The Japanese game industry is seeing some interesting times, with the Wii and DS dominating the sales charts while Sony's platforms falter. Famitsu recently asked analysts with Japanese firms Daiwa Securities, Nomura Securities and Mitsubishi UFJ Securities to share their thoughts on how things are shaping up for the game market as the 2007 fiscal year winds down.

Daiwa Securities' Eiji Maeda pointed to Gundam Musou and Virtua Fighter 5 as key software titles for the end of the fiscal year. He believes that sales of these two titles are important for the PlayStation 3 as a whole, and that other software manufacturers should be paying attention to them. Nomura's Yuta Sakurai also made mention of Gundam Musou as a key title for the end of the term, but added Monster Hunter Portable 2nd to the list. He feels that this game will push PSP hardware.

Everyone seems to be down on the PS3 and up on the Wii. Maeda believes Sony won't be able to get actual sales of six million PS3s by the end of the term. In contrast, he believes Nintendo will be able to ship out six million Wii units (2 million to Japan, 3 million to America, 1 million to Europe) and that the demand for the system won't die down for some time. Sakurai believes Sony's worldwide PS3 shipments will reach the 4.5 million mark, and stop there, while Nintendo will be able to ship 6.5 million systems. He also feels that the Wii supply problem won't clear up by the end of the term.

UFJ's Hiroshi Murakami thinks that the current retail state, where PS3's are readily available and Wii is nowhere to be found, will continue for a while. The Summer of 2007 will be the biggest fight for the PS3, he believes. Murakami believes strongly in the scenario of the PS3 being the number one system 3 to 5 years from now, and expects this state to come into view at the end of 2007.

Outside of the next generation, the analysts offers some interesting thoughts on the DS. Sakurai believes that the system saw its Japanese sales peak in 2006 and that sales will gradually go down from here on. However, he believes that the system's flame was lit in Europe over the holiday season, and that 2007 will be the breakout year over there. Murakami believes that while the DS's success will continue throughout the term, the end of 2007 is a bit unclear. There's the possibility that the light users will move away from the system. He feels that Dragon Quest IX will be the big test.

via ign ...

via IGN

SEGA has some of the most well-known and classic franchises in all of gaming. The company is currently working on bringing some of these classics to current platforms and reinvigorating them for a new generation of fans. One of these franchises is Crazy Taxi, the fan-favorite, arcadey series that first appeared on the Dreamcast back in early 2000.

The goal of Crazy Taxi is extremely simple - pick up a passenger and get them to their destination as quickly as possible. Rinse and repeat. That describes the Taxi portion of its name, but it's the Crazy part that made it fantastic fun. The city is your playground, and you needn't obey any rules getting your fares to their destination. Cruising through oncoming traffic, smashing into other vehicles, catching air off of one of the game's numerous jumps or cutting through a shortcut here and there are all part of the game. Crazy Taxi 2 changed cities, added a Crazy Jump for hopping your car into the air at any time and introduced a number of new and addictive mini-games.


Currently slated for release sometime this summer on the PSP, Crazy Taxi: Fare Wars will put gamers behind the wheel of a taxi once again, all in classic form. A mixture of the original Dreamcast releases of Crazy Taxi 1 and 2, Fare Wars will allow players to select which game they want to play and drop them right into either classic. The games are direct ports of the Dreamcast games, though SEGA will be putting on a little extra polish to give it some added visual flair, like specular lighting on the cars, environment maps on the buildings for nice reflections and some enhanced particle effects.

Beyond the visual upgrades and some enhanced jukebox options, the games will be identical to their Dreamcast counterparts. The PSP's control setup is almost exactly the same that we saw on the Dreamcast, minus having buttons instead of triggers for L and R. This means that no concessions had to be made for any of the game's mechanics and all of the classic moves are still to be found within, like the Crazy Boost or Crazy Slide.

Crazy Taxi: Fare Wars will also introduce some multiplayer functionality for play over Ad-Hoc. SEGA is keeping mum on exactly what modes we'll see here for now, though we do know the game will be limited to two players and that you'll be able to choose what features from each game that you want to use (you can turn on Crazy Jump for us in the first city, for example).

The build that we had a chance to play yesterday was in a pre-alpha stage and didn't feature any of the planned visual upgrades. The framerate also ran at only about 70% of the target rate, though it was still reasonably smooth. While the game was certainly playable, the unoptimized framerate meant that it was difficult to pull off some of the moves as we had to slow our finger movements down to match the game speed. We're told this won't be a problem in the final release however.


Aside from these slight issues, the game immediately brought back memories of our Dreamcast favorite. Shortcuts and such came right back to use, and our fingers ached to perform some of the special moves even though we thought we'd forgotten them ages ago. Assuming that SEGA can pull this one up to speed so that it plays a tad cleaner, we're looking at a better-than-the-original port here.

Crazy Taxi: Fare Wars is currently scheduled to ship sometime during the summer. Given the game's somewhat early progress, SEGA doesn't want to pin down an exact timeframe yet, but we should be picking up passengers and carting them off to the baseball stadium sooner than later. ...

via ign

One of the many franchises that SEGA is working on rejuvenating on the PSP is its air combat classic After Burner. Scheduled for release at the end of March, After Burner: Black Falcon is a return to the arcade series of yesteryear with controls, speed and visuals that perfectly match the original that we sunk hundreds of quarters to play back in the good ol' days. We covered the game's single-player portion in our hands-on last month, but we recently had a chance to spend some time with the game's multiplayer modes.

Black Falcon will feature both cooperative and competitive multiplayer for play over an Ad-Hoc local network. With support for up to four players in the competitive Mad Cow mode (and two for the co-op), SEGA is aiming to provide gamers with a brand-new way to experience its classic franchise.

Though we were only able to play through a single mission, our initial take is that the cooperative play is a great deal of fun. Seeing your buddy boost ahead of you, perform a barrel roll and then take out a line of enemy jets is a pretty cool sight to see, almost as rewarding as when you're the one pulling off the Maverick-inspired stunts.

The host's game dictates which missions will be available to the players, and the host will be able to save any progress you make, enabling you to play through the entire story cooperatively. For points and cash, the host is able to set whether everything is split evenly between the two players or whether all of the winnings will go to the host - useful if the host is a new player and needs some quick cash to get up to speed.

Both players will share a total of six lives per level. That is, if one player dies five times but the other manages to survive the entire mission, you'll be able to finish. Black Falcon also uses rubber banding to keep both players reasonably close together so that the action stays hectic.

The competitive Mad Cow mode is something like the Oddball mode from Halo. One player will start in possession of the cow, which is actually tethered to the bottom of his or her jet and looks rather silly (in a good way). Points are racked up for every second someone can keep the cow, while the other players attempt to take out the carrier. Doing so will earn the cow for the player, and that person will start racking up points.

The person carrying the cow will regenerate health over time, helping them keep it longer, and they're able to fire off an EMP charge behind their jet in order to take out people behind them. This takes the place of the roll maneuver, so they need to manually dodge missiles as they come in.

Mad Cow seems like an okay bit of fun, but we're not sure how much strategy is involved here so it may wind up getting old pretty quickly. When we snagged the cow we just kept boosting forward while moving from side to side and dropping EMP charges. Being as you can't see what's going on behind you, this is really your best option. You can throw on the brakes and let your opponents fly right by and then attempt to take them out from behind, but this seems more risky than anything else. Still, we only had time for one round of Mad Cow so we'll see if it's more fun when we can sit down and really dig into it.

After Burner: Black Falcon is currently slated for release on March 20th, so get your thrusters warmed up. ...

via ign

Crush is a game that I want to play. Developed specifically for the PSP by Kuju Entertainment (Battalion Wars, Fire Warrior), it's one of the most original games yet created for the PlayStation Portable and a title with a ton of potential (it does have similarities to Super Paper Mario after all). What's most surprising thing about this project, though, is that it isn't a sandbox game or some kind of epic actioner -- it's just a clever puzzler.

In it, you assume the role of Dan, a guy who has spent most of his life trying to work out various personal issues and a dude who can't shake his terrible insomnia. His life has gotten pretty bad to be honest, and in a last ditch effort to keep himself from going crazy, our young hero has succumbed to the miracle of hypnosis. As Dan is put under, he's charged with one mission: to solve the mysteries of his past, uncover his repressed memories, and save his sanity before it's too late.

What really makes this concept interesting is that "the mysteries of Dan's past" are actually a series of reality-defying brainteasers. Set in four different environments (a city, the seaside, and two others), each puzzle challenges players to solve problems in multiple dimensions. Best described as an Escher painting come to life, each subconscious enigma begins as a 3D world with an exit that's seemingly impossible to reach. In truth, that's your only real goal (well that, and collecting marbles that actually unlock a gateway) and all you have to do to reach that goal is walk to the open door.

The trick is that getting from your starting point to the door is easier said than done; there's never a straight line from point A to B, and users have to figure out how to overcome such challenging obstacles. Rooftops without access ladders, 20-foot jumps, and doorways upside down and underneath you are just some of the conundrums you can expect.

So how do you solve this mystery? The only way to do it is to "Crush," which is to stomp your foot like Heihachi (with the Left Trigger) so that you can transform the environment into a 2D plane instead of a three-dimensional one. What angle the camera is pointed at and what kind of surface you're standing determines what happens following each crush as well -- so this can mean that, depending on your angle, you might create a platform ladder or activate some kind of machine to help you progress. Once you "Uncrush" back to the 3D world, you can travel to your next spot and repeat if necessary.

As complicated as it might sound in the written word, it's pretty easy to get the hang of when you see it. All the stages I saw, for example, took place in a nighttime neon city that had all manner of bizarre puzzles to solve. But as I watched the producer crush and uncrush his way through the various areas to get to the next area, it quickly became evident how simple and addictive this sucker could be. Swapping between the 2D and 3D planes is an extremely cool concept and limiting users only to jumping and crouching puts an emphasis on choosing the right camera angle and one other simple goal: to get the hell out of there.

Unfortunately SEGA hasn't given a solid release date for Crush yet (it's just "summer" for now), so it's still up in the air as to how long it will be before we can sit down and play it at length. Company reps did tell me, however, that there's still a lot of work to be done and that the final game will have somewhere between 40 and 50 stages (and possibly even downloadable content, but that decision hasn't been made yet). With an order that high, it could be several months before it's shown again.

But personally, I'm willing to wait those months if it means we're getting a high-level puzzler out of it. Crush has a very compulsory feel to it, and the idea that there's actually a story to tell (told Memento style as you regress further and further into your memories) is a nice extra touch. The art style is pretty sweet too and the camera doesn't seem to have any noticeable problems. Hopefully, Crush can impress me this much again the next time it crosses our path. ...

via ign

Mayhem and motors have always gone hand in hand, and one franchise that attempted to capitalize on this concept is the Full Auto series. With a heavy emphasis on concepts like "Destruction Matters," Full Auto let drivers race through streets, trashing buildings and other environmental objects in their attempt to finish first. The sequel added to the mayhem with more cars, new environments and arena style combat. Well, the car combat is now spilling over to the portable track with Full Auto 2: Battlelines for the PSP.

While the game may have the same name as the PS3 version, this isn't a scaled down port of that title. Instead, Deep Fried Entertainment, who's developing the PSP version, overhauled just about every single facet of the racer. For example, the career mode no longer takes place in Meridian City. Nor does it have an AI informing you of what you need to do or what races you have to enter to proceed. Instead, the battles now take place across the entire world, with races found in the USA, Europe and Asia. While there are various events that you'll enter, such as coming in first place or defeating specific rivals, there's also a lot more choice provided to drivers. Players now have the option to decide whether they want to complete every single event available to them, or if they'd rather blaze through the game and face off against the "boss" racers.

The number of vehicles has changed as well for the PSP version. Battlelines now features 15 cars, nine of which are completely new to the series. While there are no licensed cars within the game, players will easily pick up on car bodies inspired by Mustangs, Vipers and other machines. Players will be able to customize these cars with a number of car skins and vinyls. While each car has five skins, over 200 vinyls are included in the game for every car. Players will also have the option to choose from 18 weapons (10 of which are new) to equip their machine, although there's a new twist to the arms placement. Weapons can now be mounted on the front, side or rear of the car, giving you additional flexibility in battle. For instance, if you place machine guns on the front and side of your car, you can fire three spreads of bullets instead of the customary two.

Battlelines isn't just a single player experience; up to four players can engage in ad hoc battles in arenas or races. Every multiplayer option from the PS3 version of the game has been brought over to the PSP game, and the various events from the single player have also been carried over into multiplayer. This means that you aren't necessarily going to try to be first in a race, because you may need to eliminate a number of obstacles or defeat specific cars to win.

Of course, the PS3 version of Battlelines used both analog sticks to help you control the car and target your opponents. Due to the lack of a second analog nub, the PSP provides limited auto targeting to help you take down other racers. It also gives you the opportunity to take advantage of Destruction Matters moments. Whenever the reticule flashes yellow, players can hit the triangle button and lock onto an object. If they fire once the reticule turns red, they can trigger the moment and spill the obstacles on the road, blocking or even destroying opponents. Bolstered by songs from Wolfmother, Sum 41 and Stone Sour, car combat fans should be ready to take first place when Full Auto 2: Battlelines hits shelves this march. ...

via ign

Tales of Destiny 2 hit the Japanese PSP on Thursday morning. That officially left us in an anomalous state -- no Tales game in the pipeline.

Well, enjoy the silence while it lasts, cuz it's lasting exactly six days. Bandai Namco updated its Tales Channel website with news of a "surprising announcement," to take place on 2/21.

There have been promises of "surprising announcements" at the Tales Channel site before, but they tended to result in something unsurprising, like a new Tales game. Sure enough, the announcement appears to be for a new game in the series. Bandai Namco promises a new entry in a popular sub-series of the franchise.

Destiny? Eternia? World? Check back around 2/21 for the announcement. ...

Ratx has released a new version of his rom trimmer:


Download and Give Feedback Via Comments ...

Aurelio has released the first version of an Operating System for the Nintendo DS, its an early release but shows lots of potential

Download and Give Feedback Via Comments ...

News from Jontte:

Hello,

I'm a beginner to C++, but I managed to write a nice Tower Defence clone for Gp2x.

Download
The tar contains executables for linux and gp2x.

Some features:
-Fully customisable levels, turrets, enemies...
-Cool sidebar drawn by teh greatestsz Atte Virtanen

Controls:
Y - Next round
A - Select best turret available
B - Place / Select turret
X - Cancel
R - Hide/Show sidebar

Creating levels is easy, and the default level has lots of commented lines to help you getting started. It currently has only 1 level (I'm lazy!), so if you like this game and have created some levels, you can send some to my email, which is joonas[at]sipuli[dot]net, and I'll add them to the official tar.

Thanks to GameDev.net for the tileset in the default level!

Waiting for your suggestions, bug reports and comments!

Joonas Haapala ...