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Astro Boy: Edge of Time Game Gets English-Language Steam Release

Active Gaming Media and Tezuka Productions announced on Wednesday that their Astro Boy: Edge of Time digital card game will get a Steam release this month. The free-to-play PC game will be available in both English and Japanese.

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 released the game as a free-to-play digital card game with in-app purchases for PC on April 12. The game also had planned iOS and Android versions, but these are not currently listed on the game's website.

The game is based on the works of manga pioneer Osamu Tezuka. His son Macoto Tezka is supervising the project. The game's cards feature Tezuka's characters redesigned by modern artists, including:

• 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, Killer is Dead, No More Heroes)
• Sina Faroughi
• Juan Fandiño Martín
• Chu Yi-Cheng

The cast includes:

Nobunaga Shimazaki as the Male Protagonist

Satomi Satou as the Female Protagonist

Mami Koyama as the Phoenix

Hidekatsu Shibata as Goa

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

Yu Kobayashi as Dororo

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.