Number 28 - Volume 3/Issue 4 - Defunct Games

Blood 

Violence 

© 2007 Ubisoft Entertainment. All Rights Reserved. America’s Army, America’s Army: Operations, America’s Army: 

Special Forces; Empower Yourself, Defend Freedom, The Official U.S. Army Game and U.S. Army are trademarks or 

registered trademarks of the United States Army in the United States and/or other countries and used under license 

from the United States Army. True Soldiers, Ubisoft, Ubi.com and the Ubisoft logo are trademarks of Ubisoft Entertainment 

in the U.S. and/or other countries. Developed by Red Storm. Red Storm and the Red Storm logo are trademarks 

of Red Storm Entertainment. Red Storm Entertainment, Inc. is a Ubisoft Entertainment company.Microsoft, Xbox, 

Xbox 360, Xbox LIVE, and the Xbox logos are trademarks of the Microsoft group of companies. 

www.truesoldiersgame.com

© 2006 Imajica Productions, Inc and Alchemic Productions. All rights reserved. “Jericho” is a trademark of Imajica Productions, Inc and Alchemic Productions. “Codemasters”® is a registered trademark owned by The Codemasters Software Company Limited 

(“Codemasters”). The Codemasters logo is a trademark of Codemasters. All other copyrights or trademarks are the property of their respective owners and are being used under license. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Developed by Mercury Steam Entertainment Inc and published by Codemasters. "PlayStation", "PLAYSTATION", and "PS" Family logo are registered trademarks of Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. Microsoft, Windows, the Windows Vista Start button, Xbox, Xbox 

360, Xbox LIVE, and the Xbox logos are trademarks of the Microsoft group of companies, and 'Games for Windows' and the Windows Vista Start button logo are used under license from Microsoft.

Publisher 

Tim Lindquist 

Editor in Chief 

Greg Off 

greg@hardcoregamer.com 

Art Director 

Terry Wolfi nger 

Senior Editor 

Thomas Wilde 

Managing Editor 

Alicia Ashby 

Editors 

Anthony Mertz Danny Cowan 

Dave Hulegaard David Brothers 

Geson Hatchett Iaian Ross 

Jason Venter James Cunningham 

Jeremy Peeples Ken Horowitz 

Steven Kent Thomas Shin 

Elizabeth Ellis Jeb Haught 

Abbie Heppe 

The Drill Instructor 

James Cunningham 

Artist 

Amadeo Garcia III 

Production Director 

Brady Hartel 

Production Artists 

John McKechnie David Silviera 

Casey Yates Julie Miyamoto 

Translator 

Elizabeth Ellis 

Ad sales 

Burr Hilsabeck 

415-412-5685 

burr@hardcoregamer.com 

Games Daishi 

Martin Gilbert 

Customer Service 

425-868-2216 

Hardcore Gamer® Magazine is published monthly by DoubleJump® 

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Periodicals postage paid at Redmond WA and at additional mailing offi ces. 

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Hardcore Gamer Magazine, PO Box 146, Redmond, WA 98073. “Hardcore 

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DoubleJump Publishing. DoubleJump Books is a division of DoubleJump 

Publishing, Inc. 

DoubleJump Publishing and the authors have made every effort to ensure 

that the information contained in this magazine is accurate. However, the 

publisher makes no warranty, either expressed or implied, as to the accuracy, 

effectiveness, or completeness of the material in this magazine; nor does the 

publisher assume liability for damages, either incidental or consequential, 

that may result from using the information in this magazine. Questions 

regarding operation of the game software and hardware should be directed 

to the support numbers provided by the game and device manufacturers in 

their documentation. 

Printed in the United States of America 

DJPubba_Tim Lindquist 

To date, my collecting obsession has been limited to 

classic arcade games. Now, after stumbling across some 

fantastic retro console deals online, I’ve been bitten by 

another bug. I’ve been obtaining old carts and systems 

at an alarming rate and the fact that most non-collectors 

are willing to give up their stuff for practically nothing 

isn’t helping. Working C64 with monitor: free; 12 carts 

for it: $7; working Atari XEGS: $24. 

Now Playing: Mr. Robot and his Robot Factory, Kaboom! 

WWanderer_Thomas 

Wilde 

It turns out that the li’l dwarf warrior I’ve been leveling 

in my copious spare time has, by total accident, a pretty 

good g PVP build. Wolfi e’s rogue is about to get its face 

caved ca in. 

Now N Playing: Jeanne d’Arc, Tabula Rasa, 

World W of Warcraft 

Lynxara_Alicia Ashby 

A LIGHT’S SHINING ON MY HEART 

MEMORY A FORK AT THE LEFT 

RAYS BURNING THRU THE CLOUDS 

FROM THE SKY UP ABOVE 

Now Playing: Luminous Arc, Persona 3, Disgaea: 

Afternoon of Darkness, Final Fantasy Tactics: The War 

of the Lions 

Racewing_Geson Hatchett 

First Sega lightens and smoothes out Vanessa Lewis, then 

Namco gives Soul Calibur Calibur’s ’s entire female cast ridiculous 

boob jobs, then Neversoft kills Judy Nails’s smile. I feel 

like I’ve... failed failed, , somehow. I don’t even want to think 

about what Falcoon’s up to. Thank goodness for Nintendo, 

who seems to be bent on actually improving their 

character designs. I’ll be fi rst in line for Brawl Brawl. 

Now Playing: Persona 33, 

, Resident Evil 4: Wii Edition Edition, , 

Guilty Gear XX Accent Core (PS2) 

Daniel Kayser_Daniel Kayser 

KouAidou_Elizabeth K 

Ellis 

DKJFLS 

hardcoregamer.com 

I write this bio while at GC in Leipzig, Germany. I’m 

a long way from home and a longer way from keeping 

my sanity, but alas, I’m staying focused... on the beer. 

Weinerschnitzel or bust! 

I’ve I become something of a reality TV whore. This 

season, s I’m watching “Top Chef,” “So You Think You Can 

Dance,” D “Last Comic Standing,” “America’s Got Talent,” 

and a “Who Wants To Be A Superhero,” whilst waiting 

eagerly e for “Survivor: China” and the new season of 

“Project “ Runway.” I also enjoy the occasional episode of 

“Supernanny” “ 

and “Shalom in the Home.” These are real 

life l skills I’m learning here, people!! 

Now N Playing: Picross DS DS, , Overlord 

Roger Danish_Greg Off Wolfie_Terry Wolfinger 

It’s Peanut Butter Jelly Time! 

Peanut Butter Jelly, Peanut Butter Jelly, Peanut Butter 

Jelly with a Baseball Bat! 

Now playing: Ratchet & Clank Future: Tools of 

Destruction, Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune, Warhawk, 

BioShock 

4thletter_David Brothers 

I made a grave mistake last month when I forgot to thank 

the lovely Carissa along with the rest of the Isotope gang. 

Will she ever forgive my error? What will be my penance? To 

be continued, true believer. 

Now Reading: Narcoleptic Sunday, Exterminators, ...said 

the shotgun to the head. 

James_James Ja 

Cunningham 

After months of joblessness, having to get up at the 

ungodly hour of 7AM every day to make money is killing 

me. Apparently it’s possible to go to bed before the sun 

comes up, but I’m not sure why anyone would want to. 

Still, it’s nice to be able to afford all the stuff I want to 

buy, especially with Rock Band looking to cost roughly 

$1,000,000,000 for game and drums. 

Now Playing: Space Giraffe, BioShock (360) 

HonestGamer_Jason Venter 

Moving across the state can be rough, but that’s what 

handheld gaming systems are for. Now that I have an 

apartment, I can’t wait to set up my home offi ce (read: 

gaming room) and hook up some consoles again. I’m back 

in the game just in time for the holiday rush! 

Now Playing: Tales of the World: Radiant Mythology Mythology, , 

Final Fantasy II (PSP), Taito Legends: Power-Up 

Hitoshura_Iaian H 

Ross 

When W I went to go pick up a copy of Persona 33, 

, I dropped 

off o a bunch of the guides for it at the store. The shock on 

their t faces after they asked me where I got so many of 

them t was worth a portion of the game’s cost, since one 

of o the clerks insisted on paying me for a copy of 

the t guide. 

Now N Playing: Disgaea: Afternoon of Darkness 

Sardius_Danny Cowan 

I didn’t do jack for this issue! I’ll be back to rattle 

cages and ruffl e feathers in the unattended pet store 

that is the gaming industry very soon, though. I will 

not rest until every single niche publisher in the world 

is angry at me! Next up: Natsume. You’re going down down, , 

Offi ce Cat. 

Now Playing: Harvest Moon: Boy & Girl, Comix 

Zone, Legend of the Blob Bros. 2, La La Land 5 

Princess Cowboy_Abbie Heppe 

Like any good gamer, I decided to get out the house 

and get some fresh air and ended up racing a sailboat 

off the coast of Maine. Long story short, we ran into 

some extremely dangerous weather, and while it was 

exhilarating, I’m glad to be back to where getting 

killed just means you restart the checkpoint. 

Now Playing: BioShock BioShock, , Metroid Prime 3 

Get “my face caved in?!!!” Oh I don’t think so, my 

dwarf-ish friend. I’m already piecing together my Arena 

Gladiator armor, Bee-otch! It is now, as they say, on! So 

Wanderer... why don’t you QQ more, noob! HOOLIGANS... 

OY! /belch 

Now Playing: World of Warcraft 

Metalbolt_Anthony Meta 

Mertz 

It’s only the second day of school and I’m pretty sure 

they’re inadvertently training us to be stenographers! So 

much typing. Too much typing. All of this typing and no 

zombies in sight. This is just wrong! 

Now Playing: MDK2 (PC) 

AArlieth_Thomas 

Shin 

Back in the days of blocky heads and pointy toes, System 

Shock 2 was one of those games that I hated to love, 

because nobody would believe me when I told them that the 

elevator shaft was jammed with worms. Hopefully, BioShock 

won’t trigger any new neuroses in my already fragile psyche, 

or I’ll summon forth my Persona for reals. 

Now Playing: BioShock, Big Bang Beat Beat, , Persona 3 

Ashura_Brady As 

Hartel 

They The announced Metal Gear β Online: Version at the Metal 

Gear Gea 20th Anniversary party, and they’re still mopping up 

my froth. As of this writing, they are currently running 

a beta b test in Japan that I wish I was in on soooo badly. 

Here’s Her hoping they run an English one! By the time this 

issue issu actually gets into your hands, though, it’ll be my 

Birthday, Birt and I’ll be 26. Yay. 

Now Playing: Bomberman Live Live, , Disgaea: Afternoon 

of Darkness D 

Jeremy_Jeremy Jere 

Peeples 

Since Fire Pro Wrestling Returns is fi nally getting a U.S. 

release, I’ve been playing every entry in the series that I 

could get my hands on to prepare, and now cannot wait for 

Returns Returns, , so I can fi nally make use of the revamped wrestler 

creation mode and ring/logo editor. Outside of Fire Pro, 

I’ve been dabbling in DiRT DiRT, , the demos for Bioshock and 

Beautiful Katamari Katamari, , and a slew of DC classics. 

Now playing - Fire Pro Wresting 1/2/D/Premium X, Crazy 

Taxi, T Shenmue, Jet Grind Radio, Toukon Retsuden 3/4 

Mads_Amadeo Garcia III 

The art monkey’s gotten his hands on some spiritual 

crack, and it’s pedal to the metal as far as drawing more 

and better stuff goes. Unfortunately, this leaves very 

little time for me to be a gamer. Does being excited over 

the Dungeons and Dragons 4th Edition release count? It 

should — if all goes well, that engine will run half the 

western RPGs you’ll be playing in the next decade! 

Now Playing: Bully Bully, , The Misadventures of Tron Bonne Bonne, , 

City of Villains (just the char-gen, HONEST!) 

Big Wyrm_ Wyrm_Jeb Jeb Haught 

I’m not disappointed that Age of Conan was delayed until 

early next year. Now I will actually have time to play the 

plethora of new releases this holiday season. Besides, 

March is a nice month to hibernate... especially when the 

sun is out to get you! 

Now Playing: Call of Duty 4 (360), Jeanne d’Arc d’Arc, , 

BioShock (360) 

VOLUME 3_ISSUE 4_ 4_VOODLE, VOODLE, SHIKA, LOU & OKAR

Ratchet & Clank 

Future: p28 

Features 

On the cover 

Previews 

VOLUME 3_ISSUE 4_VOODLE, SHIKA, LOU & OKAR 

Oh, the things we have for you this month. Exclusive Super Smash 

Bros. screens? Look no further. The rst English screens of Disgaea: 

Afternoon of Darkness? It’s all here, baby. We blended this 

with equal portions of Lost Odyssey, Metal Gear 

Solid 4, Super Mario Galaxy, and Call of Duty 4 

to create a delicious preview salad, dusted 

lightly with Ratchet & Clank Future and 

a little Age of Conan on the side. 

Your order is waiting on page 12. 

Lost Odyssey: p18 

For our rst act, watch as a single man creates a 

translation patch for the NES Namco classic The Tower 

of Druaga... without knowing any Japanese. Then, be 

shocked and amazed as Michael Tomasson of Good Deal 

Games shows you the mysteries of the Classic Gaming 

Expo, where classic consoles roam and homebrew titles 

for everything from the Sega CD to the Atari 2600 are 

unveiled. The show begins on page 32. 

Fantranning: p38 

It’s Kane & Lynch! One is a criminal genius, the other’s insane. 

We sent David Brothers to Eidos to get an in-depth, hands-on 

look at this upcoming co-op title, set for launch on the Xbox 

360 and PC. What do the makers of Hitman: Blood 

Money do when asked to come up with a completely 

immersive, action-packed action title? It looks like 

they go a little crazy and make the 

caper movie from hell. 

Check it out on page 42. 

12 

32 

42 

10 : News 

12 : Preview: Super Smash Bros. Brawl 

13 : Preview: Disgaea: 

Afternoon of Darkness 

16 : Preview: Tony Hawk’s Proving Ground 

18 : Preview: Lost Odyssey 

20 : Preview: Super Mario Galaxy 

22 : Preview: Call of Duty 4: 

modern warfare 

24 : Preview: Metal Gear Solid 4: 

Guns of the Patriots 

26 : Preview: SOCOM: U.S. Navy Seals 

Tactical Strike 

28 : Preview: Ratchet & Clank Future 

30 : Preview: Age of Conan: 

hyborian adventures 

31 : Preview: The Agency 

32 : Feature: Classic Gaming Expo 2K7 

38 : Feature: FanTranning 101 

42 : Cover Feature: Kane & Lynch 

50 : Review: Heavenly Sword 

53 : Review: Blue Dragon 

54 : Review: Guilty Gear XX Accent Core 

55 : Review: Monster Hunter Freedom 2 

56 : Review: Project Sylpheed: 

Arc of Deception 

57 : Review: Soul Nomad 

58 : Review: Wild Arms 5 

59 : Review: Combat Mission: Shock Force 

60 : Review: Digimon World: Data Squad 

61 : Review: Picross DS 

62 : Review: Smash Court Tennis 3 

63 : Arcade: Spider-Man Pinball 

64 : Online Gamer: Overlord 

66 : Downloads 

68 : Graveyard: terranigma 

70 : Japan: Dokidoki Majo Shinpan! 

72 : Japan: Nodame Cantabile 

74 : Mobile: driver l.a. undercover 

75 : Hardware 

76 : Squawkbox 

80 : Fan art 

82 : funnies 

STANDING UP FOR YOURSELF IS STRONG. 

STANDING UP FOR THOSE AROUND YOU 

IS ARMY STRONG. 

There’s strong. And then there’s Army Strong. The strength 

that comes from not just changing your life but changing the lives of others. 

Find out more at goarmy.com/strong. 

Staff Sergeant Jeremy Mutart

WORLD OF 

MONEY 

The subscription-based MMORPG World of 

Warcraft, last year’s best-selling 

game, is continuing to fuel 

Sierra’s revenues, as quarterly 

results were 68.9% higher than 

the same period last year. 

WoW: The Burning Crusade 

sold nearly 2.4 million copies 

in the rst twenty-four hours, 

with Blizzard announcing that 

WoW has reached no fewer 

than nine million subscribers, 

with The Burning Crusade yet to 

launch in China. 

NEW KIDS 

ON THE BLOCK 

Codemasters has opened a third development studio, UKbased 

Codemasters Studios Guildford (Southam and Kuala 

Lumpur being the other two), which will initially assist 

with the next installments in the Operation Flashpoint and 

Race Driver series, and with the company’s proprietary 

middleware engine, Neon. 

Blazing Lizard is a new game development studio founded 

by ex-Volition members, who worked on titles such as 

Saints Row, the Red Faction. series, the Summoner series, 

The Punisher, Freespace, and Elite Force 2. 

Four former Mumbojumbo developers, known for the 

casual game series Luxor, have teamed up with the head 

of Method Solutions to start a new studio, Slapdash Games, 

which will create casual cross-platform games for all ages 

and demographics. 

Bethesda Softworks parent company ZeniMax Media 

has created ZeniMax Online Studios, headed by former 

Mythic founder Matt Firor, which will focus on the MMO 

market segment. 

GAME 

CONTENT BY 

ANNOUNCEMENTS 

AND DELAYS 

Developer Tragnarion Studios will use Epic’s Unreal Engine 3 for its 

new multiplatform shooter The Scourge Project, a story-driven FPS 

game built from the ground up for co-op squad play, where up to 

four players will experience a personal story. 

While Ubisoft revealed that Splinter Cell: Conviction has been 

delayed until January-March of 2008, it also announced that it will 

develop and publish a game based on 20th Century Fox’s Avatar, 

the story of an ex-Marine who nds himself thrust into hostilities on 

an alien planet lled with exotic life forms, written and directed 

by Academy Award-winning lmmaker James Cameron (Titanic, 

Aliens, Terminator, etc.). Ubisoft also con rmed that it’s developing 

a third-person action game based on the “Heroes” TV series. The 

video game will focus on the entire cast, and not re-tell or bridge 

the gap between the two seasons, but instead offer its own insight. 

EA has a few unannounced titles in development, such as a 

superhero ghting game using the Marvel license by its Chicago 

studio, known for the Fight Night series and Def Jam Icon; it’s 

scheduled for release on PS3 and X360 in 2008. EA Games’s Frank 

Gibeau con rmed at a shareholder meeting that it has several 

mature titles in development, one of which is The Godfather 2. 

On the other hand, Crysis and FIFA ‘08 are being pushed back until 

November, while Spore is being given extra time for polishing and is 

tentatively scheduled for release anywhere from March to May 2008. 

During THQ’s Q1 2008 nancial conference call, CEO Brian Farrell 

con rmed it’s developing Red Faction 3, but didn’t give further 

details. During Midway’s nancial conference call, it announced 

BlackSite: Area 51 has been pushed back to early November 2007, 

while Vin Diesel’s Wheelman got bumped all the way to 2008. 

A few months ago, Take-Two promised it would not delay Grand 

Theft Auto IV from its previously announced October 16, 2007, 

release date, but there seems to have been a change of heart. We 

won’t see the next-gen GTA installment until Q2 2008, which is 

February to April 2008. 

Majesco’s Cooking Mama 2 was announced, promising new recipes, 

twice as many mini-games and an all-new multiplayer mode. 

Sony Online Entertainment is teaming up with Sir Richard Branson 

and Deepak Chopra’s Virgin Comics to bring the popular, India-based 

Ramayan 3392 A.D. comic book universe to life as an MMO, initially 

for the PC. 

10_NEWS HARDCORE GAMER MAGAZINE_VOLUME 3_ISSUE 4_VOODLE, SHIKA, LOU & OKAR 

He’s received the highest commendations for 

bravery. Countless decorations for honor and 

selflessness. But Master Chief’s greatest 

achievement reaches far beyond what any medal 

could ever hope to c o m m e m or ate. 

For the men and women of the 26th century, he is 

a human em bodiment of possibility, the last 

Spartan standing against an angry tide. This 

strength of spirit is forged through his legend. 

A hero need not speak. When he is gone, 

the world will speak for him. 

Jericho VII. The Battle of Reach. High Charity. 

Tales rife with sacrifice and courage. Tales 

that grow, flourish, and inspire. 

A n d w hile h e sha p es his o w n histor y, h e in turn 

shapes the history of all who follow. 

For no matter what horrors are released upon 

the day, they cannot match the reply of 

soldiers em boldened with his spirit, an army 

of Master Chiefs unto the mselves. 

halo3.com

Publisher: Nintendo 

Developer: Sora 

Release Date: 12/3/2007 

Genre: 3D Fighter 

Number of Players: 1-4 

Preview by Princess Cowboy 

If there was one game we wished 

Nintendo would’ve let us put 

our anxious little paws on at E3, it 

would probably be Super Smash Bros. 

Brawl. Instead, there’s been a steady 

trickle of new information to hold us 

over until the game’s December release. 

It’s worth 

mentioning the Subspace Emissary, 

the eshed out, side-scrolling single 

player component to Brawl. The 

Emissary’s goal is to create playability 

for those of us without friends — I 

mean, elaborate on the back story to 

Brawl and give an idea what’s at stake 

for each character. Sweet! 

Here’s a quick review of the 

summer announcements. Joining the game’s already 

A-list line-up will be Pit, hailing from Kid Icarus, who 

wields the dual-bladed Sacred Bow of Palutena; Ike 

from Fire Emblem; Wario, who relies on karate and 

not frantic mini-games here; and the Pokemon Trainer 

who will show you his Pokeymans: Squirtle, Ivysaur, 

and Charizard. Along with the new characters, of 

course, comes new levels; Ike brings the Castle 

Siege stage, Kid Icarus offers a Skyworld level with a 

destructible oor and wait… what? Animal Crossing is 

making an appearance too, and just like the original 

Nintendo DS game, time will change with your 

console’s internal clock. If you time it right, you may 

see some familiar faces like K.K. Slider. (Now, if only 

you got the chance to Final Smash 

Tom Nook...) 

It’s also great 

to see that Brawl will be 

playable on any and all Wii 

compatible controllers (that’s 

Classic, sideways Wii Remote, Wii 

Remote and nunchuck, and GameCube), giving 

me a good excuse to dust off those Cube 

controllers and stop living in fear of having 

to learn a new control scheme. The more 

Brawl has to offer, the better. Six and 

eight years later, its predecessors still 

make the regular rotation in 

my collection. 

12_PREVIEW_SUPER SMASH BROS. BRAWL HARDCORE GAMER MAGAZINE_VOLUME 3_ISSUE 4_VOODLE, SHIKA, LOU & OKAR 

PUBLISHER: NISA • DEVELOPER: NIS • GENRE: SRPG • CATEGORY: SONG THAT NEVER ENDS • RELEASE DATE: 10/30/2007 • # PLAYERS: 1-2 

HARDCORE GAMER MAGAZINE_VOLUME 3_ISSUE 4_ 4_VOODLE, VOODLE, SHIKA, LOU & OKAR 

Preview by Lynxara 

Afternoon of Darkness is a lot more than just the English version 

of the game formerly known as Disgaea Portable. In addition to a 

pixel-perfect port of the original Disgaea supplemented by new 

stages, a new “music shop” option that lets you spend HL to acquire 

bonus songs to listen to while while you’re grinding through Item 

World, and a bonus “Etna Mode” storyline (check out our exclusive 

shots!), Afternoon of Darkness offers Wi-Fi multiplayer features that 

are exclusive to the English version of the game. Our last preview 

announced the new ad-hoc multiplayer, and this time we’ve got a lot 

more details about how it works and why you should care about it. You 

initiate multiplayer by talking to a character called the Communicator 

(a Prinny in a maid out t) that hangs around in Laharl’s room after you 

nish the Tutorial levels. Talking to the Communicator lets you enter 

Network Mode, where you can opt to “sell” items to your friends or 

have a battle using customized rules. 

The item-selling option lets you sell copies of any items you’ve got in 

your Shopping Bag to your friends at half their usual shop price. This 

lets you help buddies ll out their item collections and get to certain 

unlockables more quickly. Multiplayer battles use radically different 

rules r than the main game, with special abilities disabled and no XP 

gained. g Instead, players gain points to keep track of their victories in 

the t 8-vs-8 melees, either by wasting entire teams or wasting the team’s 

Leader, L ala Soul Nomad. Both players can manipulate the outcome of 

the t battle by using Geo Cubes to cast special effects... but the Geo 

Cubes C demand Geo Souls, and you only gain one Geo Soul each turn. 

The T core game is still as fun as it ever was, and its fast bursts of 

tactical t action are really perfect for portable gaming. On a technical 

level, l the port is still amazing, without any load time issues at all. 

A few extra gameplay tweaks (like XP gains for Clerics when they 

Heal) H and online multiplayer instead of ad hoc would’ve been great, 

but b it’s hard to complain. Disgaea: Afternoon of Darkness is the kind 

of o game the PSP’s needed for a long, long time. 

DISGAEA: AFTERNOON OF DARKNESS 

DARKNESS_PREVIEW_13 

_PREVIEW_13

Blood and Gore 

Intense Violence 

Nudity 

© 2007 Conan Properties International LLC (“CPI”). CONAN, CONAN THE BARBARIAN, HYBORIA 

and related logos, characters, names, and distinctive likenesses are trademarks or registered trademarks 

of CPI. All Rights Reserved. Published and distributed by THQ Inc. THQ and the THQ logo are trademarks 

and/or registered trademarks of THQ Inc. All Rights Reserved. All other trademarks, logos and copyrights 

are property of their respective owners. “PlayStation”, “PLAYSTATION” and “PS” Family logo are registered 

trademarks of Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. Microsoft, Xbox, Xbox 360, Xbox LIVE, and the Xbox logos 

Check out the latest 

issue of Conan from 

Dark Horse Comics 

are trademarks of the Microsoft group of companies. *while supplies last 

Pre-order your copy today at 

GameStop and receive a Special 

Edition Xbox 360 Demo Disc*

Publisher: Activision 

Developer: Neversoft (PS3, 

360) Page 44 (PS2, Wii) 

Vicarious Visions (DS) 

Preview by Jeremy 

Release Date: Fall 2007 

Genre(s): Freeform skating 

# of Players: 1-? 

Tony Hawk’s Proving Ground is all about freedom, and Neversoft is set to make 

this the entry in the series with the most customization options and freedom for 

the player. While it’s been long-praised for its innovation, this newest offering 

is set to offer an unparalleled level of creation tools and customization features 

for player-created characters. New to the series is a video editor that allows 

you to create your own skate videos, capturing your greatest moments (and 

presumably) most painful follies. 

Also new is a virtual skate lounge that can be tricked out with plasma screens 

and high-end furniture, and also allows players to track their own stats, or meet 

new players in their own tricked out lounge. Players will also have the freedom 

to shift from single-player and multi-player gameplay seamlessly, and carry their 

single-player career mode stats over to its online counterpart. 

New Nail the Trick moves, and new gameplay mechanics such as skateable 

terrain altering, building, and bowl carving shine brightly as debuting gameplay 

features. The career mode will now allow you to develop into one of three types 

of skater - the contest-winning “career athlete”, a swift “hardcore skater” who 

dazzles with ash, or a “rigger”, who perverts the terrain into his own vision to 

achieve skating nirvana. Each of the styles will have their own unique Nail the 

Trick moves, adding even more depth to the gameplay and allowing the different 

skating styles to stand out more. This new free-form gameplay will show off ingame 

locales like Washington D.C., Philadelphia, and Baltimore. 

Freedom is the name of the game in this year’s Tony Hawk installment, and so 

far, it looks like Neversoft’s lofty goals about bringing it to the skating genre 

will be achieved, giving players the deepest and most customizable entry in the 

series to date. 

16_PREVIEW_TONY_HAWK’S_PROVING_GROUND HARDCORE GAMER MAGAZINE_VOLUME 3_ISSUE 4_ 4_VOODLE,SHIKA,LOU&OKAR 

VOODLE,SHIKA,LOU&OKAR

Publisher: Microsoft 

Developer: Mistwalker 

Release Date: 2008 

Preview by Wanderer 

Genre(s): Console RPG 

Category: Not Final Fantasy Really 

# of Players: 1 

There is absolutely no point in not saying this: Lost Odyssey is a new Final 

Fantasy game in all but name, and that much is obvious in the rst thirty seconds 

of seeing it in action. 

The sarcastic among you, who I count as my tribesmen, are laughing and saying 

“No, really? Mistwalker and all of its ex-Square Enix employees made a game like 

FF?!” That was Lynxara’s reaction. 

The point being, of course, that it is not merely FF-in uenced; it’s basically a 

direct across-the-board homage. Change the spell names and the 

game’s title, and you would have a next-generation FF game. 

Lost Odyssey is a meditation on memory and loss (Hironobu Sakaguchi 

describes it as an “emotional rollercoaster”), and it’s also about a guy 

with a sword beating up robots. Kaim has been alive for a thousand 

years, none of which he remembers, and he’s now right in the middle 

of a magically-powered civil war. With three different nations ghting 

for control of a new mystical power source, Kaim and his friends must 

ght to stay alive while Kaim slowly regains his memory. 

It’s forty hours or more of cinematically-designed, turn-based combat 

interspersed with high-de nition cutscenes. It’s the Platonic ideal of 

the late-nineties Japanese RPG, and it’s an Xbox 360 exclusive. Next 

week: more signs of the apocalypse. 

18_PREVIEW_LOST ODYSSEY HARDCORE GAMER MAGAZINE_VOLUME 3_ISSUE 4_VOODLE, SHIKA, LOU & OKAR 

FLY THE GREATEST AIRCRAFT YOU NEVER KNEW EXISTED! 

Pilot Pilot over over 50 50 authentic authentic planes planes and and 

prototypes prototypes in in some some of the the world’s world’s most most 

exotic exotic locations. locations. 

WWW.BLAZINGANGELS2.COM 

Mild Language 

Violence 

Engage Engage in in 18 18 high-stakes high-stakes missions missions where where you’ll you’ll 

bomb bomb bridges, bridges, steal steal secret secret weapons, weapons, and and more. more. 

AVAILABLE NOW 

© 2007 Ubisoft Entertainment. All Rights Reserved. Blazing Angels, Ubisoft, Ubi.com, and the Ubisoft logo are trademarks of Ubisoft Entertainment in the U.S. and/or other countries. “PlayStation”, “PLAYSTATION”, 

and “PS” Family logo are registered trademarks of Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. Microsoft, Xbox, Xbox 360, Xbox LIVE, and the Xbox logos are trademarks of the Microsoft group of companies. 

Go Go up up against against a a giant giant German German zeppelin zeppelin 

over over the the pyramids pyramids of of Cairo. Cairo.

Preview by Big Worm 

Publisher: Nintendo 

Developer: Nintendo 

Release Date: November 

Genre: Platformer 

Number of Players: 1 

After a long hiatus, Mario is back and wackier than ever in the much 

anticipated Wii title, Super Mario Galaxy. Only this time, there is no 

sunshine to bathe in as the beloved plumber traverses the deep reaches 

of space, hopping from asteroid to asteroid in his never-ending quest 

to gather golden coins and stars. Will he ever seek rehab for his 

addiction to bling? Will he continue his genocidal slaughter of every 

creature that isn’t human? Will he and Princess Peach ever nd true 

happiness? Read on, oh faithful fan, read on. 

Although this game is set in space, Mario still retains his signature moves, 

like relentlessly stomping on the heads of enemies, grabbing his hat 

while ducking and munching magic mushrooms. New to his repertoire is 

the devastating spin attack. With arms held sideways, Mario makes a 

st with each mitt and spins in place, knocking nearly everything he 

touches into oblivion. Performing this move is as simple as shaking 

the Wiimote. In addition, shaking it also activates giant gold stars 

that propel him to the next planetoid. Another new move is the long 

jump, which is activated by holding down the Z-button and A-button 

simultaneously. Triple jumps are also possible by pressing the 

A-button with the right timing. 

Using the motion-sensing controller, players can pick up items 

just by pointing at them and pressing the B-button. Certain 

enemies can also be ‘shot’ with projectiles using the same 

move. Directing Mario’s acrobatics feels very natural 

using the new controller, and just like previous titles, his 

movements are controlled with the C-stick. 

Another feature that may… ahem… “bee” of concern 

is the ability to transform into Bee Mario. When this 

power-up is discovered, it changes Mario into an 

adorable bee for a short time so he can fly up to 

high areas. The timer only lasts a few moments 

before it turns him back into his hippity-hoppity 

self, and contact with enemies or water also 

deactivates the power-up. 

With his feet planted rmly on the ground, Mario 

de es gravity by running around oating spheres 

and platforms. Grabbing power-ups and jumping 

around while hanging upside down may seem a 

bit disorienting at rst, but it gives the player 

an unprecedented amount of possibilities. 

When the path to rescuing Princess Peach is 

this much fun, she may be waiting a long 

time for her plumber in shining overalls. 

20_PREVIEW_SUPER MARIO GALAXY HARDCORE GAMER MAGAZINE_VOLUME 3_ISSUE 4_VOODLE, SHIKA, LOU & OKAR

Publisher: Activision 

Developer: In nity Ward 

Release Date: 11/2007 


Genre(s): First Person Shooter 

Category: Real World Mayhem 

# of Players: 1-16 (Online) 

At a recent Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare event in LA, I was able to get my hands 

on the controller, and while router issues prevented us from playing it online, we 

did get to enjoy twelve-player LAN. By the end of the session, I was eager for more, 

but I’m happy to report that the game plays as well as it looks. Every screenshot and 

movie of the game sports such realistic visuals that you will probably ask yourself 

if they have been ‘touched up,’ but trust me, they haven’t. A smooth frame rate 

helps to immerse players in the intense combat, and special RPG-like abilities add a 

unique amount of customization to gameplay. 

To begin with, typical soldier classes such as Sniper and Ri eman are available 

that offer pre-determined weapon loadouts. In addition, players can create and 

save custom classes that contain their favorite armaments. Up to twenty passive 

“Perks” add another dimension to customization since three of them can be active 

at any time. Deep Impact (not the movie, thankfully) allows bullets to pierce walls, 

Extreme Conditioning lets players sprint longer distances, and Eavesdrop reveals the 

conversations of nearby enemy players. 

Further customization occurs on the battle eld that rewards skilled players with 

additional abilities. For instance, scoring three kills in a row gives access to a UAV 

that displays the location of enemies for thirty seconds, while ve kills in 

a row opens up the ability to call in artillery. Although these are one-use 

features, they can have a devastating effect in the heat of battle. 

Those familiar with previous CoD titles will be able to jump right into the 

action since the controls are almost identical. Perhaps the only differences 

are in using the aforementioned non-passive abilities, which are linked to the 

D-pad. These simple controls help to even out the fast-paced action since it 

only takes a few shots to end up six feet underground. Personally, I welcome 

such realism because I get tired of having to empty a full clip into someone 

before they drop. 

Some may wonder if the change from WWII to contemporary combat was a 

good choice. After playing Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, it’s obvious that 

In nity Ward has another hit on its hands. 

22_PREVIEW_CALL OF DUTY 4: MODERN WARFARE HARDCORE GAMER MAGAZINE_VOLUME 3_ISSUE 4_VOODLE, SHIKA, LOU & OKAR

Every Metal Gear fan has wanted to see actual gameplay since 

Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots was announced. Sure, 

all of these cutscene trailers have been pretty nifty, but really, 

how is the game going to play? Hideo Kojima had a fteenminute 

long gameplay demonstration at the Metal Gear 20th 

Anniversary party that’s so detailed, in fact, that it’s the closest 

thing to actually playing the game you can currently get. 

In the demo we nd an aged Snake caught in the middle of a battle 

between two factions: PMCs (Private Military Companies) and the local 

resistance forces. The catchphrase “Nowhere to hide” is nally put 

into practice, and it is shown that Snake can approach the situations 

he nds himself in many different ways. He can Rambo through, he can 

sneak-it stealth-it, he can ally himself with the PMCs, or he can help the 

rebellion! This affects how people perceive you, how you perceive other 

people, and may effect things such as what kind of resources you have 

access to. The 3D Camera from MGS3:S returns, though the big reveal is 

that you will be able to play the game like an FPS if you wish. This is all 

in the interest of giving players a choice in how they approach the game, 

and in turn making it more accessible to players all over the world. 

Everyone’s favorite standbys aren’t missing, either. The AK47, MK22, 

and of course the RPG 7 (which you can now walk with while aiming) 

are all there. Most things that return are improved much like the RPG, 

with grenades now sporting Gears of War-style aiming, 

and a ring around Snake that helps reveal sounds and 

vibrations around him (much like Portable Ops). 

There’s also the girly magazines, and even the 

drum can from MG2: Solid Snake returns, only 

now you can roll over enemies with it. The 

camo system from MGS3 is back on steroids in 

the form of Octocam. It’s a cross between the 

old system, the stealth camo, and something 

entirely new: Snake can now mimic the 

textures of the walls and oor he’s hiding 

on, helping him further blend into the 

background. Oh, yeah, and you can use 

the tiny Metal Gear MK.II to shock people 

in the nuts! Kojima’s team seems to 

have nally found their balance 

between realism and 

surrealism, and it’s going 

to be a long wait 

until 2008! 

Preview by Ashura 

24_PREVIEW_METAL GEAR SOLID 4 HARDCORE GAMER MAGAZINE_VOLUME 3_ISSUE 4_VOODLE, SHIKA, LOU & OKAR

Preview by y Big Bi Big Bi BigW i gW g gWorm W WWorm 

W orm ormm 

In August, Sony held a gaming event at an Airsoft compound to promote 

SOCOM US Navy Seals Tactical Strike. During this awesome affair, authentic 

Navy Seals ran ve-man journalist teams through special recreations of 

missions from the game. game First we donned facemasks, facemasks camou camouage age gear, gear 

and knee pads, then we got to select from a myriad of rubber-bb shooting 

recreations of real-life weaponry (I chose an MP5, and later, a G3). As we 

entered the dark warehouse, smoke obscured our vision while spotlights 

illuminated dilapidated buildings, abandoned cars, a water fountain, and 

even a fruit stand. 

My favorite mission was rescue, and it was intense! The squad’s goal was 

to silently take out patrols in the middle of town, nd the VIP, and escort 

him to safety. After we grabbed our target, an ear-piercing alarm rang out, 

and the whole town erupted in gun re! Rubber bullets whizzed by my head, 

some ricocheted off of walls, and a few hit me in the arm. “Damn that 

stings!” I thought, “but at least they aren’t real.” We zigzagged through 

buildings, eliminating terrorists both inside and out using realistic cover 

techniques. q When we nally y got g the VIP to safety, y, my y heart was pounding p g 

harder than it ever has before. 

After the group had chow in the mess tent, it was time to check out SOCOM 

US Navy Seals Tactical Strike. Imagine my delight to nd out that the latest 

iteration of the popular series focuses more on strategy than action. Similar 

to Full Spectrum Warrior, players control a squad of soldiers who can be 

Publisher: Sony 

Developer: Sony 

Release Date: October 

Genre(s): Squad-Based Strategy 

# of Players: 1-4 (Online) Online) 

broken up into two teams. Rather than actually ring weapons and running 

around, cyber-commanders order their team to do everything from calling 

in air strikes to providing cover re to performing stealth kills. It only takes 

a few minutes to get used to the controls, and after that, they feel very 

intuitive. 

Real-life Navy Seals always go into battle with the upper-hand, and this 

game is no different. In addition to high-tech weaponry and gadgets, the 

player also usually has the element of surprise. This lets him or her adjust 

to each situation before the battle begins by setting up cross- res and 

anking the enemy. I also appreciate the ability to split up each team into 

individual soldiers because it allows nearly limitless possibilities, and with 

online multiplayer game play for up to four leader as well as the ability to 

play as Special Forces groups from around the world, the action is anything 

but pocket-sized. 

26_PREVIEW_SOCOM_CONFRONTATION HARDCORE GAMER MAGAZINE_VOLUME 3_ISSUE 4_ 4_VOODLE,SHIKA,LOU&OKAR 

VOODLE,SHIKA,LOU&OKAR 

Mild Blood 

Mild Suggestive Themes 

Violence 

"Fury" is ©2007 Auran Games Pty Ltd. All rights reserved. Fury and the Fury logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Auran Holdings Pty Ltd. Gamecock Media Group ©2007. All Rights Reserved. The rating 

icon is a registered trademark of the Entertainment Software Association. All other trademarks are property of their respective owners.


Publisher: Sony 

Developer: Insomniac 


Genre(s): Action Platformer 

Category: Super-Furry-Mechanical 


While visiting Insomniac Studios to demo Ratchet and Clank Future: Tools 

of Destruction, four very different levels were on display. Metropolis is an 

impressive, bustling hub of technology lled with skyscrapers, hover vehicles, 

and, of course, grind rails. In addition, bounce pads are scattered throughout 

the level that throw Ratchet and his metallic comrade high into the air, and 

futuristic enemies are around every corner. While it is mostly viewed from a 

behind-the-back perspective, some parts of it are played as a 2D side-scroller, 

reminiscent of the old-school days of gaming. 

Next is Sargasso, which is set in a lush background of greenery with swamps, 

rivers, and various prehistoric creatures. Some dinosaurs are almost too large to 

ll the screen, and one is so gigantic that Ratchet can climb up its back like a set 

of stairs. Sure T-Rexes may a bit intimidating, but that just makes their reaction 

to the Groovetron all the more hilarious! This oating disco ball forces all 

enemies in a small radius to break into spontaneous bouts of dancing, so imagine 

a ten-ton dino doing The Hustle, and you can’t help but laugh out loud. 

Iris is an ice level lled with skull-faced pirates that want nothing less than to 

skewer the dynamic duo. However, Ratchet can slip into a funny-looking pirate 

suit that sports a peg leg and hooked hand so he can limp around without drawing 

attention. Navigating some parts of Iris requires walking sideways on special paths 

while other obstructions involve cutting through ice barriers with the Geo-Laser. 

Last on the list is Space Combat, which is set in...well...space. Players must y 

a nimble spaceship through a gorgeous recreation of the universe while blasting 

enemy ships and avoiding projectiles. This level is extremely varied, forcing the 

player to avoid gigantic Capital Ships, y around a planet, dive down into its 

ravine, soar through a black hole, and nally battle a menacing metallic end boss. 

While not ying in space, players have a virtual cornucopia of exotic weaponry 

at their ngertips. For example, the Tornado Launcher res a cyclone that is 

controlled with the SIXAXIS controller, and Death Springs emits a roomful of 

Slinkies that explode on enemies. Most weapons can be upgraded by selecting 

different attributes from a pre-made ‘upgrade tree,’ and the effects range from 

additional ammunition to increased range or power. This type of customization is 

a very welcome addition. 

Unfortunately, Ratchet and Clank Future: Tools of Destruction doesn’t support 

multiplayer, but there seems to be more than enough action to satisfy fans 

of the series. 

28_PREVIEW_RATCHET & CLANK FUTURE: TOOLS OF DESTRUCTION HARDCORE GAMER MAGAZINE_VOLUME 3_ISSUE 4_VOODLE, SHIKA, LOU & OKAR 

© 2007 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. 

Weapon upgrades. 

Todd McFarlane specially designed, Limited Edition wireless Spartan 

controller featuring Master Chief. And McFarlane Limited Edition 

wireless Covenant controller featuring a Brute Chief. Each offers critically 

acclaimed 2.4 GHz RF wireless controller performance and includes an 

exclusive collectible Halo ® gurine from McFarlane Toys. Epic accessories 

for the epic new game. To make it even better, sign up for Xbox Live ® 

Gold now, and play with your friends no matter where they are.

Publisher: Eidos 

Developer: Funcom 

Release Date: 2008 

Genre(s): MMORPG 

Category: Crom, Count the Dead 

# of Players: Many 

Preview by Wanderer 

Conan is a hot property once again, with a successful comic from Dark Horse, a 

movie in development, and an action game on the way from THQ. Now there’s 

also Age of Conan, by the same development studio that brought you Anarchy 

Online. Set at the end of the original stories’ timeline, with Conan as the king of 

Aquilonia, it allows you to play your own barbarian in the Hyborian Age. 

As you might expect, the result is a dark and bloody MMO where guys wearing not a 

whole hell of a lot carve each other up. You begin the game washed up on a beach, 

and from the word “go,” you’re ghting for your life. You control everything in realtime, 

using sword combos and summoned pets to ght on your behalf. 

At fth level, you choose one of four archetypes for your character (soldier, priest, 

rogue, or mage), then choose other classes as you level up. Age of Conan will ship 

with a level cap of 80. 

The odd thing about Age of Conan, though, is that in a day and age when most new 

MMOs are trying not to be fantasy-based, it’s going in the other direction entirely. 

It’s a complete throwback to the roots of the fantasy genre: thews ripple, princesses 

need saving, and the PVP is in the form of drunken tavern brawls. That 

and the Conan license may give it an odd sort of counterintuitive edge in 

the increasingly crowded MMO marketplace. 

30_PREVIEW_AGE OF CONAN: HYBORIAN ADVENTURES HARDCORE GAMER MAGAZINE_VOLUME 3_ISSUE 4_VOODLE, SHIKA, LOU & OKAR 

The Agency barely existed when it was shown at E3; it was mostly shown as a .wmv le of 

gameplay, looping on a computer in the corner of Sony Online’s hotel suite. As such, it’s 

mostly a collection of concept art and ideas right now, but the latter are at least interesting. 

The Agency is a massively multiplayer online rst-person shooter, with all the gadgets, fast 

cars, ridiculous stunts, and skimpily dressed women you’d expect out of a James Bond movie. 

When enemy agents show up, you drop behind the barrel of your gun and take them on with 

your friends in a sort of FPS co-op mode. 

You can play the game as a spy, using stealth and gadgetry to in ltrate and execute your 

missions, or a comedically heavily-armed mercenary. If you start with one approach and wind up 

wanting to try the other, all you have to do is change your out t and you’ll change your role. 

The rest of the game is still up in the air, but Sony Online is mentioning the ability to collect 

backup NPCs to take care of goods, services, and in-game mail for you, as well as players 

forming their own Agencies to expand their web of in uence. Of course, this is the point in a 

game’s development where everything could change on a moment’s notice, so this is one we’ll 

have to keep an eye on. If nothing else, it’s slated to be one of the rst MMOs of any kind for 

the PS3, so there’s ground being broken here. 


Preview by yWan 

Wanderer an ande de dere re rer 

Publisher: Sony Online 

Developer: Sony Online 

Release Date: TBA 

Genre(s): Action 

Category: Rex Dart, Eskimo Spy 

# of Players: Many 

THE AGENCY_PREVIEW_31

PHOTO CREDITS 

Ken Jong 

Lance Cortez of Retroware TV 

Michael Thomasson of Good Deal Games 

The Classic Gaming Expo, affectionately 

dubbed CGE, is one of the premiere retro- 

gaming gathering events, drawing crowds 

long before similar events like Philly 

Classic, CCAG, and CinciClassic (to name 

a few) got their start. While the event 

has changed over time in content and 

venue, this year, after a short hiatus, it has 

returned in all its glory to “Sin City,” better 

known as Las Vegas. 

Similar shows attract those that fondly 

remember simpler games from simpler 

times. CGE goes beyond simple nostalgia 

and is also known as the collector’s 

convention. CGE regularly reveals new 

games for classic systems. 

Many of these titles, referred to as 

“homebrews,” are simply amazing! Not 

only do they support vintage consoles 

several decades old, the games often 

push the technology far beyond what the 

original hardware creators and software 

programmers ever imagined. For example, 

Mighty Mighty Missile for the Sega CD has 

more moving sprite graphics on the screen 

at the same time than any other of cially 

released title for that system. More 

impressive, many of these games are often 

crafted by a single individual without access 

to original documentation and design tools. 

Along with newly created content, long- 

rumored lost prototypes always seem 

to emerge at the Classic Gaming Expo. 

This year was no exception as Pitcher’s 

Duel, a Vectrex game that was stalled in 

development almost a quarter century 

ago, nally reached the hands of eager 

hobbyists. So whether you are looking to 

simply stroll down memory lane or nd 

something new for an old and cherished 

system, you’re in good company at the 

Classic Gaming Expo. 

Classic Gaming Expo 2K7 

10th Anniversary 

by Michael Thomasson of Good Deal Games 

PHOTO CREDITS 

Ken Jong 

Lance Cortez of Retroware TV 

Michael Thomasson of Good Deal Games 

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32_FEATURE_CLASSIC GAMING EXPO 2007 

32_FEATURE_CLASSIC GAMING EXPO 2007 HARDCORE GAMER MAGAZINE_VOLUME 3_ISSUE 4_ 

HARDCORE GAMER MAGAZINE_VOLUME 3_ISSUE 4_VOODLE, SHIKA, LOU & OKAR 

VOODLE, SHIKA, LOU & OKAR 

Speaking of good company, you are sure to meet 

a friend or two at the show. While bright pixels 

and booming blips and beeps often steal the 

spotlight, do not misunderstand; this show is as 

much about the gathering of players and game 

designers as the games themselves. Walking the 

show oor are many celebrities. While you won’t 

expect to nd Tom Cruise wandering about, you 

will nd the likes of David Crane, programmer 

of Atari’s Pitfall; Steve Woita, a VCS and NES 

designer; or a handful of Intellivision’s Blue Sky 

Rangers, to name a few. All of them could be 

seen mingling with adoring fans and attendees 

throughout the conference. 

A chosen few classic gaming celebrities held 

keynote speeches that were quite enlightening. 

One such speech featured Jay Smith, creator 

of the GCE Vextrex and Microvision. During this 

presentation, attendees learned how no one at 

GCE thought that anyone would ever become 

a good enough player to clear the thirteen 

programmed levels in MineStorm. Jay stated 

that within weeks of release, GCE was receiving 

letters about the “Dust Levels” that appear 

following the completion of the 13th board. Jay 

stated, “These levels were never programmed 

or planned and just happened as a complete 

accident. What happens is that the mines are 

reduced to tiny specks, but the game is still 

playable and operates.” 

Jay Smith told many yarns, such as how the original Microvision was intentionally made bigger by 

marketing and that it could have been half its physical size. He spoke about technical issues such as 

solving the complex problem of writing text on a vector screen, designing the rst 16x16 LCD screen 

“that couldn’t be done,” and how the famous Vectrex “hum” was not in any of the prototype models 

and is thought to be a manufacturing issue caused by faulty or improper grounding. He teased the 

crowd with the news that the Vectrex was almost re-released as a portable in 1990 using a CRT with 

an Oscilloscope for static de ection. 

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CLASSIC GAMING EXPO 2007 

CLASSIC GAMING EXPO 2007_FEATURE 

_FEATURE_33 

_33 

HARDCORE GAMER MAGAZINE_VOLUME 3_ISSUE 4_ 


VOODLE, SHIKA, LOU & OKAR

Intellivision fans were pleased to hear from Keith 

Robinson and members of the Blue Sky Rangers. During 

a question and answer segment, when asked about 

dealings with people who are still in the industry, Keith 

Robinson looked directly at cameraman Earl Green and 

sighed, “Man, I wish the cameras weren’t rolling...” — 

much to the crowd’s delight! 

Al Alcorn, Atari’s rst employee and the programmer of 

Pong, gave a Powerpoint presentation that he previously 

had shown to students at Stanford, dealing with factors 

in society that led to how Atari operated and the 

company’s mindset, noting how Atari “bet the company 

every year!” 

He mentioned how Nolan Bushnell, Atari’s founder and 

president at the time, promised employee Steve Jobs a 

“$1000 bonus for every chip removed from Breakout,” 

and how Jobs used Wozniak to do the work, then took 

the credit and the majority of the cash! 

Alcorn stated that when Warner rst bought Atari they 

considered changing the Atari logo. It wasn’t until the 

polling results revealed that the Atari logo was more 

recognizable than that of both Mickey Mouse and Coca 

Cola to the target demographic of young teens when 

Warner decided it was better to keep what they had! 

He spoke of his involvement with Atari in creating 

the rst embossed hologram, which evolved into the 

portable Cosmos system. Alcorn stated that when 

the suits at Atari eventually admitted to him that the 

Cosmos would never be released, he abandoned Atari. 

And there were more keynotes: the Activision programmers comprised of Garry Kitchen, David Crane, 

Steve Cartwright, and Glyn Anderson spoke about leaving Atari to form their own company. An Atari 

Panel consisting of Steve Woita, Keithen Hayenga, Steve Wright and Bob Polaro told stories of their 

days programming games for the VCS. Game journalism was discussed by the rst gaming journalist 

Bill Kunkel, along with Chris Koehler and Chris Bieniak. CGE founders Joe Santulli, John Hardie, and 

Sean Kelly even reminisced over hijinks from past expos. 

Intellivision fans were pleased to hear from K 

K i 

ei 

ei 

ei 

eei 

ei 

eeith 

th 

th 

th 

t 

Robinson and members of the Blue Sky Ran 

an 

an 

ange 

ge 

ge 

ge 

gg rs 

rs 

rs 

rs 

rs. 

. DDu 

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ng 

ng 

ng 

ng 

ng 

ng 

a question and answer segment, when as 

as 

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out 

dealings with people who are still in the 

ee 

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Robinson looked directly at cameeeee 

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....” 

.” 

.” 

. — 

— 

much to the crowd’s delight! 

Al Alcorn, Atari’s rst employeeee an 

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Pong, gave a Powerpoint pres 

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34_FEATURE_CLASSIC GAMING EXPO 2007 



VOODLE, SHIKA, LOU & OKAR HARDCORE GAMER MAGAZINE_VOLUME 2_ISSUE 5_CALL CHUCK 

CGE itself is also host to other events. There is always an Alumni Dinner, an event party hosted by 

CGE Services, honoring those involved in making some of our beloved classic games, and this year 

the Pinball Hall of Fame also opened its doors to attendees of CGE. Complimentary shuttles ferried 

players from the show oor to the pinball museum, which featured over 140 classic pinball machines 

as well as 40 classic arcade coin-ops. The Pinball Hall of Fame also hosted the latest Retrotopia, 

sponsored by Keith Robinson of Intellivision fame. All of the pinball machines and arcade coin-ops 

were on free play, a disk jockey was on hand spinning music of the ’80s, and all had a good time. 

Several INTV veterans could be found tilting machines, including John Sohl, designer of Astrosmash, 

and B-17 Bomber. While we were not all “pinball wizards” to begin with, the more signature drinks 

(referred to as the Astrosmash) we consumed, the less control attendees had over the ol’ silver ball! 

With this year’s proceeds going to The Salvation Army, the CGE auction is not to be missed. Watching 

John Hardie carefully twist words to get bidders salivating for rare collectable items, such as a full- 

size Solid Snake statue that sold for $450, was very entertaining. Highlights included the sale of an 

Intellivision Keyboard Component w/ ECS computer module along with one of the two known existing 

copies of Conversational French, which sold for a cool $3,000. 

Four “Mystery Boxes” with minimal or exceptional contents were also auctioned off throughout the 

evening for various values. One such “Mystery Box” sold for $1,300 and to the winner’s delight it 

contained the rarest of Atari 2600 games, CommaVid’s Video Life. Less than twenty copies were 

known to be made, and in the past it has fetched values approaching three grand! 

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CLASSIC GAMING EXPO 2007 

CLASSIC GAMING EXPO 2007_FEATURE 

_FEATURE_35 

_35 



VOODLE, SHIKA, LOU & OKAR

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ga gain in in insssss s were we we we were re re r to to ttt oo be be be beee found fou 

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In In conclusion, conclusion, if iff you’ve you’ u’ve made mmmmmmad ad ad ade e eeee the th th th th th t e e e e e e e show sh sh sh ssh ssh sh sh s ow oow ow ow ow o in in ii the th th th th th th the eeeee past, paast st stt sttt s ,, , the the eeee organizers oor o ga ga ga ga gaa gani n zeeeerrs rs rs rs rs and and 

exhibitors exhibitors rs thank tha hha hhha hh nk nk you. yyou 

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yyy yyyy ou ou ou ou ou ou ou ou ou ouu 

to to to to to to to to to to to check cche 

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HARDCORE GAMER MAGAZINE_VOLUME 3_ISSUE 4_VOODLE, VOODLE, SHIKA, LOU & OKAR 

VENDORS 

Arcade-in-a-Box showcased their thei ei eir r rclas classic c clas 

lassic sic gaming ga gamin min ming gsyst system syst 

y em e on a the Atari a 2600 0 and nd other systems. ssystems. 

Titles previously sly available av avail ailabl ab e on 

massive 70-inch projection screen e and demonstrated demo monstrat rated ed their diskette disket ette for the Atari Atar ari i 400/800 4400 

00/800 computers, such h as 

Claim Claim Jumper, 

upcoming Jamma-in-a-Box system. system tem. 

Attack Attack of of the the Mutant Mutant Camels, and Jumpman Jumpman Junior, r were 

Atari2600.com released three e new nnew 

w games: gam g es: Rent Rent Wars Wars s and Nerds Nerds 

ported to the Atari Atar ari i 5200 55200 

200 in cartridge ca c rtridge format. 

for the Atari 2600, and The The Last Last Ninja Ninja a for the Atari ri 5200. 

Packrat Videogames featured fe f atured e playable pl p ayable homebrews and hacks hac hacks k at 

CGE Services released Lasercade Lasercade e for fo for the e Atari 2600 0 and 

the long- 

lost and long g rumored Pitcher’s Pitcher’s Duel Duel l for fo for the GCE Vectrex. Ve Vectr c ex. 

their booth. boo b th. Showing Showi owing ng amazing ama amazin zing support supp upp pport ort for fo f r the Odyssey2 console, 

they y highlighted hhigh 

ighlighted dnew new 

titles tit titles les es such su such ch 

as Kill Kill the the Attacking Attacking Aliens, Mr. Mr. 

Custom Cus Custo C tom t Portables, Po Porta r bles, known kno kn wn for o taking takin 

king g Roboto, Planet Planet Lander, Pong, 

systems sys syste 

tems of yesterday ay and making ma makin kin k g them t tthem 

Puzzle Puzzle Piece, a and nd n more. mor ore. e. 

portable por portab p table le today, tod today, ay, did di did d just jjust 

st that th that at t with wit with h 

demos dem demos d os for systems sy syste stems ms such h as aas 

s the tthe 

he e Sega Seg S a 

Dreamcast, D Atari Jaguar, r, Nintendo Ni Ninte nt ndo NES, 

GameCube Gam Ga G eCube and N64, N6 N64, 4 X-Box, X-B -Box, ox and even 

the thhe 

fan favorite coin-op op Neo-Geo! Ne Neo-Geo! 

Pink k GGod 

Godzilla odzilla a had h ad people peo people ple playing pl playi ayi ay ng 

in analog ana analog with h their the th ir Pink Pink Godzilla Godzilla 

Dev Dev Kit, t a new full-color card 

game eabout about a creating g videogames. 

vvide 

ideoga g mes. 

Digital Diigital 

Press, operated operat rated ed by CGE cofounder 

fo ounder Joe Santulli, Santul tulli, li, had ha had d a large 

assortment as asss 

ssort ortmen ment t of oof 

f classic cclas 

lassic sic games ga games for sale, as 

well we weel 

ell l as aas 

s the tthe 

he h popular pop popula ular rand and a informative DP 

RetroGaming Radio io conducted con conduc ducted 

interviews and n offered offere ered dDVD- DVD-rom 

rom 

collections col co lec lectio tions of their weekly wee weekly kly k seven- se seven ven e - 

year-and-counting yea ear-andd 

counting radio rad adio show. sho show. w 

Collector’s Coollector’s 

Guides. Gui G ides d . 

RetroZone ne released Sialagogic’s Si Siala alagog gogic’ ic’s Sudoku Sudoku 2007 2007 7 for fo for the NES, as s 

Gamegator2000 sold software for the Philips CD-I and a unique 

adapter that allows one to use a Sega Genesis controller in place 

well as USB converters conver erter t s that allow playing pl playing emulated games on a 

PC or Nintendo Wii with original controllers. 

of an impossible-to- imposs ossibl ible-t e-to- o- nd n CD-I controller. 

Rolenta Press sold copies of their excellent game books and d 

Good Deal Games supported homebrew homebre b w publishing publ b ishing in a grand 

way, with over two dozen z new and recently released games e for 

the Atari Lynx, Atari Jaguar, Ja Jaguar, Colecovision, Coleco covis vision i , Sega SSega 

ega CD, Turbografx- 

Turb u ogr o afx- 

16, Vectrex, and d more. mmore 

o . They The hey auctioned au aucti ctione oned two o unreleased Capcom om 

previewed the upcoming 4th edition of the h must-own Phoenix: Phoenix: 

The The Fall Fall & & Rise Rise of of Videogames. Famed author Leonard Herman 

and premiere e videogame journalist Bill Kunkel autographed their th t eir 

boo books in the Good Deal Games booth. 

prototypes for the Sega Saturn, Werewolf Werewolf f and an a d Major Major Damage. Twin Galaxies made available the newest edition of their popular pop opula ular 

Copies of their ReVival Magazine e along with the he new Gyruss- Twin Twin Galaxies Galaxies Of Of cial cial Video Video Game Game & & Pinball Pinball Book Book of of World World 

based military science ction novel, novel vel, From From Neptune Neptune to to Earth, Records: Records: Arcade Arcade Volume. Walter Day promoted the upcoming upcomin min m g 

were also available for the literary crowd. 

theatrical l lm, 

lm, The The King King of of Kong: Kong: A A Fistful Fistful of of Quarters, about abo bout 

Intellivision Productions Prod o uct u ions released the repackaged PC/Mac 

software bundle Las Las Vegas Vegas g Lounge Lounge g Trio, , Intellivision Intellivision Lives!, 

, 

and Intellivision Intellivision Rocks!, along with the audio cd Intellivision 

Intellivision 

the battle between a middle school schoo ool science teacher teach acher e and 

a hot sauce mogul for the Guinness world d record 

on 

the th the arcade d classic l i Donkey DDonkey k Kong. K 

in in Hi-Fi. Those in the know who asked nicely could demo an 

Also o at aat 

CGE2K7 CGE2 E K7 7 were wer we e Billy Galaxy, Next Level 

upcoming version of Intellivision software for the Nintendo 

Videogames, Vid Videog eo ame mes, s, Older Old Older er Games, Gam Games, Y-Bot Classic 

DS, featuring touch screen controls s that made the original 

Games, Gam Ga G es, and d Yobo YYobo 

obo Gameware Ga G meware selling 

Intellivision overlays a snap — the best emulation of the 

various var ariou i s wares and game-related 

Intellivision to date! 

Messiah Entertainment demonstrated their Generation 

NEX console that is fully compatible with Nintendo 

NES games, making blowing into aging carts a thing thi h ng 

of the past! Their new 2.4GHz 2.4G 4GHz H wireless wir w eless arcade 

stick was also on-hand and nd worked wor wo ked nicely. 

NWCGE, known as the Northwest Classic Games 

Enthusiasts, ts, displayed an assortment of unique 

items. ite items. m Among them were reproduction reproducti tion on carts car carts ts for 

toys toy toys s and aand 

n merchandise. 

mer me m chandise. 


CLASSIC GAMING EXPO 2007 2007_FEATURE _FEATURE_37 _37

y Scott Jacobi of Retrogaming Times Monthly 

I have always admired fan translations of 

video games. The notion that a collection 

of “ordinary Joes” could pick up a title that 

was discarded by a big company and make 

a new play experience available to even 

more people has always been intriguing to 

me. However, I had just enough knowledge 

as a programmer to believe that such a 

task was beyond my ability, and never 

mind my complete inability to comprehend 

Japanese. I never suspected that I would be 

responsible for such a translation. 

As a video game history buff, I found myself 

researching a game made by Namco, known 

as The Tower of Druaga. It was an arcade 

game that was as popular in Japan as it was 

unpopular in America. In the process of nding 

out what platforms it was released on, I found 

out about a particular conversion for the PC 

Engine. I had assumed that it was simply a 

very accurate port of the arcade version, 

which Namco was known for. Nevertheless, I 

gave it a shot, and it turned out to be quite 

different. It was more of an upgraded version 

with an isometric view than a straight port, so 

I gured I’d give it a shot. 

One of the aspects that made The Tower of 

Druaga so notorious was the challenge of 

making the necessary treasure chests appear. 

The solutions were different for each oor, 

and appeared incredibly random. This PC 

Engine version was kind enough to at least 

provide players with clues on how to attain 

the chests, but unfortunately for me, they 

were all in Japanese. I thought my story with 

this game would end here. 

In an unusual act of curiosity, I decided to 

take a look at the game’s ROM in a hex editor, 

just to see what I could see. A hex editor 

allows you to examine raw machine language, 

which is composed of a series of base-sixteen 

numbers. The contents of a ROM can be 

generally categorized into two parts: program 

and data. It’s not easy to nd things in either 

part, but between the two, data is far easier 

to search through. I happened to chance upon 

the word “NAMCO” among all of the numbers. 

Further investigation led me to believe that 

I had found the data belonging to the title 

screen. As a quick test, I replaced the name 

NAMCO with my name, and started the game 

up in an emulator. Sure enough, the emulator 

displayed the title screen with the name 

SCOTT where the name NAMCO used to be. 

Emboldened by this discovery, I decided to 

investigate a little further. Every letter of 

every word in the game was composed of a 

series of numbers from zero to 255. By testing 

every value out on the title screen, I was able 

to create a table that mapped every number 

to the symbol they represent in the ROM. 

Even though I didn’t know how to read the 

Japanese that appeared in the rst hint, I was 

able to convert those symbols into numbers, 

and nd the place in the ROM where that hint 

was located. That’s when it rst occurred to 

me: I might be able to translate this game 

into English. 

There are two dif cult parts to translating 

a ROM. One is the technical know-how to 

replace the Japanese text with English text. 

The other is knowing what English text to 

replace the Japanese text with. I had gured 

out the rst part, but I de nitely needed 

assistance with the second part. I had two 

choices: attempt to translate each hint with 

the assistance of an online translation website 

38_FEATURE_FAN TRANNING 101 HARDCORE GAMER MAGAZINE_VOLUME 3_ISSUE 4_VOODLE, SHIKA, LOU & OKAR 

This dilemma is something that many ROM 

translators, both professionals and amateurs, 

have come across. It is a common complaint 

among hardcore fans of any video game 

series, that a game is poorly translated 

when it’s brought over from Japan. The very 

problem that I was experiencing is one of the 

biggest reasons for that complaint. It’s rare to 

nd extra space in a ROM to actually enhance 

a translation. Far more often, translators nd 

that they have to compromise on the accuracy 

of the translation in order to make it t into 

the memory allotted for a game’s text. 

I completed the task of tting all of the 

translations into the game, and I honestly 

believed that I had done all that I could to 

make the game playable by English-speaking 

gamers. There was one particularly glaring 

omission from the translation, and that was 

the status screen. The status screen was 

drawn on the screen using graphics tiles 

instead of text. Graphics are stored very 

differently from text, and I could not nd the 

location of those tiles with my own ability. 

I felt that the game was 95% translated, 

and if it was ever going to be 100%, perhaps 

someone could pick up where I left off and 

complete the game. 

I proceeded to make the patch that other 

users could apply to their Japanese version 

of the ROM and use my translation, and 

I submitted the patch to http://www. 

romhacking.net/ which houses the largest 

collection of ROM translations on the net. 

They accepted my patch and the translation 

was posted. I believed that was the end of 

my story. 

I never would have had the notion to attempt 

a project such as this if it hadn’t been for the 

Internet, so it’s not so ironic that that I was also 

empowered to nish the project because of the 

Internet as well. The site manager who accepted 

by patch suggested that I ask for help with the 

status screen on the translation forums. Figuring 

that it couldn’t hurt, I explained my dilemma 

and asked if anyone knew how to nd the 

graphics tiles where the untranslated Japanese 

was stored. Sure enough, only two days later, 

a forum member who goes by Sliver X posted a 

screenshot of the tiles, as they appeared in the 

ROM, using a special tool known only as YY-CHR. 

40_FEATURE_FAN TRANNING 101 HARDCORE GAMER MAGAZINE_VOLUME 3_ISSUE 4_VOODLE, SHIKA, LOU & OKAR

This dilemma is something that many ROM 

translators, both professionals and amateurs, 

have come across. It is a common complaint 

among hardcore fans of any video game 

series, that a game is poorly translated 

when it’s brought over from Japan. The very 

problem that I was experiencing is one of the 

biggest reasons for that complaint. It’s rare to 

nd extra space in a ROM to actually enhance 

a translation. Far more often, translators nd 

that they have to compromise on the accuracy 

of the translation in order to make it t into 

the memory allotted for a game’s text. 

I completed the task of tting all of the 

translations into the game, and I honestly 

believed that I had done all that I could to 

make the game playable by English-speaking 

gamers. There was one particularly glaring 

omission from the translation, and that was 

the status screen. The status screen was 

drawn on the screen using graphics tiles 

instead of text. Graphics are stored very 

differently from text, and I could not nd the 

location of those tiles with my own ability. 

I felt that the game was 95% translated, 

and if it was ever going to be 100%, perhaps 

someone could pick up where I left off and 

complete the game. 

I proceeded to make the patch that other 

users could apply to their Japanese version 

of the ROM and use my translation, and 

I submitted the patch to http://www. 

romhacking.net/ which houses the largest 

collection of ROM translations on the net. 

They accepted my patch and the translation 

was posted. I believed that was the end of 

my story. 

I never would have had the notion to attempt 

a project such as this if it hadn’t been for the 

Internet, so it’s not so ironic that that I was also 

empowered to nish the project because of the 

Internet as well. The site manager who accepted 

by patch suggested that I ask for help with the 

status screen on the translation forums. Figuring 

that it couldn’t hurt, I explained my dilemma 

and asked if anyone knew how to nd the 

graphics tiles where the untranslated Japanese 

was stored. Sure enough, only two days later, 

a forum member who goes by Sliver X posted a 

screenshot of the tiles, as they appeared in the 

ROM, using a special tool known only as YY-CHR. 

40_FEATURE_FAN TRANNING 101 HARDCORE GAMER MAGAZINE_VOLUME 3_ISSUE 4_VOODLE, SHIKA, LOU & OKAR 

“It is a common 

complaint among 

hardcore fans of any 

video game series, 

that a game is poorly 

translated when it’s 

brought over from 

Japan.” 

YY-CHR was developed by a Japanese 

programmer to help him change the graphic 

tiles of different video games to whatever he 

wanted them to be. The tool could load the 

contents of a ROM into memory, and allow a 

user to view them. The trick, however, was 

to look at the contents in the correct format. 

Every system has a different native format, so 

you had to choose that format in order to see 

anything, or it will simply look like garbage. 

Sliver X had found the correct format for the 

PC Engine (which turned out to be identical to 

the SNES format) and found the location (or 

memory address) where the tiles were stored. 

Now I could actually get to work completing 

the translation. 

Having discussed the status screen with Keiko, 

I knew what each tile should become. Since 

YY-CHR was designed to be an editor, I was 

able to go to the same location that Sliver X 

found, and immediately begin to re-draw the 

tiles in English. In some cases, I opted to use 

symbols, since the status screen used Kanji. 

So I took the Kanji for “sword” and replaced 

it with a sword icon. In other cases, I replaced 

the Kanji with a very condensed English word 

(like “power”). When I was done editing, 

I saved my work, and loaded the game up 

an emulator to see how it looked. At last, I 

thought, the game is nally translated. Before 

I stopped, I decided to poke around a little 

more in the ROM. 


I happened to stumble upon the glyph set, 

that is, is the set of tiles used for the English 

and Japanese characters. It contained a huge 

number of Japanese letters (none of which I 

was using anymore) and the standard twentysix 

capital English letters. At this point, 

I decided that the translation might look 

better if I added a lower case to the glyph 

set. I replaced many of the unused Japanese 

letter with my own designs, and proceeded 

to rewrite many of my translations, this time 

with lower case letters. This time-consuming, 

but simple act resulted in a more polished 

translation that was easier to read. 

Having gone this far, there was only one more 

thing that was bothering me: abbreviations. 

On the equipment screen, I only had enough 

room for twelve letters per item. In most 

cases, that was enough, but for items with 

names like “White Gauntlet,” I could not t 

the entire name on the screen, so I settled for 

“White Gaunt.” which was twelve characters 

exactly. I borrowed an idea from the many 

great ROM translators that came before me. 

I created extra tiles that were designed to 

contain two lower case letters. For example, 

I created one tile that represented “tl” and 

another tile that represented “et.” Now I 

could remove the abbreviations and t the 

entire name of the item on the screen by 

writing “White Gaun(tl)(et)” for example. 

After Afte doing this, I nally got the translation 

exactly exac where I wanted, and I happily 

submitted the updated patch to RomHacking. 

net so it could be enjoyed by everyone. I’m 

not sure if I would ever attempt another 

translation again in the future, but I certainly 

wouldn’t rule it out. In the end, I realized 

that the process isn’t quite as mystifying 

as I believed it was. Certainly, I chose an 

easy game to work on, and there are even 

easier ones out there. Some games that are 

already translated (such as Final Fantasy IV 

and Phantasy Star II) are translated again by 

fans because they wanted to provide players 

with a more accurate translation than the 

of cial one which was given to them. If you 

ever happen to stumble upon a game that 

you are motivated to translate, never assume 

that ability is beyond your reach. Even if 

you simply post a message on the translation 

message boards, you may just nd someone 

who can help you get over the bigger hurdles, 

and provide fellow hardcore gamers with a 

brand new gaming experience. 

Scott Jacobi is a 6 year video game industry 

vet. He is the Chief Editor for Retrogaming 

Times Monthly, the longest-running online 

free Retrogaming newsletter ever, and he is a 

member of the staff at StrategyWiki.org. 

FAN TRANNING 101_FEATURE_41

PEANUT BUTTER AND CHOCOLATE 

Hitman: Blood Money was de nitely one of the best games 

to hit the Xbox 360 last year. It mixed style with action and 

foreshadowed just what the Xbox 360 is capable of through 

its sprawling stages and interesting AI. As a player, you had 

an enormous number of choices as to how to proceed. If you 

wanted to kill every single person in a level... well, who 

could stop you? 

Another sleeper hit was Freedom Fighters. It was based on 

the Hitman 2 engine, though it was geared more toward 

team-based gameplay. Instead of sneaking about and killing in 

silence, you and your crew took to the streets to retake the 

country. Simple but effective controls made the game a hit 

with casual and hardcore gamers alike. 

What’s this got to do with Kane & Lynch: Dead Men? 

Well, that’s easy. 

You got Hitman in my Freedom Fighters! 

You got Freedom Fighters in my Hitman! 

ALONE WITH A BUDDY 

IO Interactive is behind both Hitman and Freedom Fighters, 

and Kane & Lynch is what you get when you put two great 

tastes together. The style and stealth of Hitman mix with 

the team tactics of Freedom Fighters to give up a unique 

gameplay experience. 

Cooperative play is one of the biggest selling points of multiplayer 

titles right now, so it’s no surprise that more and more games 

are starting to implement it. However, Kane & Lynch is slightly 

different. It’s a single player cooperative experience. 

You are Kane. Kane was sentenced to death row after turning his 

life from gold to dross. His son found his father’s gun, shot himself 

by accident, and died two weeks later. Kane left the country and 

went into the soldier for hire business in an attempt to forget his 

old life. He worked for a secret organization called The Seven for 

over a decade, until the traditional “one last hit” went south. 

He escaped with a fortune, but his team didn’t even manage to 

escape with their lives. 

42_COVER STORY_KANE & LYNCH 

story by 4thletter 


Lynch, your partner, was also sentenced to death. He’s 

accused of murdering his wife, though he isn’t sure if he’s 

guilty or not. You see, he blacks out sometimes. When he 

wakes up, he tends to nd himself covered in blood and 

possibly responsible for some very shocking acts. 

They meet on death row, mere moments before what 

appears to be a jail break. In reality, four members of The 

Seven survived the job and want to x things. In short, 

either Kane gives them their due, meaning his fortune and 

his life, or they kill his wife and daughter. 

It’s an easy choice. Kane is already responsible for the 

death of one of his children. He can’t handle being 

responsible for another death. 


KANE & LYNCH_COVER STORY_43

GETTING TOO OLD FOR THIS 

You could call Kane & Lynch a buddy movie and 

you wouldn’t be too far off. If you were to take 

cult classics like 48 Hrs or Bandits, where the two 

“buddies” pretty much hate each other, you’ll 

be even closer. Kane and Lynch get along out of 

necessity, but they don’t quite trust each other yet. 

Lynch is, to put it bluntly, unhinged. He’s quick to 

anger, even more prone to violence, and severely 

under-medicated. Sometimes he talks to things that 

aren’t there, as well. If you bring Lynch along on 

a job, you’re almost guaranteed to fall into some 

heinous mayhem, not to mention his penchant for 

leaving every single person around him dead. 

Kane, on the other hand, is a bit more subtle. 

He’s built up a few connections over his time with 

the mercenaries and he’s rock solid at planning 

heists. He knows how to get in and out, but if he 

doesn’t rein Lynch in, he’s looking at failing his 

family for a nal time. His cool head under re 

won’t mean much if Lynch is doing enough blazing 

for the both of them. 

LOOSE CANNONS 

“What’s all this got to do with gameplay?” 

That’s a fair question and the answer is easy. It has 

everything to do with gameplay. 

Since you’re controlling Kane, Lynch is run by the AI. 

He will go off and do his own thing, either for story 

reasons or just because, and this means that you 

have to adjust. You can direct him, to an extent, 

but he is his own man. The anti-buddy movie feel of 

the game is re ected in the gameplay itself. 

We got a bit of face time with the game, and were 

shown a couple of stages. Kane and Lynch need to 

pull off a bank heist to nd something. They nd a 

safecracker and make a plan. After meeting up with 

the safecracker, they gas the bank, putting almost 

everyone to sleep on the inside. 

They breach the building and descend to the vault. 

Kane tells Lynch to go watch the hostages, just in 

case a few of them wake up. Kane, meanwhile, 

stays with the safecracker. Waves of guards come 

pouring into the vault area and Kane ghts them 

off all by himself. They crack the vault, check the 

safety deposit boxes, and get ready to head back to 

the ground level to escape. 

When they reach the bank lobby, they nd Lynch 

standing on a platform and dead hostages scattered 

all around. Lynch, however, is still ring on them. “I 

thought I told you to stay still!” he shouts. “Don’t 

make me kill you again!” 

Kane eventually calms Lynch down, but they’ve lost 

a valuable bargaining chip. There is a gauntlet of 

cops waiting outside and they’ve got absolutely no 

leverage. Their only choice is to get into a shoot-out 

with LA’s nest and engage in a high speed chase 

in a van down the streets. That’s pretty much the 

de nition of the term “Charlie Foxtrot.” 



K.I.S.S. 

Kane’s mercenary connections tend to pay off. He can gather a 

crew for large hits to make it easier to get in and out. Some jobs 

just need more than two people. So, yes, there is squad-based 

gameplay in Kane & Lynch 

Look, don’t run away screaming. It isn’t that bad at all. IO 

Interactive made a conscious decision to get as far away from 

the war game genre as possible. Those kind of games tend to be 

overcomplicated and drown the user in multi-layered menus. 

In Kane & Lynch, you’ve just got a few buttons. Everything is kept 

simple. The status of your crew mates are displayed as a small icon 

in the upper right hand corner. You can give them a few commands 

— Go, Attack, and Return. They will handle the rest. You don’t have 

to worry about setting breaching charges, allies refusing to obey 

your orders, or anything like that. The system just works. 

The crew mechanics come in when a level needs a little extra 

oomph. Two men against the world is pretty tough, but throw six 

into the mix, some of them with their own personal soldiers, and 

you’ve got World War III. The crew numbers are decided on a perlevel 

basis and scaled to t the action. You don’t control the makeup 

of the team, so that means no trying to overwhelm the enemy. 

There is a reason for your crew to be present where they are. They 

aren’t faceless ciphers, like you’d nd in other games. There are 

little touches and bits of dialogue that hint at a storied past, either 

alone or with either of the main characters. Lynch is the subject of 

no small amount of scorn and is frequently called a “wife-killer.” 

Another member of the crew found religion in prison and isn’t 

afraid to comment on your actions. Others, of course, aren’t too 

happy to be there at all. 



You can tell at a glance exactly what your crew is up to, making it 

easy to strategize. This economy carries over to the HUD, which is as 

minimalist as you can get without eschewing it entirely. All you really 

need to know is how much ammo you have left, so that’s all you get to 

know. Health is shown through in-game actions. Kane’s vision will go 

red, the screen goes awash in motion blur, and he’ll eventually pass 

out. Immersive? Yes. 

The good news is that passing out doesn’t necessarily mean dying. 

Your crew can bring you back to life with a shot of adrenaline, and you 

can return the favor. This isn’t an unlimited option, though. Too many 

adrenaline shots will net you a brand new heart attack and kill you 

dead. Use it sparingly and, though this should go without saying, 

don’t get shot. 

Even weapons sharing is simple. You can trade weapons between allies, 

so if a crew mate has a ri e that you like, and you’ve got a P90 that he 

may enjoy, you can access his inventory with one click (of a button) and 

trade weapons with one ick (of a stick). “One click and one ick” is 

the name of the game. If you’re running low on ammo, your crew can 

hook you up with a few extra magazines, as well. 

That’s about as intrusive as the HUD gets. At any other point in time, 

the cinematic feel of the game is maintained. There aren’t traditional 

loading screens or static chapter breaks. Kane and Lynch speak over the 


loading screens, discussing the upcoming job, arguing, and generally 

hating each other’s guts. The chapter titles are key, or clever, lines of 

dialogue from the current section of the game, be it an observation on 

heights (who doesn’t hate them?) or on the ridiculous nature of a job. 

You aren’t just watching a buddy movie. You’re playing one. 

COME GET SOME 

All of this attention to detail is no accident. 

The game began its life focused on Kane, but Lynch kept pushing his 

way into the title. Where the devs wanted a super tense scene with just 

Kane, they’d nd that this germ of an idea called Lynch could make the 

scene even more tense. Lynch had an edge that Kane didn’t have and 

he did nothing but make the game more interesting. 

The next trick was implementing him into the game in a reasonable 

manner. Cracking the co-op single player was no easy task, but once it 

was done, development became much easier. Having a contentious duo 

makes dialoguing and plotting much easier. Instead of having to ght to 

create the voice of one character, you can bounce the characters off of 

each other and see what comes out of the pot. The two characters are 

going to be knee-deep in bad guys, but at each other’s throats as well. 


INTELLIGENT 

Kane & Lynch is closer to the Freedom Fighters side of the family 

tree than the Hitman side, but it didn’t fall too far from either of its 

parents. IO Interactive mastered squad-based gameplay with Freedom 

Fighter and used what they learned to dig deep into Kane & Lynch. 

Hitman was always more of a hardcore title than Freedom Fighters, 

so the tilt toward Freedom Fighters makes sense. Hitman took time 

and multiple playthroughs to master. It was all about guring out 

every single angle and acting accordingly. The AI ran routes, but was 

extremely smart. You’d have to outthink, out ght, and outrun the 

enemy in order to get anywhere. Making a mistake spelled doom. 

Kane & Lynch is different. It’s an action game, one where twitch 

re exes are paramount. It’s a bit more brute force than its predecessor, 

so a different tack is required. The AI has to be smart in an alternate 

way. They have to be dumber to t into the action movie feel. This 

doesn’t mean that they are stupid, of course. You’ve seen movies where 

the crowd will dash right through a busy gun ght in a blind panic? That’s 

Kane & Lynch. 

The crowd mechanics have evolved quite a bit from the Mardi Gras 

stage in Hitman: Blood Money. The game can support hundreds of crowd 

members at one time. In nightclubs, they’ll each dance to the beat in 

their own way. No more crowds of identical clones doing the exact same 

dance on the exact same loop. Each one is distinct. 

If you pull a gun in a crowd scene, and someone spots you, a “ripple” 

of information will pass through the crowd. When that ripple reaches a 

guard, he’s going to come over to see exactly what’s going on and why 

you thought you could sneak a gun in. 

In shoot-out situations, the crowd will panic and try to get away by 

any means. If you re into, or over, a crowd, the people will dodge and 

duck. Clever players can use this to clear a path, but ring bullets tends 

to attract attention. It’s a give-and-take situation. You’ve got a path, 

yeah, but now everyone knows where you are. 


A LITTLE KIDNAPPING AMONGST FRIENDS 

The Tokyo stages shows both the crowd mechanics and the co-op play to 

the fullest. You enter a nightclub and breach the of ce of the owner. She 

knows Kane, but what she doesn’t know is that Kane is going to punch 

her in the face, knock her out, and kidnap her. Sucks to be her, right? 

No, sucks to be Kane. She isn’t getting out of the nightclub on her own, 

so Lynch has to carry her. This means that Kane has to escort him out of 

a club lled with a few hundred people. He’s got guns, sure, but he is a 

man down. If you’ve seen Michael Mann’s Collateral, you may be able to 

gure out where this is going. 

Kane exits the of ce and pretty much directly into a re ght. The 

crowd scatters when the rst gun res, but as happens so often in these 

situations, the panic results in tragedy. Not everyone is running toward 

an exit. Some run for cover, others just run. Firing a gun makes them 

run away, but that just makes it easier for the guards to nd and kill 

your heroes. Kane’s got to balance clearing a path for his ersatz buddy 

with killing enemies. During all of this, the crowd is going to dart in and 

out of Kane’s iron sights. Sure, you could be a jerk and kill them, but 

Kane’s supposed to be the good guy here... or, if not the good guy, at 

least the better guy. 

It gets better. Later, Kane and his team rappel down the side of a Tokyo 

highrise. One bomb and a short re ght later, and you’ve got an of ce 

full of dead executives and guards. Now the trick is to get down to 

ground level, change into their disguises, and walk out the front door. It 

all goes well until Lynch decides that a cop is looking at him wrong and 

hits him with a face full of lead. After that, it’s Assault on Precinct 13, 

Tokyo high rise-style. 

This time, the crowd is different. They’re all going for the exit, but they 

aren’t so worried about dodging bullets. They’ll dash into your cross re 

and die screaming. They crank the tense atmosphere up to eleven 

and turn an already tough battle into a nightmare. If you decide that 

the thing you just saw out of the corner of your eyes was a a panicky 

civilian, rather than a cop that’s packing a shotgun, you’re dead meat. 


YOU CALL THAT SNEAKY? 

As if you couldn’t tell, Kane & Lynch isn’t the subtlest game around. 

Its pace is another trait it inherited more from Freedom Fighters than 

Hitman. In fact, the speed has been increased since Freedom Fighters. 

Crowds will ood a room and impede your progress, and enemies won’t 

hesitate to duck, cover, and ank you in a manner that’s much closer 

to real life. 

Kane and Lynch’s job requires a modicum of stealth, but like all good 

action lms, whatever can go wrong, does. Sometimes, it’s Lynch’s fault. 

Other times, things just go wrong. That’s no excuse to lose your cool, 

of course. In the aforementioned bank scene, breaching the bank isn’t 

just a matter of gassing the civilians and climbing in a window. You have 

to gain access to the bank’s roof, which means making it past a few 

guards. If Kane can approach one of them silently, he can use the tiny 

knife af xed to his ring to bleed him out quietly. It’s quick to pull and 

extremely effective. 

All of your weapons are shown on your person, within reason. Kane, 

and other members of the group, sometimes carries a knapsack that 

holds guns, ammo, and grenades. While he can get away with walking 

around with a bag full of guns, acting suspicious is a sure re way 

to screw up a mission. Pulling a pistol too early can send the crowd 

screaming off toward the guards, who will in turn send a hail of bullets 

screaming your way. 

In short, stealth isn’t a big deal, but breaking stealth too early in a stage 

means that you’re going to either face a fully blown mission failure or 

turn a cakewalk into something rotten. 

TWO HEADS ARE BETTER 

With all this talk of single player co-op, one might think that 

multiplayer is out of the question. Untrue. 

The split-screen cooperative gameplay follows the single player game. 

Playing co-op is easy. All you need to do is select co-op before starting 

a stage, as drop-in/drop-out co-op is not implemented, and select a 

dif culty level. 

Some of the stages are speci cally built to make it more challenging 

with two players. While you can be reasonably certain that Lynch will be 

able to handle his own when he goes off somewhere, that certainty may 

go out the window when you’ve got a human on the other joystick. 

It is a classic catch-22. While a certain stage may be super tough on your 

own, and seemingly unbeatable, bringing in a friend may not be the best 

choice. Human error is always a factor, and a missed twitch could lead 

to a dead partner. 

While each of the operatives in your group can be controlled by a single 

player, co-op mode adds a little into the mix. Now, each player can 

have his own operatives, and they can be traded from player to player 

in a similar method as weapons trading. If you’ve ever wanted to show 


your squad leader how it’s done, now’s your chance to graduate from 

armchair quarterback to starter. Each player can instruct their minions 

exactly as they would if the group were complete. 

Splitting up your group can give you a distinct tactical advantage, 

though a disadvantage is equally possible. If Lynch can’t make it through 

an area on his own, having an extra gun along for the ride can make the 

difference. At the same time, if you’re going into a heavy re ght, being 

down an operative can mean the difference between death and life. 

TWO EYES 

Kane & Lynch is un nished, obviously, but is far enough along in its 

development cycle to be able to make a few informed judgments. The 

graphics are not the greatest you’ll see on your next-gen system, but 

you’ll nd out the reason for that soon enough. 

The less detailed the enemies, the more you can have on screen at 

once. This isn’t to say that the game looks bad, as exactly the opposite 

is true, but it’s a conscious choice, rather than a hardware limitation. 

The game can support up to 900 distinct crowd members, a humanoid AI 

in Lynch, squad AI in your crew, tactical and squad AI in your enemies, 

and tons of explosions, so it’s obvious that there is going to be some 

give and take. 

Thankfully, the give outweighs the take. The rst time you look out 

over the edge of a Tokyo highrise and feel a spot of vertigo or notice 

that you can clearly see buildings that are thousands of feet away, 

you’ll understand. Kane & Lynch is all about the up close and personal, 

but doesn’t hesitate to use a long shot to set the scene and work 

your emotions. 

THINGS JUST GOT REAL 

So far, Kane & Lynch looks like a pretty carefully crafted ride. 

IO Interactive described it to us as a “story driven crime drama,” 

and they seem to be living up to that name. There are little touches 

throughout the game that hint at deep emotional connections between 

the characters. Exposition is limited to areas where it makes sense, 

rather than text-heavy loading screens. Everything you need to know, 

and some things that you don’t, is delivered through dialogue. 

Pardon the cliche, but Kane & Lynch is high octane. It blends 

Hitman-style in ltration sequences and Freedom Fighters-style 

intense action scenes into something new and exciting. The idea 

of single player co-op is still pretty new in action games, but IO 

Interactive and Eidos’s Kane & Lynch: Dead Men is de nitely a good 

start. Seamless and challenging co-op play in the privacy of your own 

home, with a dash of a few classic buddy movies? Sounds great! 

HARDCORE GAMER MAGAZINE_VOLUME 3_ISSUE 4_VOODLE, SHIKA, LOU & OKAR

Astute gamers will have heard the name 

Heavenly Sword bandied about for a fair few 

years now. Development rst began in 2003 

by Just Add Monsters, though it was imperiled 

by the bankruptcy of Argonaut Games. JAM 

reformed as Ninja Theory in late 2004. Once 

E3 hit in 2005, Ninja Theory wowed the world 

with two things: Heavenly Sword and the 

phrase “PS3 exclusive.” Now it’s late 2007 

and Heavenly Sword is shipping to stores. 

Is it worth the hype? Survey says... yes. 

The combat was well worth the wait. 

Nariko, the red-haired heroine of Heavenly 

Sword, has three stances to ght in while 

using the eponymous weapon. Range 

stance utilizes a blade on the end of a 

chain. You can use it to keep enemies at 

bay, sling debris around the area, or set 

up an air combo. It isn’t very powerful 

offensively, but it can lead to great things. 

The Power and Speed stances will probably 

be used much more often. These are the 

hard-hitting and fast-moving stances. 

Speed stance is the default and gives your 

attacks a bluish tinge. Nariko can string 

attacks together in combos which vary from 

simple slices to ips, turns, and pirouettes. 

Power stance shifts her grip on the sword. 

It’s slower than Speed stance, but much more 

powerful. She can knock enemies down like 

tenpins and kill them with no trouble at all. 

On top of these stances, however, are the 

Superstyles. Fighting game a cianados know 

them better as super moves. Once a meter 

is lled to a certain level, Nariko will be 

able to pull off a super move. There are 

three possible levels, and each stance 

has a move for each level. These moves 

can kill one enemy instantly, knock a 

bunch of enemies back, or slaughter 

an entire room of foes. They are 

incredibly ashy, and often brutal. 

Flashy is the name of the game, 

however. The more stylish your 

ghting moves, and the longer you go 

without getting hit, the more you ll 

a meter at the bottom of your screen. 

Depending on the level of the meter, 

you can earn up to three Glyphs per 

chapter. Glyphs, other than serving as a 

performance grade, unlock new combos, 

Superstyles, concept art, and videos. 

Review by 4thletter 

50_REVIEW_HEAVENLY SWORD HARDCORE GAMER MAGAZINE_VOLUME 3_ISSUE 4_VOODLE, SHIKA, LOU & OKAR 

Rating: Teen (Blood, Language, Suggestive Themes, Violence) | Publisher: Sony Computer Entertainment 

Developer: Ninja Theory | Release Date: 9/12/07 | Genre: Action | Category: Heavenly | # of Players: 1 

Heavenly Sword goes a step 

farther than most motion-captured 

games do. Andy Serkis, the actor 

who portrayed Gollum in Lord of 

the Rings, is the Dramatic Director 

for the game and brings his mo-cap 

expertise into play. 

Every inch of an actor’s body 

and face is captured, resulting 

in realistic expressions and body 

language. There are scenes that 

work simply because of the trueto-life 

body language and don’t 

even need dialogue. When you can 

read disgust in someone’s posture, 

you know that you’ve struck gold. 

Heavenly Sword uses extraordinary 

character models and life-like 

faces to populate its CG cinemas 

and in-game cinemas both. The 

action movie feel of the game is 

ramped up to the max. 


There is no denying that Heavenly Sword looks 

incredible. The graphics are proof positive that 

hi-def is the new hotness and that motion-capture 

will never, ever die. The environments aren’t 

anything like the computer generated static 

images we used to get back in the day. There 

are running waterfalls, birds ying around 

(including a particularly evil-looking raven), 

and tons of things to destroy. Carts, boxes, 

barrels, tables, and even food abound 

throughout each stage. Some of it even 

explodes, if you’re into that. 

Nariko has a younger girl who she has 

taken in as a kind of surrogate sister. Kai 

is a little off in the head. She speaks to 

things that aren’t there and is pretty 

much disconnected from reality. She is 

also extremely sick with a crossbow, 

to the point where she can alter the 

trajectory of arrows mid- ight for 

the perfect shot. She has no offensive 

capabilities beyond her arrows, so her 

attack buttons result in dodges and 

stun attacks. She will leap frog and 

dash through the legs of attackers, all 

so she can get some space to set up a 

killer arrow shot. 

Heavenly Sword’s problems are light, 

but still a little irritating. Beating 

the game unlocks Hell Mode, a 

harder version of the main story. The 

problem is that the normal story is 

super linear, with basically no chance 

of in-game decisions that affect the 

ride. There aren’t even forks in the 

road to follow. In this sense, the game 

is very much like the action movie they 

set out to make. 

Heavenly Sword will probably be 

compared to God of War right out of the 

gate, but the two games work toward 

different goals. Where God of War focused 

on fast-paced combat and complicated 

puzzles, Heavenly Sword takes a different 

approach. Speedy, stylish combat mixes with 

incredibly detailed cinemas and movie-style 

storytelling to create a game that feels like an 

action movie and plays like a dream. 

4of 5 

HEAVENLY SWORD_REVIEW_51

Fantasy Violence 

Mild Language 

 

 

 

 

 

 

GUNDAM ® & ©1979-2007 SOTSU • SUNRISE. TM SOTSU. ©2007 NAMCO BANDAI Games Inc. Mobile Suit Gundam, G Gundam, Gundam Wing, ZETA GUNDAM, Mobile Suit and all related characters, names, 

logos, distinctive likenesses, drawings and other images contained in this product are the exclusive property of SOTSU Co., Ltd. and Sunrise Inc. Dynasty Warriors and the KOEI logo are registered trademarks 

or trademarks of KOEI Co., Ltd. All Rights Reserved. Microsoft, Xbox, Xbox 360, and the Xbox logos are trademarks of the Microsoft group of companies. “PlayStation”, “PLAYSTATION” and “PS” Family logo are 

registered trademarks of Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. The ratings icon is a registered trademark of the Entertainment Software Association. 

 

 

 

 

In an era where games are getting ever-shorter, Blue Dragon is a 

staggeringly 16-bit, grind-happy title. You can easily complete the 

entirety of Eternal Sonata in the time you’d invest in completing 

any single disc of Blue Dragon …and it’s a three-disc game. While 

the “of cial” time for completion is usually set at forty hours, most 

players can expect to invest well upwards of sixty. It feels like a 

throwback to 1992, when RPGs were growing ever-longer as they 

grew more complex. A lot of people are going to enjoy that. 

Even the basic concepts of the game are right out of 1992. Imagine 

a simpli ed Final Fantasy V, with fewer “jobs” to assign your ve 

party members and more chances to mix ‘n match cross-class skills. 

Throw in a little bit of Grandia initiative action, allowing you to charge 

up certain spells and attacks. Populate this game world with simple 

characters meant to appeal to adolescents (in 1992, after all, most 

gamers are still around thirteen). Now imagine a traditional menudriven 

interface, and design work courtesy Akira Toriyama. Give it a 

plotline meant to resemble Toriyama’s early action-comedy manga, 

like Dr. Slump and Dragonball. Finish this theoretical game off with a 

fantastic score by Nobuo Uematsu, suitable for listening to obsessively 

on your MP3 player. There; The you’ve imagined Blue Dragon. To an 

old-school gamer, this probably p sounds great, although you may nd 

yourself wishing for more mor challenging battles. 

Of course, Blue Dragon is a modern 360 game, so players have a right 

to go to it expecting staggering sta graphics. It’s a game that certainly 

tries to deliver, running at 1080p and using extremely detailed 

animations that could never n work on a lesser console. While its 

pre-rendered cut-scenes cut-scene do make for some truly beautiful viewing, 

the in-engine graphics are a more problematic. Despite running at 30 

fps, it has persistent problems pro maintaining its framerate if too many 

enemies or combat animations anim are onscreen at once. Backgrounds 

2nd opinion by BigWorm • Alternate Rating : 4 of 5 


are textured realistically while characters are smooth and plasticky, 

making interactions between the two look absolutely unconvincing. 

Real-time shadows don’t seem to be properly anti-aliased, so they 

icker unpleasantly as you move across the world map. The detail in 

the combat animations also makes battles needlessly time-consuming, 

since animations can’t be skipped. The time it takes Blue Dragon to 

resolve a single random encounter would encompass at least ve or six 

battles in a legit 1992 SNES RPG like Final Fantasy V . 

This illustrates the fundamental problem of Blue Dragon: it’s not 1992 

anymore, and it’s really hard to tolerate a game that’s paced so slowly, 

when there’s nothing really exciting or even entertaining about it. 

The story and characters just serve to remind you of better games 

Toriyama’s worked on. Next to a legitimately gorgeous, high-concept, 

and far more ef cient RPG like Eternal Sonata, Blue Dragon just 

doesn’t have much to offer. It’s not even as interesting or fun to look 

at as a top-drawer PS2 title like Persona 3. 

It’s not that Blue Dragon is a bad game. It has some legitimately 

entertaining moments, a few well-designed boss battles, and a really 

memorable soundtrack. It’s just so slow-paced that it’s very easy 

to get bored or distracted while playing it, and the simple nature 

of the plot and gameplay makes the slow pace seem unjusti ed. 

Blue Dragon ends up feeling average, when a creative team that 

includes Toriyama, Uematsu, and Final Fantasy creator Hironobu 

Sakaguchi should by all rights be producing must-buy games. Of 

course, development studio Artoon also worked on Blue Dragon… 

and they were one of the parties responsible for the jaw-droppingly 

awful Vampire’s Rain. Maybe it should be a pleasant surprise that Blue 

Dragon turned out as well as it did. 

Rating : 3 of 5 

Blue Dragon is a bit slow at rst, but rewards loyalty with tons of spells later in the game. I like the 

feature that lets players “queue” up moves, so they can release them in a particular order. 

Review by Lynxara 

Publisher : Microsoft Game Studios Genre(s) : Turn-based RPG 

Developer : Mistwalker 

Category : Dragon Quest Lite 

Release Date : 8/28/2007 # of players : 1 

Rating : Teen (Crude Humor, Fantasy Violence, Mild Language) 

3.75 of 5 

BLUE DRAGON_REVIEW_53

Review Re Revi Review vi view ew b bby 

by yby 

XXX XX Racewing 

Publisher : Aksys Games 

Developer : Arc System Works 

Release Date : 9/11/2007 

Rating : Teen 

Guilty Gear’s been around a long time, and as is the case with 

long-running ghting games, it’s had numerous sequels and 

upgrades in the name of balance, or just keeping things fresh. 

Guilty Gear XX has served as Arc System Works’s agship 

ghter, and this is its fourth and nal version. Every aspect 

of ghting game design that Arc has learned over the years 

culminates here, except one. It’s the one I always complain 

about whenever I do a Guilty Gear review, and as long as 

nothing’s done about it, it will continue to be a sticking point 

with me, because every other ghting game on Earth has 

spoiled me on it by now. 

Simply put, this Guilty Gear has the fewest 

single-player options in the entire series, and 

it’s positively deplorable. Arcade, Survival and 

M.O.M. mode are just a series of ghts 

over and over again, and that’s all we 

get. Mission Mode is axed, and any sort 

of Story Mode is once again gone. Unless 

you’re a huge fan of playing repeated 

timed bouts without any rhyme or reason 

behind them, then this is strictly a twoplayer 

title. This wouldn’t be so bad if 

either version were online, but we’re not 

that lucky. Unless you live in a highcompetition 

area, this game’s almost 

useless for wasting away those lonely 

nights. The low price tag helps ease the 

sting of this fact, but only a little. 

This would normally cause me to 

drastically lower the score of this GGXX 

3.75 of 5 

Genre(s) : Fighting 

Category : Guilty Gear XX Turbo 

# of players : 1-2 

revision compared to earlier installments, but to be honest, the 

overall gameplay’s gotten so much of an upgrade that it just 

about makes up for it. Accent Core has seen numerous tweaks and 

revisions to character movesets, move properties, and even the 

overall ow of the engine to create a better ghting experience. 

New techniques like Throw Escapes, the Force Break (extra power 

granted to special moves at the cost of meter) and Slash Back (a 

high-risk mechanism which rewards success with a near-instant 

counterattack) give extra strategic options to a ghting game 

already rife with such, and every character plays better than they 

have previously. All this, and the game still looks and sounds as 

beautiful as ever. Turn on anti-aliasing in the options to give our 

eyeballs a treat. If you do have a steady stream of challengers 

to run through this game with, then you’re going to be in utter 

heaven. This is 2D ghting bliss, the likes of which we haven’t 

seen since the heady heydays of Capcom, SNK and 

Midway dominance. 

If there’s been a Guilty Gear-shaped hole 

in your life since #Reload, (or Slash for you 

importers out there), then it’s time for you 

to upgrade. Just make sure you get it to play 

against other people, because it’s an utter 

bore popping in this title with no one else 

around. Enjoy this last upgrade to XX while you 

can, because, if you haven’t heard, the next 

Guilty Gear is going threeeeee-deeeeee! 


2nd opinion by Wanderer • Alternate Rating : 3.5 of 5 

I never thought I’d see anyone emulate Street Fighter II this closely. Accent 

Core is a good time, but if you’ve got #Reload, you’ve got Accent Core. 

54_REVIEW_ 

54_REVIEW_GUILTY GUILTY GEAR XX ACCENT CORE HARDCORE GAMER MAGAZINE_VOLUME 3_ISSUE 4_VOODLE, SHIKA, LOU & OKAR 

I’ve been looking forward to Monster Hunter Freedom 2, so it 

came as a bit of a surprise to nd that the rose has well and 

truly lost its bloom. The fun of obsessive-compulsive item 

management doesn’t balance out an awkward ghting engine, 

and all the online bells and whistles in the world can’t make up 

for the frustration of a barely functional camera. Clever extras 

and sub-systems are a waste if the core gameplay can’t back 

back them up, and MHF2 barely manages to hold its own where 

it really matters. 

Not that there isn’t a lot to like, of course. MHF2 is a deep, 

gorgeous game about kicking ass in a hunter-gatherer society. The 

central village has an Alaskan climate, with the opening quests 

set in the foothills, caves, and peak of a snowy mountain before 

opening up into jungle, desert, volcano, etc. Quests tend be 

either hunting down certain monsters or gathering an amount of 

a speci c item, but there are plenty of gathering opportunities 

along the way for those looking to bring as much swag back home 

as possible. 

No matter where you go the riches of the land are spread at your 

feet, and can be used to create a stunning array of weapons, 

armor, ammunition, potions, traps, and other wonderful goodies. 

Hunted creatures can be eviscerated for bones, 

claws, hide, and various other body parts, while 

points of interest in the eld contain a huge 

variety of components that ll up the limited 

inventory quickly. Very few found items are 

usable as-is, 

but instead 

must either be 

combined into 

something useful or 

2nd opinion by Racewing • Alternate Rating : 3.5 of 5 

Review by James 

Publisher : Capcom 

Developer : Capcom 


Rating : Teen 

I’m usually immune to “bad cameras,” but this one really does get in the way. If you plan to play this 

game for any signi cant length (and there’re many reasons to), be prepared to press the L button. A lot. 


Genre(s) : Action Adventure 

Category : Hunting & Gathering 


stockpiled for weapon and armor upgrades. 

Good equipment is vital. Monster Hunter’s wildlife doesn’t play 

nice; it only takes one pack of carnivores working in unison to 

whittle the health bar down to nothing. Each weapon has certain 

strengths associated with it, whether it’s the dual blades’ charge 

meter that enhances attack strength when full, or the incredibly 

useful battle horn’s musical status effects. It’s just too bad that 

combat is where MHF2 starts to fall apart, despite the depth of 

the weapon system. 

The problems with combat come from a combination of the 

camera and slow attack speed. The really fun weapons are huge, 

and take just enough time to swing for even the slower enemies 

to work in a hit. Toss in a camera that delights in being in just 

the wrong place and you’ve got ghts that quickly turn from 

methodical into simply frustrating. 

Monster Hunter Freedom 2 is almost an amazing game. Its 

dozens of item systems, combat styles, quests, and online 

features nearly make it a must-have. If Capcom can just 

sort out the combat, even with something 

as simple as a lock-on 

function, I wouldn’t be 

able to stop raving about 

it. As it is, though, it’s 

merely a very fun game 

for those willing to 

overlook its problems. 

Rating : 3.5 of 5 

3.5 of 5 

MONSTER HUNTER FREEDOM 2_REVIEW_55

Review by Wanderer 

Publisher blisher : Sq Square are Enix Eni Genre(s) Genre : Space Combat 

Developer : Game Arts 

Category: Fight your Family! 


Rating : Teen 

# of players : 1 

I’m a little disappointed, honestly. The Silpheed series used to consist 

entirely of shoot-’em-ups, and Project Sylpheed is a “Gundam”-tastic 

space combat/soap opera in the same vein as Colony Wars. It’s like 

somebody repackaged Gradius as a tragic story about life, love, and 

giant space lasers. (Please note: this is not a request.) 

It’s set in the twenty-seventh century, as a splinter group, ADAN, 

suddenly launches a series of attacks on Terran colonists. Talented Young 

Protagonist Katana Faraway and his Nonthreatening Female Companion 

Ellen Bernstein are in the rst squad to face attack. As Katana, you’ll be 

on the front lines throughout the ensuing civil war, and so will your old 

buddy Margras Mason, the Angsty Antagonist Blinded By Grief And Also 

Rage, who’s on ADAN’s side. 

Project Sylpheed’s action is all space combat, with you 

piloting ghters against enemy ships. It avoids 

the usual pitfalls of this kind of game fairly 

neatly; it doesn’t have chatty wingmen who 

constantly need rescuing, random ran cheap 

hits that you can’t avoid, or tons of space 

debris complicating your ight path. 

Project Sylpheed d recognizes recogni that space 

is kind of big g and gives you y room to y 

around in it, but also doesn’t doe stick you 

ve miles from the action so you burn half 

the mission just ying over there. th 

On the other hand, it has a few 

issues. The controls are either 

counterintuitive 

or unlike any 

other game you’ve y ever 

played, sso 

there’s a 

learn learning curve. 

Pr Project Sylpheed 

costs forty 

3 of 5 

2nd opinion by Racewing • Alternate Rating : 3 of 5 

bucks, making this a budget title, but it’s hard to play unless you’re 

playing in HD. In SD, the minimap is useless and targets’ names are 

illegible, making the game extremely dif cult after the rst mission or 

so. In HD, the visual problems vanish, making this a budget title aimed at 

gamers that aren’t on a budget. This is odd. 

The storyline is also pretty blatantly Random Anime Plot #524, complete 

with entire battleships crewed with what appear pp to 

be fourteen-year-old girls (this is seriously what 

a “Nadesico” game would look like), but that’s 

forgivable, naturally. That’s not t what brought 

us here. We came here to shoot t down enemy 

spacecraft, and that part of the e game is 

frequently entertaining. 

Project Sylpheed is aimed directly ctly at gamers 

who are already expert at this particular 

breed of shooter, who like anime, me, and who 

have HD television sets, which means its 

target demographic is about three ree guys. Of 

those three guys, one of them probably has 

a 360. 

If you’re not that guy, then what at we’ve 

got here is a forty-dollar 360 game ame from an 

underrepresented genre that may not be quite 

good enough to hold your attention ntion for the 

time it would take to master it. . Your 

mileage may vary, of course; this his 

is the sort of game that inspires s 

either rabid, forum-war-igniting g 

fandom or complete indifference. ce. 

I tend to lean towards the latter. er. 


Sylpheed is very pretty. It’s also fanservice-, weapon- and action-packed. Unfortunately, the gameplay inexplicably 

annoys the daylights out of me. If this had been 2D, or on rails, this probably would have been a dream come true. 

56_REVIEW_ 

56_REVIEW_PROJECT PROJECT SYLPHEED HARDCORE GAMER MAGAZINE_VOLUME 3_ISSUE 4_VOODLE, SHIKA, LOU & OKAR 

I usually hate describing games in terms of what other games they 

are most like, but I’m making an exception here. If NIS America’s 

previous games, from Disgaea on down, were Shining Force, Soul 

Nomad is Fire Emblem. 

The previous games gave you control of an army made of individual 

characters, while Soul Nomad has you elding small, fully 

customizable battalions. Every exchange of re you have with an 

enemy unit has a certain amount of risk, giving Soul Nomad 

a higher challenge and a lower margin of error than any 

NIS game before it. 

You begin the game as a nameless protagonist who’s 

just been handed a brand-new sword. Unfortunately, 

it contains the soul of Gig, a powerful megalomaniac 

who tried to blow up the world for laughs two 

hundred years ago. Gig’s old minions, the World 

Eaters, are slowly starting to wake back up, 

and the plan is basically to hope that you can use 

Gig’s power to destroy them without falling under his 

control. It is not a terribly good plan, as it involves 

running up to a three-hundred-foot-tall death 

machine and poking it in the jibblies with a 

sword, but it’s all you’ve got. 

Constructing units in Soul Nomad involves 

purchasing them, then creating a “room” to 

stick them in. Each type of character has 

a different effect depending on where 

2nd opinion by Iaian • Alternate Rating : 2.5 of 5 

Review by Wanderer 

Publisher : NIS America 

Developer : NIS America 


Rating : Teen 

Soul Nomad is everything NIS games aren’t. Spending hours ghting a random generator to play 

an on-rails paper-thin game is not fun. 


Genre(s) : Strategy/RPG 

Category : Not What You Think 

# of players : 1 

they’re standing in a room, and the room’s current leader determines 

what kind of battle eld unit the room winds up being. When the room 

attacks another unit, the defender gets a free counterattack. 

That forms the root of the game’s strategy. Any single unit may be 

unbeatable on paper, but one lucky counterattack that takes out 

its cleric can turn it into a liability. Every rule in the game has an 

exception or two, which can turn a theoretically unbeatable strategy 

into suicide in the course of a couple of minutes. 

Before you start to think that sounds too simple, you also have to 

consider characters’ movement rates, terrain bonuses, current items, 

tactical options, and experience points. Soul Nomad eases you into it, 

but it can be remarkably complex. 

It’s also extremely random, for want of a better word. You can’t 

control where each character in a unit will attack, or prevent your 

vulnerable back and middle ranks from being attacked by the enemy’s 

ranged units. You may skate through three maps, or you might have 

an otherwise-unstoppable room get wiped out because the enemy got 

a lucky crit. That, and the increasingly stripped-down presentation 

of the game, prevent me from giving Soul Nomad an unquali ed 

recommendation 

There’s a speci c kind of strategy gamer that’s going to eat this sort 

of thing up with a spoon, and it’s 

not the same kind of gamer that 

generally goes for the NIS formula. 

Soul Nomad is a surprisingly radical 

departure from type for NIS, and 

it’s largely successful. It’s just more 

frustrating than it needs to be. 


3.25 of 5 

SOUL NOMAD_REVIEW_57

Review R i bby Lynxara L Review by Kou Aidou 

Publisher : XSEED 

Genre(s) : Turn-based RPG 

Developer : Media Vision Category : Wild, Wild West 

Release Date : 8/28/2007 # of players : 1 

Rating : Teen (Fantasy Violence, Mild Language, Suggestive Themes) 

There is plenty about Wild Arms 5 that seems intended for a hardcore 

fan of the series. You can meet characters and acquire costumes that 

Google reveals to be from every single prior Wild Arms title. I am not 

myself a huge fan of Wild Arms, and haven’t played any previous game 

in the series in critical depth. I’m approaching Wild Arms 5, more or 

less, as if it were just another PS2 RPG. 

WA5 uses the “hex” battle system that previously appeared in Wild 

Arms 4. Battles place characters on a eld of hexagonal tiles, some 

with elemental properties. In random encounters, allies, enemies and 

elements are placed on the eld at random. Attacks, spells, and special 

attacks affect every character or monster standing within a given hex. You 

can exploit this to tremendous advantage in combat, and your enemy can 

do the same. It’s interesting and has a lot of potential. 

Since you always begin battle at full HP in WA5, most enemies are able 

to do unusually large amounts of damage. Your characters can only take 

two or three hits, and the 

same goes for enemies. In 

random encounters, this 

often means that whether 

or not you win a battle 

comes down to whether 

or not you got initiative. 

WA5 lets you replay losing 

battles, so you often end up 

milling them until you get a 

random arrangement that 

isn’t lethal. This kind of 

combat balance just 

isn’t fun. 

When you’re not in combat, you get to run around as the 

protagonist. On the expansive world map you can’t do much but 

go from point A to point B, but dungeons are more interesting. 

There, Dean can shoot objects with his guns (called ARMs), or 

3 of 5 

2nd opinion by Racewing • Alternate Rating : 3 of 5 

solve platformer-style puzzles involving switches and boxes. These 

puzzles are simple but have a pleasant, Zelda-like charm to them, 

and get more fun as you discover more types of ammunition for 

Dean tackle problems with 

There’s action elements to the platforming, too, but they really 

don’t work thanks to questionable physics. Dean slips and slides 

on dirt and grass the way Mario slides on ice. Where you can 

stand doesn’t map properly to the visuals, so occasionally you 

can position Dean such that he’s hovering in mid-air. This is 

part of a general problem with clunky graphics; texture work is 

minimal, and jaggies are omnipresent to a degree that’s not really 

excusable so late in the PS2’s lifespan. 

If you managed to be indifferent to the graphics, you’re going to 

run into something far harder to ignore: shoddy localization. Weird 

grammar, odd word choices, and confusing mistranslations abound. 

Some hints are unintelligible; a character wielding one sword may 

be instructed to do a “twin sword” attack when it’s actually time 

for them to team up with another swordsman. The English dub is 

poor, in terms of both casting and performance. This is hard to 

accept with no alternative Japanese language track, and no way to 

shut voices off during cutscenes. 

When I was between buzz-kills, I actually had a lot of fun playing 

Wild Arms 5. The Southwestern designs are inspired, the characters 

are expressive, and the soundtrack is a fantastic homage to Ennio 

Morricone’s spaghetti Western scores. Unfortunately, there’s just too 

much about the game that doesn’t work to counter-balance all of the 

good stuff. It’s impossible to recommend when an RPG fan could be 

playing better things instead. 


The WA5 experience switches regularly between frustration and euphoria. Still, if you’ve 

beaten all the A-list PS2 RPGs up until now, this one won’t hurt. Plus, the soundtrack is sweet. 

58_REVIEW_ 

58_REVIEW_WILD WILD ARMS 5 HARDCORE GAMER MAGAZINE_VOLUME 3_ISSUE 4_VOODLE, SHIKA, LOU & OKAR 

Strategy is a tricky genre for games. While some genres can 

fall back on presentation if the programming isn’t 100% solid, 

strategy games require complex AI and intuitive gameplay 

interfaces. If these aspects aren’t spot-on perfect, there’s 

simply no reason to play. Combat Mission: Shock Force nobly 

sacri ces presentation for complexity, but sadly, it fails to 

deliver on the gameplay front. 

It’s clear that some aspects of the game have gotten a lot of 

consideration. The units accurately re ect current military 

technology for all the countries involved, and there’s an emphasis 

on realistic military tactics. On top of an of cial campaign, 

there’s about two dozen free-play missions included, and an 

in-depth scenario creator. All missions can be played in either 

real-time or turn-based formats, with multiplayer options through 

network, LAN, or hotseat play. 

A lot of thought was put into the premise, as well. The decision 

to set a game in a near-future war between the US and Syria 

could be seen as controversial, so the developers included an 

explanation of their decision in the instruction manual. The 

game is not an endorsement, but is meant to demonstrate the 

impracticality of such a war by realistically portraying the Syrian 

army’s ability to defend itself on its native soil. When developers 

literally want to use their game to make the world a better place, 

it’s hard to be too hard on them. 

Unfortunately, while the game may have been meant for people 

who have pre-existing knowledge of military tactics, it’s nearly 

inaccessible to those who do not. Even a basic tutorial like the 

2nd opinion by Lynxara • Alternate Rating : 3 of 5 

Publisher : Paradox Interactive 

Developer : Big Time Software 


Rating : Teen 

An unapologetically niche title with obvious depth in the gameplay, and no interest at all in creating a 

comprehensible interface for newcomers. Poor graphics don’t help the package hold your interest long, either. 


Genre(s) : Strategy 

Category : Modern Warfare 


kind Paradox Interactive includes in its games 

could have been a lifesaver, but anyone who 

hasn’t played the earlier Combat Mission 

games will instead be required to navigate the 

intimidating 200-page manual full of poorlyorganized 

information just to gure out how to 

get started. 

That said, even those who can appreciate 

the game’s realism are unlikely to forgive the 

clunky mouse-scrolling camera controls (with no mini-map for 

quick jumping), the awkward hotkey-based control interface, or 

the terrible unit path nding AI. One of the strengths of the game 

is the way it allows you to play any mission in a variety of ways, 

but given how long it takes to give a unit a correct order and 

navigate the abysmal camera to its destination, they might as well 

have not even bothered with the real-time option. 

While the decision to scale back the graphics to compensate for 

the game’s complexity is a respectable one, the game lacks any 

real sense of artistry that could have been achieved even with 

simple graphics; each mission in identical-looking desert landscape. 

There’s a rather cool fusion of traditional middle eastern music and 

modern rock that serves as the main theme, but otherwise, the 

soundtrack mostly consists of unit calls and tank noises. 

The developers’ chutzpah regarding the Shock Force’s premise is 

admirable, and if you fall into the game’s narrow audience, there 

may be a lot to like about it. Still, they have done their core 

concepts a great disservice, both by alienating series newcomers 

and failing to properly streamline the game’s interface. 


3 of 5 

COMBAT MISSION SHOCK FORCE_REVIEW_59

Review Re Revi vi view Review ew b bby 

by yby 

XXX XX Racewing 

Publisher bl h : Namco Bandai d 

Genre(s) : RPG 

Developer : Bec 

Category : Collectible Monsters 

Release Date : 9/18/2007 # of players : 1 

Rating : Everyone 10+ (Crude Humor, Mild Fantasy Violence, Mild Language) 

Nintendo may have a stranglehold on the US monster-raising 

market, but there have always been up-and-comers to steal 

(or feed upon) its thunder. Long before Spectrobes managed 

to carve a niche, longtime Pokemon rival Digimon was there, 

cultivating its own signi cant fanbase through years of 

animation and games. 

It’s for this fanbase that Digimon World: Data Squad was made, 

as it’s otherwise pretty much your standard cel-shaded, technomusic-laden, 

anime-inspired (it’s actually based on the new 

season of the dubbed Digimon anime series hitting the airwaves 

this fall) Japanese Japa RPG that coasts on its 

star star power… po such as it is. I’m not 

even ev e going to try to describe 

the th t plot to you. I still don’t 

understand un it myself, and I 

do ddon’t n think I ever will. 

Ba Battles are turn-based, and 

th the 

big “hook” of this game is 

th the the e ability a to evolve your various 

Digimon Di Digi gi gim in several different 

directions, di d re rect ct cti either during the 

course co cour ur u se of o battle or outside of it. It’s 

somewhat so som novel, considering 

th that evolution can happen at 

3 of 5 

whatever w pace you want, 

and said pace is affected 

by how much you and your 

Digimon are in sync during 

the t course of battle. Each 

Digimon Di D has several potential 

forms, form rm r and these forms can be 

switched almost at will. Why switch evolutionary forms when 

one has inherently higher stats than the other? That would be 

where elemental properties come into play. Remember those? 

They’re in every monster game ever made. Still, it works here. 

This game’s big annoyance is the random encounter rate. 

Remember Skies of Arcadia? Remember Suikoden IV? We’re 

talking those levels of irritation here. Run around for eight 

to ten seconds, then fight. Repeat until you throw the disc 

across the room. On the plus side, it’s good for gaining levels; 

however, solving the environmental puzzles is trying enough 

without losing your bearings every time you’re about to regain 

them. It creates a huge learning curve at the start of the 

game that one wouldn’t expect. However, once you’re past it 

(around the time you defeat the second boss, really), you’ve 

got a pretty powerful team on your hands to guide you through 

the rest of the game. 

I’ll be honest here: Data Squad really isn’t going to make a lot 

of converts. These kinds of licensed games know exactly who 

they’re for, and those are the people who are going to buy 

them. However, it’s at least good to know that the game isn’t 

a total clunker. It has some good ideas, and certainly proves 

itself to be more far fun than, say, Mega Man Star Force. 

Factor in the large cast of ‘mon and exclusive series canon 

characters, and Digimon, fans already know what to do. The 

rest of us…well, if you’ve already beaten the living crap out of 

Pokemon Diamond/Pearl, this might not be a bad shot. 


2nd opinion by Wanderer • Alternate Rating : 3 of 5 

To really enjoy this game, I think you have to be about eleven years old and a big 

Digimon fan. I am neither. 

60_REVIEW_ 

60_REVIEW_DIGIMON DIGIMON WORLD: DATA SQUAD HARDCORE GAMER MAGAZINE_VOLUME 3_ISSUE 4_VOODLE, SHIKA, LOU & OKAR 

Simple can be wonderful. A clear set of rules with limited 

complications can lead to logic puzzles of amazing beauty. 

The downside of only having a few rules, of course, is that 

it only takes a small thing to throw off the balance. Much 

as it hurts to say, Picross DS’s brain-crushingly addictive 

logic problems have one small interface issue that adds an 

unnecessary touch of aggravation to the harder puzzles 

comprising the heart of the game. 

First, the good stuff. Picross is played on a grid with sets 

of 

numbers running along the top and left-hand side. 

The numbers tell how many of the row or column’s 

empty squares to ll in, with at least one space 

left blank between one number and the next. 2, 

3, 3, for example, would mean a row of two blocks 

followed f 

by three followed by three. Fitting them 

in to a ten by ten grid is dead easy, seeing as there’s 

only one place for them to go. Two blocks plus a space (either left 

blank or marked with an X to show nothing goes there) plus three 

plus space plus three equals ten. Those same numbers on a fteen 

by fteen grid, on the other hand, could go just about anywhere, 

seeing as there’s now seven spaces left unaccounted for. Fill in 

every square in the grid and you get a complete puzzle showing a 

pixel-art picture. 

The easiest puzzles are set on ve by ve grids, great for getting the 

hang of things and fun for a quick blast. Medium bumps the grid size 

to ten by ten, but the majority of the puzzles are fteen by fteen 

or greater, and that’s where operational dif culties come into play. 

2nd opinion by Kou Aidou • Alternate Rating : 4 of 5 



Publisher : Nintendo 

Developer : Jupiter 


Rating : Everyone 

I was too hard on Picross DS in my import review, partly because I didn’t realize how many unlockable Free 

stages there were. I still think auto-correct should have been optional and not a determiner of dif culty, though. 

Genre(s) : Puzzle 

Category : Pixel Art 


The 5x5 and 10x10 grids fit on 

one screen, with all elements 

visible at all times. The 

15x15 grids, on the other 

hand, introduce magnifying 

and scrolling tools, and 

all of a sudden important 

information is disappearing 

off the side of the screen 

as you scroll around. The 

row/column numbers for the 

highlighted square and its two 

neighbors are superimposed on the magnified 

grid, and the entire puzzle is shown on the top screen, but 

it’s still a pain to work around when juggling multiple possible 

solutions. You can eliminate the issue entirely by switching 

to standard d-pad and buttons, but that feels nothing but 

awkward after the smooth, intuitive stylus controls. A 

combination d-pad and stylus control method works as a 

decent compromise, but it’s still somewhat clunky after the 

instant clarity of the earlier puzzles. 

There’s more good than bad in Picross, though, even taking 

into account my retail copy crashing once after completing 

a puzzle. The Daily Picross challenge is a great way to chart 

your increasing skills, downloadable content adds new puzzles 

to an already respectable library, and you can even create 

new puzzles to share with friends. Best of all, Picross is a 

wonderfully pure test of logical puzzle solving, with a deep 

challenge that’s as satisfying as it is addictive. 


4 of 5 

PICROSS DS_REVIEW_61


Publisher : Bandai-Namco Games 

Developer : Namco 


Rating : Everyone 

The universe can be a strange and recursive place. After the 

success of Pong in the early ‘70s, a real world version called 

“Tennis” gained popularity, with the paddles replaced by 

real people holding tennis racquets and the white square 

reimagined as a fuzzy green ball. Nowadays Pong has gone the 

way of the pet rock, but video game versions of its spawn still 

pop up here and there. Smash Court Tennis 3 is the latest, and 

its a solid if uninspired version of the sport. 

If you’ve played 

any sports game 

in your entire 

life you’ve got 

a good idea of 

what to expect. 

The main career 

mode starts off 

with a playercreated 

no-skills 

newbie slowly 

working her way 

up the ranking ladder. A helpful tutorial explains every aspect 

of the shot system, and then it’s off to the pro circuit and an 

attempt at fame and glory. Winning matches and successfully 

training earns experience, and going up a level earns skill 

points that can be used to either improve your pro’s overall 

stats or buy new abilities, such as special shots, better 

fatigue recovery, or improved shot proficiency. 

There are five shot types to learn, each having its own effect 

on the ball, and figuring out when to use them is half the 

challenge. Mastering the shots, learning how to place them 

3.5 of 5 

Genre(s) : Sports 

Category : Tennis 


2nd opinion by Dack • Alternate Rating : 3.5 of 5 

and how much power to use, will send your opponents flying 

around the court desperately racing to keep up. Anything 

less will earn painful defeat, sadly free of McEnroe-esque 

histrionics, and the nagging feeling that this isn’t as fun as it 

might be. 

For those looking for something a little quicker than a major 

pro quest, SCT3 comes equipped with several game modes 

featuring sixteen real-world tennis stars to choose from. 

Multiplayer is limited to two people, so four-player mixed 

doubles is out, but the real treat is found in the mini-game 

section of the Challenge mode. Galaga Tennis isn’t anything 

major, but Pac-Man and Bomb Tennis are good fun. Hitting 

Pac-Man back and forth over a court set on top of a dot-filled 

maze, dodging ghosts while the score rises as Pac eats any 

pellets he lands on, is bizarre and entertaining. Bomb Tennis 

does that one better, however, with a bomb-ball that explodes 

once it takes too many hard hits. Missing a return shot causes 

bombs to rain down onto your side of the court, and it only 

takes one explosion to cause a chain reaction that blots out 

the screen. Simple and addictive, Bomb Tennis turned out to 

be the most fun part of the whole package. 

For those looking for a more serious tennis game, Smash Court 

Tennis 3 delivers solid gameplay that, while hardly revolutionary, 

still accomplishes a decent challenge. It’s a bit strange that the 

best part is found in the mini-games, but SCT3 manages a decent 

all-around game that, while it won’t set anyone’s world on re, 

won’t disappoint the tennis fans either. 

Rating : 3.5 of 5 

Unless you are a Tennis fanatic or love seeing hot sweaty men run in short pants, there’s no reason 

to buy this if you already own Virtua Tennis: World Tour, a superior game at the same price. 

62_REVIEW_ 

62_REVIEW_SMASH SMASH COURT TENNIS 3 HARDCORE GAMER MAGAZINE_VOLUME 3_ISSUE 4_VOODLE, SHIKA, LOU & OKAR 

Review by Shaggy 

Publisher: 

Publisher: Stern Stern Stern Pinball 

Pinball 

Developer: 

Developer: 

Developer: Stern Stern Stern Pinball 

Pinball 

Genre(s): 

Genre(s): Pinball Pinball Pinball 

Category: 

Category: 

Category: MULTIBALL! 

MULTIBALL! 

MULTIBALL! 

Release Release Date: 

Date: May May May 2007 2007 2007 

# # # # of of of of Players: 

Players: 1-4 1-4 1-4 1-4 

What you see on this page is not an illusion, nor a cruel joke. This is real review in a real game 

magazine about a new pinball game. Pins have not disappeared; in fact, they are doing fairly 

well thanks to a little company called Stern Pinball. However, pinball machines have been all but 

forgotten by most of the gaming press (along with arcade machines). 

Spider-Man is the latest pin from Stern. It was released in conjunction with the feature lm 

Spider-Man 3 earlier this year, although it is based on the entire trilogy of lms. Artwork from 

each movie appears on the table along with villians like the Green Goblin, Doctor Octopus, Venom, 

and Sandman. Each character appears on the table as a detailed, movable gure that you battle 

by hitting targets near them. The orange monochrome display above the table also recreates (in 

limited form) certain scenes from the movies. The marquee itself includes an artwork montage 

from the movies and easily catches the eye. 

The table is well-designed and includes three ball ippers and a number of targets for the 

player to aim at. Once you launch the ball, it falls into a small area with a few bumpers and 

lanes that score you a few points before the real game begins. It’s worth noting that the 

ball can get stuck in the initial area, which may call for a slight bump to the cabinet. 

The object of the game, once you can in uence the ball’s motion, is to battle the 

villains from the movies. The rst objective is to aim for the green stand-up 

targets to battle the Green Goblin, which are located on the left side of the 

table. Then aim for the right “Web-Slinger” hole to battle Doc Ock; shoot 

the yellow targets to battle Sandman and shoot the side ramp with the 

upper ipper to battle Venom. As each villian is defeated (by hitting the 

right targets and making good shots) you will receive an extra ball. By 

defeating them more than once you can activate other special modes 

of play. To get multiball, hit the white standup target and then shoot 

the left and right loops. While it requires appropriate timing and a little 

skill to place your shots right, the table was designed with the physics 

necessary to make struggling for just the right shot enjoyable. The addition 

of the story makes it that much sweeter. 

Tournament play is available for multiple players, activated via a separate 

start button. Whether you play Spider-Man alone or with friends, it is a fun 

game that offers an experience that can only be found on an actual pinball 

table. As hard as video console pinball tries, it never will be the same as 

the real thing. Fortunately, Spider-Man is a very popular pin and it shouldn’t 

be dif cult to nd at a local arcade or other venue. 


SPIDER-MAN PINBALL_ARCADE_63

Preview by BigWyrm 

In these modern times where its seems that everyone from your boss 

to your mother is constantly barking orders, it’s nice to be considered 

an exalted potentate for once. That’s why I love playing Overlord, as 

I never tire of my lowly minions happily sacri cing their lives upon 

command. Talk about an ego boost! 

After beating the single player story, I decided to go online and bend real 

people to my will. The rst 

thing that I noticed is that none 

of the armor, weapons, spells, 

or extra minions earned from 

singleplayer transfer over to 

the multiplayer experience. 

This means that all players 

start every match on even 

terms with the same amount 

of spells and minions, so time 

becomes an important factor 

in amassing a deadly horde to 

decimate rivals. Relying on the 

default settings for the entire match is tantamount to suicide. Also, don’t 

be discouraged if there are no servers to join; it just means that you need 

to host a game. Doing so gives you zero ping and lets you customize the 

options, however limited they may be. 

The co-op survival mode makes two Overlords work together to survive 

as long as possible. Two small maps are available for this mode. One is 

a dark and eerie Dwarf-infested cave called Gates of Destruction while 

the other, Last Stand, takes place on grassy plains lled with 

insects and other creatures. 

During my rst match, the other player didn’t use his headset, so we 

couldn’t strategize. When the round started, he ran off into the sunset 

and died in less than three minutes. What did I learn from this? When 

joining every co-op game, speak to your teammate before it begins. If 

there is no response, leave immediately. 

Competitive modes consist of both Versus-Slaughter (players gain points 

by killing NPCs and their opponent), and Versus-Pillage (players acquire 

gold by looting enemies, houses, and killing their opponent). Fighting 

your adversary doesn’t usually happen as often in Pillage, but it’s a good 

idea to always keep an eye out for the other Overlord. 

Players can choose from two separate maps for each versus mode, 

and they are not only larger than co-op maps, but they also resemble 

singleplayer levels. In addition, they have more variety in NPC enemies 

and additional tower objects that grant spells and health/mana bonuses. 

Just like single player, several impediments exist that require a nite 

set of minions to move or certain type to eliminate (like red minions 

removing re barriers). Budding gremlin commanders can also kill rival 

minions carrying tower objects and steal them. Anyone intent on killing 

the rival Overlord should target him with the left trigger and send their 

minions using the right trigger. Simply ‘sweeping’ them in the direction 

of the opponent isn’t very effective, as they will stop to attack any 

enemy NPCs or minions in their path. 

64_ONLINE GAMER_OVERLORD HARDCORE GAMER MAGAZINE_VOLUME 3_ISSUE 4_VOODLE, SHIKA, LOU & OKAR 

Copyright © 2007 Entertainment Consumers Association. All rights reserved. 

Fight back at theeca.com

GAMES GA GAME ME MESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS YOU YOU YO YOU CAN CA CAN DOWNLOAD DOWNLOAD DO DOWN WN WNLO LO LOAD AD AND AAND 

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AC ACHI HI HINE NE NES 

SPACE SPACE GIRAFFE GIRAFFE 

Downloaded by James 

Developer: Llamasoft * Platform: XBox 360 

Genre: Shooter * Category: Brain Trance * # of Players: 1 

Price: 400 points ($5) * Get it at: Xbox Live Arcade 

Space Giraffe is not Tempest. Despite a super cial 

similarity, subtle clues such as “playing completely and 

utterly unlike Tempest” give the secret away. It takes 

a bit of learning, and getting started can be confusing, 

but experience reveals the incredible strategies hiding 

beneath Space Giraffe’s shooty exterior. 

A yellow claw 

runs along the 

top of a series of 

lanes. Shooting 

the advancing enemies works just ne, but most of 

them can be bulled off the web’s rim for massive score 

bonuses. Bulling several enemies at once earns a score 

multiplier, but it only works so long as there’s power in 

the Power Zone. Whenever you do something, whether 

it’s using a jump powerup or shooting an enemy, a line 

of light on the web grows into the distance. The line is 

always shrinking unless it’s being lled, and when it’s 

gone the Power Zone is empty. An empty Power Zone 

not only lessens the giraffe’s repower but means 

any enemy can kill it, so guring out Power Zone 

manipulation strategies is half the game. 

The other half is sorting out which enemies do what, 

and when it’s best to forgo bonus points from bulling 

them to instead shoot through to the danger they’re 

covering. Action and strategy and pure visual overload 

combine into an arcade game as deep as it is chaotic, 

and a goofy sense of humor ties it all together. Most 

importantly, Space Giraffe is pure addictive fun, 

constantly demanding one more round as the pulsing 

light melts your eyes out of their sockets. 

SCORE: SCORE: SCORE: 5 5 5 of of of 55 

5 

BOMBERMAN BOMBERMAN LIVE LIVE 

Developer: Backbone Entertainment 

Platform: Xbox 360 * Genre: Bomberman 

Category: Pure Chaos 

# of Players: 1-8 * Price: 800 points ($10) 

Get it at: Xbox Live Arcade 

We’ve been waiting for this for years 

and it’s nally here. Bomberman 

Live is pure, classic Bomberman 

taken online with up to eight 

players adding to the chaos at once. 

Almost every aspect of the ght is 

customizable, from basics such as 

time limit and number of wins to 

the championship to more advanced 

options like weapon loadout. For 

extra insanity, the Revenge mode 

from the Saturn game returns, 

allowing defeated Bombermen to 

throw bombs from the sidelines 

after being defeated, and there’s 

no denying the satisfaction of taking 

out the bastard who nailed you rst. 

Unfortunately there’s not much of 

a single player mode, seeing as it’s 

just multiplayer with AI bots, but 

this isn’t called Bomberman Live by 

a random act of branding. While a 

few more arenas would have been 

nice, this is the ultimate modern 

Bomberman, and one of the best 

multiplayer games around. 

SCORE: SCORE: SCORE: 4.5 4.5 4.5 of of of 55 

5 

66_ON THE HE DO DOWNLOAD 

LOAD 



SUPER SUPER SUPER STARDUST STARDUST STARDUST HD HD HD HD 

Developer: Housemarque * Platform: PS3 

Genre: Shooter * Category: Lots o’ Rocks 

# of Players: 1-2 * Price: $9.99 

Get it at: Playstation Network 

Super Stardust d HD plays like a cross 

between Asteroids and Geometry Wars 

set high above a planet’s surface, with 

enemies and asteroids entering orbit 

and cluttering up the sky. There are 

three types of asteroids corresponding 

to the three primary weapons, all colorcoded 

for your shooting convenience. 

The spread gun is most effective against 

standard rocks, the laser whip makes 

short work of gold asteroids and most 

enemies, and the straight-shot blue 

gun tears through ice and bosses alike. 

All the guns are at least somewhat 

effective in all situations, but you can 

also just bomb everything into next 

week when things get too hairy. The 

levels are arbitrarily long, though, with 

no indicator of how you’re progressing 

until the last few enemies appear. A 

high-score run on Super Stardust HD is 

more a marathon than sprint, but it’s 

still the best thing running on the PS3. 

SCORE: SCORE: SCORE: 4.5 4.5 4.5 of of of 55 

5 

VENICE VENICE 


Developer: PopCap Games * Platform: PC 

Genre: Shooter * Category: Trick Shot 

# of Players: 1 * Price: $19.95 

Get it at: http://www.popcap.com/ 

Popcap’s newest casual addiction is 

Venice, a pleasantly fun time-waster 

with a decidedly odd premise. A 

boat oats on the waters as Venice 

sinks under the sea, and shooting 

treasures into their corresponding 

outlines on blocks is the only way 

to save the town from a watery 

doom. Rings, amphoras, lyres, 

hearts, stars, and more (but no 

yellow moons or green clovers) get 

shot into their respective places, 

frequently requiring a timed- or 

bank-shot. Powerups are awarded 

for combos, which happen when a 

treasure lands high up and sends 

copies of itself tumbling down to 

land in lower matching slots, and 

exploiting them can lead to huge 

chain reactions that clear the levels 

quickly. This is especially important 

in the secondary game mode, where 

constantly rising water keeps the 

pressure on. Despite its simplicity, 

Venice is surprisingly addictive, and 

is a great way to while away the 

low-key gaming hours. 

SCORE: SCORE: SCORE: 4 4 4 of of of 55 

5 

BOLT BOLT BRAIN BRAIN TEASERS 

TEASERS 

Developer: Scarsoft * Platform: PC 

Genre: Maze/Puzzle * Category: Brain Crusher 

# of Players: 1 * Price: $14.99 

Get it at: http://www.scarsoft.com 

Bolt Brain Teasers is a mousecontrolled 

maze game about 

creating a clear path for a little 

yellow bunny through the chaos of 

blocks that stand between it and a 

delicious cake reward. Each level 

has a set amount of tools for sliding, 

turning, or exploding the blocks in 

your way, but because there’s only 

one solution, and the tools can be 

used almost anywhere, in any order, 

there are an overwhelming number 

of ways to screw up the more 

complex puzzles. There’s nothing 

wrong with a good challenge, but 

clearing out even the easiest of 

what Bolt mockingly refers to as 

“Main Game” (as opposed to the 

three easier sets of thirty puzzles) 

is cause for smug satisfaction tinged 

with relief. There’s a sweet spot 

between tutorial-easy and braincrushing 

tough, and Bolt doesn’t 

spend a lot of time there. Bolt 

Brain Teasers is worth checking 

out, though, for scarily smart or 

masochistic gamers. 

SCORE: SSSSCORE SSCORE SSSSS SCORE: SS SSSS SCORE SSSSSSSC SCCC SC SC SC SC SC SC SC SC SC SCOO SS CC CCCC CCCCCCOOOOOOOOOO CO CO CO CO CO CO CO CO CO COOR CC OR OR OR OR OR OR OR OR OR OR OR ORRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRE OR OR RE RE RE RE RE RE RE RE RE RE REEEEE E: EEEE E: EEE: E: E: EEE 33.5 

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Downloaded by James 

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Poisonous skies, but the 

sunsets are amazing! 

US RPG fans got screwed more often than not in 

the 16-bit days, even if many of the games they 

desperately wanted and never got to play ended 

up better in imagination than reality. Other than 

learning Japanese, there wasn’t much to be done 

about playing games like Seiken Densetsu 3, Dragon 

Quest V and VI, and more Fire Emblems than you 

can shake a stick at. Terranigma, on the other hand, 

was an even bigger screw-over than normal, because 

an English translation was released in Europe. For 

fans of Soul Blazer and Illusion of Gaia, this was, to 

put it tactfully, unkind. 

Terranigma opens in the typical peaceful village 

so many RPGs like to kick things off in, complete 

with oversleeping but rambunctious hero being 

woken up by his cute 

female childhood 

Carmen Miranda has 

a mean final form. 

friend. Piling that much 

cliché in one place is 

most likely a move to 

lull the player into a 

feeling of comfortable 

familiarity, seeing as 

the plot grows very 

strange, very quickly. 

The crystal blue, which 

looks remarkably like 

giant soap bubbles 

drifting through the air, 

is particularly thick that 

day, and the villagers 

can see other lives in 

other worlds re ected 

on the surface if they 

look closely. Seeing as nothing exists outside the 

village, this is more than a little strange. 

There’s a big world outside, of course, and Ark 

gets thrust into it when he accidentally 

turns everyone in the village to blue 

glass. Whoops. Time to venture 

outside, then, and see that the 

village actually exists under the 

skin of the planet, with the 

villagers’ souls trapped in 

temples on rocky continents 

oating in seas of lava. 

Completing the temples does 

more than bring 

back the villagers, 

though, it also sets 

into motion events 

leading to waking up 

the world. 

Our world. Earth. 

Apparently it’s all 

but dead. How’d 

that happen? 

The Earth has 

become a barren 

chunk of poisonous 

rock where nothing 

can live, but that’s 

nothing that can’t 

be xed by running 

Behold! the power of 

the star chamber 

Dude, check out 

your hand... Whoa. 

through dungeons while smacking monsters around. 

Terranigma’s mysterious storyline is complemented 

by a fun action-oriented ghting engine. Ark wields 

a spear which, despite the single attack button, can 

throw out a decent number of attacks by combining 

with jumps, dashes, or simple button-mashing. 

There’s a move for every occasion, and it can leave 

you wishing the dungeons had a few more critters 

to take out to get that fast-action feel. Most of the 

enemies end up as one hit wonders, after a bit of 

leveling up, but that helps make sorting out the 

complicated dungeons a bit easier. 

Dungeon crawling in Terranigma is more than just 

about killing things, after all. While the caves, 

temples, forests, and castles of Earth aren’t as 

Blueberry-steak waffles 

with curry syrup is bad? 

Exhumed by James 

68_GRAVEYARD_TERRANIGMA HARDCORE GAMER MAGAZINE_VOLUME 3_ISSUE 4_VOODLE, SHIKA, LOU & OKAR 

Yeti love flower! Ark touch 

flower, Yeti smash! 

puzzle-oriented as something like Landstalker, 

they have their fair share of mysteries to 

unravel. The dungeons get fairly complex, 

lled with labyrinthine passages that twist 

and connect in relatively complex ways. 

There are a few “enter the right number”type 

puzzles, but in general it’s more about 

exploration and keeping your bearings than 

sorting out complex switch interactions. 

Tracking down the next bit of plot, on the 

other hand, can take a bit of doing. 

The next place to go is generally pretty 

obvious for the rst half of the game, 

but once humans have been revived on 

Earth things get somewhat less linear. The 

plot only has the One True Path, but guring out who 

to talk to, what they want, and where they’re hiding becomes 

half the battle. Terranigma eventually builds itself a good-sized 

cast of characters with their own 16-bit RPG-style plots, and 

this is made all the more entertaining by taking place in our 

familiar world. You can’t go wrong with nding wood in Canada 

to build a bridge 

over the Colorado 

River so you can 

walk to Brazil on a 

Mode 7 overworld. 

There’s even a 

small plot point 

where Ark gets 

to cast his vote 

in a democratic 

election between 

capitalist and 

communist 

candidates. 

A slice of cheese and you’ve 

got a great sandwich. 

More than just 

the pleasant 

oddness of seeing 

RPG conventions 

superimposed on Earth, what makes the tone of Terranigma work 

is a sense of mystery tinged with sadness. Death and rebirth 

are the central themes, with reincarnation taken as a given. 

This perspective permeates the plot, whether stated directly 

or merely hinted at, and despite Terranigma’s standard 16-bit 

quality translation (not very good and loaded with typos) the 

excellent music and overall presentation manage to convey the 

emotional hit that the text sometimes lacks. There’s also plenty 

of humor, of course, because Ark is an upbeat, adventurous 

soul exploring a vibrant and lively world, but seeing a friendly 

animal eating the corpse of her dead husband so she’ll have 

the strength to survive tends to stick in the memory above any 

wacky hijinks that may happen along the way. 


Keyser Soze was what!? 

If that seems like a lot of talk about story and only a 

little about gameplay, there’s good reason. 

Exploring dungeons, battling monsters and 

bosses, and leveling up while buying 

ever-stronger equipment is always 

fun, and Terranigma does a good 

enough job at it. The bulk of the 

game is spent running, jumping, 

and ghting, in fact. Left 

to pure gamplay, though, 

Terranigma would 

be a decent if 

forgettable romp, 

but the best RPGs 

are a combination 

of game and story. While 

a stupid story is easily 

ignorable if the gameplay 

is good, a well-executed 

story can combine with 

“pretty good” gameplay 

to make something truly 

memorable. Terranigma’s 

main strength is how 

all its elements work 

together (with a second 

nod to the fantastic 

soundtrack), and even 

today that’s a goal 

most games have a hard 

time reaching. 

arks new extreme sport, 

armor plowing. 

how long is this traffic cop 

going to make me wait? 

TERRANIGMA_GRAVEYARD_69

Greetings to my throngs of adoring 

fans! With Sardius out of commission this month, 

your favorite fanservice-loving editor was personally asked to sub in 

for the import section, with a game that didn’t escape his notice no matter how w 

much he tried to avoid it! This month, we present you with a title that’s currently ly 

famous (or infamous) for two reasons. One is the fact that it’s been advertised as a 

game where you “touch” little girls. The other is that a good amount of the people from m 

Twinkle Star Sprites worked on this puppy. Both are entirely true, but only one of these e 

yields results that most people are expecting. 

In DDMS, you play as Akuji Nishimura, a misbehaving junior high student. One day, the e 

heavens charge him with the task of nding witches which have in ltrated his school. . 

He refuses at rst, but accepts under pain of being transformed into a goody-two-shoes s 

forevermore. Accompanying him is a tiny, cute-as-a-button angel by the name of Lulu, 

who is predictably and humorously insane due to her frequent delusions of grandeur. 

Once you start the game, you’re plopped into your standard text-heavy adventure game 

in the vein of Phoenix Wright, Hotel Dusk, or any other point-and-click adventures in 

the system’s library. However, right off the bat you’ll notice that SNK decided to be 

very annoying. To interact with anything in this game — items, menus, pieces of the 

environment — it has to be tapped twice in succession. Such an approach may work 

well when you’re using a computer mouse, but on a touch screen, it’s just madness. 

Key items can also be slid around the screen, or offscreen and into your possession. 

Mostly, Mostly Akuji will be exploring 

the neighborhood, n 

looking for 

characters chara to interact with 

(they’ll (they show up in whatever building ding he enters), enters) clues, clues or collectibles to advance 

the story. s Sometimes these will be pictures of suspected witches, other times they’ll be keys 

to unlock un doors, books or trinkets that will allow you to coax information out of NPCs, and all 

that. You’ve been here before. It’s all standard adventure stuff, and to be honest, if you don’t 

know Japanese, this is going to get very boring, very fast. If you do know Japanese, the game 

reportedly repo boasts off-the-wall humor to match its character designs. However, should either 

part party persevere, then they’ll actually track down their suspect. After the music pumps up, and 

pre- pre- ght banter is exchanged, the fun parts start. 

First First off is combat! The girl will throw various projectiles at you, which have a range of effects, 

from 

doing simple damage to messing around with the game system itself. Akuji has a blunt 

swo sword to defend himself with (drawing lines on the screen will slash against the approaching 

pro projectiles, sometimes de ecting), but magical companions (including Lulu) can be called 

upo upon to aid with various attacks, employed by placing the stylus on the attacking suspect 

for 

a short time. Deplete her energy bar and defenses, and it’s time for the part everyone’s 

wa waiting for! 

Th The “witch-touching” mode is an anatomical scavenger hunt, though nowhere near in the 

wa way those words may imply. Clothes stay on, and you’re ordered to touch in seemingly 

ra random places to nd where they react via little hearts. You can smile/wink at the 

gi girls (or in one scenario, a boy), give them items in order to keep them placated, or 

ev even blow on them with the DS mic. Every so often, their expressions change, and 

yo you have to adapt to their new position. Once you nd the right spot, you can 

cconcentrate 

on it, and eventually unearth the all-telling “witch-mark.” 

OOnce 

you manage to nd the mark, you’ve nally beaten the chapter, and 

tthe 

witch you found actually ends up in your employ. She can talk to 

ppeople 

and interact with things in ways that neither Akuji nor Lulu 

ccan. 

She also brings to the table a brand new attack that you 

can use in combat sequences. Since these combat sequences 

ramp up in dif d culty, you’re going to need all of the help you can get. 

Furthermore, certain bosses are vulnerable to certain types of attacks, giving the game a Mega Man-esque feel, if 

drawn out just a little too long by text-heavy adventure parts. This is my one gripe with the game, honestly. 

The combat parts (not the touching parts) are the highlight of the title, as they show the best design, and 

I’d have liked to see even more of them in proportion to the rest of the game. 

70_JAPAN_ 

70_JAPAN_DOKIDOKI DOKIDOKI MAJO SHINPAN! HARDCORE GAMER MAGAZINE_VOLUME 3_ISSUE 4_ 

Review by Racewing 


If you’re looking into this game based on its somewhatinfamous 

online reputation (see sidebar), don’t bother. You’ll 

be disappointed. If you like comedy and text adventure 

games, can read Japanese, and didn’t get cavities from 

Twinkle Star Sprites, then this is the game for you! 

Niche? You betcha. 


Suf Suf ce to say there’s 

no truly erotic 

content content in here 

(though admittedly, 

there are times when 

the game seems to want to come as close as 

possible). Why? Well, just in case it’s not brain-dead obvious, 

let’s run down the facts: 

- This is on a system made by Nintendo, a system whose audience 

involves a great number of women and impressionable children, and 

who as a company, has a long-standing history of rejecting games 

with such content. 

- Said system is in the prime of its life, and very much in the public 

eye. If you’re looking for a “traditional” dating game on a console, 

you’d probably do best to hunt down a dead Sega system. Such games 

ran rampant on the Dreamcast after its plug was of cially pulled. Even 

then, when ported to console, nearly all line-crossing material is cut. 

- The majority of the involved girls are explicitly stated on the game’s 

of cial website as being anywhere from 12 to 15 years of age—below 

the age of consent in most countries, and the lower extreme of 

which dips below Japan’s. 

Put all of these ingredients together, and voila; you end up with a game with about as much sex as, say, Sexy 

Parodius. Furthermore, the “touching” aspect accounts for 15 percent of the game at best. The rest is 

running around, listening to dialogue, or maybe taking part in a short battle. Honestly, the game doesn’t 

really need ”action”; the touching parts can be disturbing enough for the uninitiated if you think about 

what you’re doing too much, or pay too much attention to the girls’ precocious facial expressions. 

While it’s mildly surprising that Nintendo licensed this at all, it’s easily argued that the game’s 

infamous reputation is the result of things being blown out of proportion. That’s what 

happens when you listen to the Internet and perfectly-pitched advertising, kids. 

DOKIDOKI MAJO SHINPAN! 

SHINPAN!_JAPAN_71 

_JAPAN_71

Publisher: Banpresto 

Developer: Banpresto 


Genre(s): Rhythm/Adventure 

Category: Women’s Anime 


Review by KouAidou 

Nodame Cantabile is based off an anime which you probably haven’t heard of. We certainly 

hadn’t. The manga the anime was based on from comes from the josei genre, meaning 

that it’s targeted mostly towards women in their college years or later. Nevertheless, we 

thought the concept sounded intriguing enough that it might be worth a look here at HGM. 

The game follows the anime’s plotline, which centers around Shinichi Chiaki, a brilliant 

but arrogant musician who hopes one day to become a professional conductor, but who is 

hindered by a crippling fear of travel. Things start to change when he meets the pianist 

Megumi Noda (AKA Nodame), whose overly carefree nature contrasts with his fastidiously 

controlled lifestyle. Though it sounds like your typical “opposites attract” relationship 

drama, Nodame succeeds by portraying both characters as deeply awed people governed 

by more than just their primary character trait. 

Though the plot summary might lead you to expect a datesim, the game is actually 

centered around a series of rhythm-game like “Concert” portions, which are given 

context by text-heavy “Adventure” portions which precede them. Contrary to what the 

name would suggest, the Adventure portions are little more than glori ed cutscenes that 

occasionally ask you to engage in annoying button-pressing minigames which you can’t 

lose, have no real effect on the game’s events whatsoever, and just serve to slow down the 

otherwise entertaining plot developments. 

The Concert portions comprise the real “meat” of the game, and things fare a bit better 

here. Playing as Chiaki, the conductor of an orchestra, you’ll need to lead the group 

through such classics as the theme from “Swan Lake” and “The Flight of the Bumblebee,” 

regulating the group’s tempo, volume, and rhythm through proper manipulation of the face 

buttons and analog sticks. It’s simple but effective; the music will really follow your lead, 

so there’s a certain sense of personal satisfaction when you’ve conducted well. 

Unfortunately, a sense of satisfaction is all you get, as your performance during the 

concerts also has no actual effect on the rest of the story. Completing a song unlocks it for 

you to replay in free-play mode, and a great performance unlocks extras like production 

art, but the fact that characters will react to you the same way regardless of whether you 

turn in a bad or a transcendent performance makes the whole story-based concept seem 

even more pointless. 

It’s sad, too, because the story is 

clearly full of dynamic characters 

and amusing situations, and a 

game that really put you in the 

middle of that could have been 

really enjoyable. As it is, Nodame 

Cantabile squanders its potential 

by falling back on a fairly average 

rhythm game, bridged together by 

story segments whose “gameplay” 

additions hurt more than they help. 

If you happen to be interested in Nodame Cantabile’s story, it may be worth checking out, as 

it provides you a fairly good short introduction to the anime. There’s very little actual game 

here, though, so don’t feel bad about skipping it, either. 

2.5 of 5 

72_JAPAN_NODAME CANTABILE HARDCORE GAMER MAGAZINE_VOLUME 3_ISSUE 4_VOODLE, SHIKA, LOU & OKAR

REVIEW 

concentrate on driving, but you can still just hit your nitro 

button and ram the car instead. 

While on foot, most of the missions just call for running 

around, hiding behind cover, and shooting the town up. 

Again, targeting is automatic, and the missions are brief, 

but it breaks up the driving missions nicely. 

The graphics use solid colors for the backdrop and some shading for vehicles, and 

that gives a unique look to the entire experience. You only hear music while you play 

the game, with no explosion or gun effects, and 

that’s a real disappointment. 

In any case, Driver L.A. Undercover has some 

quality action sequences, blending driving with 

chases, gun re, jumps, speed and smash-ups. The 

foot missions are a bit forgettable and only serve 

to break up the driving action. There’s some 

unlockable content, like vehicles, locations and 

separate mission modes, so this game has unusual 

replay value for a Mobile title. 

Publisher: Gameloft 

Developer: Gameloft 


Tanner is back in his usual form as the undercover cop 

poised to in ltrate and take down bad guys all over. This 

time around, he’s made his way to the City of Angels and is 

looking to bring down the Los Angeles Ma a. 

Traveling a huge 3D city that barely resembles L.A., there 

are over 30 missions to undertake, either on foot or while 

driving. These missions are usually bundled into groups of 

four per in-game objective, 

and while they offer variety 

none of them are very long. 

This is Mobile, after all. 

Driving missions are standard 

fare: racing from point A to 

point B, chasing down other 

vehicles and destroying 

them, and following or 

evading target vehicles. 

Mission length varies, but all 

let you drive around town in 

some sweet rides, each with 

different stats that can be 

improved. Your vehicles can 

take damage while you do all that running around, but you 

can also stop at the local mechanic shop and get that taken 

care of so that the mission doesn’t end in disaster. 

The neat thing about driving 

missions is that you can take 

out the bad guys by driving 

and shooting at the same 

time. With a quick press of 

the button, Tanner will lean 

out the window and ll your 

enemies full of lead. Targeting 

is automatic, so that you can 

Genre: GTA Clone 

Category: Driving 

# of Players: 1 3.5 of 5 

74_MOBILE_DRIVER L.A. UNDERCOVER HARDCORE GAMER MAGAZINE_VOLUME 3_ISSUE 4_VOODLE, SHIKA, LOU & OKAR 

Split sh 

Reviews by DJPubba 

FragFX 

• Nunchuck/Mouse combo for PS3 • Price: $59.99 

Let me start out by saying that I am a hardcore PC keyboard/mouse 

FPS shooter-dood. I can’t stand playing console FPS games with an 

analog stick. It drives me nuts when I try. 

Therefore, when I heard about the FragFX, I was interested, yet wary. 

I have tried console pseudo-mice before — speci cally, the SmartJoy Frag 

for Xbox with Halo. The results were usable but no substitute for proper 

mouse support built into the game. I patiently waited for the PC version 

of Halo instead. 

Before I go any further, let me say “WTF?!” to whoever decided to not give their blessing for mouse 

support in FPS console games. I mean, come on, people! You support a mouse for console web 

browsing but not in-game? I just don’t get it. 

I got my FragFX, cut open the evil hand-stabbing plastic packaging everyone uses nowadays, 

plugged ‘er into the PS3 and booted Resistance. No-workie. The controls didn’t do squat but there was 

a ashing blue button. A quick scan of the included instruction pamphlet revealed that you have to 

turn the thing on by pressing the ashing blue button. Okay. Now it’s working. 

I noted a sensitivity dial on the nunchuck and predicted that I’d be using it pretty quickly. I was right. The default setting felt really 

bad. Moving the mouse quickly resulted in a molasses-like movement of the cross hair and moving it slowly resulted in short, rapid jerky 

movements. I ddled with both the game’s sensitivity and the FragFX’s and found a usable balance. Unfortunately, no amount of ddling 

gave me the smooth, precise mousing I’m used to with my Logictech G5 on the PC. 

On top of that, the circle, square, triangle and X buttons are located right where I normally grip the mouse with my thumb so I had to 

constantly be wary of not holding the mouse too hard or I’d accidently hit a button I didn’t want. This resulted in cramping pretty quickly. 

In summary, if you’re a hardcore PC mouser, keep sending those petitions to console makers for real mouse support. 

The Quasicon is an arcade-style controller 

designed for use with modern home consoles. 

There are tons of arcade sticks on the market 

that will plug into nearly anything you want 

them to, but there is a big difference between 

those and this: this has analog sticks and buttons 

in addition to the standard digital 8-way joysticks. 

This is actually quite remarkable and probably the reason behind the hefty price tag. 

As far as I know, analog arcade buttons do not exist in the arcade and analog joysticks 

are exceedingly rare. Quasimoto has manufactured their own analog arcade buttons and 

sticks. This makes the Quasicon unlike any other arcade controller there is. All of their 

competition uses buttons and arcade hardware that anyone who wanted to build their own 

arcade stick could obtain for themselves from HappControls.com. 

The idea is fantastic, but how does the controller stack up in real-world use? Arguably, the main reason anyone would want an arcade stick 

is to play ghting games. With that in mind, I invited Racewing over, who still hasn’t come down from the buzz he got from the MAS arcade 

stick I converted to work on Xbox for him. Race and I went one-on-one in a quick SFA3 match and it was immediately clear that, while 

the Quasicon is a 1000% improvement over a gamepad, its springy analog buttons weren’t quite as silky-sweet as the MAS stick’s standard 

arcade buttons. However, the digital 8-ways seemed just as good and the button layout was okay considering how many were present. 

After Racewing left, I red up a FPS, a third-person shooter and a racing game. All played well with the analog sticks, which actually 

provided an even more precise measure of control over their gamepad counterparts, due to their additional shaft length. The sticks are a 

little close together, but not uncomfortably so. The analog buttons worked about as well as the real ones on a PS2 Dual Shock, which is not 

saying much. Just like those, the difference between pressing softly and pressing hard is so small that you wouldn’t really know they were 

analog unless someone told you. The whole concept of analog buttons seems gimmicky and largely unsupported to me anyway, so having 

them on this stick really seems to be just for the sake of completeness. 

The Quasicon is designed for the perfectionist who wants an arcade controller that can completely replace the original gamepad on their 

current-gen console. It is that which the Quasicon delivers and more, with many other little features I wish I had more room to talk about 

here. I’ll probably hack a trackball and spinner (and some artwork!) onto mine for the complete retro package. 


Quasimoto (www.Quasimoto.com) 

Quasicon 

• Arcade-style Controller • Price: $199.00 

HARDWARE_75

RENEGADE KID: 

NO KIDDING AROUND 

Here, He here! 

The Gamecock G has 

somet something to say to 

th the masses! 

To leave the comfort of a fulltime job, where you receive bene ts and a steady 

paycheck is crazy, right? Well, yes it is. To be an independent developer is both 

thrilling and scary, and it takes a little bit of crazy to step out. Renegade Kid’s cofounders, 

Jools Watsham and Gregg Hargrove, had to embrace their inner madness 

and hold on for dear life when they decided to fund the development of Dementium: 

The Ward with the hope that a nice publisher would come along, package it up, and 

put it on the shelf. Here, the maniacal minds behind Renegade Kid offer advice to all 

those thinking of starting their own game studio. 

Jools Watsham: Creative independence has been a dream of mine for a long time. I 

have been designing, creating artwork, and writing music for games ever since my Dad 

purchased a ZX Spectrum in 1982, when I was eight years old. My passion for playing and 

making games has only grown over the years. Gregg and I rst spoke of starting our own 

game studio over ten years ago. We were both young(er) and dumb(er) then; it was just a 

dream. To be honest, it’s a good thing that dream didn’t come true too quickly. Dog only 

knows what kind of a mess we’d be in if we had gone independent any sooner than now. 

Experience is the key when it comes to putting your life, wife, and kids in the risky hands 

of the video game industry. 

My belief is that to start and maintain a successful video game company, you have to create 

games that people want to play. Pretty obvious, right? So, in order to keep my thoughts on 

track I always make sure my game concepts please the three P’s. If my game doesn’t please 

the three P’s, then the development risk may be too high, and I may end up wasting a lot of time 

and money. P number one is the public. If the public doesn’t want my game, then no one’s going 

to buy it, and I’ll go out of business quicker than you can say “Why did you make that game, man? 

No one wants to play it!” P number two is the publisher. Video games are a business. If my game 

isn’t sexy to a publisher (translation: $ellable), then I’m dead in the water, no matter how ‘good’ 

the game may be. P number three is the press. Other people’s opinions matter to most people, 

so if the press likes my game, more people will start talking about it. 

Gregg Hargrove: I began as an artist with a love of comic books. I never put too much thought 

into video games because like most people at the time, I had no idea what actually went into 

making one. My family never even had a computer as I was growing up so I had no idea what they 

could actually do artistically. Don’t get me wrong, I loved games. I spent every quarter I had down 

at the local arcade, but they were just magic! No one actually made them, they just “were.” 

However, fate being as twisted as it is, I found myself as an adult making them for a living and I 

was hooked! Talk about growth! Every project was a different challenge with new, exciting, and 

even terrifying possibilities. Almost from the beginning I wanted to steer the ship, but honestly 

had little idea what that actually meant. Just learning how to make compelling art for a game 

was hard enough and little did I know that was just the tip of the iceberg. I would have crashed 

right into that sucker if I had been allowed to take command at that early stage. 

The most important thing I’ve learned through many projects has been compromise. Compromise 

is a tricky term to bandy about and many artists will puff their chests out and wail, “I will never 

compromise my artistic integrity!” That’s not what I mean. You should 

always want your art to be the best it can be. I wanted every game 

I worked on to look glorious! Does that mean that I should get to do 

whatever I want even now that I get to call those shots? No. The game 

must come rst. Jools talks about the three Ps and that’s a hard fact 

to get your artsy brain around but it’s crucial when embarking on a 

commercial venture. The trick is to learn to use the creativity you 

rely on as an artist and nd a way that satis es those three Ps and still 

compels your sensibilities as an artist. Never give up you dreams, never 

sell your soul, but nd a way to make it all work together. 

We’re just sayin’... 

CONTHQ 


76_SQUAWKBOX_GAMECOCK HARDCORE GAMER MAGAZINE_VOLUME 3_ISSUE 4_ 4_VOODLE, VOODLE, SHIKA, LOU & OKAR

Our guides 

aren’t for 

everyone. 

(Some people don’t play video games.) 

Soul Nomad 

Would you sell your soul for 

Ultimate Power? (Or would you 

just buy the guide?) 

• Complete Map Data! 

• Complete Character Data! 

• Every Secret revealed! 

• Complete Item Data! 

• Build the strongest rooms! 

• Crush every enemy! 

Rogue Galaxy 

Miss nothing. Learn everything. 

This comprehensive guide is 

packed full of extreme detail about 

every inch of the game. 

• Complete maps of every planet 

• Every weapon identifi ed 

• Lists of every enemy’s stats 

• Every secret revealed 

Persona 3 

Create every Persona, establish 

every Social Link, say the right 

things to the right people, fi nish 

all of Elizabeth’s requests on time, 

fi nd all of the treasure chests on 

every fl oor of Tartarus, refer to our 

detailed besitary, and more. 

Disgaea2: 

Cursed Memories 

640 pages jam-packed with 

extreme detail. If you’ve ever seen 

our Monster Size guides, you 

know they’re fat. This one is our 

fattest ever. We went a little nuts. 

Castlevania®: Dawn 

of Sorrow 

Set one year after the events 

of 2003’s Castlevania®: Aria of 

Sorrow, this sequel follows the 

protagonist Soma Cruz into a new 

castle, and a new adventure. 

Disgaea: Hour of 

Darkness 

Secrets, techniques for capturing 

monsters, all the item ranks, job 

evolutions, class prerequisites and 

much, much more. 

www.DoubleJumpGuides.com 

Rogue Galaxy is a trademark of Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. Created and developed by 

Level 5. © 2006 Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. SMT, Shin Megami Tensei and Persona are 

trademarks or registered trademarks of Atlus USA. Disgaea and Soul Nomad ©NIPPON ICHI 

SOFTWARE INC. ©NIS America, Inc. Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow © 1986-2005 KONAMI. 

“KONAMI” and “CASTLEVANIA” are registered trademarks of KONAMI CORPORATION. 

“CASTLEVANIA Dawn of Sorrow” is a trademark of KONAMI CORPORATION. DoubleJump and 

Monster Size are trademarks or registered trademarks of DoubleJump Publishing, Inc.

Fan art is all about giving exposure to aspiring artists who might 

not otherwise have a way to get their artsie parts seen. If you are 

one such artist, point your web browser toward 

www.hardcoregamer.com and check out the Fan Art section of 

our message boards. That is where you can post your arts to get 

them considered for this section. If your entry is picked to print in the 

magazine, we’ll give you an extra 100 points to spend on swag in our online store. If 

your entry is the pick of the issue, we’ll give you an extra 500! You may also email 

submissions to fart@hardcoregamer.com. 

A few things to keep in mind: There is no deadline for submissions because we’ll be 

doing this every issue. Keep it video game related, please. Only post drawings which 

you drewed yourownself. Don’t expect drawings of nekkid people or any adults-only 

type stuff to make the cut. Keep it rated “Teen” or below. You are the copyright 

owner of your artwork as soon as you draw it whether you make note of that fact 

or not. However, in submitting your artwork to us, you give us permission to reprint 

your art and make fun of it if necessary. 

Title : i am getting better 

Artist : 8bithaven 

Title : Pandaren Brewmaster 

Artist : dokgu11 

Title : takisca 

Artist : Acidic 

Title : Ivy 

Artist : Acidic 

THQLUV 


Title : Geisha 

Artist : emceelokey 

Title : Warg wider, concept art. Lord of The Rings. 

Artist : snake_otc 

Title : Leon S. Kennedy=== Resident Evil 4 

Artist : snake_otc 

80_FAN ART HARDCORE GAMER MAGAZINE_VOLUME 3_ISSUE 4_VOODLE, SHIKA, LOU & OKAR

HGMISRAD 

hardcoregamer.com

Gods & Heroes: Rome Rising, Perpetual Entertainment and the logos for each are trademarks of Perpetual Entertainment, Inc. © 2007 Perpetual 

Entertainment, Inc. All rights reserved. Platform Publishing and the Platform Publishing logo are trademarks of Sony Online Entertainment LLC. 

All rights reserved. The ratings icon is a registered trademark of the Entertainment Software Association. All other trademarks or trade names 

are properties of their respective owners.

Love games? 

We love games. In fact, we were going to call the magazine “We 

really like games allot, monthly,” but that was kinda dumb. Plus, 

it’s supposed to be “a lot,” not allot. Anyway, if you love games 

like us, then you should subscribe and get this thing stuffed into 

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in a mailbox and we’ll start sending your issues and bill you later 

or just get on the horn and order at 800-478-1132. You could 

also do it online at www.sub2hgm.com. 

Authorized signature 

12 issues 

new games • old games • console 

games • arcade games • pc games 

• portable games • game stuff

Number 28 - Volume 3/Issue 4 - Defunct Games

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