Nightly News Roundup: 2011.04.27

Tales of the Abyss 3D to come to North America

Nintendo Power’s confirmed that Tales of the Abyss, the role-playing game developed by Namco Bandai and originally released on the PlayStation 2, will be hitting the 3DS in North America at an unspecified date. Tales of the Abyss is the eighth game in the Tales series, and celebrated its 10th anniversary upon release; artist Kōsuke Fujishima, who illustrated Tales of Symphonia and Tales of Vesperia, will be returning to work on the project. (Fujishima is most famous for authoring and illustrating the anime series You’re Under Arrest and Oh My Goddess!.)

According to Makoto Yoshizumi, as told by Nintendo Power and as reported by Nintendo Everything, the following was taken into consideration while developing Tales of the Abyss:

– Namco Bandai understands that fans want more Tales game in English
– Time and money get in the way
– Namco Bandai has taken steps to alleviate the issues above, and hopefully we can now look forward to seeing more Tales games worldwide
– It’s been difficult to fit the game on the 3DS card due to size restrictions
– Voice data in particular was challenging to put on the card and feels they solved the problem while keeping the quality high
– “Every part of the game, with the exception of the animated cut-scenes, has been redone in 3D”
– Yoshizumi believes this makes the game seem more real/immersive than before
– Character models rebuilt to improve performance
– Rest of the game has been ported over seamlessly
– Some changes made to “in-game parameters” to compensate for control differences
– No other additions, no new weapons/artes
– No communication features (StreetPass, SpotPass)
– Namco Bandai have talked about a sequel, but haven’t yet come up with something that would be good enough for a full game
– Yoshizumi says he appreciates the comments he receives on Twitter from worldwide fans, and he hopes that more Tales games can make it over in the future
– Load times have been improved on significantly
– Steadier frame rate (may have been referring to the world map specifically)
– Skits will remain unvoiced

Source: NintendoEverything

Dead or Alive: Dimensions explicated by Team Ninja

GamesRadar recently interviewed Yosuke Hayashi about Dead or Alive: Dimensions— and asked, specifically, why the game is on the 3DS, as the series is known to usually be on consoles only. Furthermore, GamesRadar asked why Dimension garnered a Teen rating as opposed to the usual Mature rating, as well as its coexistence with Capcom’s Street Fighter IV 3DS:

GR: So why the 3DS, then? People tend to associate DoA with being on the system with the most raw horsepower in order to showcase the game’s visuals.

YH: Our main reason for choosing the 3DS was creating Dead or Alive from a bit of a different perspective… no pun intended. We could have just continued on consoles the way we had up to this point, but we decided we wanted to give players a portable experience – let them hang out together with a bunch of friends and just play it. The 3DS felt like a platform where we could most easily realize that. It gave us the opportunity to really flesh out a fresher, portable experience rather than simply doing a direct port. The 3DS simple felt like a good match for what we wanted to do with the game.

GR: DoA set a bit of a precedent by being one of the first big fighting game franchises to eschew the “arcade-first, console port later” format. Nowadays this seems to be the norm – or you’re even seeing the reverse happening, like with Super Street Fighter IV. Why do you see this trend happening, and do you think fighting games in arcades are dead at this point?

YH: Speaking in terms of the Japanese arcade scene, it’s pretty bad at the moment. I think what SF did was… well, they did what they could do, put it out on the console first. The market wouldn’t really allow the reverse of that. The arcade version exists for the SF champs to show off, basically.

GR: Something longtime DoA fans may have noticed is that this is the first “T” rated game in the series in a while – most of the previous games garnered an “M.” DoA has a bit of a reputation for edgy content – does this mean you’ve “toned it down” in any way for a broader (and presumably younger) 3DS market?

YH: Our core fighting action has always been more in line with the “T” rating, really. The main difference is that, in the previous games, some of the movies and sequences could get a bit racy. That’s more or less why the ESRB gave us an “M.” As a result, the whole game needed to be M-rated. But we want fans to know that we haven’t changed or toned down anything here. The fighting’s still as intense as ever, and you’ll still get plenty of fanservice. I guess the ESRB decided this time that our cinematics were on the “T” level, so that’s why we’ve got the rating.

You can read the full interview here on GamesRadar.com.

(New gameplay has also been released– it’s embedded below.)

Source: GamesRadar.com

Reaverbots to be chosen by fans

Capcom-Unity, Capcom’s official community and social networking hub, has announced that fans will be able to vote for their favorite Reaverbots to appear in Mega Man Legends 3, in the latest of what seems an unprecedented wave of fan participation for Capcom’s latest Mega Man Legends game. Fans previously chose the specific model for Rock Volnutt, as well as the art for the newest protagonist of the game. This latest Reaver Bot “election” can be found here, and lasts from now until Thursday, May 12, at 5pm PST.

Fans can choose between forty-one different normal-sized Reaverbots, and their choices will be supported with “some old favorites”, according to Capcom-Unity. Furthermore, Reaverbots who are especially popular in the forum and comments, but not in the votes, will still be selected as a special category.

Source: Capcom-Unity