Niahak's Place

Normally I wouldn’t specifically mention iTunes, as honestly one store is much like another (although iTunes is classy, easy to use and all that stuff).

However – and I’m not sure when exactly this happened, but I noticed it last night – every single SaGa game soundtrack is now on iTunes.  This includes the Romancing SaGas, which weren’t localized, and the original Game Boy SaGa games, which were brought over to the USA as Final Fantasy Legends 1, 2 and 3.  To me, the game boy renditions are well worth the money alone, to say nothing of the DS remakes.

Now – the most incredible part to me actually happened tonight.  Literally in the past 24 hours, someone with the ‘pull’ to do so changed the SaGa2 and SaGa3 DS soundtracks so that they now have the US branding!  SaGa 3 is now Final Fantasy Legend 3: Shadow or Light and SaGa2 is  Final Fantasy Legend II Goddess of Destiny. Even names which weren’t directly rendered (Steslos -> Talon, Ragna -> Xagor) the first time around were modified to fit with the original US renditions of a game that came out on the original Game Boy.

Maybe this is some particularly dedicated (and awesome!) Square Enix employee, or maybe this was planned all along when the soundtracks were released in the US store.  But because I’m the sappy type, I’m going to hope until someone tells me otherwise 🙂

I’ve heard many a tale of the popularity of Sora no Kiseki in Japan, but I had pretty much given up hope of seeing it in English barring a fan translation.  Given the sheer size of the series, fan translation itself would have been highly unlikely as well.  Luckily, XSeed has got our collective RPG-loving backs.  Despite the PSP’s near-dead status, they’ve committed to bringing over all three of the games in the series.  Now that I’ve finished the first one, I can confirm that it’s not just an impressive game, it’ll be an impressive series.

When Monster Hunter Tri was announced for Wii, I hadn’t heard of the Monster Hunter phenomenon.  I was only glad to hear that a AAA (or at least AA) third-party title was finally announced for the system, and that it was something I would be moderately interested in.

I’m conflicted in a way about Monster Hunter; fundamentally, it’s a game that’s quite similar to Shadow of the Colossus: Much of the time, you’re fighting something much bigger than you, gradually chipping away at the right places and avoiding its spiny parts.  It also requires a good deal more teamwork, preparation, thought, and luck.  But as a consequence, it is incredibly slow to progress.

Lately I was looking for a good simulation game to play. Although Koei’s various sims usually fill that niche pretty well, there’s nothing like a good solid computer-y sim game.

Fate of the World is an indie global warming management simulator. Now, in the United States, that in itself is controversial, which in my opinion is totally stupid – but the rejection of science by half of the political spectrum aside, it’s a game that challenging, interesting and depressing.

Shop sims have always interested me. A long, long time ago (I was… well, let’s just say this was around ’92), I was fascinated by an edutainment store simulator I remember only as “Bentley Bear’s Store”. I would play this game nonstop when I would get a chance, at a computer learning camp I attended through early elementary school. (Googling does not bring up the game, although it does indicate Bentley Bear was the main character in Crystal Castles – no help).

In this ancient shop simulation, you would buy various items (clothes, appliances, and so on) at a base price, and sell these items at a markup, arranging them in your store to draw in customers. You could even visit the nearby department huge store to view their prices, and undercut them slightly to draw in more people. I think there was even an initial debt to repay.

After I stopped going to that computer camp, I simply stopped playing the game. It was sort of interesting, but back then the internet was a mere fledgling of what it is now, and I doubt that the halls of AOL or Compuserve would have had any information on it regardless.

Recettear is the modern Bentley Bear’s Store. Known long-form as “An Item Shop’s Tale”, Recettear is the poster child for translation of Japanese indie (often called “doujin”) games. Much like the store-sim game of my youth, in Recettear you purchase items from either a Guild Shop or the global Marketplace, and sell them at a negotiated markup (that markup often depending upon the willingness of the customer in question to haggle). You arrange them in the store in such a way as to draw in customers, and later you can even design the walls, floor, and counters of your store to attract specific kinds.