Late Night Consoling

Sega put a great deal of fanfare behind Amusement Vision's yakuza epic Ryu ga Gotoku (PS2) by producer Toshihiro Nagoshi after keeping it conspicuously hush-hush under the codename Project-J. Indeed, when the game was released in Japan, it was met with critical acclaim. The sales figures didn't reflect that, however, and to my dismay Sega has kept quiet on the possible of a Western release of the game.

Fortunately, I have just received word from a trustworthy source that European localizations of the game are in the works, and though a North American release isn't a certain it seems likely. Sega has not yet responded to requests for confirmation. Fingers crossed!

At the extraordinarily named "Hopper's Vol.1 25H Our Party People" event in Japan, the details of which I haven't the slightest clue, designers Hideo Kojima (Metal Gear), Goichi Suda (Killer 7 [PS2, GCN]), and Kazutoshi Iida (Doshin the Giant [GCN]) spoke together at a panel. Suda noted that Kojima's 1988 adventure game Snatcher (MSX) was a big reason he became involved with games, and he and Kojima mentioned that they should collaborate on an adventure game to be announced at E3. The event is reported slightly differently by various sites, but only one doesn't play it off as if the comment was a joke, which doesn't speak well for fans hoping for such a collaboration--but hey, you never know. If I had to come up with designers known for utterly insane stories, those two would be on the very short list. Hell, it might even be a list of two.

Suda also brought up the Nintendo Revolution and confirmed hisproject for the console, stating that development is in progress. Kojima is working on a Revolution game as well, but has been reluctant to disclose any details.

Speaking of Amusement Vision, the latest issue of Official U.S. PlayStation Magazine reports that a new edition of the studio's best known property, Super Monkey Ball, is under development. The game will, somewhat surprisingly, be a story based platform-ish game with various themed worlds as well as puzzles and multiplayer minigames. The game, entitled Super Monkey Ball Adventures, will be handled by Traveller's Tales, the studio behind the underrated Lego Star Wars (PS2, Xbox, GCN, GBA, PC).

Given the news' presence in a Sony-sponsored publication, the story only mentioned PS2 and PSP as platforms for the game. However, the series has appeared on all three current-gen consoles and made its home console debut (and most frequent appearance and best sales figures) on GameCube, so don't be surprised to see it pop up elsewhere.

This weekend, fire hit the New York City offices of 2K Games and Global Star, divisions of publisher Take-Two Games. Those publishing arms have no game development operations in New York, so the incident will have no effect on games in progress. No employees were harmed. Jason Bergman, the man who basically invented my job and who now works for 2K Games, posted news of the fire on his blog this weekend (the entry has now been taken down).

The cause of the fire is still unknown. Upon receipt of the news, Take-Two nemesis Jack Thompson allegedly danced a jig.

Three new games are headed to Xbox 360 via Xbox Live Arcade: PopCap's Astro Pop, what appears to be sort of a Tetris/Breakout hybrid; Stainless Games' Crystal Quest, a crystal-collecting space shooter originally released in 1987; and Sprout Games' Feeding Frenzy, a fish-eat-fish action title. All three games are due for release in February.

CNN/Money's Chris Morris takes a look at what went wrong with publisher Majesco. The company just announced its departure from high budget game development.

Starting to get tired of Guitar Hero (PS2)? First off, you shouldn't be, but if you are, you could always turn your guitar controller into an actual musical instrument. Or, rather, nerdstrument. Ugh, I felt dirty just typing that. Still, this is pretty cool.