Solarobo, a DS sequel to Tail Concerto

[Aussie2B]

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

[kupomogli]

Sorry, but it's Namco Bandai. If the Tales series being fairly well supported by its fanbase doesn't get games over here, a second Tail Concerto which is a fairly obscure game to begin with more than likely won't make it. We can only hope another publisher picks this one up.

[Vlcice]

Oh, wow. This is great! I'm so, so glad to see this. Tail Concerto is one of my favourite games. I bought the import way back in 1998, and played through the whole game in French again later. I'm going to have to get this day 1 - hopefully there's an English version, but if not I imported the prequel and I can surely get through this one in Japanese too.

[Aussie2B]

Sorry, but it's Namco Bandai. If the Tales series being fairly well supported by its fanbase doesn't get games over here, a second Tail Concerto which is a fairly obscure game to begin with more than likely won't make it. We can only hope another publisher picks this one up.

That doesn't really make a difference to me either way since I'll be importing day one. :P I own both the US and Japanese versions of Tail Concerto, and while it would be a shame to miss out on the story, it's not a difficulty game to play in Japanese since it's nearly all platforming.

And there's no rule that Bandai Namco would have to localize it themselves. I mean, Atlus did the original, and they did a really nice job with the localization too (well, besides people whining that j-pop and alcoholic photo album pictures being removed).

[Vlcice]

Personally I wasn't a big fan of Atlus's translation because the kittens' voices were really, really annoying to me. The rest of the translation seemed good, though. Bandai's own French PAL version was really good, though they removed all of the voice acting except in the FMVs (which are subtitled).

And thanks so much for posting this, Aussie2B. I hadn't heard about it anywhere else but it really made my day coming home from work to this news.