<![CDATA[Kotaku: dissidia]]> http://tags.kotaku.com/assets/base/img/thumbs140x140/kotaku.com.png <![CDATA[Kotaku: dissidia]]> http://kotaku.com/tag/dissidia http://kotaku.com/tag/dissidia <![CDATA[Tales Of Characters... All Together!!]]> Today, at a press conference in Tokyo, Namco Bandai announced a action title that brings together 35 characters from the 13 Tales of games. Characters from each title exist in the same game universe.

This new title, which is for the PSP, is Tales of VS. It will be out this summer in Japan. The game is supposedly like Square Enix's DISSIDIA PSP title, complete with 3D battle scenes.

This confirms what we dug up last month: registered trademarks for Tales of Graces and Tales of VS..

PSP 『テイルズオブバーサス』、 2009 年夏発売 [Famitsu]

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<![CDATA[The Chances Of A DISSIDIA Sequel...]]> Want a DISSIDIA sequel? Square Enix game designer Tetsuya Nomura says there are "no plans" currently. But, hey, plans can change.

According to game site 1Up, Nomura states at the end of a 704-page DISSIDIA strategy guide: "There are no current plans for a sequel. To be honest, I wanted to do one up until a few months ago. I even called [Mitsunori] Takahashi, the planning director, and [Ryuji] Ikeda, the lead programmer, to talk about sequel concepts — I told them to think about what they were going to do and prepare themselves [to make a sequel]. However, circumstances inside the company wiped that idea out... to actually make [a sequel] happen would be very difficult given the situation."

(That situation is probably, what, the development of mega title Final Fantasy XIII?)

"If a lot of fans ask for a DISSIDIA II, circumstances might change. I'd like to think about the matter again if that happens," Nomura added. With the way DISSIDIA is selling and with Square Enix's proclivity for sequels, DISSIDIA II seems like no-brainer — and is.

Nomura: No Plans For Dissidia Sequel [1Up] [Pic]

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<![CDATA[The Ten Biggest Selling Games In Japan For December]]> Famitsu publisher Enterbrain has crunched data for December sales, and tallied up the ten biggest games in Japan. Wonder what's number one with a bullet?

Sure ya do! Here's the list for the December 1 to December 28, 2008 sales period:

1. DISSIDIA (PSP)
Square Enix
Launch: 12/18/2008
December Sales: 660,262 units
Total Sales: 660,262 units

2. Animal Crossing: City Folk (Wii)
Nintendo
Launch: 11/20/08
December Sales: 481,695 units
Total Sales: 895,302 units

3. Kirby Super Star Ultra (DS)
Nintendo
Launch: 11/6/08
December Sales: 403,279 units
Total Sales: 855,427 units

4. Wagamama Fashion Girl's Mode (DS)
Nintendo
Launch: 10/23/08
December Sales: 299,170 units
Total Sales: 549,348 units

5. Professor Layton and The Last Time Travel (DS)
Level 5
Launch: 11/27/08
December Sales: 267,365 units
Total Sales: 628,143 units

6. Pokémon Platinum (DS)
The Pokémon Company
Launch: 9/13/08
December Sales: 258,843 units
Total Sales: 2,287,337 units

7. Taiko no Tatsujin Wii
Bandai Namco
Launch: 12/11/08
December Sales: 251,183 units
Total Sales: 251,183 units

8. Rhythm Heaven Gold
Nintendo
Launch: 7/31/08
December Sales: 221,971 units
Total Sales: 1,350,671 units

9. Wii Fit
Nintendo
Launch: 12/1/07
December Sales: 211,651 units
Total Sales: 2,967,297 units

10. Gundam Musou 2
Bandai Namco
Launch 12/18/08
December Sales: 206,438 units
Total Sales: 206,438 units

2008年12月期・月間ゲームソフト販売ランキング(集計期間:2008年12月1日〜12月28日) [Famitsu] Pic]

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<![CDATA[Dissidia: Final Fantasy Import Review: The [Evil] Emperor's New [Suit of Armor]]]> When we were children, we wanted two things: a Super Mario Bros. movie and a Final Fantasy fighting game; we got one of those things, and it made us wish we were dead.

Today, fifteen years later, we have the other one. Does it make us wish we were dead — or does it make us wish we were more alive?

This is a difficult question to answer. Come inside, then, and watch me run confused circles around myself as I attempt, with great vigor, to analyze Dissidia: Final Fantasy, a veritable cornucopia of aesthetic competence, attention to detail, affectionate fan service, and ever-present, cascading, waterfall-like arithmetic. Shucks, forget analysis — I'll be lucky if I can even describe it accurately without punching myself in the face on accident.

Loved
Serious production values: Square-Enix are absolutely, positively not kidding about making you want to buy this game if "you" = "a person who has ever liked any Final Fantasy game, ever". The characters all look just like they would if someone made a high-budget anime about their respective Final Fantasy game and then hired a very expensive video game developer to make a game about that anime. They're constantly jumping and twirling and screaming off the names of magic spells or special deathblow attacks. On top of all this, there's a story, in which Cosmos, the goddess of light, and Chaos, the god of . . . uh, chaos each summon ten warriors from different dimensions to lead their armies of good or evil (respectively) in an epic clash consisting of one-on-one duels in which Final Fantasy characters flip and fly circles around one another.

Wow — talk about music: Man! This game definitely has some well-produced music about it. If you've ever played a Final Fantasy game for more than ten minutes, you know that the battle themes might actually, genuinely be the single most awesome and timeless parts of them. Dissidia is a Final Fantasy where battling is everything. In other words, all of the time you spend playing Dissidia outside the menus, you're going to be treated to excellently produced, hyperactive chugging progressive-ish rock music. Literally every battle theme from Final Fantasy is presented in a sublime new arrangement sublimely lodged halfway between live rock performance and nostalgic videogamey goodness. It's awesome. You should probably buy the soundtrack.

The fans are served: If you like Final Fantasy characters for their staple one-line catchphrases, you'll love Dissidia's story scenes, in which booming voices in the sky foretell ominous things, and then Tidus turns to Squall and says "Yay, let's save the world dude, lol" and then Squall says "I prefer to work alone." When you press the confirm button to begin the single player story mode, you're treated to a nine-minute CG cut-scene in which the ten heroes and ten villains dash at one another and duel in dance-like flying spirals. Watch Squall's Gunblade clash against Sephiroth's mighty Masamune! See Tidus kick a Blitzball in Kefka's face! See Ultimecia shoot lightning bolts at Onion Knight! All the most action-packed scenes from your favorite fan-fictions are right here, in living color, in deliciously expensive CG. And it's not just the big things — little touches are everywhere. When you earn a new ability, the pop-in tutorial window text is written in the sense of voice of a vintage Final Fantasy character. Like, when you get your first summon spell, the tutorial text has a little picture of Rydia (the summoner girl from Final Fantasy IV) by it. Et cetera. If this is starting to sound like a good deal to you, just stop reading now and consider this a must-purchase. It'll save you having to send hate mail. For all the cynics in the audience: you have to admit that this is way more courteous of Square-Enix than, say, another remake of Final Fantasy III with an extra dungeon or special weapon.

Plenty of stuff to do! You don't just fight battles. Oh no. You fight battles by selecting which battles you want to fight by moving your character around a board game map kind of thing, expending "Destiny Points" to enter encounters with enemies or open treasure chests. The more destiny points you have at the end of a particular board-game-map, the more bonuses you receive. Use bonus points to unlock all sorts of inane shi—awesome stuff. Like new characters, or new character costumes. Also, be sure to play every day, and check your Moogle Mail to get special bonus items, weapons, techniques, or whatever. Play against friends to learn even more techniques, trade items, or pass the time on a bus. It's not just a game, it's something to do.

The battle system is... interesting. Were you worried that this "Final Fantasy Fighting Game" would rely entirely on skill? Are you no good at Street Fighter, and hoping for a game that would allow you to grind the hell out of everything? If so, Dissidia has you covered. Each of the selectable characters can be outfitted with custom armor, weapons, accessories, and skills. In battle, you freely execute the skills in balletic, chaotic, screaming, flying duels against single opponents. Duels are pretty short; they can turn out dozens of ways. If you can't beat a particular computer opponent, you can level up and try again. Also, thanks to the evil god Chaos's influence, the world has "lost its shape", meaning that every stage isn't just some boring flat battlefield — it's made up of dozens of little floating rocks or islands or piles of debris, meaning you'll be zipping between them by use of mid-air ethereal grind-rails, which adds up to great spectacle. Like something of a psychotic hybrid of Smash Bros. and Kingdom Hearts, the fate of the battle constantly depends on the flip of a coin. Thanks to the presence of a "Brave" meter, which acts something like a hit-point buffer that seesaws back and forth between fighters as they trade blows, and different sets of attacks for damaging Brave (reduce your opponent's Brave to zero to initiate "Break" mode, where all your attacks damage his HP) and directly damaging HP (these attacks are often slower and more risky) the tables can turn viciously at any given second. So, in other words, the combat is never, uhh, dull.

Hated
The battle system is...too interesting. Confession time: I played this game for over thirty hours, zipping through multiple characters' storylines and playing an unholy bunch of single battles, and the physics, calculus, algebra, and chemistry of this game's battle system still manage to completely and utterly elude me. To be one hundred percent honest with you, it's terrifying how much bullshit they stuffed into this game to make the battles look "sophisticated". We've got hit points, magic points, brave points, experience points, destiny points, story points (which, yes, measure your progress in the story), gold, experience levels, skills. We've got this little crawling Chocobo graphic in the lower-right corner of the status menu screen, which inches further toward the word "Lucky" with each battle you fight, whether you win or not; when it reaches "Lucky", you get a prize. You can equip your characters with any of hundreds of weapons or accessories, and prior to most battles you're offered a choice of what "item" you want to use to... I guess the best word is "sponsor" your fighter. You have accessories, and you have sub-accessories that increase the effects of other accessories if you fulfill some specific in-battle requirement. You've got attack skills, magic spells, brave attacks, HP attacks, innate skills, movement actions, and I can hardly remember what the hell else. It's a bloody mess. When you're actually in a one-on-one duel with another dude, which is supposed to be the meat of the game, you've got numbers clogging up literally the entire screen half the time, and your characters are running up walls and grinding on imaginary rails in mid-air. How the hell is this happening? When I was a kid and I thought it would be so badass if they made a movie based on Final Fantasy IV, even though that game had a character who was able to jump off the top of the screen and not come back down for a whole real-time minute, somehow scenes involving the characters and their enemies flying like eagles and doing midair circles and figure-eights around one another just wasn't what I had in mind. It's weird enough that you can fly on your own volition, though it's also, like, the best surefire way to hurt your enemy is to hit him so he flies up in the air first, and then you follow him up and play out some little quick-timer event thing in order to actually score damage. And then there are times when you're doing so well and you are whipping the enemy, and then, suddenly, it's "Break" and he touches you with his nine-foot sword and you die instantly. And then, you're like, GRRR. It's like, if Street Fighter II were Final Fantasy, Dissidia would be Unlimited Saga.

Too Much Stuff To Do! So is this a Final Fantasy Fighting Game, or what? Simply put, no. It's not. The description card at the Tokyo Game Show demo stations listed its genre as "Dynamic Progressive Action Role Playing Game". That about says it. Slightly related story: I was at a Square-Enix press conference at E3, once, where Tetsuya Nomura literally pleaded to the press, in their continuing coverage of the (then) upcoming "Final Fantasy VII Advent Children", to refer to the work as "non-interactive software", and not as a "film" or a "movie". No joke. Dissidia feels like the same thing. It feels like Square-Enix bigwigs were sitting around, going, "Can we sell this as an action game? Can we sell it as a fighting game?" The answer was an immediate "Hell yes! However, we can sell it even more it as something more." So now you've got all this board-game wandering bullshit and these long, drawn-out story sequences and "Destiny Points" and "Story Points" and . . . it's a mess. It's not an "action game" so much as it's a "dynamic action-based interactive computer program".

Story: why bother? Really? Like, here's an example from the Light Warrior's first story mode: Tidus is standing around the dimensional rift. He says, "Frionel [hero of FFII] had something stolen from him, so he followed an enemy into the dimensional rift!" Light Warrior says "I will go get him". Tidus says "I'll go too!" Light Warrior says "No! It's too dangerous!" Uhh, okay. So you go into the "rift", fight your way across a board game thing, reach the boss square, and start the battle. The cut-scene shows Frionel injured. Light Warrior says "He's too strong for you! I'll take care of this!" Frionel nods and retreats. Light Warrior then battles Sephiroth. He beats Sephiroth and then gets a . . . rose. "This is what he stole from Frionel!" Light Warrior says. Uhh, okay. Now repeat this level of "dramatic" "writing" ten times for every character. Can't we just say that the evil god and the good goddess are having a feud and have summoned tough dudes to duke it out? Why in the flipping heck do they have to talk to each other so much before fighting? "Bunch of dudes summoned to beat each other up" was enough for Mortal Kombat, and that game didn't even have any Final Fantasy characters in it!

So, look. I'm going to level with you. I disliked the living shit out of this game. I disliked it because — and this is the honest truth — I love me some Final Fantasy characters, and I honestly believe the fans deserve better than some quite frankly genre-less game-like slab-blob of computer programming and nifty CG. Playing it is like doing your taxes on the moon — both in that numbers bombard you constantly while you float and spin helplessly in zero gravity, and in the slightly pathetic feeling that you've come to some fantastic, far-off place to sit in the pod and think about your life back on earth while the rest of the astronauts take a spin on the lunar rover.

What that analogy means is I feel like this game was a big missed opportunity. It could have been a big juicy steak, and instead it's a salad bar, where each individual type of vegetable is laid out on a table thirty feet away from the next. If they wanted to get the fan money as efficiently as possible, all Square Enix really needed to do was, you know, kinda copy Monster Hunter a bit, maybe make this game into a really solid 3D brawler, instead of some slippery, weird, fragmented playable cut-scene factory.

THAT SAID, despite thoroughly disliking his game, I enjoyed playing it for around thirty hours. Does that sound impossible? Maybe it does. If Dissidia were a place, it'd be a weird place. It's a garden in a box; it's a bucket of Final Fantasy-shaped Lego bricks. It's a neat little toy. It's brain taffy. It's a hang-out game. You just kind of hang out with the characters, scoff at their hammy little stories, and go "Cool, I leveled up" or "Cool, I got a new skill" every couple of minutes. If you ride a lot of trains of buses, Dissidia has got you covered. And you can have fun with friends with the wi-fi battles, so long as neither of you actually cares who wins.

If you decided before reading this review that you like Dissidia, if all it really takes to get you to love this game is the mere presence of the characters in splendid 3D and the ways and means to level up everything, then by all means, please, love it. It's certainly jam-packed with enough juicy little baubles of near-finished game-design, and it presses the "Fan Service" button enough times per second to split a watermelon. If screenshots and videos have you thinking you might be interested, then you are officially interested. Take the plunge.

Ahem. Final warning: the music is so badass it might lead you to compose your own terrible improvised original Final Fantasy battle themes, as it did for me. If this happens to you as well, try to get a better drummer. And a better guitarist. As far as guitars go, though, you can't really do much better than this one right here.

Dissidia: Final Fantasy was developed and published by Square-Enix, released in Japan on Dec. 18, 2008 for the Sony PSP. Retails for 5,980 yen. Played story mode to completion, played local multiplayer with random strangers on a train.

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<![CDATA[HOT-SUBAI: Tomato Mart and Big Mario Jump the Gundam]]> Ahh, Akihabara, the mecca — nay, the Las Vegas of videogames. Uhh. I didn't go there today. I went to Nakano instead. Nakano is Akihabara in a shoebox. I like shoeboxes. Saw something interesting there.

Two of my favorite game shops — Big Mario, in the covered "Sun Plaza" shop street leading from the Nakano Station North Square up to the entrance of the mammoth Nakano Broadway, and Tomato Mart, tucked up high in a corner of the third floor of the labyrinthine Broadway building itself, were doing what they do best on this terrible rainy day, and they were doing it with great vigor: they was breaking the shit out of some street dates.

Japanese lesson: "HATSUBAI" is Japanese for "on sale". "Hatsubai chuu" means "now on sale". "Shin-hatsubai" means "new release". "Saishinsaku" means "newest release". I prefer to think of "Hatsubai" as spelled "Hot-subai", so there you go. Welcome to the first installment of Kotaku Hot-subai. (I just made that up!)

Tomorrow, Thursday, December 18th, 2008, is a street date that will live in infamy. The amount of hardcore-gamer-friendly big, big videogames officially going on sale tomorrow on all major platforms is substantial enough that just one copy of each game would be enough to gag the gargantuan space monster through which the player pilots a manned spacecraft in the NES classic Abadox if pressed into the right wall of epithelial tissue. I'm going to put the next paragraph in bold for the people who are skimming:

Here is a list of the games going on sale here in The Japan tomorrow:

Actually, we're not going to do a full list, because there are fifty-four games being released tomorrow (link: Game Watch), and we'd be here all day, much as it would amuse me personally to go into great lengths as to why EA Sports Rugby Greatest Hits edition for the PlayStation 2 is being released entirely in English.

Prince of Persia (PS3, Xbox 360)

It's been fully localized into Japanese. Pop quiz: Will the Japanese recognize the copious Zelda and Shadow of the Colossus references? (Answer: of course not!)

Fate: Unlimited Codes (PS2)

"Fate: Stay Night" was an erotic visual novel game which later became the muse of many fan comics and fan fictions, then an animated series, then emerged clean on the other end as a fighting game. Earlier this year, one of my favorite developers, cavia (who also leave their name uncapitalized by choice), joined forces with Eighting (which is not a typo on "Fighting") to develop a Fate arcade fighter, which Capcom is now releasing for the PlayStation 2. Being that it's developed by niches within niches, it is priced at a horse-asphyxiating 7,230 yen, which is way more than I'm willing to pay for morbid curiosity. Pity.

Sonic World Adventure (Wii)

It's Sonic: Unleashed, with a less "EXTREME!" (in other words, very generic) title. Will Japanese gamers fall in love with Sonic the Werehog? Short answer: probably not! Like NiGHTS for Wii, I expect this one to plummet to 1,200 yen within two months, at which point I will snatch it up with evil claws.

Karaoke Joysound Wii (Wii)

Joysound is a leading provider of karaoke equipment and software. This is a game sponsored by them, and published by good old lovable Hudson, they of the cute bee mascot. It comes with a microphone, and it's only 6,000 yen! You can get a second microphone for 2,000 yen. I wouldn't be surprised if this sells a decent amount, despite Singstar and Lips' already existing. Then again, the walls be thin here in The Japan, and the neighbors be passive aggressive. I could swear that every time I play my guitar past eight PM the guy next door somehow pisses on my cactus.

Actually, ahem, this Joysound karaoke is kind of a big deal. They say they've got 30,000 songs available to sing, and that you can sing as many songs as you want for just 300 Wii Points per every 24 hours. Come to think of it, this is the first I've heard of such a pricing scheme. Interesting. I'm curious to see how it works out.

Ragnarok Online DS (DS)

It's Ragnarok Online, for DS! Capitalizing on the wireless-play action-RPG torch ignited by Monster Hunter and carried by Phantasy Star Portable.

Lego Batman (PS3, Xbox 360)

LOL.

Tales of Hearts: Anime Movie Edition (DS)

It's a new entry in Namco's Tales series, though since the first two Tales games on the DS sold (very) poorly and ended up in piles in bargain bins, they've decided to make this one a different kind of "Tales" game. The "genre" tab on the back calls it an "RPG about meeting hearts". What the hell does that mean? I don't know. What's even more baffling . . .

Tales of Hearts: CG Movie Edition (DS)

. . . is that there are two versions of the game, one with hand-drawn anime cut-scenes, and one with CG cut-scenes. Apparently, the contents of the game are otherwise identical. Scope out the games for yourself, though. Look at the CG version. Now look at the anime version. Ain't that eerie? What were they thinking? This reminds me of how Bandai-Namco published both that terrible Gundam game and the decent Ridge Racer 7 on the PlayStation 3 launch day, and then held some kind of cheap raffle on their website in which players who bought both games could win, like, a coffee mug or a bath towel. Seriously, they were some cheesy prizes. What do you win if you buy both versions of Tales of Hearts?

Suikoden: Tierkeris (DS)

The latest Suikoden game, and it's on the DS. The Suikoden team had, previously, attempted to capture the DS audience with Time Hollow, which was a really cute little graphical adventure about time travel. It didn't sell. So here's another Suikoden game. As RPG series go, Suikoden is polite and admirably lacking in idiotic bombast. Its fans are people with hearts of gold. In Tomato Mart today, where the street date lay shattered on the floor, a couple both dressed in gothic black maid-like cosplay of ferocious cheapness (seriously, it looked like their pants were made of black-spraypainted newspaper) trembled with violent joy when the girl at the counter told them that, yes, Suikoden was in stock, and yes, they could buy two copies. That said, I played this game at Tokyo Game Show and fighting its battles felt like reading the stocks page under six hundred feet of water.

Bokujou Monogatari: Youkoso! Kaze no bazaar e (Harvest Moon: Welcome to the Wind Bazaar) (DS)

By the gods, look at this game. Does that not look like joy on a plate? It's a new Harvest Moon, and it has a country fair in it. What a shame it's released on such a crowded day. I will buy this game when its price hits the floor, and I will hug it like a teddy bear, and then I'll probably play it for a half an hour before realizing I should just be lifting weights.

Gundam Musou 2 (PS3, Xbox 360, PS2)

This one will be the big (huge) seller, no doubt. The basic gist of Gundam Musou 2 is that it's the same game as Gundam Musou, only the ground is a different color sometimes. You're in this big robot and you're just smashing the shit out of other robots, just swinging your robot sword and firing your little robot laser. Sometimes one of your friend robots calls you up and is like "Shit man, I need some help over here", so you follow this arrow and you sneak up real awesome-like, smashing dudes on the way, and then you can see the dude you're supposed to help — he's like, standing there in the middle of a huge-ass field all by himself with like one robot standing in front of him and another one standing on his left, just kind of staring at him, and his life meter is up in the corner, like, ticking down, llike they's nervousing him to death or some shit man, that shit is tight. Most of the time, though, it's all good, man, like, you're standing at the top of a hill and there's like a million robots down at the bottom and they all look sweet as hell, all exactly the same, all high def and shit, and they're just standing there, holding their guns and waiting for you to smash their asses, and sometimes there's a boss, like, some dude in a robot that looks kind of like yours though like I don't know man some shit's different, like he knows how to press the square button or something.

Gundam Musou 2 sells for a hippo-choking 7,800 yen — money which could be used to donate a two-year-supply of dietary biscuits and apple juice to starving children in Africa — or a 13,400-yen Treasure Box edition which contains all the meaningless trash you can see in this photograph.

The slogan for Gundom Musou is "Densetsu wa — aratana jidai e". "The Legend Enters a New Generation". Uhh, okay. So why's it still on PS2?

Let's Tap (Wii)

Yuji Naka: he left Sega, he made his own company, he did nothing, he decided to make a game, Sega publishes it. It's "the world's first game you play without touching the controller". The game, he told me during one of our frequent chats at Starbucks (warning: that's a lie; he told me at TGS), was based on a pissed-out idea he got when he and Game Designer friend were LOLling at the oversensitivity of the Wiimote. We should just make a game where you put the controller on a cardboard box and touch the box to play the game, they said. So they made it. The original tag line was "the world's first game that even penguins can play". I asked Naka how a penguin would play this game. He replied, shrewdly, "With its flippers". Aha. "Or its beak". Intelligent man. I will Make Purchase of this game — priced at a reasonable 4,980 yen — and proceed to get very drunk (on Sprite Zero) whilst playing it and its Wiiware cousin Let's Catch, tomorrow night. (Probably alone. (winking sad face))

TIM ROGERS' PICK OF THE WEEK, however, goes to

Bleach: Versus Crusade (Wii)

It's a Treasure game, so it is awesome. It's a Bleach game, so it will be released in decent quantities. Everyone is going to win. I played it at TGS and loved it. I'm probably going to love it for real, and in private, when it's not eight damned dollars.

THE POINT OF THIS STORY

All of the games listed above were on the shelves and on sale at Tomato Mart and Big Mario, Tokyo's two most-reliable street-date crushers. Well, come to think of it, neither Tomato Mart nor Big Mario had Gundam Musou 2 for Xbox 360. That was a little funny. Avid players of the Musou series rely on Tomato Mart and Big Mario to sell them their Musou games before street date so they can have them completely cleared and sold back for top price by Friday.

Neither Tomato Mart nor Big Mario, however, had this week's biggest release, a game the likes of which could suffocate a rhino with just its instruction manual alone. Yes, I'm talking about

Dissidia: Final Fantasy

I typed up a description for this game, like, yesterday, though I have no idea where to use it, so I'll post it here:

When we were kids, we wanted two things: Super Mario Bros.: The Movie and Final Fantasy: The Fighting Game. We got one of those things, and it made us wish we were dead. Fifteen years later, we're getting the other. Let us open our hearts and prepare to wish for death again, my brothers.

Here's a video review I did of Dissidia: Final Fantasy today at a gachapon toy-store in Nakano Broadway, despite my being unable to play the game.

So, uhhm, yes. Neither Big Mario nor Tomato Mart have Dissidia. By God, I'm almost thirty damn years old, and look at the sentences I'm typing while Brian Ashcraft is out having a baby.

Ahem!

Anyway, here's the punchline. Ready? Tomato Mart actually had a sign out front that said: "We do not have Dissidia: Final Fantasy today. Our shipment did not yet arrive. We should be getting it in tomorrow around 1pm. We apologize sincerely for the inconvenience." Can you believe that? They're apologizing for not being able to break the street date of the biggest game of the month. You've got to love stuff like this. You just got to.

[via Game Watch, misc]

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<![CDATA[For Relaxing Times, Make It Dissidia Time]]> A reader has alerted us to the fact that Square Enix's Japanese site now carries a link to ubiquitous Japanese drinks company Suntory who are selling a range of canned Dissidia 'potions'.

Unlike the previous Suntory Final Fantasy potions, Dissidia Final Fantasy Potion eschews a ludicrous/awesome dildo-shaped bottle in favour of a range of 'Light' and 'Dark' cans bearing pictures of characters from the game.

So how do they taste? Well, normally, we would ask Bashcraft to take the Dissidia challenge but he has been unwell of late and the promised 'Grapefruit' (Light) and 'Muscat' (Dark) flavors may do him in. If my previous experience of every Japanese soft drink ever is anything to go by, however, the answer is almost certainly 'Wrong'.

SUNTORY × SQUARE ENIX. DISSIDIA FINAL FANTASY. POTION [Suntory.co.jp - thanks to Gina Jaio for the tip]

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<![CDATA[Square Enix Does DISSIDIA Bundle Box Right]]> Nice box! That's the packaging for the limited edition DISSIDIA: Final Fantasy PSP bundle. It's white with pictures on it. Priced at ¥25,890 (US$ 270) and includes a copy of the game and the PSP-3000. Take a look at that, after the jump. Likewise, it's white with pictures on it.


This PSP is pretty and all, but honestly, the box is prettier.

スクエニ、PSP「DISSIDIA FINAL FANTASY」同梱版続報 [Game Watch]

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<![CDATA[DISSIDIA Final Fantasy Dated For Japan]]> DISSIDIA: Final Fantasy has been dated: the action RPG hits Japanese PSPs on December 18th. Tetsuya Nomura did the character designs, and while the game has a good buzz, it'll be good to see Square Enix get the title out the doors. You know, so Nomura can focus on more important things. Final Fantasy Versus XIII, we're looking right at you.

DISSIDIA is priced at ¥6,090 (US$56).

PSP用ソフト「ディシディア ファイナルファンタジー」 [IT Media]

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