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This Week’s Releases (Aug 22-26, 2005)

by Eric-Jon Rössel Waugh

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

Today (Monday, August 22nd)

Advance Wars: Dual Strike (DS)
Intelligent Systems/Nintendo

Now, there’s nothing wrong with the Wars series. This is, what, the fourth Wars game announced in the West, after the two GBA iterations and the endlessly-delayed and frequently-renamed GameCube iteration. And it looks every bit as good as previous games. I understand it’s to make some decent use of the touchscreen with a real-time mode where you move things around with the stylus. Good and well; this is something the DS should excel at. I’m surprised we haven’t seen more strategy games and RPGs for the system.

The name, though – why is it still Advance Wars? The answer is the same as why Retro’s second Metroid game is called Metroid Prime 2, instead of just “Metroid: Echoes” and why Metal Gear Ghost Babel became simply “Metal Gear Solid”; it’s an issue of branding. The assumption, from a Western marketing perspective, is that you need “brand unity”. If you’ve got a successful product, you need to cash in on its name as far as you can. So if you’ve got a new cereal, you’re better off introducing it as, say, Cinna-Crunch Pebbles and putting Fred Flintsone in it, rather then letting it fend for itself, on its own merits.

The thing about the Wars series – well. It’s been around for a long time. Going on twenty years, actually. It began on the Famicom as Famicom Wars, then moved to the Super Famicom and Gameboy as Super Famicom Wars and Gameboy Wars. Thus we have Advance Wars. And since the GBA games were the first we were introduced to over here, every future game in the series must have the word “Advance” in it.

Well, to be fair, we’re to receive the GameCube one (called, inexplicably, “Famicom Wars”) as (even more inexplicably) “Battalion Wars”. I guess that complicates the theory right there. And the Western title for the DS game is no less arbitrary than the Japanese one (again, simply “Famicom Wars DS”). That doesn’t make this trend any less irritating.

( Continue reading )

(August 22nd, 2005 @ 10:15am)



16 responses

Are you a Bad enough Dude to clear Kunio’s name?

Anyone out there a fan of Downtown Nekketsu Monogatari? (If you aren’t, then why are you reading my journal?!)

Go throw this string into Google:

“Tachi no Banka” translation

After spending some decent time with it, I can easily say that Shin Nekketsu Kouha: Kunio Tachi no Banka is pretty much the best game in the main Nekketsu series, all Downtown matters aside. And there’s a decent translation patch for it.

So. Go for it.

To say more would be foolish.

(April 26th, 2003 @ 6:02pm)



No response?

Gangster blood BURN!

I somehow ended up spending most of the day doing research on Technos — particularly the Nekketsu Gangster Kunio series (brought over her in such odd and mangled forms as Renegade, Super Dodge Ball, River City Ransom, and Crash ‘N The Boys Street Challenge).

I am stunned at how huge this series is, and how many forms it takes — including, as Smiley pointed out, a Riki & Kunio Puyo Puyo game.

I might as well spread the wealth. Here:

http://www.angelfire.com/games3/johnnyundaunted/
http://www.classicgaming.com/kunio/

The best resources I was able to pull up today; the former has more complete information, but less of it than does the latter. Ignore the ROM links, as they’re all dead. There are a few more interesting sites linked off of those, if one is inclined to be adventuresome — including a partially-translated version of Super Nekketsu Gangster Kunio-Kun, for the SFC. I really must track down some of these files eventually, particularly that final entry in the series (at least going by the ominous description of its story and hints about its ending)…

(February 6th, 2002 @ 11:29pm)



No response?