This Week in Games

Cowboys, Pirates and Ninja

Welcome back, everyone! I've been excited to get back into this column. I was blown over by the positive reception last week, thank you all kindly for the warm welcome. As a minor note, folks trying to type my name got it a little mixed up: my name is “Jean-Karlo”, not “Jean”. Kinda like Guy-Manuel, formerly of Daft Punk. Pedantry aside, we have a lot of really fun news this week. So: this is This Week In Games:

We prefer to focus on Japanese games in this column, but the name John Romero is too big to ignore. One of the creatives behind the masterpiece that is the original Doom, that old cornerstone of the first-person shooter genre, John Romero is a member of the old guard for game development; a name as hallowed as Roberta Williams, Robert Woodhead, or Will Wright. Sure, everyone still ribs the guy for Daikatana and its horribly misjudged promotion, but even now he has tremendous insight and wisdom to share with game developers young and old (which includes reminding his old coworkers of how things actually shook down at Id all those years ago—guy's got him some memory). And it turns out, Romero is gearing up for a new project: he tweeted out a link to his website where he's listing positions with his studio to create a new first-person shooter.

It's hard not to get excited when an old figurehead of the industry jumps back into the fray; while I can't promise we'll keep too close an eye on the project here at This Week In Games, I can say that this is nevertheless an exciting development for gamers in the U.S. Break a leg, Romero!

It's cool to see anime adapted to stage, like with the various anime adaptations handled by the Takarazuka Revue or that awesome One Piece kabuki adaptation (that was all inspired by a simple colored spread drawn by Oda!). And in a stunning twist, it looks like we're getting a video game adapted to the stage as a kabuki presentation: Final Fantasy X.

The show won't go live until spring of 2023, but the cast has already been announced: Kikunosuke Onoe, Shido Nakamura, Matsuya Onoe, and Yajuro Bando are set to star, although we still don't know who's playing which role. While Final Fantasy X may seem like a random choice for a kabuki, I think it makes perfect sense. FFX's setting was heavily inspired by Okinawa, and much of its world and aesthetics already had a very Japanese-inspired feel, from Yuna's kimono-esque white mage robes to Bahamut's sun disk on his back to Auron's ronin-esque shtick of keeping his arm tucked into his robes. I look forward to seeing the cast of FFX done up in kabuki aesthetics, this one's gonna be a winner.

So, VTubers! They're a thing! You love them, my desk is covered in the merch from my favorite one, and Anime Expo was no doubt crawling with VTubers wandering around incognito. It's no understatement to say that they're an established facet of internet culture now, and video game studios have taken notice. SEGA, in a brilliant turn, has turned Miles “Tails” Prower into a VTuber and produced a series of very cute videos where he “interviews” other Sonic characters (and he's still voiced by Colleen O'Shaughnessy!). While my understanding that a few well-known VTubers out there are already big fans of Apex Legends, it seems Respawn Entertainment wants to give fans a bone and has developed three unique 2D VTuber models for fans!

The three characters chosen—Mirage, Octane and Bangalore—all have some degree of social media addiction in their in-game lore, and the specific designs used are based off of their “anime” skins. Respawn even has a handy guide for would-be users getting these avatars up-and-running.

It's amazing to see developers actively support and nurture the VTuber community, especially with how much VTubing has grown in the U.S. since the summer of 2020. I hope some studios also throw 3D VTubers a bone (personally, Live2D is just janky and uncanny to me), but the ramifications of this are exciting. Will studios hire VTubers to promote their games in-character? Will we see other companies turn their mascots into VTubers? Good stuff to ruminate on, and I whole-heartedly encourage anyone curious about VTubing to check it out. I've already got a favorite and they're plastered all over my ita-bag, and I drag that bag to every convention I've been to, but there's always room for more folks out there. Someone needs a favorite, and everyone deserves to be someone's favorite.

Dudes handsomer, smarter, and with nicer dogs than me have spoken at length at the dire state of online play with fighting games—specifically, the lack of rollback netcode in big AAA releases. If you like Samurai Shodown, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, or Guilty Gear Strive, you know the pain of trying to play online: you basically can't, with how choppy the online play can be. And things are pretty dire when even mobile games like Skullgirls Mobile feature rollback for their online play but full-priced console games don't. So here we have Breakers Collection: a compilation of Visco Corporation's obscure fighting games Breakers and Breakers Revenge, currently being worked on by Qubyte—and they've got rollback netcode.

Qubyte has other goodies slated like an art gallery, crossover play, lobbies with unlockable cosmetics, and even an interactive replay function (allowing players to record matches and replay them from a specific moment). But it's the rollback that sticks out: here are a pair of fighting games from the mid-to-late 90s—and they have rollback. I'm not even that big a fan of fighting games, and this is frustrating. There's nothing worse than paying money for a game and basically not being able to play it online. As for Breakers Collection: it's way cool to see it getting repackaged. I don't know horribly much about it, just that I was introduced to it via a busted cabinet at an out-of-the-way ice skating rink in Puerto Rico. I'm always down for old cult hits getting resurrected in some capacity. Qubyte doesn't have a release date yet for the Breakers Collection, but old-school fighting game fans have a lot to be excited about.

Hey, so, remember the Black Lagoon manga by Rei Hiroe, basically a very violent John Woo movie in anime form about a modern-day crew of pirates led by the violent, angry “Two-Hand” Revy and her run-ins with all aspects of the criminal underworld? I sure do. Rei Hiroe, whose art also graced the Re:Creators anime, is skilled at drawing women with fangs who are both drop-dead gorgeous but also look like they'll eat my face. And Hiroe is no stranger to particular proclivities: Revy canonically dabbled in bondage-themed sex work in her past (and Hiroe has drawn art of it). It's a fun, violent anime, and it's a bit of a shame it never got a video game adaptation. So what better for a series about violent, sexy women than a collab with a video game series about sexy, violent women?

The Taimanin universe is, for the uninitiated, a series of visual novels about a cadre of demon-slaying ninja in skintight spandex and their misadventures in keeping demons out of Japan's criminal underworld. It's been going on since 2005 and besides the obvious visual novel spin-offs and adult OVA adaptations, it's also been given some mobile game spin-offs. Most relevant is Taimanin RPG, a mobile RPG series where you roll the gacha for your favorite Anti-Demon ninja in various scanty outfits and have at it. And apparently, they're collabing with Black Lagoon, of all things: starting July 31st, players can roll for Revy, the Russian mafia boss Balalaika and the ex-FARC member-cum-maid Roberta. Rei Hiroe himself drew the new art for Revy and Balalaika himself (and of course took the chance to stick Revy in a skintight ninja outfit), while regular Taimanin artist Kagami drew Roberta.

It's not the first time Taimanin RPG has had an out-there cameo: not too long ago, they had a Super Sonico crossover. Sonico wasn't put into any kind of compromising situation, and Hiroe himself confirmed Revy won't be on the business end of orc shenanigans...but it's still an interesting development. Considering how Fate was able to make the jump from a Comiket visual novel with a strange predilection for shellfish to a multimedia giant with theatrical films and a world-famous mobile game, I'd always hoped Taimanin would also someday make the jump. I mean, it's easy enough: folks dig ninja chicks, it can't be too hard to just make a raunchy late-night anime, keep the exposed naughty bits for the Blu-ray release, and call it a day. There's already a safe-for-work Taimanin game in the U.S.: Action Taimanin. I wouldn't call it great, but I play it almost every day (though you won't catch me dead paying for any costumes--$30 for a skin is a highway robbery). At any rate: I'm gobsmacked that this is a crossover I lived to see happen. I'd have expected something like Queen's Blade long before I would have expected Black Lagoon, but oh well.

This past week was Metal Gear Solid's 35th anniversary. Cool. But Metal Gear creator Hideo Kojima also took the time to highlight that other video game series he made: Boktai. This past weekend was the Boktai series' 19th anniversary, and Kojima had some kind words to say about the franchise.

Boktai was a strange beast: Kojima, being the creative guy who loves finding fourth-wall-breaking methods of interacting with games, spearheaded the development of a Game Boy Advance title with a UV-sensor embedded in the cartridge. Then, he created a world with a pleasant blend of his favorite spaghetti western references (the main character's name is “Django”) and Norse mythology, and set players off to banish vampires, golems and other “immortals” with the power of the Sun and this neat solar-gun they found. Sunlight was vital to playing the game: you couldn't kill bosses or recharge your gun without it. But you also had to be smart about how much exposure you got—not just because of the threat of skin cancer, but also because certain in-game elements were affected by the sun. Enemies moved faster in brighter sunlight, for example. The games were very inventive with its puzzles and even tracked the phases of the moon, for good measure. The first game, Boktai: The Sun Is In Your Hand!, was a straight-up portable take on Metal Gear Solid, focusing on stealth and evasion. The second game, Boktai: Solar Boy Django, was more of an action-RPG with some fun crossover elements with Mega Man Battle Network 4. The third Boktai game never came to the U.S. (at least you guys got Metal Gear Solid V), and Boktai DS was rebranded as Lunar Knights in the U.S. for whatever reason.

And... that was that. Outside of the Gun del Sol appearing in Metal Gear Ac!d and Metal Gear Solid IV: Guns of the Patriots, Boktai was largely forgotten. There were plenty of Battle Network crossovers, and Boktai DS even had Mega Man Star Force's Omega-Xis as an obtainable Terrenial—and all that was dummied out in the U.S. Outside of Kojima occasionally tweeting out nostalgia for Boktai, it's been crickets. Kojima would go on to tweet a navel-gazing rumination about how amazing a Boktai game for mobile devices would be, especially if they took GPS positioning and local weather forecasts into consideration. But I don't think he'll be making that, Kojima seems happy as a clam playing at being a filmmaker and rubbing shoulders with Norman Reedus as he works on SAN-D or whatever.

It does seem, though, that other people think Kojima's idea is solid, because as we researched this story it turns out there's actually a Boktai fan game that utilizes local weather forecasts. Kura5: Bonds of the Undying is very careful with its tributes to Boktai, replicating its aesthetic and gameplay while also having enough distinctions in case Konami comes knocking. It's got a lot of fun ideas and hey, the art style is making me feel like a kid playing on my GBA in 80-degree tropical sunlight (and worrying the faculty of my school, to which my parents could only say, “Jean-Karlo doesn't mind the heat"). It'd be nice if we got a new Boktai game or something, but I know better at this point. Silent Hill fans and Metal Gear fans don't have anything new to teach me about disappointment from Konami.

Still, happy 19th to Boktai. That's a whole lot of great Boktai days.

Nintendo sure had a busy week! Last week, we made a minor mention of Nintendo's new policy for its gay employees, but we figure it's big enough to reiterate: Nintendo is now extending full benefits to same-sex partners and common-law marriages for employees working in the company. Same-sex couples aren't yet legally recognized in Japan and in fact were deemed “unconstitutional” this past June 20th, but Nintendo is making moves on that front all the same.

Now, Nintendo has seen some controversy over the treatment of its employees: several accounts of poor treatment towards contract workers had broken out a few months back. But it still bears mentioning that Nintendo nevertheless has always tried to do right by its employees—lest we forget the late Satoru Iwata taking a 50% pay cut during Nintendo's lean years to ensure no employees were laid off, a move that to this day casts a lot of shadows on a lot of executives at studios worldwide. This new development is certainly a welcome one, and I hope it leads to a healthier work culture at Nintendo—and maybe to some positive change at large.

But that's not all that Nintendo's been up to! Nintendo also acquired Dynamo Pictures and rebranded them to Nintendo Pictures. The former Dynamo Pictures has a short but impressive resume of support work, having had a hand in the CG for things like CG modeling, motion capture and production assistance for works like Evangelion: 2.0 You Can (Not) Advance or Resident Evil: Infinite Darkness. Also, they produced a series of Pikmin shorts for Nintendo.

Presumably, the new Nintendo Pictures will focus on creating animated content for Nintendo. Whether this is a response to that Mario Bros movie starring Chris Pratt, I won't theorize upon, but Nintendo clearly means to make bigger moves into the world of multimedia and it seems they'd rather do things in-house moving forward. What kind of works can we expect? Too soon to say. Of course, there will be some Mario, Kirby and Zelda stuff. Come to think of it, some animated shorts tying into Breath of the Wild 2 would be fantastic. Something to lean in on Fire Emblem's prodigious fame would also be great. Who knows, we might even get a totally crazy deal and see a Captain N revival! The sky's the limit! I just hope we get to see Link whine “Well, ex-cuuuuse me, Princess!” again.

Xenoblade fans got an extra treat this week with the release of the eight-minute-long Overview Trailer for Xenoblade Chronicles 3. At the time of publication, the game is only a week away from release, so expectations are running high. The trailer itself isn't really anything new: much of the information it imparts is transcribed from the Xenoblade 3 Nintendo Direct from earlier this summer. But it nevertheless helps to have a primer on the game. It goes over the central conflict between the nations of Agnus and Keves, the party system, the camp system, Interlinking your party's paired units into Ouroboroses, and the massive explorable worlds that are the Xenoblade series' trademark. The class system is still very complicated at first blush, so I won't begrudge anyone who thinks the battle interface is a hot mess because holy hell, is it ever. But there is a lot of thought put into this series, and I think longtime series vets can appreciate how systems have evolved. The six-member party condenses the complicated Blade/Driver setup from Xenoblade 2, while also incorporating some of Torna: The Golden Country's engaging battle system. The camp system is similarly from Torna, and promises lots of Tales Of...-esque cooking and character skits. The Hero system, wherein parties play host to a seventh unique character, feels like an attempt at capturing the legacy of Blades as expansions to the party—and also an excuse to bring in more anime artists at drawing wild, wild characters.

I am so sorry for folks who weren't able to get the Xenoblade 3 special edition set because there is gonna be so much fun stuff in that art book. But if it makes folks feel any better: Nintendo won't be shipping out the special edition goodies until sometime late this autumn. Until then: anyone interested in Xenoblade 3 can look forward to picking it up on the 29th!

And rounding things off for Nintendo's barrage of news, we have a new Kirby game coming: Kirby's Dream Buffet! While Kirby and the Forgotten Land still has that new-game smell, Dream Buffet is something else entirely. Going by the trailer, it seems to be an answer to Fall Guys: Kirby and company roll around in various stages, competing in mini-games until one puff-ball is the ruler of the ice-cream mountain. It's not a bad idea; HAL Lab has always experimented with multiplayer experiences with Kirby, like with Kirby Battle Royale or Team Kirby Crash Deluxe. And at worst, these have been fun little distractions. I can't say I'm looking forward to a monetized Kirby game where we're nickel-and-dimed for cute add-ons like hats for Kirby or a Meta-Knight avatar, but it's a format that works and could see some profit for HAL Lab.

Sony recently announced PlayStation Stars, a new loyalty program along the lines of Nintendo's, er, “My Nintendo” program. It's a simple enough affair: it's free to opt-in, and you earn points by just playing Sony games, although extra points are earned by taking part in monthly campaigns, earning specific trophies, or joining tournaments. There aren't too many details on what you can use the points for outside of PSN wallet funds or vague “PlayStation Store products,” but it's the introduced “digital collectibles” that raises my eyebrow. Emphatically not NFTs, “digital collectibles” consist of digitized statues of Sony-branded characters and devices, and apparently will come in a variety of rarities.

So, they're basically NFTs that aren't on the blockchain.

I mean, at least they're not on the blockchain and they (presumably) can't be exchanged for any kind of cash value? But everything associated to NFTs has soured me on the concept of any kind of “digital collectible.” It's one thing to unlock little CG renders of character models in a video game, that kind of bonus was fun in stuff like Mega Man X: Command Mission or Tales of Symphonia. Making that an out-and-out reward for a service as some kind of incentive just rubs me the wrong way. It reminds me a little of Steam trading cards, another (older) form of speculation that didn't really go anywhere after it came out. It's a pity because you could totally do things like wallpapers or exclusive themes for your home menu. Those wouldn't feel quite as gross as... I dunno, using your points to roll a gacha for a possible Ultra-Rare variant of Bingo and Toghopper. And if I get a CG statue of Parappa the Rapper, you're just going to make me want another Parappa the Rapper game, and wouldn't that be a more productive use of your time than just making variants of Parappa the Rapper's model?

At any rate, we still have no word on PlayStation Stars' initiation date, but so far it doesn't seem horrible, lack of faith in “digital collectibles” notwithstanding.

• Arcade classic Avenging Spirit is set for a port to Nintendo Switch's eShop! It's like a mix of Ghost Trick with Little Nemo the Dreammaster: you play the ghost of a murder victim who possesses characters to rescue his girlfriend. Lots of fun arcade-y variety is promised by the trailer!
• Disappointed by Sonic Origins' many performance issues? SEGA's social media manager promises “they're on it”; improvements to come shortly!
• Are you a Golden Axe fan? Because Bandai is selling some figures of Golden Axe characters from Storm Collectibles, like Tyris Flare. They're expensive, but for a Golden Axe fan I presume it's as good as you can get for now.
• If you've been interested in the Azure Striker Gunvolt series but insist on playing it on PC, good news: the upcoming third Gunvolt game is getting a PC port and is slated for a Winter 2022 release date!
• Daisy has been patched into Mario Strikers: Battle League in a free patch as of the 21st of July, and there was much rejoicing. Local princess says, "Hi, I'm Daisy!".
• If you haven't played Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of Dana, there's good news: it's getting a PS5 port this November 15th! It's still out for Nintendo Switch and PS4 too, there's never been a better time to get into Ys.
• If you're like me and you love Breath of Fire 2, you'll be thrilled to hear there's an awesome vinyl LP of the soundtrack coming out! The liner notes are written by Axe of the Bloodgod hostess and Capcom-superfan Nadia Oxford. Preorders are live, and the set is due for release Q4 2022.

And that's another week in the books. I do hope that these columns are a fun way for you guys to kick off your weekend, because they sure are a nice way to spend my summer nights. What about you guys? Think you'll take the VTuber plunge with Apex Legends? Do you have fond memories of Boktai or Breakers? Are you guys looking forward to the Final Fantasy kabuki experience? Did you have $32 to toss for Asagi's Taimanin Asagi 2 skin in Action Taimanin? Lemme know in the comments, it's fun seeing you guys get excited about stuff in there. Be good to each other, I'll see you in seven.