The Negative Edge News Report 02.06.08

Posted by Tommy Coloma on 02.06.2008

The first, and hopefully last, fighting game-themed edition of The Negative Edge. Get ready for some Super Smash Bros. Brawl first-hand impressions, Marvel vs. Capcom 2 news, this week's releases, and a few more surprises!




Welcome to another edition of The Negative Edge. Most of the time that I was supposed to be using to put this column together was instead spent on finishing Halo 3 and Persona 3. So, if it seems a little short to you, now you know why. Halo 3 took me around 10 hours to finish on Heroic (I suck at first-person shooters) and Persona 3, in all, took me 100 hours and 53 minutes not including the many hours I played without saving due to death. I'll have a rundown on Persona 3 when I have time. I literally just finished beating the game before writing this paragraph and I really want to step away from the game for a few hours. I think that I'm through with RPGs for a little while (at least until Persona 3 FES gets released). I was planning on playing Persona 2 and/or finishing off Digital Devil Saga 2 or maybe checking out Final Fantasy VI, but I really need to take a break from long games.

Enough about me, lets get to the news -


The Music Box

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This week's selection comes from a shooter that can be described as Galaga meets Tempest. I've played the game a few times and tried to get into it, but, honestly, I'd rather play Gradius or Darius. I do like the music though. Sure, it's a remix of Toccata and Fugue in D minor (which is cheating damnit!), but I like how they were able to make it sound good on the NES. The first song is from the NES version and the second is a remix that was used in DDR Ultramix 2.


The News As I See It

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Super Smash Bros. Brawl is awesome, but I'm sure you already knew that
The game was released last week and within a few days pretty much all of the secrets have been revealed. I'm not going to go too much into detail since I'm sure that if you cared, you'd already know all the good stuff. I will, however, add one thing since I haven't seen it mentioned anywhere and as far as I know, this is the first time this particular character has done something like this. Highlight to view - Samus talks in the game. It just seems really weird that they'd have her do that in SSBB instead of in one of her own games.

Now, while browsing through the Smash World Forums the other day, I found a thread where there's a discussion on how the game disc has been ripped, revealing the whole file structure. It pretty much confirms that the characters that have already been revealed are the only ones that are in the game. Sorry, no Mega Man. One of the more notable finds hints that several characters were in the game at one point but were subsequently removed. Unfortunately, not enough data remains to allow for them to be hacked in. Here are the file names. You should be able to figure out who they are -

\RSBJ01\effect\fighter\ef_dixie.pac
\RSBJ01\effect\fighter\ef_dr_mario.pac
\RSBJ01\effect\fighter\ef_mewtwo.pac
\RSBJ01\effect\fighter\ef_pra_mai.pac
\RSBJ01\effect\fighter\ef_roy.pac
\RSBJ01\effect\fighter\ef_toon_sheik.pac
\RSBJ01\effect\fighter\ef_toon_zelda.pac

As for the game itself, I've actually been fortunate enough to play it. I am not a hardcore Smash Bros. fan (I could never get past the fact that you had to use an analog stick to control your character), but I will say that I enjoyed it immensely.

First of all, after trying all of the control schemes, I'd say that the Wii remote + nunchuck scheme is the one I like the most. The classic controller would be my second choice followed by the GameCube controller. I was expecting the standalone Wii remote scheme to be my favorite as it is the only one that allows you to use a d-pad, but I found that I was actually having a lot of trouble with it. Maybe the d-pad is too small. It was also a bitch to use the shield since it requires the use of the trigger. In an earlier column I mentioned that it would be nice if you could use a joystick with this game and that I was actually looking into getting the Hori stick before the game came out in the US. I'll take that back as I am now 100% sure that the stick will not work with this game as the joystick is mapped to the d-pad, not the analog stick, so you would not be able to control your character with it. All you can do is taunt.

As far as character selection goes, I think that it's fine. Nintendo blew it's wad too early by announcing Snake and Sonic a few months back and I'm sure that that is why a lot of people are disappointed. They were expecting one more big announcement and when they didn't get anything they felt gyped. Again, there are 35+ characters. If you can't get behind even one Nintendo character or Snake or Sonic, then WTF are you even interested in this game? As for my preferences, I'd say that my favorite character so far is Zero Suit Samus. I didn't play with everyone, but among those that I did play with she had the cleanest controls; when I was using her, I could do the moves that I wanted to do when I wanted to do them. Again, I'm no expert at the game, so for all I know it might just be my imagination. She is selectable from the get-go so you aren't forced to do a Final Smash to get her, though the way you choose her is pretty annoying and it's different for some of the control schemes.

Unfortunately, I could not provide you with any screenshots. There is a great screenshot feature in the game that I used to take a few awesome screenshots. I really liked this one with ZSS holding a Super Scope 6. It's pretty surreal. The problem is that when you save your screenshots to an SD card and put the card in your computer, the only things that you see are BIN files. I'll upload the pics if/when I figure out how to convert them. That might not be necessary since I'm sure that by the time I figure out how to do it, the game will be out in the US.

If you have any questions about the game that haven't been addressed anywhere else and that can't be found with a simple Google search, feel free to ask. I'll have access to the game for a little while so I don't mind looking if I have time. Just note that I can't read Japanese so if you have a question that requires some reading, I can't help you.

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Arcana Heart gets a US release date, along with a shot at being one of the most expensive fighting games ever
Last week, the import version of Arcana Heart was on sale at Play-Asia for $30. Maybe they're psychic, as a few days after the sale started, Atlus announced that it is localizing the game and plans to release it on the 8th of April for the same price.

Arcana Heart can be summed up as a fighting game that features different schoolgirls who represent pretty much every female archetype you can think of from anime and manga. If you want further clarification, just take a look at the following trailer.


It really isn't a surprise that Atlus decided to pick this game up as it is a VERY niche title. Just look at the trailer if you don't believe me. It's just way off. I will pick this up even though I already have the import, mostly because I want to be able to read what's going on. I know that it's just a fighting game, but there are some story modes (that's what they look like anyway) that I'd love to be able to play through. I also know that it will be hard to find after it's initial run. This is one of the problems that I have with Atlus - the fact that their games are too hard to find after their release. I expect this title to be harder to find than the typical Atlus game since it caters to three different crowds - Atlus fans who will buy all of their games no matter what, 2D fighting game fans that need to fill that void that they've had in their hearts since Capcom stopped making 2D fighters, and anime fans. Come to think of it, I fall under all 3 of those categories. Maybe this game will give the Dreamcast version of Marvel vs. Capcom 2 a run for it's money on eBay. I actually hope that this sells out quickly though. If that happens, maybe we could get a version of Melty Blood some day.

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Now that EA is out, true believers can once again dream about experiencing the enjoyment of a lifetime
So the big news for me last week was the revelation that EA lost the license to make crappy Marvel fighting games. I'm sure that Marvel thought that they made the right decision when they went with EA a few years ago seeing as how EA was a big name back then, so you can't really fault them that much for not knowing any better. I'm just glad that they realized their mistake before Ultimate Alliance '08: The Crapfest (KOF fans, see what I did there?) was released.

Of course, the first thing that came to everyone's mind was - "When are we going to see Marvel vs. Capcom 3?" Or, at the very least - "When are we going to see an online-enabled re-release of Marvel vs. Capcom 2?" In order to ease the minds of those who long for the glory days of 2D fighters involving comic book characters, Seth Killian, a Community Senior Manager over at the Capcom BBS, decided to post the following message -

People, people---calm yourselves. This isn't a question of "we have to convince Capcom this is a good idea!" Capcom <3s our Marvel games. A new title would be cool. A re-release of an old title would be cool. We all agree. It's now just a question of making the business plans all line up, which can sometimes be a lot more complicated than anyone just excited about an awesome game usually wants to think about.

Of course we'll let you know if we have anything to announce, but even if something like this were to happen, it would take time. This is very fresh news, so let's give it a while to shake out and keep our fingers crossed for more of that zany Marvel vs. Capcom goodness.

credit: Gamercafe via Arcade Renaissance

While Marvel vs. Capcom 2 is one of the most popular games in the series, it is probably one of my least favorite Capcom fighters. Despite this, I would actually love to play it online so that I can learn its ins and outs. Probably one of my biggest disappointments ever was the announcement that the original Xbox version of MVC2 wasn't going to be online-enabled. That would have been hot. If it plays its cards right, Capcom has the chance to fix that mistake and release the game to a whole new audience via Live or PSN. Or we may finally get that Marvel vs. DC game that was rumored all those years ago. Who knows? The possibility now exists. We just have to wait it out and hope that the players involved will see the opportunity that's right in front of them. Maybe the fact that the Naomi arcade system bios was recently emulated will convince them to fast-track another MVC game. Wouldn't it be wild if an arcade-perfect version of MVC2 was released with GGPO support before Marvel and Capcom could join forces again?


The Release List

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This'll cover the last two or three weeks since I wasn't around last week. Some of the more noteworthy releases include Rez HD (Xbox Live), Lolo 2 (Wii VC), Xyanide Resurrection (PS2 import), Culdcept SAGA (Xbox 360), Oneechanbara Revolution (Wii Import), The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters (DVD), and Columns III: Revenge of Columns (Wii VC). Of course, those aren't the only things that were released over the past few weeks -



Chessmaster Live (Xbox Live Arcade)
Ok. So we can play this on our PC for free, but, for chess fans, how cool would it be to be able to play this while sitting in front of a TV instead of in front of a computer monitor? There is a problem though - after reading some of the comments in the Chessmaster Live forums, I found that there is a lot of cheating going on in this game. Essentially, some people will enter games and not make any moves at all. In most cases, the opponent will get tired and quit, giving the non-moving player the win. If you're the type that likes ranked matches, you might want to look into this problem before thinking about getting the game.

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Loopop Cube (DS Import)
This is a platforming puzzler where you must push three blocks together in order to get rid of them. You have to get rid of all of the blocks to clear the stage. I like platformers. I like puzzles. This could be awesome!


That will be 255 Rupees please

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For those who missed it the first time
Konami just confirmed that it will be releasing a Metal Gear Solid compilation for the PS2 which will contain the first three Metal Gear Solid games. The compilation will be priced at the unbelievably low price of $30. The release date is still unknown, though you can be sure that it will come out before MGS4. That puts it within the 2008/2009 range.

I have never played a single Metal Gear Solid game for more than five minutes. The only Metal Gear that I ever played through was Snake's Revenge on the NES (the one that isn't considered canon thanks to the fact that it wasn't made by Hideo Kojima). So, I am pretty much looking forward to this release so that I can catch up. The only problem that I have is the fact that this'll contain the original PSX version of Metal Gear Solid instead of the GameCube update. Then again, I don't know enough about the series. Was Twin Snakes better than the original?


This week's wallpaper

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c-c-c-COMBO BREAKER
Someone gave me the link to this a little while ago. I thought that it was pretty hilarious the first time I saw it even though I was never really a big Killer Instinct fan. Unfortunately, I do not know who the original artist is at this time. (note: click on it to get the high-res version)


To Be Continued...

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That's it for this week. I just bought a cooked iguana from someone named Bob. If I can figure out how to use it to get a dog to accompany me on my quest to find a certain computer chip, I'll be back next week.