Solatorobo: Red the Hunter announced for North America and Europe

[Nz17]

Yes, all casings are clear, and larger than the ones in the US because in the past, the manuals were thicker and have all the language variants within. What I believe has happened with time is that in accordance with the coloured region flash on the spine, the games are now only packaged with the manuals in the language(s) for the region they are going to. So if you ordered the game from the UK, then the manual will be in English. It's not uncommon now to find DS games in France that only have French manuals, and DS games in Germany that only have German manuals.

Ah, OK, so that clears that up. Good to have learned something new.

For a couple little corrections, Red's sister Chocolat is actually a dog too (yeah, she confuses just about everyone at first; you can tell the cats by their skinny tails and pointed feet).

Holy crackers, you ain't kidding when you say that's an easy mistake to make. She looks so much like the cats in the game! If you couldn't see their feet and tails, you would think she's a cat... and most of the time when you see her, you just see her expression, so no wonder so many people are mistaken.

Also, I don't know where you think you're hearing German or Japanese. o_O The full world is inspired by France (although there are some signs like "Parts" in English), so the voice snippets are only in French. But, yeah, the voice acting is all by Japanese people, so their pronunciation isn't perfect and some stuff can be difficult to make out.

See, this is merely a confusion over terminology. When I wrote that they "speak" with German accents, what I meant is that their dialog is written with German accents applied. The group is called something like the Kervas or some such in the UK's English version of the script. The actual small voice clips are clearly not German. Although it is difficult to discern when the "French" being spoken in the voice clips is French or not when you aren't fluent in either the Japanese or French language and what's said sounds so different from the snippets of French you do know.

As for the DSi features, the only thing you're missing out on is being able to take a photo to replace the picture of Red on the file select screen. And for the downloadable quests, there are 12 in total.

Both good to know. I had heard the DSi feature(s) were minor and this certainly verifies that.

However, I noticed that the character designs are similar to a TV series Miyazaki was involved in, Sherlock Hound AKA Meitantei Holmes.

True enough, but when you have anthropomorphic cats and dogs walking about in period Europe, the designs can only be so different - it would be hard not to see similarities even if there are none!

[Aussie2B]

So the text for the Kuvasz members is written with a German accent? Weird. I'd take that as a flub on the part of the localizers. Not to mention that the group's name itself is messed up since it's not spelled as "Kuvasz" as it should be (after the breed of dog). There's some other strange stuff like that, like how Stare, from Tail Concerto, has her name spelled as "Stair". I'm hoping Xseed will fix these little things.

For some more useless trivia, heh, all of the major characters are actually based on real breeds/species of cats and dogs. Here's some of them:

Red: Shiba inu
Chocolat: Pomeranian
Elh: American Shorthair
Beluga: Lynx
Opera: Russian Blue
Calua: Ocelot
Gren: Kishu inu
Merveille: Collie
Bruno: German Shepherd

[Nz17]

For some more useless trivia, heh, all of the major characters are actually based on real breeds/species of cats and dogs. Here's some of them:

Red: Shiba inu
Chocolat: Pomeranian
Elh: American Shorthair
Beluga: Lynx
Opera: Russian Blue
Calua: Ocelot
Gren: Kishu inu
Merveille: Collie
Bruno: German Shepherd

Well I guess this would all go toward explaining why the cats are called Felineko (feline + neko) and the dogs are Caninu (canine and inu).

[Aussie2B]

I think originally they were simply nekohito and inuhito, which translates to cat-people and dog-people. I guess they wanted something a little more creative in English. The strange thing about the game, though, is that there are actually English names for most proper nouns hidden in the code of the Japanese game, so it's hard to know what was actually chosen by Nintendo of Europe's localization team or CyberConnect2 themselves, especially considering, stranger yet, they don't always match. Like take the mission provider, for example. CC2 gave her the name Fromage in katakana, yet right under that, they write out her name in English as Flo Financier.

[SEGA_Queen]

The senior editor of Xseed has been interviewed on GameSpot's On The Spot:

http://www.gamespot.com/ds/rpg/solar...ll%3Btitle%3B2

She mentioned that Xseed is including the soundtrack CD with every first run copy of the game.

[joshnickerson]

Oooh... incentive to pre-order now. I wonder if it will be store-specific though.

[Aussie2B]

Nice. Here's to hoping it'll have different tracks than the CD that came with the Japanese collector's edition as, while great, it only had a small fraction of the game's tracks. The closer I get to having the full soundtrack the better, since I don't think the game is going to get an OST release, which is a damn shame as Chikayo Fukuda has improved a lot over the years and produced an absolutely lovely soundtrack for Solatorobo.

[Nz17]

According to this story on Joystiq, "XSEED is bundling a 24-track soundtrack CD with the initial shipment of the DS game."

So Aussie2B, how many tracks were on the Japanese Sola to Robo music CD?

[Kitsune Sniper]

... 24.

[Vlcice]

Yeah, they've confirmed it's the same CD. Would have been nice to get different tracks, but oh well!

They did say that it's going to have nice packaging. (Which, well, so did the Japanese one.)

[Aussie2B]

Bummer. It would be little consolation to myself, but I hope it at least has different packaging than the Japanese one (not like it would make a big difference to me since they'd probably just use art that's already on something else I have). Actually, considering that the US cover of the game is the image that was used on the Japanese soundtrack, I'd be surprised if they didn't change it. Who knows, maybe they'll just swap the two, putting the Japanese game cover image on it.

[Vlcice]

Today in Solatorobo news:

Official website launched: http://solatorobo.com/ Not quite as elaborate as the Euro site, but some very nice wallpapers available for download in the Multimedia section.

Also, a press release published by Joystiq confirms that the game has gone gold (hooray!!) and that Xseed's release is trilingual with English, French and Spanish text: http://www.joystiq.com/2011/09/09/hu...-september-27/

September 27 can't get here soon enough!!

[joshnickerson]

Grah! I need to hurry up and pre-order this!

[Vlcice]

Don't miss out on the first-press CD!

[Nz17]

Wow, this Sola to Robo sounds really good! I should have a copy of this game for myself!

[Vlcice]

Wow, this Sola to Robo sounds really good! I should have a copy of this game for myself!

Free CD is serious times.

[Bojay1997]

Free CD is serious times.

Not to mention actually getting a game that is cheaper than the European import, has fully working camera and other region locked features and which supports Xseed and which may influence which games they release in the US market down the road.

[Aussie2B]

I just preordered my US copy the other day. I don't know if I'll play it much right away since playing through the Japanese version was plenty fulfilling for me for the time being, but I want to support the decision to bring it out in the US by buying at launch. I don't know if people realize just how fortunate we are to be receiving this game. It very well could've been Japan-only, and while I'd simply recommend importing in that scenario, it's nice that it'll reach a much broader audience.

Plus, another thing to consider, is that CyberConnect2 is working on a 15th anniversary project that has anthropomorphic characters just like Solatorobo and could very possibly be a part of the same series (Little Tail Bronx):

http://www.cc2.co.jp/15th_project/index.html

Buying Xseed's release of Solatorobo might help influence their decision to possibly bring that title to the US.

[Nz17]

Aren't "Tail Concerto" and "Sola" the only CyberConnect2 games to be officially released outside Japan?

[Vlcice]

No, much of their catalogue's been released outside Japan. I think it's only a small number that didn't - but most of their games are licensed games made on contract, not original. Most of the .hack games were released internationally, as are a bunch of the licensed Naruto games, the upcoming Asura's Wrath, etc.