I may be the only one who cares, but in my book this is most exciting game news I've heard in a long while. After over 10 years since the original Tail Concerto on Playstation, a vastly underappreciated 3D platformer gem, with CyberConnect2 wanting to make a sequel for pretty much all that time, stating that Bandai flat-out wouldn't fund a sequel, putting a up page about the idea of a "Tail Concerto 2" on PS2 which never left the drawing board, and then creating a teaser image for a DS project that looked like it had to be related to Tail Concerto two and a half years ago, CyberConnect2 has FINALLY revealed what the DS project is and that it is indeed a follow-up to Tail Concerto. Talk about a ridiculously long and painful wait, but judging by the coverage in Famitsu and the images on the official site that just went up, it looks like it'll be worth it.
It looks like it strikes the perfect balance of bringing back everything that made Tail Concerto what it is while also treading some new territory so as to not make it too derivative. They claim it's an "Action RPG", but if it's anything like the original, which it looks to be, then it's more of a 3D platformer with a bit of an RPG feel since there are towns with NPCs to talk to and such.
It seems like they're really pouring themselves into the project, which isn't a surprise since they've been languishing in Naruto and .hack hell for years (no offense to those that enjoy those games; they're good too). I'm sure they must have been craving the opportunity to work with an original property, not just licensed stuff, and between their two PS1 offerings, Tail Concerto and Silent Bomber, they proved that they had plenty of creative ideas. Solarobo is also a celebration of the 15th anniversary of CyberConnect2, which is fitting since Tail Concerto was their very first game (talk about off to a great start). They claim that they've been working on this project for 3 years, which is surprising to me because I was starting to think the DS project had been forgotten and was going to get canned. I guess they really wanted to keep it on the down low.
I'm impressed that after over a decade, they've reassembled all the people that were really important to the original. It's got the same director, and Nobuteru Yuuki is back to do the art. But, okay, enough of my rambling, here are some links:
http://gonintendo.com/viewstory.php?id=117455
http://www.siliconera.com/2010/03/18...s-of-solarobo/
http://www.solarobo.channel.or.jp/index.html
So am I indeed the only one that cares? :P