Ask 411 Games 07.02.12: Mothers, Otakus, Dream Teams, More!
Posted by Mathew Sforcina on 07.02.2012
Are 2D fighting games like Mortal Kombat and Killer Instinct dead? Why isn't there a third game in the Chrono Trigger franchise? Why was Norimaro removed from Marvel Super Heroes Vs Capcom? All this and more covered this week in Ask 411 Games!
Greetings, and welcome to Ask 411 Games. I am your ever sarcastic host, Mathew Sforcina, and to start with, I've decided to hold of on the EVERY CONSOLE EVER!* list until I've finished the main 5 and then I'll post it in one big chuck, possibly over multiple weeks. We'll see. But at least this way I won't keep hyping it for ages and be unable to deliver.
Anyway, I'm fighting off a combination of remnants of illness and tiredness for weekend activities I could not avoid, as well as online poker and Wub Machined WWE themes, so let's get to brass tacks and press start, shall we?
Remember, questions can go in the comment section, or, better yet, to ask411games@gmail.com.
krash9924 starts us off.
Any idea why certain PS2 Level 5 games haven't been brought to next gen consoles. Two of the best were Dark Cloud and Rogue Galaxy.
I can tell you, quite simply in fact. The reason Level 5 hasn't brought their PS2 library forward (seriously, apart from a Dragon Quest game, the two you mentioned are Level 5's entire PS2 library) is due to one man.
Well, OK, not really. But the general reasoning involves him. Level 5 are basically far too busy on other projects to bring old games to the forefront again. They are working on Professor Layton, as well as a Wii game that is being co-produced with Studio Ghibli, as well as launching a couple of new franchises and producing a new game in the Inazuma Eleven series.
And anyway, they have a PS3 franchise, the White Knight Chronicles series, although that game's second entry was less than stellar.
That said, the last news out of the company was somewhat positive, in a way. Yoshiaki Kusuda, director at Level 5 said back in 2009…
"At this moment we don't have a specific plan for a sequel in the Dark Cloud series. There are many staff members, including myself at Level 5, who have worked on the Dark Cloud series. There are some who decided to join Level 5 because they love the Dark Cloud series. So, if requests from users should increase in the future, we would seriously consider making it."
Rogue Galaxy has less of a fanbase, but presumably the logic is the same. They're busy on other stuff, but if enough people demand it, they'll make it.
We need a site like Kickstarter but that works on names. Like game developers say "We'll make ‘X Game' if 1.5 Million people say they want it" or something, in a way that is secure but legit. Something to get people out of their lazy mode… Buttkicker?
Also what happened to the Chrono series?
Politics. See, after the first game went very very well…
And the second did pretty good…
Square basically decided that they couldn't guarantee that the third game would be up to the same standard, not without the full ‘Dream Team' that helped make the first game. Given that these men include Hironobu Sakaguchi, the creator Final Fantasy, Yuji Horii, creator of Dragon Quest and Akira Toriyama, a manga artist who is known most for his work on Dragon Ball, this is something of a big ask.
Especially given that the rest of the team, most of which did work on Cross, have split up and gone their separate ways. Getting them all back together is somewhat hard.
Square seem to have this thing about not going back if they can help it. They won't ever remake FFVII until one of the new FF games surpasses it, and they seem to not want to go back to Chrono until they have all the pieces and are sure they can do better than the original. So it's not looking good, as everyone involved wants everyone else involved to be, well, involved in the 3rd game. And that is very unlikely to occur, given that Square Enix wants to look forward, not backwards.
But hey, it isn't impossible…
Cactus has an argument and a question.
That article on Cracked is such bullshit. Half of his complaints were either from being lazy or not accepting a new use of the medium. The example I used with him is back in like 2001 when everybody was saying "Remember when you only needed two buttons to play a game?" and shit like that, but now it's normal. 10 years from now Playstation 5 will introduce nodes you plug into your nervous system, and this same guy (or the others who will inevitably follow him) will say "Direct metaphysical UI? Fuck that, I'll keep my touch pad and cameras, please!"
Well, see, there are two issues here. One is with ‘integration' and the general merging of all internet devices, which is an issue in terms of privacy and the right to switch off, but to your ‘change isn't bad' argument, while I normally agree, there is a difference here.
Getting used to new buttons and new control sticks is a challenge, but it's one that is over quickly, and more importantly is fairly direct when you do it. Short of a physical problem with the controller, when you press X, it does stuff. With the modern rage of motion controls, and now games that force you to look in two different places at once, the games are now forcing you to work AROUND the control schemes. A mark of a bad game is one in which the control scheme is unresponsive and bad. Motion controls can punish the player for something that is in no way their own fault.
That said, I'm not totally Anti-Wii U on the control scheme, but the always online thing does bug me. But then, I'm usually sceptical until proven otherwise, so we'll just have to wait and see. After a year or two, hopefully they will work out the kinks.
As for a question, I was watching a speed run of LOZ: The Minish Cap, and I noticed the titles at the beginning had a co-billing of Nintendo and Capcom, and I was wondering how often Nintendo does that anymore? I know it's more likely to happen on their handheld platforms, but usually it seems like its with smaller companies.
Well, I know of one game that sort of fits under that description that most people wish hadn't.
But Nintendo rarely co-brands in that way, mainly because they rarely let other companies work on ‘their' properties. Or at least, as you say, big companies. They might find a small company to work exclusively on something, like with Hudson Soft on Mario Party, or they'll have their own internal subdivision working on it, like HAL on the Smash Bros games.
Capcom's work on the handheld Zelda games is fairly unique, in that Flagship, a Capcom subsidiary, went to Nintendo and blackmailed campaigned to be allowed to bring Zelda to the Color Game Boy, which they did with first the port and then the Oracle of Seasons and Oracle of Ages games, which then led to the GBA games.
But yeah, ‘first party' Nintendo properties developed by third parties very rare. They will occasionally let a third party use their properties, but games made by both Nintendo and another company? You can probably count the number of times on 1-2 hands.
Guest#6217 takes off the nostalgia glasses.
Why do people keep asking about Killer Instinct. Yeah, it was a good(and no better than that) game in it's time, but surely standard 2D beat em ups are dead
Yeah, dead.
Yes, you can argue that 2 of them are crossover games, but there are still 2D fighters giving it a go, the genre may have been sick for a long time but it's now back to being a valid game style.
As for why Killer Instinct specially, I think it is two fold. One, people kinda want Rare back to something resembling normality, they want the old Rare back, as opposed to the Kinect only wasteland it is now. But mainly it is because Killer Instinct did have some unique points, the double life bar, the combo system, simple to learn, but with tactics involved. But most of all KI was a sort of bridge between the two main fighters at the time. It had the violence and look of Mortal Kombat, combined with a system that was closer to Street Fighter. It was a best of both words situation, a game anyone could find a reason to like.
Supposedly. I never cared for it myself to be honest, but I'm not about to deny that there is a sizable level of interest in a new one. And since Microsoft doesn't have enough 1st party characters to create their own Smash Bros clone (not that they couldn't do one, just that it would have to be a mass company infight), why not make a home grown fighter with a property you already own?
SCGuy asks about another return.
I read a little while ago, probably from Wikipedia, that there was an update to Joe and Mac being made for LIVE- any truth to that or better yet news on it?
For anyone late, Joe and Mac was a 1991 platformer made by Data East that was released to practically everything, and looked like this.
So is there an update on XBLA? Well there was this interview and other sources back in 2009 that basically said "Yes, there is an update on the way".
You'll notice I said 2009 there.
Fact is that Golgoth Studios, the French company that intends to make it, is kinda busy right now working on a Toki remake. Joe and Mac is on the way but it'll be a while, as Toki is taking up all their time.
Shio asks about a missing character.
Why was Norimaro from Marvel Super Heroes vs Capcom not included in the USA version of the game? He was supposed to be in there at one point to his dialogue being english translated in ROM files of the game.
and Why was he not included in Marvel vs Capcom 2 instead of having 2 wolverines in that game?
Norimaro is a comedy character originally included in the game, created by and voiced by Noritake Kinashi, a Japanese comedian. An otaku of the highest order, his fighting style is, well, not to fight, as he competes without actually actively fighting, in a way that wouldn't be seen in a fighting game again until Phoenix Wright in Ultimate Marvel V Capcom 3.
But why was he removed? If you go into the ROM of the game, he's practically finished, with only his ending a little off, using Dan's ending quotes, saying that he was Captain America. Heck, they even removed a couple of frames from his hyper combo to make sure he was cool, as him in the bath wouldn't fly.
But at the last second, he was gone. Why?
There are several theories. Some speculate Kinashi owns the rights to the character and decided not to give permission for any use outside of Japan. Some suspect Capcom USA thought that America wouldn't ‘get' him, given that it was 1998, and Otaku wasn't yet a known thing globally. And others point the blame at Marvel, claiming that Marvel didn't want their brand in the US associated with such a character.
I tend to lean towards the Marvel said no side of the fence, as this is the one that most people agree on and it makes some degree of sense. His non-appearance in Marvel V Capcom 2, which had more comedy characters than you can shake a stick at, would imply that he was DQed by Marvel, as Capcom put in practically everyone they could in that game.
But there is no official reason.
And with that non-answer, we end another week. Remember, questions can go in the comment section, or, better yet, to ask411games@gmail.com. Until next time, remember, save-scum. It's the safest option.
