News

Astro Boy: Edge of Time Game Adds 7 Cast Members

Active Gaming Media revealed seven more cast members over the past two weeks for Atom: Jikū no Hate, the Japanese version of its Astro Boy: Edge of Time digital card game based on the works of manga pioneer Osamu Tezuka. The newly revealed cast includes:

Hiroshi Kamiya as Black Jack

Yūichi Nakamura as Hyakkimaru

Kazuya Nakai as Ambassador Magma

Ryotaro Okiayu as Deadcross

Miyuki Sawashiro as Astro Boy and Atlas

Tomokazu Seki as Professor Ochanomizu

Yū Kobayashi as Dororo

The previously announced cast includes:

Nobunaga Shimazaki as the Male Protagonist

Satomi Satou as the Female Protagonist

Mami Koyama as the Phoenix

Hidekatsu Shibata as Goa

The game's cards will feature Tezuka's characters redesigned by modern artists. For example, Gantz and Inuyashiki manga artist Hiroya Oku provided a new illustration of Tezuka's Magma.

Active Gaming Media launched a Kickstarter campaign for the game in August, but canceled it three days before the campaign ended, with only US$7,255 of its US$50,000 goal. However, the game's parallel crowdfunding campaign on the Japanese Makuake site was successful. DMM will release the game as a free-to-play digital card game for iOS, Android, and PC this spring. Pre-registration began last month.

Osamu Tezuka's son Macoto Tezka is supervising the project. The artists redesigning the characters include:

• Hiroya Oku (Gantz, Inuyashiki manga creator)
• NekoshowguN (Lollipop Chainsaw character designer)
• Satoshi Yoshioka
• Hiroshi Matsuyama (president of CyberConnect2)
• Hiroaki
• Seiichirow Hosokawa (character designer for .hack//G.U. Trilogy, .hack//Roots)
• Suda 51 (Gōichi Suda, CEO of Grasshopper Manufacture and director of Killer is Dead, No More Heroes)
• Sina Faroughi
• Juan Fandiño Martín
• Chu Yi-Cheng

Composers Akira Yamaoka (Silent Hill series) and Giovanni Giorgio Moroder (pioneer of disco and electronic dance music) are working on the music for the game.

The game will feature an online multiplayer mode and a single-player story mode. The story takes place in The Sprawl, a city that lies outside of normal space and time, where characters from different universes gather in peace until the demon king Goa invades. Players take on the role of a "summoner," who is able to summon "hard light construct" versions of characters they have met in order to fight off Goa.

Source: Dengeki Online (tasun), Comic Natalie