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Music of Ouendan 2

As Pink Godzilla has been counting down, Moero! Nekketsu Rhythm Damashii Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan 2 is now shipping. As I wait for my copy to arrive (I didn't spring for speedy shipping, oops), I recalled that one of the best things I did for Ouendan was listen the hell out of the real songs. In that spirit, why not check out what's available on the iTunes Store?

I have personal qualms with buying music from the iTunes Store (the DRM situation, which they're improving), but I don't know anywhere else to get Japanese music a la carte. There was an excellent article in Slate about the iTunes Store in Japan called "jTunes: The insanely great songs Apple won't let you hear." Paul Collins discusses some of the great music that doesn't make it to my side of the Pacific, but notes that with a little work you can fake around Apple's country restriction:

While iTunes Japan pegs foreign undesirables from their credit card numbers, it can't screen fake Japanese addresses provided by prepaid iTunes Card users. There's a small but ardent underground economy among Americans in dummy addresses and e-mailed scans of Japanese iTunes Cards, picked up by friends in Tokyo convenience stores or openly sold online.

One of those open sellers is J-List, whom I first heard of way back in the day when I was first hearing about things like anime and Pocky. I bought a ¥3000 card and, following their directions, set up an iTunes Store account.

One result is this iMix, comprising all the songs in the iTunes Store I could find from Wikipedia's track list. (That was before several additional tracks were added to the list, but I can't find those tracks in the iTunes Store anyway.)

Sadly it's only six songs, so at ¥1200 it'll almost use half of a ¥3000 iTunes card. Several of the songs are listed on the iTunes Store, but are really "orgel" versions. I doubt these will help your game performance, so I didn't include them. Personally I prefer my covers bluegrass, anyway.

If you have any suggestions or corrections for this iMix, let me know.

Staving the winter gaming doldrums

After enjoying episode 15 of the Press Start podcast on the train this morning, I thought I'd write a bit about what games I've been playing lately, even if only one of them has been on the DS.

I played through Super Paper Mario on the Wii. I loved The Thousand Year Door, especially the music, and Super Paper Mario did not disappoint. I managed to get through the whole game, and have played through some of the fun side amusements you can dive into once the main quest is done:

• Merlee's quest
• the treasure maps
• card collecting
• Pit of 100 Trials
• the arcade games

An annoyance compared to even Thousand Year Door is that, to fit on the wiimote, the controls are simplified to the point of having to switch pixls to get different controls. For example, if you were laying bombs but needed to switch to the hammer, you have to switch from Boomer to Cudge; it's especially apparent for the pixls (or even other characters) who replicate powers you simply earned in Thousand Year Door. The game was originally for Gamecube, though, so I don't see how that could actually be, unless they intended to limit the control scheme to only a few buttons on the GC as well.

Before Super Paper Mario, my Wii was still full of Mario while I played Mario Sunshine (finished, starting from an abandoned save) and Mario 64 (not quite complete). I joked I was in training for Galaxy, but as Galaxy's release date is still unannounced, I have plenty of time to get  out of shape again—though after beating Paper Mario, I picked back up New Super Mario Bros of all things. With the advantage of distance, I can disagree with my comparison of New SMB with the original Yoshi's Island, having gotten stuck and disinterested in Yoshi's Island DS due to its difficulty and the complexity of managing multiple protagonists. In comparison New SMB was frightfully easy to pick back up, and mixes the classic formulas of Super Mario Bros 1 and 3 with beautiful art into a new great game.

Meanwhile, I found myself unable to resist the 99¢ month's trial of Gametap, Turner Broadcasting's digital game delivery service for Windows PCs (also mentioned in the podcast). For your month's subscription, you get free access to almost 900 games. Of those there are some real gems, though as a friend said, a bunch of them are the same PC games you see in every bargain bin. With the help of an Xbox 360 controller, I played a few arcade style classics like Galaxian and two of my Atari 2600 favorites, Yar's Revenge and Beamrider. I grew up in a Nintendo household, but I played a little Sonic 3, and will probably get back to it. The buffet subscription model shines with these old games; it's like having your own arcade on freeplay.

Gametap is big into the Myst series, as they're the only place to get the multiplayer online version of the last game, Uru. With fond memories of the Quicktime/Hypercard version on the PC, I gave into the siren song plastered all over the site and played through realMYST, the free-moving 3D reproduction of the first game. It was a fun experience, although the Quicktime video integrated into some scenes made the game stutter unplayably at points on my iMac (I was running Windows on it with Boot Camp). I hope, if I give in further to the series, that Riven runs better.

The main argument for Gametap to me was, of course, the new Sam & Max episodes, which are full of witty dialogue and gamer in-jokes, and thus completely delightful. (Now that Gametap got their exclusive time, you can also get them directly from Telltale without a Gametap subscription.) They are definitely old school adventure games, with the same sometimes frustrating puzzles. I had to look at walkthroughs a few times. Luckily Jeff "CJayC" Veasey's walkthroughs on Gamefaqs have "Hint Guide" sections written in the same leading, sometimes outright Socratic style of the old Infocom adventures' in-game hints, so you can stop reading as soon as he tells you precisely which of your many blind assumptions is preventing you from understanding the puzzle.

I hope these suggestions might give you some ideas for your own play time... for the week until Ouendan 2 hits shelves, at least.

Preorder Ouendan 2 at Play-Asia

While they've had it available for early orderers for a while, Play-Asia sent out a reminder that you can preorder Moero! Nekketsu Rhythm Damashii Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan 2, complete with the cover art:

Picks from the newsletter

There's a new Nintendo Handheld Gaming News newsletter for this month, and inside I found a couple interesting games I hadn't heard about: Honeycomb Beat and Konami Classics Series: Arcade Hits.

Honeycomb Beat is a puzzle game from Konami/Hudson Soft featuring "a cool fusion of music and addictive puzzle action" and presumably named for the hexagonal play units and Hudson Soft's bee logo. It seems to be like some of those non-video puzzle games of yore, flipping sets of colored blocks until all the colors match, but presented for today's synaesthetic post-Lumines world. Judging from the mixed reviews it's definitely a budget-quality title for your $20, but sounds like a decent title for puzzle fans. Probably not something I'd pick up personally.

Also from Konami (coincidence?), Konami Classics Series: Arcade Hits certainly fits the title, bringing Contra, Gradius, Track & Field, and twelve other Konami "arcade classics" to the DS. The most interesting features to me are wireless LAN multiplayer for the two-player games and "Jukebox Mode" if you want the classic arcade music without having to play the actual games. I mostly missed this era, but I'm sure $30 is totally worth it for some of you out there.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have more Mario 64 on the Wii to play. I already finished Mario Sunshine again and I gotta keep those mad skillz up for Galaxy...

Moero! Nekketsu Rhythm Damashii Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan 2: coming in 2007

The big news you've probably already heard (thanks to the success of Elite Beat Agents) is that Inis is developing the even more colorfully named Moero! Nekketsu Rhythm Damashii Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan 2 (something like "Burn! Hot Rhythm Soul Go Fight Cheersquad 2," says the internet) for release to the Japanese market this year. Some specific news was announced this week at the Game Developers Conference, where Keiichi Yano of Inis had a session about the development of Ouendan and the localization of EBA:

Keiichi Yano mentioned that Nintendo will reveal more details on the sequel, later this week, but he gave us a glimpse of the new game and characters on the overhead projector. He also revealed that the original cast of Ouendan characters will return with a slight, ever so subtle edgier art style.

twilightx over at nintendo_ds also shared this magazine scan of some first screenshots of the new game. (Meanwhile there are also some first screens of Super Paper Mario—another title I anxiously await—as well as video from GDC on Gamevideos.com.)

Mystery hour in your pocket

To prepare for the holidays last December, I planned ahead to have plenty of game for a plane ride by picking up Yoshi's Island DS and, a game I'd heard a few good things about, Touch Detective. I liked Phoenix Wright, so it should be at least fairly good, yeah?

Then the news was suddenly sprung upon me that Hotel Dusk: Room 215, which I'd heard about in November from Play's site, was coming to the US but soon. Soon enough, I had picked it up as well. So now not only do I have Touch Detective completely unplayed, but Hotel Dusk as well.

I thought perhaps I would get around to writing a post comparing all three, but at the rate I'm getting through Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney: Justice for All, that'll be this time next year. At the moment I'm a little bored with it—the story half implied that the case would be over in the court chapter, but of course it expired back to the exploration game, which is keeping my attention a lot less. This particular case is dragging on, after sharing a lot of evidence about true motivations early in the case.

Luckily Tycho of Penny Arcade fame has been writing about Hotel Dusk instead. Maybe I'll just stick with a real book.

Silly rabbit

I went with the roommate early yesterday to stand in front of Toys're Us so he could get a DS Lite. When we got there we found to his consternation a line half the length of the building. Turns out, though, that not only were they selling DSes Sunday morning, but Wiis as well—so they had plenty of DSes to go around, while by the time the line grew to the full length of the front of the building, all the Wiis were spoken for.

I, of course, planned ahead, bringing my DS to get in a little more Phoenix Wright: Justice for All. Of course, the dude (12? 14?) in line ahead of us was all, "'Sup. What game do you have?" He had an old blue DS; he'd saved up years of gift cards for a Gamecube, but now had the opportunity to skip it and get the Wii. I found it's kind of hard to explain how little he'd want to play Phoenix Wright—lots of words and stuff, not something you can just pick up—so he showed me a bit of Mario & Luigi: Partners in Time (maybe I should get it; I liked Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door), and he loved Elite Beat Agents so I let him play Ouendan for a round.

He wanted to unlock me some Mario Kart levels, but after he discerned that my logo was "lame" (I had used the bunny stencil, apparently—it was quite a while ago), the gauntlet was thrown. So we played head to head a few tracks, then he schooled me at the balloon battle mode. Soon enough it was his turn to go inside, soon to be off somewhere else, having a distracted day full of prior obligations that would prevent him from playing his new Wii until last night.

Meanwhile I was off to breakfast, reminded how cool Mario Kart is. That's one of the few multiplayer plays I hadn't set up ahead of time, and one of the few fun times. Funny it took a kid in a line to remind me.

You will know them by their buttons

News of DS Buttons comes from Matt Jones' del.icio.us links. Ever wonder if that guy is secretly jonesing for some Mario Kart action? Don't want to leave a couple hundred dollars of hardware and software out for the snatching as a multiplayer game invitaton? DS Buttons sells sets of 1" buttons to tell potential players at what games you'll 0wn them from the outside of your bag.

For $12, get an "I ♥ DS" button plus your choice of four of the (currently) nine game buttons. (As soon as they add Elite Beat Agents, I could pick four games I actually play.)

The Big Day

The big day is almost upon us: the most anticipated video game release of the holiday season. Can you feel the excitement?? I can't wait to queue up for hours just so tomorrow I can unwrap the hottest video game sensation since the Xbox 360 launched. To tide you over (or feed your hunger), here's one of the better TV commercials for this, the object of so much gamer jubilation:

Elite Beat Agents first impressions

After a long drought of few interesting games for the DS, I find myself with copies of Contact, Phoenix Wright 2, and Elite Beat Agents—and I never even got that far in Megaman ZX yet. While I put off starting Contact until I finished a book, and haven't cracked the law books with Contact in play, I couldn't help but try out Elite Beat Agents as soon as I got it.

If you liked Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan, it's definitely worth playing. The music selections, while not what I would have chosen, are good: pop-punk like "Sk8er Boi," "Makes No Difference," and "The Anthem" are definitely the right mood. While I wouldn't actively listen to "YMCA," I admit it's great for rhythm gaming.

The Game|Life article teases at the ending, and having played through it on ☆☆ Cruisin' (the "Normal" difficulty, though I feel Ouendan and EBA on "Hard" are the real Ouendan and EBA), I can say it's a great ending for this game. There are interesting narrative differences in how the last challenges are presented in EBA compared to Ouendan; I don't want to spoil the ending, though, so I hope it suffices to say EBA doesn't play quite as strongly to my argument about the role of personal responsibility as in Ouendan's story, though the very end serves up just as much kandou.

My biggest disappointment so far has nothing to do with the game itself. Recently I swore off the iTunes Music Store, due to boring technorighteous reasons I won't bother explaining here, and switched to Emusic. Playing on the train this morning, I decided I wanted to build a playlist of the EBA songs, since listening to the Ouendan soundtrack helped improve my game so much. Unfortunately, not even the first song I searched for—Jamiroquai's "Canned Heat"—is in Emusic. In fact, searching for all of the tracks, I find Emusic only has live versions of Highway Star; tons of covers and/or karaoke versions of YMCA, Material Girl, and You're The Inspiration; and Rock This Town (which is also in the awesome Guitar Hero 2). I guess I should stick to the indie podcasts to find things to buy on Emusic.

Disappointment aside, there are a couple interesting changes in the mechanics of EBA. The most superficial is that, instead of a flat map, you select levels by spinning a section of 3D world with the stylus. More usefully, one friend who played Ouendan a bit was annoyed that you can't skip the introductory part of the song, only the comic book intro; in EBA, you can skip right to the "Are you READY?" prompt. Also, similar to the full screen picture when you finish all difficulties of Ouendan, you get a full screen picture when you succeed in all portions of a song—and a star marker, encouraging you to completely "O" all the songs to collect all the stars. Lastly, as the Game|Life article notes, there are 19 songs in EBA. There are still only 15 levels in the regular game, however. The extra songs are unlocked, and I'm not sure if it's by points or what, as I've only unlocked Cher's "Believe."

Altogether, Elite Beat Agents is everything one could have reasonably hoped for in a US adaptation of Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan. It's great fun and you should get it!