L. Frank Baum’s book or the famous movie. So, let Toto fight. The poor dog is reduced to a follower, a poor-man’s Fable II dog that can be petted with the tap of the lower screen.

Trackball Movement: As potential Oz players can see from the screenshots, the lower screen is dominated by a simulated trackball. Flicking on it with the stylus works okay, but it feels like a control interface from the days of Super Mario 64 and, more specifically, Pac ‘N Roll. I’d have loved for D-pad controls if only to be able to input sustained movement instead of having to keep that trackball rolling.

What Should Stay The Same?
The Visuals of Oz: DS screenshots seldom look good anywhere but on a DS screen. So if you’re turned off by what you see in this post, don’t disregard the game’s looks. The game’s 3D graphics are comparable to the best on the system. Stylized 3D may still enable a cleaner look (see Zeldas on DS), but for something more conventionally rendered, Wizard of Oz on the DS is top-flight.

The Disregard For The Classics: Yes, you can get the Lion and the Tin Man in your party along with the Scarecrow. And you do meet Oz — or the guy playing him (should I have warned that a spoiler was coming?). But that Oz meeting happens within the first hour, after which the real goal of the game is to defeat four witches and fight lots of little creatures along the way. As this kind of long JRPG is not easily experienced in a five-minute demo, I didn’t see or play much of the adventure. But what I did see mixed the familiar trappings that even a non-Oz-watcher like me have heard of with a colorful array of enemies and locales.

Final Thoughts
People love the Wizard of Oz, and yet it remains one of the most popular pieces of adventure fiction to not have much of a presence in the gaming medium. There was a Super Nintendo Oz game. And maybe another one or two. But this DS game is a rarity. If you are into the fiction, it’s worth a look. For those who need a gameplay hook, I can’t say I saw anything distinct about how this game plays. Not yet.

And now, as I end the piece, am I supposed to make a joke about not being in Kansas anymore or there being no place like home? Forget it.

Half-Minute Hero is a PSP game that rested unattended at a New York City event for XSeed games that I attended last night. It was an assuming oddity in the corner, running on the console that doesn’t have many games that people are talking about these days. In other words, it would have been easy to miss. Th

It’s a game that just may be the most marvelous answer to the criticism that Japanese role-playing games are tediously-paced.

This game, at least its hero mode, plays a full RPG quest in 30 seconds, at a pace that makes WarioWare seem relaxed. And would you believe it’s the first RPG I’ve played that had me hoping for more random encounters?

What Is It?

Half-Minute Hero is a PSP game developed by Marvelous Entertainment and Opus Studio with eight-bit graphics but a thoroughly modern send-up to top-down Japanese role-playing games.

What We Saw

The game is said to have four modes of play, including a magician mode and princess mode that play like riffs off of genres other than the JRPGs lampooned in the hero mode I tired. I got to play two missions. Each set my hero down on an old Final Fantasy SNES-era world map with a timer counting down 30 seconds until game-ending catastrophe. I had just a half-minute to save the world from some comically evil dark lords.

How Far Along Is It?

The game is slated for a Fall 2009 release. The two missions I played were fully localised and feature-complete. I don’t know how far along the rest of the game is.

What Needs Improvement?

Not Much: The game hyper-accelerates the pace of the traditional role-playing game flawlessly. The demo missions were a little hard, but I didn’t mind. It was confusing to figure out which health items on sale in the shops did what, but that wasn’t a big problem either.

What Should Stay The Same?

Most of It: You control the hero with the d-pad and walk (or run) him around the map. You have just 30 seconds — sort of. Entering castles, towns or other locations represented by buildings pauses the game’s countdown. In those locations, the game switches to 2D-side-scrolling and lets you talk or buy items such as better swords, shields or even a potion that refills the countdown clock. None of the talking was serious. And the spirit of the game compels the player to get on with it. Out in the overworld wilderness, I discovered that random encounters transition the game into battle mode. These battles are also rendered in 2D and are run automatically. Your hero dashes to the right, sword pointed at enemy. All I could do was wait for his repeated attacks to succeed. Or I could make him flee. All of this happens in Charlie-Chaplin-style high speed. A battle is over in two seconds. Experience points are tallied, gold is earned. Leveling up commences (I went up six levels in half a minute). Leveling is fun, but the goal is to rush to the boss — hoping that by the time you get near his lair you’ve been prompted with the “You > Evil.” That alert indicates that victory is attainable. So you crush the boss. With hundredths of seconds to spare. Very vague echoes of Majora’s Mask.

Respects For The Gamer: I am weary of JRPGs that waste players’ time with cumbersome menus as well as inane and unessential dialogue. Half-Minute Hero seems to be designed by people who agree and have sped things along. Gameplay and fun appear to have been prioritized over tedious item management and maudlin narrative.

Final Thoughts

XSeed was showing only a tiny portion of the game. The official fact sheet for the title promises 15 hours of gameplay, spread across four modes of play that have 30 missions each. While missions can last more than 30-seconds if you make the necessary time-extension purchases in some missions, that still doesn’t add up. But who’s counting?

It may well be that the other modes of the game — conspicuously absent from the demo I was able to play — don’t share the hero mode’s ingenuity. That’s a key thing to look for as the game’s fall 2009 release approaches. Nevertheless, the game made the best first-impression of any new title I sampled this week.

To control an aeroplane in a Wii game, I have held the Wii Remote like a paper aeroplane.

I have held it like a flashlight, dipping and raising it to orient where my plane’s nose is pointing.

These schemes failed me when, unsupervised by representatives in attendance at publisher XSeed’s New York demo event last night, I took up Wii Remote and nunchuck and sent my World War II dogfighter into the drink.

The Sky Crawlers: Innocent Aces, this flight combat game from the developers of Ace Combat, is controlled differently.

Read this next part slowly, lest you be as flummoxed as I was.

The nunchuck controls plane movement. Tilt, twist, turn it and the plane does the same.

The Z-button on the nunchuck shoots the plane’s guns.

The C-button on the nunchuck switches weapons.

The Wii Remote controls the throttle, so it gets held vertically. Pulling it toward you speeds the plane up. Tilting it away slows the plane.

Tilting the nunchuck’s control stick lets the player pick from a batch of stunt maneuvers. Pressing A on the remote activates them.

Flying the plane into yellow circles on the game’s mini-map causes a meter to appear, a horizontal bar that slowly fills with colour. Pressing A as the meter fills makes the plane manoeuvre into position behind an enemy plane. The more that meter is filled, the better the resulting position is.

Once I got it, the controls worked well. Here’s to Project Aces for coming up with one of the stranger Wii control schemes yet.

A note about the story, which is its own brand of strange: I didn’t play more than a quick skirmish in the air, but the fact sheet reveals that the plot of this game involves a peaceful world that is nostalgic for the constant wars that used to befall it. To remedy the social unease caused by a lack of war, governments hire private companies and fliers, like the ones controlled in this game, to fight battles. The game’s hero is rookie pilot Lynx, who, according to the fact sheet, “becomes involved in a secret new military project with the goal of making pilots immortal.” This is a “somber story of a world that needs war to survive.”

The Sky Crawlers: Innocent Aces is a single-player Wii exclusive set for holiday release, published by XSeed and developed by Namco Bandai Games and Project Aces.

According to IGN, XSEED has picked up Namco Bandai’s slack, with Fragile: Farewell Ruins of the Moon arriving sometime this Winter. The game, which features the adventures of a boy name Seto in a post-apocalyptic world, makes extensive use of the Wii remote, which acts as a flashlight and metal detector in-game.

Pre-E3 2009: Fragile Coming to America! [IGN]

Losing the massively multiplayer aspects of the PC version but retaining a lot of the look and feel, Ragnarok Online DS is more of a traditional action RPG. The player takes on the role of the orphan Ares, who heads out to seek his fortune. He runs into a young girl with mysterious powers who has lost her memory, which pretty much covers all the standard RPG conventions. You still change job classes, gain levels, enhance your armour and weapons, and occasionally team with other players for wireless battles, but otherwise it sounds like a pretty standard RPG with Ragnarok trappings.

“We could not be more pleased to be involved in bringing such a well-known and beloved series on the PC to a handheld platform,” said Jun Iwasaki, President of XSEED Games. “Ragnarok Online DS stays true to the original while adding elements to optimise the experience on the Nintendo DS.”

Look for Ragnarok Online on the Nintendo DS this winter, and I promise this is the last time we’ll ever announce this game.

The DS games knowingly pay homage to Famicom-era day games of yore. The first game was introduced to American gamers as Retro Game Challenge by publisher XSEED. “Retro Game Challenge started off well but still hasn’t gotten to the point where we can justify bringing over the sequel,” XSEED’s Ken Berry said in a recent interview. “It’s amazing how many people write to thank us for publishing that game, so perhaps as those enthusiast fans continue to spread the word we will get to where we need to be eventually.”

Nice letters don’t translate into big sales. They do translate into nice letters, which is heartwarming. Heartwarming doesn’t pay the bills, though. And that’s sad.

RPGamer Feature – The Road to E3 – Little King’s Story Interview [RPG Gamer via GayGamer]

What is it with Wii games losing publishers? First Fatal Frame, now Muramasa – which was about the best-looking thing due on the console in 2009 – finds its American release up in the air.

Vanillaware’s gorgeous 2D side-scroller was supposed to be released by XSEED in North America later this year (it was released in Japan earlier this month). But the company today issued a statement that reads:

XSEED Games confirms that it is no longer involved with the North American release of Muramasa: The Demon Blade. XSEED Games and Marvelous had previously announced the game as part of the initial line up between the two publishing partners. We firmly believe in the product and will look forward to seeing it release in North America. We enjoy and respect our relationship with Marvelous, and are committed to working together to deliver an amazing line up of games in the US including the highly anticipated Little King’s Story, the epic RPG Arc Rise Fantasia and Suda51’s intriguing mystery adventure Flower, Sun, Rain.

So now Marvelous need to find somebody else to publish the game in the US. Please hurry!

XSEED Loses Muramasa: The Demon Blade [IGN]

For those of you with a low tolerance for hit points, the dynamic duo will also be showing off XSEED’s first DS games, Populous DS based on the classic PC game, KORG DS-10, a music creation program, and Retro Game Challenge, a mini-game title based on the Japanese Game Centre CX TV series. Perhaps these three non-RPG titles will calm me enough to keep the Rune Factory fan in me from dry-humping their booth.

Marvelous Entertainment USA and XSEED Games

Join Forces to Announce E3 2008 Line Up

Independent Game Publishers to Showcase Stellar Portfolio of Titles on Wii™ and Popular Handheld Systems

Torrance, Calif., (July 11, 2008) – Marvelous Entertainment USA and XSEED Games today announced its E3 plans which include a stellar line up of games for both Nintendo platforms, the Nintendo DS and Wii, as well as the PSP® (PlayStation®Portable) system. Both companies will display their portfolio of upcoming titles at E3 2008 which will be held at the Los Angeles Convention Centre from July 15th – 17th. E3 attendees are invited to visit the Marvelous Entertainment USA and XSEED Games booth located at Concourse Hall Pavilion #427.

“We’re very pleased to be able to give the North American audience a sneak peak at our upcoming lineup,” stated Yasuhiro Wada, Managing Director of Marvelous Entertainment. “This is just the beginning of some of the great games that we’ll be releasing in the US under our Marvelous Entertainment USA banner.”

“It’s been an amazing year for us, and we feel that we’re well positioned going into E3,” said Jun Iwasaki, President of XSEED Games. “We’ve got a fantastic partnership with Marvelous Entertainment which we greatly appreciate, and the overall line up of titles we’re showcasing is strong and diverse, which we’re exceptionally excited about.”

Games being shown under the Marvelous and XSEED Games partnership are:

Avalon Code DS

From the creative minds behind Rune Factory and Harvest Moon with the development studio responsible for the Final Fantasy III and Final Fantasy IV DS remakes comes Avalon Code, an action RPG boasting incredible graphics, a deep and engrossing story, and innovative game play mechanics. Using the main character’s ‘Book of Prophecy’, players can modify the rules of engagement during battle as well as weapon and monster attributes. The player even has control over the story as it changes depending on which gender the player chooses to play as, enhancing the ability to immerse themselves into the story. Avalon Code DS is scheduled for release Q1 2009. The game will be published in Europe by Rising Star Games*, a subsidiary of Marvelous Entertainment.

Rune Factory: Frontier Wii

From the creators of Harvest Moon and Rune Factory for the DS comes the first installment of Rune Factory for a home console. Developed exclusively for Wii, Rune Factory: Frontier features stunning graphics and takes full advantage of the Wii’s unique controls to fully immerse players in the Rune Factory universe. Rune Factory: Frontier incorporates an open-ended structure that allows players to choose the type of game they wish to experience. Whether it’s growing crops, expanding the town, fighting (or befriending) monsters or even falling in love, the experience is unique to each player. Rune Factory: Frontier Wii is scheduled for release Q1 2009. The game will be published in Europe by Rising Star Games*, a subsidiary of Marvelous Entertainment.

LITTLE KING’S STORY Wii

Little King’s Story has an art style that is very ’story-book’ in look and a magical fairy tale quality that will intrigue and delight gamers. The storyline, visual look, and lyrical music of Little King’s Story, work in concert to transport players to an interactive, enchanting, fairy tale world. By combining gameplay elements from life-simulation, real-time strategy, and adventure genres, the many aspects of creating a vast kingdom come to life! As King, players will manage and involve their townspeople in the goals of creating this new territory; enlisting them to dig for treasure, build new buildings and otherwise better their community. Of course, leadership is a two-way street, so as King, players will try to conquer rival nations to create a single unified kingdom, while also granting the requests of townspeople at whim. The game transforms the Wii Remote™ to a royal scepter and offers players the chance to be the best king in the world! Little King’s Story Wii is scheduled for release Winter 2008. The game will be published in Europe by Rising Star Games*, a subsidiary of Marvelous Entertainment.

VALHALLA KNIGHTS 2 PSP system

Sequel to the popular Valhalla Knights, Valhalla Knights 2 promises to give fans of the original game a vast and expansive world to explore, and the customisation tools to create the ultimate battle party. This action RPG (Role Playing Game) sequel adds new races, job classes, weapons, magic spells, foes, armour and more to the Valhalla Knights universe, all within an engrossing story arc. Controlling and choosing character aspects such as skills, race and appearance, players engage in real-time 6 on 6 battles, reliant on tactical combat strategies to achieve success. Supporting 2 player ad hoc network play, gamers can engage in Co-op and Versus modes with friends, or simply trade items and weapons. Valhalla Knights 2 PSP system is scheduled for release Fall 2008.

Separately, XSEED Games will unveil the company’s first official support of the Nintendo DS with three titles:

Populous™ DS

Based on the original Populous PC classic from Electronic Arts, Populous DS brings a re-imagination of the classic game, which pioneered the God simulation genre. Featuring touch-screen controls that utilise the dual-screens, players manipulate 5 elementally-imbued gods, each with their own unique miracles, within an extensive single-player campaign. Within the multiplayer wireless mode, up to 4 players can unleash earthquakes, tidal waves and raging volcanoes onto rival players’ lands. Populous DS is scheduled for release Fall 2008. The game will be published in Europe by Rising Star Games*, a subsidiary of Marvelous Entertainment.

KORG DS-10

Designed after the famous KORG MS-10 music synthesiser, KORG DS-10 is a music-creation program for professional and aspiring musicians alike. The sound sources in the KORG DS-10 come from KORG, one of the world’s top musical instrument producers, and no effort was spared in the replication of creating high-quality sounds. The Nintendo DS’s touch-screen controls are utilized to the fullest to provide an authentic feel and operability across a dual-screen layout that is unsurpassed in portable music creation. A 6-track/16-step sequencer enables precise control and provides a wide range of musical possibilities, and up to eight DS units can be linked via wireless connection to play together or to exchange sounds and songs. KORG DS-10 is scheduled for release Fall 2008.

Retro Game Challenge

An original game based on the popular Japanese GAME CENTRE CX TV series, Retro Game Challenge reinvents how classic games are played. Featuring a story-driven progression, players complete short challenges in a wide-variety of fictional re
tro-games. Specific challenges in shooting, racing, action and even an epic role-playing game are integrated into the story, while the in-game magazines offer cheat codes as well as fake 80’s news stories paying tribute to the rich history of the gaming industry. Released to raving reviews as Game Centre CX: Arino’s Challenge in Japan, the game received a Gold Award from Famitsu with a 33/40 review score. Retro Game Challenge is scheduled for release Winter 2008.