by [name redacted]

Week five of my ongoing, irreverent news column; originally posted at Next Generation

Finally this week, a good balance: not too many games, not too few. About the same number of Japanese and North American releases. Some mainstream, some casual, and some incredibly obscure and hardcore releases. If only the release calendar were always so even, maybe videogame sales wouldn’t slump so much in the summer. Have at you! (Remember to note the release region.)

Today (August 08):

Madden NFL 06 (DS/GBA/Gamecube/PS2/Xbox)
EA Sports/EA Sports (NA)

Yes, yes. Another Madden release. EA’s stock price goes up, enabling it to buy out another six or seven indie developers who were daft enough to sign publishing deals in the last few years. Or maybe buy out Activision. Or Equador. I understand Saudi Arabia’s government is going through a period of transition. Weird what can happen to a company when it goes public. I wonder what Trip Hawkins thinks of his old labor of love. The company that was founded to promote game designers as authors in their own right.

Oh, whoops. Sorry. Tangent. This is a football game in what I understand is a popular series that began on the Sega Genesis in 1991, on one of those weird custom cartridges that EA manufactured before it bothered to acquire an actual license to publish Genesis games. I am told each incarnation of the game is essentially the same as the previous year’s, with a few slight adjustments and an updated team roster. I am also told that the last couple of games have been a little better than usual. That’s nice. I guess.

The 2006 edition (that is, the one released in 2005) is reported to feature a “brand new passing game” in the “Quarterback Vision Control system”; “Formation Specific Audible”; and some fiddling with the offensive and defensive games. There’s also a “Superstar Mode” single player game, which allows the player to “live the life of an NFL star”. I’m sure this must appeal to a lot of people. If you’re one of them, now you know which mega-corporation to support. Get to it!

Jump Superstars (DS)
Ganbarion/Nintendo (J)

In Japan, this is intended to be one of the “big” DS titles, to help sell it to hardcore and mainstream gamers the way that Nintendogs and all of those quiz games have sold it to a casual audience. In a nutshell, it’s Smash Bros. with Goku and Naruto instead of Mario and Link. More than a mere licensed game, you can kind of think of this as the Super Robot Wars of fighting games. All of the most major Shounen Jump properties are represented, from One Piece to Bobobo-bo Bo-bobo.

The game also uses the DS hardware to bring a few novel elements to fighting games. Fighting takes place on the top screen; the bottom has what looks like a manga page. What you do is you tap a panel of the manga to activate a special ability – whetherbeit switching characters, calling in a striker, or boosting to your character’s powers. Controls and game system are variations on things you’ve seen before. The visuals are defiantly two-dimensional, which makes sense both from a design and a license perspective. Looks pretty enjoyable. What with Jump’s recent entry to the North American market, this seems to stand a chance for release here, though I somehow doubt Nintendo of America will pick it up.

Tomorrow (August 09):

Sacred Underworld (PC)
Ascaron GmbH/Ascaron GmbH (NA)

An expansion pack for Ascaron’s action-RPG, Sacred (winner of PC Gamer’s “Best Roleplaying Game 2004” award). This expansion seems to continue the plot of the original game, adding a scenario whereby following the original end of the game, the player is dragged into the eponymous underworld, the goal being to find (mercy me) the Portal of Hell.

The add-on introduces two new characters, half a dozen new regions, two more plot chapters, expands the gameworld by 40%, adds a bunch of new monsters, items, armor, side quests – heck, you know what to expect. It’s only twenty bucks, so if you own and enjoy the original you might as well upgrade.

August 10:

RHEM 2 (PC)
Knut Mueller/Got Game Entertainment (NA)

Wow. What’s with all of the Myst clones, lately? I keep hearing that the PC adventure genre is dead; researching this column is doing a good job to convince me otherwise.

RHEM 2 follows from the plot of the original RHEM, released in the summer of 2003; same developer, same publisher. In that game, the player arrived in a surreal alternate world by stolen rail car. At the end, apparently, the player discovers a hidden underground city; that’s where this sequel takes place. Both games have the eerie sense of style and Place lacking in most Mystalikes. Even from the screenshots, RHEM seems like a reasonably well-considered world. Of the games coming out this week, this one intrigues me the most. If you want to check out the original RHEM, it seems to only cost about twenty bucks now. If you’ve the pocket change, go to it. Show some support.

August 11:

Kyouryuu Ouja Ketteisen: Kyouryuu Grand Prix (DS)
MTO/MTO (J)

I almost skipped this game, until I realized it’s a DINOSAUR RACER. Aside from its Westernized title – “Dinosaur Grand Prix” – and the above screenshot, I seriously can find no information on this game. It’s driving me nuts. I had to mention it, though. I mean, how many DINOSAUR RACERS do you see in the average month?

Konchuu no Mori no Daibouken (GBA)
Culture Brain/Culture Brain (J)

More beetle wrestling! This one’s made by Culture Brain instead of Sega. That just means it’s the twenty-third best-selling GBA game on certain import sites instead of the third-best. You probably don’t care about this game. I don’t either. We at Next Generation, however, pride ourselves on the completeness of our beetle coverage compared to other Western gaming sites. More on this pressing issue as it develops!

Sonic Gems Collection (GCN/PS2)
Sonic Team/Sega (J)

So, okay. Mega Collection contained every Sonic game made for the Genesis, right? Except for Sonic CD and Knuckles Chaotix, I mean? At the time, Sonic Team claimed it couldn’t include Sonic CD due to space issues. Given that otherwise the entire Genesis catalog must have taken up almost fifty megs on the Gamecube disc, I can see where the concern must have from.

Now, though, we’re getting Sonic CD. And Sonic: The Fighters! Rad! That’s never been released on home consoles before. And Sonic R – well, that’s fine. Might as well include it. And the Streets of Rage trilogy! Which… has nothing to do with either Sonic or Sonic Team, but who cares. And… the same Game Gear games that were included on the Xbox and PS2 versions of Mega Collection. Hm. Whatever. And… well, that’s it.

Hold on. That’s it? No SegaSonic arcade? No Knuckles Chaotix? According to Sonic Team director Yojiro Ogawa, the issue is “whether gamers will accept Sonic Gems Collection. If Gems becomes popular among consumers and they are eager for more, it may well be that we include these games [in a future compilation].” … What?

Well at least we’ve got Streets of Rage. Whoops! Actually, those games are being removed for the US release of the compilation, as they would drive up the ESRB rating. Instead we’re getting Vectorman.

Oh well; at least we should finally get a choice of soundtrack for Sonic CD, right? Whoops! No, actually. Ogawa says that each region’s edition of Sonic CD will only have its intended soundtrack. The reason cited: space issues, again. Though instead, each edition will come with a bunch of remixed music from both versions of Sonic CD.

…

Let’s look at this for a moment, shall we? A Gamecube disc holds about two gigs, right? Sonic CD, without its soundtrack, takes up 223 megs of space. Compressed, each soundtrack is just under forty megs. Sonic-R is a Saturn game, that came on a standard CD, most of which was taken up by Richard Jaques’ infamous redbook score. So it can’t be much larger. Shot in the dark, let’s say it’s another 260 megs. Sonic: the Fighters takes up eighteen megs. Factor in an enormously generous fifty megs for the emulation code, and that brings us to 631 megs. Let’s throw in another ridiculous fifty megs for art assets, and we have 681 megs.

So. Ogawa’s lying through his teeth, just as Naka has in the past. I don’t know what’s going on, really. Speculate as you will. There’s no reason on heaven or earth that a Gamecube disc can’t hold the entire Sonic catalogue through the Saturn era – with plenty of room to spare.

This is, of course, the Japanese release – so if you import it, you will get the Bare Knuckle games. And heck, Bare Knuckle 3 is significantly better than Streets of Rage 3 anyway. And you will get the Hataya Naofumi soundtrack for Sonic CD instead of the well-composed though slightly inappropriate Spencer Nilsen one. And you will also probably pay a lot more for the benefit. There’s just no winning with Sonic Team these days.

The North American release will be next week, alongside a new Gamecube bundle with Super Smash Bros. Melee (you wonder why Nintendo didn’t do this two years ago), actually a rather good Hello Kitty game, and the first original game from Dark Moon Studios (formerly Sammy Studios), the vampire Western FPS Darkwatch. There’s some neat stuff happening; come back next Monday to find out what’s so neat about it.