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Playing Treasure's Lost PS2 Game

I don’t know how this got past me, but I’m on it now: a few weeks ago, the unreleased game saviors at Lost Levels gave up on their seven year wait for Tiny Toons: Defenders of the Universe and finally pushed the beta they had been sitting on into public channels. The reason you should care about such inexplicable, unfinished, licensed pap? Two reasons. It’s from Treasure, the Japanese game developer everyone so loves (probably too much). And it’s been billed in the past as the spiritual successor to Rakugaki Showtime, the cult crayon arena fighter nobody’s ever played.

Yuusha 30 and Wario’s Micro Game Legacy

A number of sites got their greasy, keyboard crippled hands on early scans of the latest Weekly Famitsu yesterday, and revealed Yuusha 30, thus spoiling all the good fun of Marvelous’ countdown clock. A “new feels RPG” — no comment — according to Famitsu, Yuusha 30’s hook is having four playable characters that you only control for thirty seconds at a time. Each character corresponds with a different game genre. Yuusha’s princess has you playing thirty seconds of scrolling shooter, its demon you play a strategy game, and with the token warrior, a side-scrolling action game. Right now, that’s about all the information there is about Yuush 30 for PSP. But it’s enough to get me chomping at the bit to try it out.

While it isn’t widespread enough to call a trend, the micro game is starting to spread beyond its WarioWare confines.

Screen Test: Oboro Muramasa

NTBUMMYAB*, I was one of those goons who spent the late ‘90s ogling issues of Gamefan like they were hardcore pornography. Dave Halverson’s unhinged hyperbole describing the latest 2D treasure (typically made by Treasure) to hit the Japanese Sega Saturn was intoxicating, and the sprite art for these games was downright titillating. These were games that I would never get to play, unattainable ideals perpetually out of reach, a full continent, ocean, and language away from me.

What? Yes, I had a girlfriend at the time. She was real.

Anyway, I eventually did get to play many of the games I lusted after, though one of them I’ve never been able to fully enjoy. Vanillaware’s Princess Crown was and still is a sight to behold, its giant, graceful sprites one of gaming’s finest hand drawn achievements. Even though I’ve played it a number of times, I still have no clue what the story is about since it’s never received an English translation (and never will, since the code’s been lost.) Fortunately, Vanillaware has re-emerged in the past two years and their most recent games, Princess Crown’s pseudo-sequel Odin Sphere and SRPG GrimGrimoire, are just as beautiful as their forebear and fully available in the one language I’ve managed to partially learn. Their next sidescrolling tour-de-force, Oboro Muramasa for Wii, well, it doesn’t even look real. Look at these screens? This is like some kind of ridiculous fever dream about what 2D games might look like in the awesome-future.

about the blogger

John Constantine, our superhero, was raised by birds and then attended Penn State University. He is currently working on a novel about a fictional city that exists only in his mind. John has an astonishingly extensive knowledge of Scientology. Ultimately he would like to learn how to effectively use his brain. He continues to keep Wu-Tang's secret to himself.

Derrick Sanskrit is a self-professed geek in a variety of fields including typography, graphic design, comic books, music and cartoons. As a professional hipster graphic designer, his recent clients have included Hooksexup, Pitchfork and MoCCA, among others.

Amber Ahlborn - artist, writer, gamer and DigiPen survivor, she maintains a day job as a graphic artist. By night Amber moonlights as a professional Metroid Fanatic and keeps a metal suit in the closet just in case. Has lived in the state of Washington and insists that it really doesn't rain as much as everyone says it does.

Nadia Oxford is a housekeeping robot who was refurbished into a warrior when the world's need for justice was great. Now that the galaxy is at peace (give or take a conflict here or there), she works as a freelance writer for various sites and magazines. Based in Toronto, Nadia prizes the certificate from the Ministry of Health declaring her tick and rabies-free.

Bob Mackey is a grad student, writer, and cyborg, who uses the powerful girl-repelling nanomachines mad science grafted onto his body to allocate time towards interests of the nerd persuasion. He believes that complaining about things on the Internet is akin to the fine art of wine tasting, but with more spitting into buckets.

Joe Keiser has a programming degree from Johns Hopkins University, a tiny apartment in Brooklyn, and a fake toy guitar built in the hollowed-out shell of a real guitar. He writes about games and technology for a variety of outlets. One day he will stop doing this. The day after that, police will find his body under a collapsed pile of (formerly neatly alphabetized) collector's edition tchotchkes.

Cole Stryker is an American freelance writer living in York, England, where he resides with his archeologist wife. He writes for a travel company by day and argues about pop culture on the internet by night. Find him writing regularly here and here.

Peter Smith is like the lead character of Irwin Shaw's The 80-Yard Run, except less athletic. He considers himself very lucky to have this job. But it's a little premature to take "jack-off of all trades" off his resume. Besides writing, travelling, and painting houses, Pete plays guitar in a rock trio called The Aye-Ayes. He calls them a 'power pop' band, but they generally sound more like Motorhead on a drinking binge.

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