(Here are the rest of the notable North American game releases between April 2009 and June 2009!)
-
Nintendo Sapphire:
Xevious Resurrection
A budget-priced ($29.99 MSRP) shooter title published by Namco,
Xevious Resurrection is an updated version of the classic arcade shooter. It features similar gameplay to the original game, with a ship that can fly in eight directions and shoot down other ships, but has fully 3-D graphics and enhanced music and sound effects. It's fairly light on plot, but does feature dialogue between some levels, giving the pilot a name and giving him some friends to talk to between stages. It's a fun retro-styled arcade shooter for the modern age, and reviews are solid, but 30 bucks is a bit high even for such a polished game. It sees a price drop fairly soon after release, and does well as a digital title ranging from 10-20 dollars depending on what sales are going on at the time.
Pixie Planet
A game made for young girls, Pixie Planet combines puzzler and platformer elements with monster collecting and can be somewhat compared to the OTL
Shopkins IP, with cute fairy girls and magical creatures instead of anthropomorphic groceries. It's intended to bring more young girl players to the Sapphire, and it's actually a reasonably good game, with innovative puzzling, simple but intuitive platforming, and some cute and fun little characters, a couple of which become memetic. It does sell decently well upon its release, but doesn't become the huge multimedia franchise its creators were hoping for. It instead settles into a sort of budget/middle shelf routine of cheaply made, budget priced, but still fairly solid games that turn a small profit. The franchise does remain exclusive to Nintendo systems, so it does get a couple small tie-ins with Nintendo IPs here and there.
Tale Vengeance 2
The sequel to
Tale Vengeance and the first direct sequel in TTL's
Tale series,
Tale Vengeance 2 continues the story of Kovu, Atarakagi, and Laika from the original game, while also introducing several new heroes and villains in another dark, ninja-influenced action-RPG.
Tale Vengeance 2 was made during a time of transition for the series, both in terms of transition to the seventh console generation and also the transition from a Telnet Japan-helmed series to a Game Arts-helmed one. The game is the first
Tale title without the influence of Yoshiharu Gotanda, who has formed his own game company and is developing
Ecumenopolis instead. However, many of the developers from
Tale Vengeance did return to work on this game, and it features a similar art style and combat, but with the requisite graphical and gameplay enhancements that come out of a transition to a new console. The combat is still heavily melee and combo based, but now includes counters, a series first, in which enemy attacks can be countered and launched into a stronger attack. Magic plays slightly more of a role in this game as well, though many techniques still focus on buffs and debuffs, and only a few characters use magical techniques. The plot sees Atarakagi as the initial playable protagonist, but also focuses on the twin wanderers Ozobu and Oromi, teenage brother and sister who found themselves adrift after their village was destroyed and their family slaughtered. Their quest for revenge eventually brings them into conflict with Atarakagi, who was framed for the deed, but the deed was actually performed by the evil prince Shoga, who seeks to gain control of an ancient power buried deep within the planet. The game allows the player to control Ozobu and Oromi for some time before the player then retakes control of Atarakagi to battle them in the first of three boss clashes. Eventually, the three team up when their paths cross with Kovu and Laika, who are now married and in charge of their own small kingdom. The five heroes, along with two returning heroes from the previous game and two new heroes, eventually set out to defeat Shoga, but Shoga's defeat ultimately leads them toward their final goal, to destroy the Spirit of Vengeance, who has teamed up with an ancient queen of the dead, Mitsukayomi. The two are the final protagonists of the game, and are defeated at Alternia Castle, an ancient fortress that rises once Shoga is defeated. Defeating the evil queen and the Spirit of Vengeance brings peace to the world at last, though it has come at a heavy cost: Atarakagi sacrificed himself in the final battle, and depending on the player's actions throughout the game, either Ozobu or Oromi also dies.
Tale Vengeance 2 ends on a bittersweet note, and concludes one of the darker chapters in the
Tale saga.
Tale Vengeance 2 is somewhat lost in the fold amongst 2009 JRPG releases in the West. Game Arts doesn't hype it all that much in North America, and it's a sort of stealth release, much quieter than other releases in the series. The localization is also somewhat rushed, with a new cast of voice actors considered to be inferior to the ones who dubbed the original game. Because of this, it's the worst selling game in the series in North America to date, selling about half the copies of the previous least selling game,
Tale Vengeance. However, it does exceptionally well in Japan, becoming the best selling
Tale game in that territory since
Tale Illumina. Thus, the series survives, but it's as of yet unknown whether or not North American fans will see the next game localized.
Apple iTwin:
Katamari Forever
The latest release in the
Katamari Damacy series by Namco,
Katamari Forever sees the series' classic gameplay return with more modes and variants than ever before.
Katamari Forever is loaded with content, including a fairly long single player campaign, a robust endless mode, a multiplayer mode with a ton of different things to do, a music vault, and other fun bits of content for players to enjoy. The game allows for both traditional and motion control schemes, with the motion controls quite fun, allowing players to roll their Katamari by gently moving the iTwin controllers back and forth.
Katamari Forever is widely praised by reviewers for its wealth of content, and gets some of the best reviews in the series to date. It's a moderate hit in North America, thanks to a strong marketing blitz, and sells especially well in Japan.
Raigeki
The classic Sega fighting game series with a focus on over the top characters and hilarious moves is back on the Apple iTwin. It features an anime-esque cel shaded style and plenty more of the series' traditional humor, complete with comedic voice acting and the return of that crazy announcer. The game is jam packed with anime tropes and anime-inspired characters, with 12 classic characters returning and 12 new ones joining the fray, with 4 DLC characters released later on. The game itself is a fairly traditional 2-D fighter, and plays quite well, though it's not as technical or as polished as games like
Virtue And Vice. It's a welcome return to form for the series, with reviews averaging in the low-8s, and though it doesn't achieve the sales that the old series did, it still does quite well amongst longtime fans as well as enthusiasts of anime-style fighting games.
(Authors' Note: The following game idea was given to us by the reader
Goldwind2!)
Spaced Out
Spaced Out is a Western-produced JRPG-styled comedic sci-fi game about a group of outlaw space travelers who must carefully navigate a galaxy dominated by two rival superpowers: a massive space corporation which controls thousands of planets and whose CEO fires people by literally tossing them into a star, and a sprawling galactic empire which is run by a well-meaning but still insane emperor who is being manipulated by the nobility. The outlaws' party is made up of numerous sci-fi tropes, including a Han Solo parody space rogue out for money and for himself, a redshirt soldier who gets tired of being sent into dangerous situations by the emperor and defects to the outlaws, and a Jedi parody clean-cut hero type who is talented at fighting but who is way too “noble” for his own good. There's also a sexy alien space babe femme fatale and a princess who constantly needs rescuing, and the party is rounded out by a weird looking tentacled alien who is tired of being ridiculed for his looks (not because of his oozing purple skin or extra tentacles, but that he has 7 eyes instead of 6, the normal number of eyes for his species). There are humorous figures amongst the emperor's minions as well, most notably a minion who keeps dying but is unable to stay dead, so he's constantly getting revived and thrown into more painful and dangerous situations. The game itself is somewhat similar in tone to the OTL show
Tripping The Rift, and in fact has a couple of the OTL show's writers on its staff (along with some of the people who worked on the OTL
South Park RPGs). Stephen Root, who did voices on that show IOTL, voices the Han Solo-esque character in this game, and other notable voice actors include Richard Kind as the voice of the insane emperor.
Spaced Out, which is exclusive to the iTwin as one of the games designed by one of the development teams created by Steve Jobs, gets decent reviews for its action-RPG styled combat system that mixes elements from games like
Super Mario RPG with games like the
Super Star Wars titles, and its humorous plot that's raunchy but not quite raunchy enough for an M-rating. It's definitely intended to be more of a niche title, and does decent sales upon its release in May 2009.
Arcade Champion
Arcade Champion is a life-sim/minigame title featuring dozens of arcade-style minigames combined with a life-sim esque story about a boy trying to win prizes for his friends. The game features classic arcade games such as basketball and skeeball and also has some luck-based redemption games reworked into games that utilize timing and skill. Though the game has a traditional control scheme option, it heavily utilizes the motion controls, and is MUCH more fun to play with them as many of the games control a lot more intuitively with it. Its format is definitely a unique one, combining the life-sim elements of titles like
Shenmue and
Syrielle with arcade gameplay reminiscent of OTL's
Carnival Games series. The game features a fun cast of characters, though dialogue is entirely on-screen, with no voice acting. It's up to the player whether they want to enjoy the game for its minigames (many of which are actually quite fun) or try to focus more on the life-sim elements. The game actually becomes a bit of a mainstream hit thanks to a heavy advertising budget and positive reviews which roundly praise the game's motion controls. It doesn't have outstanding sales right away, but would maintain strong sales numbers well into its lifetime, becoming a popular holiday purchase or budget game once the initial MSRP drops, and it eventually sells at least a million copies, exceeding Apple's expectations.
Mega Man Next 3
Mega Man Next 3 is the third game in the
Mega Man Next series and the sequel to the critically acclaimed
Mega Man Next 2. It's a 3-D
Mega Man game with the familiar formula, levels that Mega Man must navigate and then a boss at the end. However, the game does mix up the formula somewhat, giving Mega Man limited flight abilities and allowing him to use melee moves as well. In fact, each boss defeated drops a weapon that not only gives Mega Man a new ranged weapon to fire, but also an enhancement to his melee as well (the enhancement, like the ranged weapon, uses up weapon power). Mega Man's flight is on a depleteable meter that can be leveled up eight times throughout the game, similarly to his health meter, allowing the player to reach some new areas with longer flight time. The game features 12 levels, just like
Mega Man Next 2, but slightly less enhancements and weapons for Mega Man to collect, making the game a bit shorter. The plotline features the Ultimo Corporation, which has stolen some of Dr. Light's technology and is using it to create powerful new robots to take over the world and destroy the old model robots, including Mega Man and his friends. Mega Man must defeat each of the robots in each stage in order to gain access to the Ultimo Corporation's factory and ultimately its corporate HQ. The game doesn't have side branches and optional boss levels like
Mega Man Next 2, but each level does have hidden areas that can be reached with Mega Man's new flight abilities, with the player able to revisit these areas to reach higher places. The game doesn't have quite as much emotional pathos as that of
Mega Man Next 2 and its Melody storyline, but it does feature robots from previous games returning to help Mega Man out. In fact, this game features more allied robots than any other, as Mega Man helps them unite to fight off the Ultimo Corporation's more evil and well-armed robots. By the time the game ends, there's a full-on robot revolution, with an army of good robots battling Ultimo's evil ones. Eventually, Mega Man raids Ultimo's sprawling factory, then takes on its corporate HQ, a massive skyscraper that Mega Man will need his flight abilities to navigate. When he reaches the top, he must battle Ultimo's ultimate weapon (a humanoid robot resembling Proto Man, with incredible technology and a myriad of weapons), and then the Ultimo CEO's master computer. After defeating both bosses, Ultimo is defeated, and their evil robots no longer pose a threat to humanity.
Mega Man Next 3 is released in June 2009, one of the most crowded months for games in recent memory. Reviews are positive, but not as overwhelmingly so as
Mega Man Next 2, averaging in the mid-8 range. Critics praise the new flight and melee mechanics, but still see the game as being somewhat of a rehash of its predecessor, with no real new graphical enhancements or huge gameplay changes. It's still one of the best selling games of the month, and becomes one of the iTwin's biggest hits of the year.
Too Many Cooks
Too Many Cooks is a cooking simulation game, somewhat like OTL's
Cooking Mama but with a bit more action, utilizing the motion controls and local co-op to create both an instructive and party-like experience. It is a bit more wacky than OTL's
Cooking Mama, making it somewhat unrealistic in terms of actual cooking experience, but it's quite fun nonetheless. It's another successful Apple original, but mostly amongst younger fans.
Microsoft Xbox 2:
Grizzly: A Hat For All Seasons
The third game in the
Grizzly series, about a bear with the ability to control time,
A Hat For All Seasons has Grizzly accidentally causing a time loop that blends all four seasons into one. The only way he can solve the problem is to collect hats that give him magical abilities, while also using his own time manipulation to aid in his quest. Clara and Ciera, the once evil witches who are now good, serve as side characters in the game and provide Grizzly with helpful advice while also helping to instruct him on the magical powers of his hats. Some of the “grittiness” of the first two games is gone, as this game skews more toward younger players in an effort to retain some of the Xbox 2's younger audience. While it does give the game a richer, more colorful and magical feel, a lot of the elements that distinguished it from its fellow platformers are gone, and reviews for the game are fairly average, with sales not terrible but also not that impressive.
Game Boy Supernova:
Hang Glider Girl
An action/sports game with elements of
Thrillseekers and
Paradventure, Hang Glider Girl is about a brave young superheroine who uses her hang glider to leap into action. Stages consist of challenges in which the player must perform stunts, stick the landing, and battle bad guys during their descent, making the game a sort of crossover type of title. Points are scored both on the stunts completed and the player's success in targeting the bad guys. It's marketed toward younger players but with enough skill elements to provide a challenge for older ones, and becomes a bit of a portable sleeper hit.
Killer Instinct
Released at the same time as
Killer Instinct 4 on the Sapphire,
Killer Instinct for the Supernova is a somewhat scaled down version of that game. It features identical gameplay, including the new combo system, but has only 20 playable characters as opposed to the 26 in the Sapphire game, and no DLC. It also features an alternative storyline, with a lot of the auxiliary Karkena elements removed and just featuring her as a straight up bad guy with no real deeper motivations. It's definitely not the preferred way to play the latest
Killer Instinct game, but it's damn good for a handheld, with amazing graphics and maintaining the gameplay of its console counterpart. Reviews and sales are quite good, and the game is considered a more than acceptable tradeoff for portability.
Excitebike Revolution
Excitebike Revolution takes the classic
Excitebike gameplay and modernizes it significantly, featuring modern motorbikes and some very nice looking tracks. It features both stunt courses and racing, and its presentation is very much like that of a modern console game, with graphics rivaling the best Wave titles and realistic sound effects, along with licensed music. The game has an extensive season mode and is loaded with minigames and bonuses, similar to OTL's
Excitebike 64 and TTL's
Ultra Excitebike and
Excitebike for Wave, both of which were critical and commercial successes.
Excitebike Revolution, along with its generic season mode, also features a storyline mode partially inspired by the
Thrillseekers games, in which players can choose either a male racer (a Japanese man named Shigeru, in honor of the late Shigeru Miyamoto) or a female racer (an American woman named Annie). While each character has a similar story, their paths vary slightly, due to their personalities, with Shigeru being more quiet and reserved and Annie being more energetic. The story mode is a somewhat more fun way to play through a season, and is praised by reviewers, but not the main attraction of the game.
Excitebike Revolution, like its predecessors, receives highly positive reviews and decent sales, and is considered one of the best Supernova games of the year.
Fat Princess
Published by Sony,
Fat Princess is a massively multiplayer competitive game very similar to OTL's game, with a capture-the-flag style mechanic in which players must rescue a princess while she gorges on cakes. Like OTL's game,
Fat Princess is released as a downloadable exclusive, but unlike OTL's game, it's conceived as a portable title from the very start. It becomes a very popular Supernova exclusive and one of the most popular downloadable titles in the store, with plenty of players in its first two years, while the Fat Princess herself becomes part of Nintendo's character stable and would appear in at least one other game.
Pokemon LightSun and DarkMoon
An enhanced remake of TTL's Gen 2 games,
Pokemon Sun and Moon, which were originally released in 2000 on the Game Boy Nova,
LightSun and DarkMoon feature the gameplay and presentation improvements from the last two generations, including 3-D graphics similar to OTL's
Pokemon Let's Go, with fully 3-D Pokemon battles, and voice acting for many of the major characters. The story remains largely intact, focusing on Team Shrapnel (which is formed from the remnants of Team Rocket), but is somewhat darker and more serious (and was already relatively serious in the original game), with Team Shrapnel members threatening people's lives on numerous occasions and the leader Breaker proving to be an extremely sadistic and nefarious villain, with the voice acting demonstrating that quite effectively. Jampacked with new features, and carrying over the previous game's inclusion of Kanto, this is perhaps the biggest, most comprehensive
Pokemon title yet in terms of content. It has all Pokemon from the four previous generations, though most of the non-Gen 1/Gen 2 Pokemon are extremely hard to get until the postgame. Reviews for
LightSun and DarkMoon are excellent, exceeding those of
Black and White, with many perfect reviews for the game. Sales are outstanding, outpacing those of
Black and White, and in the eyes of many reviewers, it's the best Supernova game of the year, setting the stage for Gen 5 to come in 2010.
Apple iPod Play:
Power: Fully Charged!
A port of the iTwin hit
Power to the iPod Play and iPhone,
Fully Charged is somewhat of an enhanced remake, despite having a reduced quality of graphics. It features all the content of the original, and even adds bonus mini-games, an online challenge mode, some extra levels, and voice acting, making it a worthwhile play even for fans of the original game. While it doesn't sell as well as the original, it's considered one of the best handheld ports of its generation, and a bigger hit on the iPhone than on the iPod Play.
Panzer Dragoon Metamoria
A classic rail-shooter style
Panzer Dragoon game for the iPod Play,
Metamoria takes place in a beautiful, forested world, where all technology is powered by magic and which dragons roam free across the land. Dragon riders, with the ability to harness magic to control the dragons, take flight and do battle, and the protagonist, a girl named Zoey, takes flight on a beautiful gray dragon to free the dragon's brothers and sisters from the clutches of a prince who has chosen to wage war on the peaceful forest kingdom of Metamoria. While the game is at its core a simple rail shooter, the presentation is incredible for a handheld, with beautiful landscapes and animation and incredibly smooth movement. It also features perhaps the best soundtrack in the series to date, with atmospheric music conveying a sense of poignancy and wonder. The game is fully voiced, though there aren't a huge amount of cutscenes in the game, most of them bridging the gap between levels.
Metamoria features perhaps the best variety of enemies and power-ups in any of the strictly rail-shooter based
Panzer Dragoon games, making each of the game's levels a fun and unique challenge. The plot is both uplifting and bittersweet: Zoey becomes the reluctant leader of a revolt that sees some of her loved ones die, along with some of the brethren of her flying dragon. By the end of the game, Zoey is scarred by her losses but still fights with a righteous sense of courage, and ultimately, she defeats the prince, who dies while asking forgiveness for what he has done. Zoey, who is now badly physically scarred in addition to her emotional scars, holds the prince in her arms as he dies, not saying she forgives him but her actions convey that she does. She and her dragon (also scarred by their battles) then fly off into parts unknown with the dragon's last two remaining siblings, off into an uncertain future.
Panzer Dragoon Metamoria is about as simple as the series gets, but is considered one of the best rail shooters of all time, up there with
Squad Four Eclipse. It's a major critical and commercial success, especially on the iPhone, which gets an even more beautiful version that features extremely intuitive touch controls. It's a major contender for best iPod Play game of the year.
Apartment 317
Apartment 317 is a visual novel/detective game that takes place in a massive apartment building in which a series of murders have been committed. The player is a nameless detective who must interrogate the residents and search out clues to find the killer. The game features plenty of noir motifs and has some excellent voice acting, though the detective has no voiced lines and is considered a player avatar. It's overall a very good game, and is a sales success, but a slow burn of one, with most of its sales coming from reduced price digital buys on the iTunes store.
Half-Minute Hero
A game that also appeared IOTL,
Half-Minute Hero is a retro-styled RPG in which the player only has 30 seconds to level up and defeat the final boss. The game moves at a very quick pace and is more of a humorous take on RPGs than an attempt to be an actual full-length game.
Half-Minute Hero comes in a variety of modes, including a mode where the player is a villain who commands an army of minions, and a mode where the hero has 300 seconds to win, but unlike the 30 second mode, there's no way to add extra time to the clock.
Half-Minute Hero, like its OTL counterpart, is seen as a fun little RPG and a unique take on its genre. Like many other iPod Play games at the time, it's more successful on the iPhone, where it gets a touchscreen version that makes the game both quicker and more fun to play.
Mole
Mole is a sort of modern day
Dig Dug game where the player is a mole who must dig through a variety of underground environments, battling enemies along the way. The mole is quite cute and cartoony, giving the game some mascot platformer appeal. It's fairly deep for such a simplistic game, almost reminiscent of
Mr. Driller, and achieves limited popularity as another unique iPod Play game.
Multiplatform:
Bloody Train
Bloody Train is a horror/shooter title that takes place in an underground abandoned train depot, with trains full of ghosts. The game sort of has a
Fatal Frame-esque storyline, with a group of teenagers out to take pictures in abandoned areas getting caught up in a terrifying nightmare and forced to fight their way out. However, the game is much more action packed: the teens find some guns that are effective on the ghosts, and from there, the game becomes more of a shooter. It's somewhat over the top, but commercially and critically successful, thanks to the likable cast of characters, the legitimately scary atmosphere, and the shooting mechanics, which are some of the best to be seen in an action horror game. The game is released for all three major consoles, and sees similar sales levels on all three, with slightly better sales on the iTwin than on the Sapphire or Xbox 2.
Danger Zone
Danger Zone is an FPS about hot shot soldiers who head into enemy territory (the enemy being a generic Middle Eastern army headed by a generic warlord). The game is a more action packed, tongue in cheek take on the
Call Of Duty franchise, and it achieves a good degree of commercial success thanks to its balls to the wall gameplay (which calls to mind the early installments of the FPS series
Load) and its fun multiplayer which rewards players for splitting off from the team to seek individual glory, making it great for players who focus on their K
counts more than anything else. The game never takes itself completely seriously, but also never descends into outright parody. It's simply a really fun and explosive FPS, and though it's released for all three major consoles, it does best on the Xbox 2.
Riders Of Ajorn II: The Shadow Mount
Riders Of Ajorn II is the sequel to 2004's minor hit WRPG for the Xbox,
Riders Of Ajorn. The sequel features protagonist Beckan returning in search of an ancient ghostly horse known as the Shadow Mount, which is being ridden by a dangerous and nameless assassin. The plotline also revolves around the coronation of a beautiful queen that Becken was once pledged to marry, and whom he must now work to protect. The mounted combat from the original game returns, with improvements to the jousting mechanic and dramatic improvements to battle flow that give it one of the best combat systems ever featured in a JRPG. Unfortunately, the world building and plotline are somewhat of a disappointment, but the fun gameplay keeps it from being a total bust, even if reviews aren't quite as good as the original. It's originally an Xbox exclusive, but gets an excellent iTwin port later in the year that features an outstanding dual control scheme that makes the combat system even more fun and intuitive, making mounted combat much easier and much more enjoyable. It doesn't quite match the sales success of the original but it does become an iTwin sleeper on a system that needed more major WRPGs.
Ridge Racer Duals
A new
Ridge Racer title for the Sapphire and iTwin,
Ridge Racer Duals has an emphasis on one-on-one street racing, though it also features normal racing with up to 16 cars, and a selection of fun new tracks. The improved graphics look great on the HD systems, and it controls better than ever. Unfortunately, the Sapphire version releases in the shadow of
Gran Turismo 4, and sales suffer as a result. It does much better on the iTwin, where it's marketed as a fun multiplayer racing game to enjoy locally or online, and ultimately sells three times more copies on the iTwin than on the Sapphire.
Terminator
Terminator is a third-person action shooter published by Electronic Arts. It follows the events of the first two
Terminator movies, and features Kyle Reese and Sarah Connor as the protagonists. The game starts off by showing Kyle Reese in the future and has a tutorial level in which Reese trains under John Connor and then must evade Terminators on his way to the time portal. From there, he has to defend Sarah Connor, until he is killed and the player takes control of Connor for the remainder of the game, first during the end of the first
Terminator and then playing a brief segment taking place between the two films before finally the events of the second
Terminator play out. The game has Michael Biehn and Linda Hamilton reprising their roles from the original films, and features remixed music from the original films as well, along with a brand new score. While the game does a good job at adapting the two films into one epic game, the gameplay itself is fairly clunky, and the levels are somewhat boring, with lots of padding/filler segments inbetween big action setpieces. There are some segments in the game, including the opening tutorial itself, which are genuinely fun, but then other segments that are a chore to play and don't mesh well with the films at all.
Terminator receives generally mediocre critical reviews, and after a lot of hype for the game, ends up being one of the more disappointing titles of the year, with sales being fairly poor.
Brutal Legend
Released for Sapphire, iTwin, and Xbox 2,
Brutal Legend is a rock and roll focused action/adventure game that's quite similar to OTL's game, and is released by Activision a few months earlier than IOTL (IOTL, the game had some contract disputes and was published by Electronic Arts, ITTL, Electronic Arts' focus on the new
Terminator game takes them out of the running to publish
Brutal Legend, and thus Activision gets the nod). Similarities to OTL's game include the presence of certain voice actors, including Jack Black, Jennifer Hale, and Tim Curry as the same characters they played IOTL, and the focus on heavy metal and powerful guitar solos. The game does have less RTS elements than OTL's game, slightly more female characters (due to the influence of riot grrl bands ITTL) and more elements from the
Guitar Hero games, due to the two games being published by the same company. Despite the small changes,
Brutal Legend remains about as popular both critically and commercially as it is IOTL, perhaps slightly moreso. It's not given a huge amount of marketing attention by Activision (which is focusing on promotion for
Thrillseekers 2 during this time), but marketing tie-ins with
Thrillseekers 2 do help, and the positive word of mouth helps the game find an audience. It does best on the Sapphire, but the iTwin's motion controls are also received positively.
Darksiders
A hack and slash title with similarities to the
Legend Of Zelda series,
Darksiders is published by THQ for the three major consoles. It no longer features the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, due to THQ being worried about Acclaim's
Divine Wrath 4 which also features the Horsemen. Instead, the protagonist is a barbarian named Kull, who makes a deal with an ancient demon to gain unstoppable powers so that he may have his revenge on the army that butchered his village and killed his wife. Kull initially uses these powers to kill the human armies, but is forced into doing the demon's dirty work and turning his wrath on the nature spirits that keep the world alive. Kull must find a way to escape his deal before he is forced to ravage the world. Gameplay is very similar to OTL's game, and
Darksiders is generally well received, becoming one of the year's more popular new hack and slash titles.
Ghostbusters: The Video Game
Another game that's quite similar to its TTL counterpart,
Ghostbusters: The Video Game is published by THQ ITTL, and like the OTL game, is essentially the “true”
Ghostbusters 3, with the entire original cast returning to reprise their roles as the Ghostbusters, and the player taking on the role of a rookie who joins the team to help them hunt down an evil spirit. The biggest change is that ITTL, Sigourney Weaver is able to reprise her role, and was involved in the project from very early on, becoming the primary female character in the game and assisting the Ghostbusters on numerous occasions, including helping them fight the final villain. Rick Moranis also appears in TTL's game, someone else who didn't appear in the OTL title. Gameplay is very similar to that of the OTL game, with the various ghost hunting gadgets all making an appearance, including the Proton Stream. Like OTL's game, TTL's game explores plot threads and concepts that the original writing team wanted to explore in a
Ghostbusters movie but never got the chance to do so. The game gets a highly positive reception, similar to that of OTL's game, and though it isn't a huge hit initially, word of mouth would help it to achieve greater sales later on, especially on the iTwin, which uses the motion controls to excellent effect.
Pew Pew
A top down shooter for handhelds and mobile devices in which you're an alien who uses over the top weaponry to kill humans and rack up a high score. Reminiscent of OTL games such as
Alien Hominid and
Destroy All Humans, its very violent but its cartoony gameplay style makes it quite popular and fairly silly, and it becomes a critical and commercial hit. The iPhone version incorporates touch controls, but they aren't implemented quite as well as they are on other ports, and ultimately the Supernova version of the game becomes the top seller.
Prototype
Another game from IOTL,
Prototype is an action/adventure title published by Activision featuring the protagonist Alex Mercer, who can shapeshift and absorb his enemies at will. The gameplay is quite similar to OTL's game, including an open world design and fast-paced action combat, but the plot is somewhat different and is inspired somewhat by the
Gemini games, in which Alex is being hunted down by the corporation that created him, who employs a being with similar powers to hunt him down, thus giving the game an element of “hunter vs. hunted” in which Alex can be attacked by this being at almost any time as he's accomplishing certain missions. Alex thus spends more of the game on defense than on the offensive, using his powers mostly when under duress, and spending more time hiding, though the player still has lots of leeway and freedom to accomplish goals other than running. Despite the change in plot from OTL's game,
Prototype is still considered an excellent game, and in fact is probably a bit better received than IOTL, due to the fact that
Infamous, a game with a somewhat similar premise, has been butterflied away, making
Prototype into a more unique concept. The game is released for all three consoles but does best by far on the Sapphire, where its excellent graphics look extremely impressive on the system, and there are few similar games out at the time. It sells slightly worse than
Batman: Gotham Stories, just missing out on the month's top five but performing better later on.
Sonic R2
A full-featured
Sonic kart racing game for the iTwin and iPod Play,
Sonic R2 takes its name from the classic Saturn title but is much more similar in look and gameplay to the modern
Sonic All-Stars Racing games, featuring 20 characters mostly taken from modern
Sonic games but also featuring a few Sega guest stars such as Nights and Vectorman, along with Zeta from
Panzer Dragoon Zeta and Commander Keen from his titular series (with Reynaud later showing up as DLC). The game features 24 different tracks, both original and inspired by classic Sega franchises, and a ton of different minigames, including a footrace mode (like the OTL
Sonic R), a balloon collecting mode, a ring collecting mode, and even a car combat mode. The game has both traditional and motion control schemes and features a wheel accessory for the iTwin controller that's similar to OTL's Wii Wheel for
Mariokart Wii. The wealth of special features, online play, and racing that's friendly for both new players and veterans makes
Sonic R2 a surprisingly strong kart racing title and a major hit for the iTwin from a sales standpoint, becoming one of the biggest releases of the spring.
1 vs. 100
A live downloadable quiz game based on the Bob Saget-hosted gameshow (which exists both IOTL and ITTL), 1 vs. 100 features one player who must answer trivia questions and outlast “the mob”, consisting of 100 players answering the same questions. The game plays out very similarly to OTL's Xbox 360 version of the game, but unlike OTL's game, TTL's
1 vs. 100 is a multiplatform title, appearing on the Sapphire and the iTwin, but not the Xbox 2. There's no crossplay between the two console ecosystems, which feature identical gameplay but different hosts.
1 vs. 100 is received positively on both consoles, but has bigger crowds of players on the iTwin, where it becomes one of the top online games on the console for two years after its release. The Sapphire version is successful initally, but fades in popularity somewhat after a time. Both versions would eventually cease operation in 2013.
Androsia 2
The sequel to the 2007 game
Androsia, notable for bringing together a staff of talented programmers and animators to create a popular action game about an android working to prevent a calamity,
Androsia 2 sees most of the old team, including combat animator Monty Oum, return to produce this sequel.
Androsia 2 updates the gameplay significantly from the original title, enhancing both melee and ranged combat and allowing for the discovery of both interchangeable parts and new chips that enhance the protagonist Symbol's abilities to incredible new heights. A new protagonist, a female android named Arkana, is introduced in the game. Arkana is introduced as an “improved” model of Dana, Symbol's friend from the previous game, and is ultimately revealed to be a mole, programmed by the humans attempting to destroy Symbol and his group of exiles. However, Arkana rebels against this programming, and the player is able to guide her through this journey, in which she must replace her entire body part by part to be free of the control humans have placed over her. Dana, who starts out jealous of Arkana, is instrumental to this process, leading to major development for both characters that runs parallel to Symbol's development as a reluctant leader. The excellent fight choreography from the original game returns, both in cutscenes and in actual combat, but the combat has been improved to address complaints that the previous
Androsia was almost more fun to watch than it was to play.
Androsia 2 features a combat system that almost seems like it was ripped from a fighting game, but featuring some truly spectacular context-based commands that allow the player to pull off truly spectacular stunts by being aware of their environment. The game's plot sees a new government rise up in Obsidian's wake. While the government is a significant improvement over the Obsidian Authority, ensuring rights for all people, those rights apply to humans, not androids, who are ruthlessly hunted down. Symbol must contend with both sabotage attempts by the new government and radical androids who want to kill humans to protect robotkind. Eventually, Symbol is forced to battle hostile challenges to his leadership, helping the humans to defeat a radical android named Grandslam, who tries to detonate a massive viral bomb that will kill 99 percent of humanity. Symbol does this in spite of the immense pain that humans have caused Arkana, who opposes Grandslam's plan but cannot bring herself to ever work with a human after the trauma caused by her implanted control circuits. In the end, Symbol and Dana, along with the remaining androids, are welcomed back into human civilization, but Arkana rejects the offer and Symbol's friendship, choosing to live in exile and ending the game on a bittersweet note.
Androsia 2 gets stellar reviews from critics, but the sales don't quite match up, due to intense competition at the time of the game's release on the three major consoles. It would eventually turn a profit and get a sequel, but in the meantime, most of the people on the game's creative team move onto other projects. Eventually, many of them would drift back together to work on another project, but not with the company that created Androsia. That, however, wouldn't take place for a number of years, while
Androsia 3 would come together on a new generation of consoles with a new creative team.
Metal Slug NEO
SNK's reimagination of the classic
Metal Slug series, this game is a sidescrolling run and gun with retro-styled (but definitely more modern graphics and similar fast and furious gameplay, complete with huge new bosses, fun new powerups, and new local and online competitive modes. It's released on the Sapphire (as a digital title), the Supernova, and the iPod Play, and is quite well received, considered a welcome update of a shooter classic.
Meteora
A space shooter developed by Excitech Games and published by Ubisoft,
Meteora is a sequel/reboot/remake of the 1994 space shooter/FMV classic. The game combines both bullet hell-style space shooter gameplay and some third person shooting segments with modern 3-D animated cutscenes (replacing the FMVs of the original). The third person shooting segments appear only on the full Sapphire version of the game, while the iPod Play version (the only port of the game) has only the space shooting segments and some of the cutscenes. The game is about a brave space explorer and his team battling alien hordes as they attempt to crash abandoned space colonies onto a populated world. The plot is a bit less silly than that of the original game, while the space shooting, though updated for modern consoles, feels somewhat dated. The third person shooter segments, however, are quite well received, with the protagonist and his team going into the space colonies as they're plummeting toward the planet to fight the alien invaders within. The final critical verdict: the Sapphire version is surprisingly good and a fun little sleeper hit, while the iPod Play version is mediocre and boring. Excitech would ultimately find greater success on a later full-fledged shooter game.
Sherlock Holmes
Another console/handheld title,
Sherlock Holmes is a mystery/adventure game released on the iTwin but also released on the Supernova and iPod Play. It plays much like other modern mystery games, with the titular detective called upon to solve a series of mysteries that tie into one much greater mystery toward the end of the game. Moriarty appears as a major villain, but there's another major antagonist whose reveal is a complete surprise, essentially a minor character from one of the earlier mysteries that ties into the larger one. Sherlock's backstory is exposed somewhat in the game, which tries to really define his personality and even brings in his older brother Mycroft as a major supporting character. For fans of the classic Sherlock Holmes books and the mystery game genre, this is one of the better games of its type of the generation: reviews are quite positive and the game achieves a limited form of sales success as well. However, sales are somewhat limited by the game's genre, which doesn't lend itself well to blockbuster sales. It's considered a “must play” by Sherlock Holmes fans, but most other players stay away.
(Authors' Note: The following idea was given to us by the reader
HonestAbe1809!)
Thirteen Ghosts
The classic horror film
13 Ghosts was never remade ITTL, but ultimately got a video game adaptation of sorts in 2009, coming to the iTwin and Sapphire as a horror game. It takes place in a mansion on a deserted island, and features thirteen differently designed ghosts for the protagonist and his team to contend with, and each ghost (which features a unique design and gameplay setting) gets their time to shine, with their domain (ranging from a scuttled cruise ship to a haunted graveyard to a creepy series of catacombs to an abandoned music room) forming a “level” of sorts that the protagonist must navigate differently from the domain before it. The game features plenty of dialogue between the team members as they explore the island and get into various terrifying situations, and like any good horror story, no one is safe: four of the six team members meet gruesome ends before the end of the game. The game itself, designed by the team behind
Secret Of Happy Valley and
Creepy, features plenty of nods to those titles and a similar sense of horror and humor, meaning that fans of those games find a lot to love about this one. Like those two games, it's more of a sleeper/niche title than a major blockbuster, but it achieves good reviews and ultimately turns a healthy profit.
-
Top Selling New Console Games In North America (in terms of sales over the first four weeks of release):
April 2009:
1. SOCOM 4 (Nintendo Sapphire)
2. Street Fighter V (Apple iTwin)
3. Phantasy Star VIII: Beneath The Spectral Canopy (Apple iTwin)
4. Street Fighter V (Nintendo Sapphire)
5. Crime Stories: Literary Ghosts (Nintendo Sapphire)
May 2009:
1. Killer Instinct 4 (Nintendo Sapphire)
2. Killer Instinct (Game Boy Supernova)
3. Sonic R2 (Apple iTwin)
4. Batman: Gotham Stories (Nintendo Sapphire)
5. Batman: Gotham Stories (Microsoft Xbox)
June 2009:
1. Pokemon Dark Moon (Game Boy Supernova)
2. Pokemon Light Sun (Game Boy Supernova)
3. The Legend Of Zelda: Spirit Of The Woods (Nintendo Sapphire)
4. Divine Wrath 4 (Nintendo Sapphire)
5. Divine Wrath 4 (Microsoft Xbox 2)