This Week in Games

VIDEO GAME DREAMS DO COME TRUE

Welcome back, folks! I must say, Thousand-Year Door fans wasted no time sticking true to form in the week-and-change since Nintendo announced the remake. Between concerns over the 30fps framerate or bellyaching about a new script where Bowser calls Kamek a "lunkhead" instead of an "airhead," my cynical crack about Thousand-Year Door fans being impossible is proven. I didn't want to be right about that. The other thing that disappoints me is the Baten Kaitos HD remasters are already out, with all of the dignity of a New York Times crossword shovelware tossed out the window. I did not even know it was released last week, and a lot of other people didn't, either. I'm calling on Xenoblade fans to extend a hand and try it out—the Baten Kaitos games are both phenomenal RPGs that served to whet Monolith Soft's RPG skills before they made Xenoblade. Remember: you might not have heard of Baten Kaitos, but once upon a time, the original Xenoblade Chronicles was a secret handshake among RPG fanatics. Moreover, Baten Kaitos could do with more handshakes.

This was a very fun story to see unfold this week. I wanted to share it last week, but between Unity soiling its bedsheets and both a Nintendo Direct and a State of Play stream, I hope folks understand when I say this news got overshadowed. Digital Eclipse had a very dedicated subset of the RPG industry on edge last week when they tweeted a teaser, featuring a particular green dragon snaked around a sword. Eagle-eyed fans could recognize it as the same exact dragon from the Wizardry logo, which served as a prelude to the news that Digital Eclipse was releasing one of the most-esteemed RPGs ever. I know Nintendo tends to amaze people when big releases are available for pre-order or purchase as soon as a Direct goes up, but Digital Eclipse had this one ready to go on the spot. Ladies and gentlemen, Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord is finally back.

I tend to talk up many crusty old games here but believe me when I say that Wizardry is one of the most important games ever made. So many RPGs—Japanese RPGs, computer RPGs, all of them—owe their existence to the original Wizardry. When you play Etrian Odyssey, you are playing a spiritual successor to Wizardry, in spirit and format. Created by Robert Woodhead almost 40 years ago for the Apple II, Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord had players delving into an unforgiving dungeon under order from the Mad Overlord Trebor (a cheeky anagram referencing Robert Woodhead) in order to retrieve an amulet from the evil sorceress Werdna (a reference to Woodhead's co-developer, Andrew). The dungeon itself was a ten-floor labyrinth, with each floor spread out across a 20x20 grid. It doesn't sound like much, but the monsters and threats were unforgiving. Utilizing a novel first-person wireframe perspective and a simple interface, players had to fight off ferocious monsters and earn every bit of progress—and once a party member went down, they were down unless you had the money to revive them. Because there was no auto-map feature (out of necessity—Wizardry and all its features left no space on either side of those old floppy disks), players had to draw their maps on graph paper—decades later, Etrian Odyssey would lovingly re-create this function with the Nintendo DS's touch screen.

Nevertheless, Wizardry did not need to wait that long to inspire other genre-defining classics; Wizardry was massive on both sides of the pond, and over in Japan it would go on to serve as the ancestor to Dragon Quest and Phantasy Star—the pillars of classic Japanese RPGs. From Wizardry, Dragon Quest took its first-person perspective during battles (the overhead perspective during exploration was taken from Richard Garriot's Ultima games). Meanwhile, Phantasy Star updated Wizardry's first-person dungeon crawling with then-cutting-edge graphics and seamless transitions into battles with animated monster sprites. Then there were the Megami Tensei games and their dungeon-crawling (specifically, the earlier non-Shin titles). Woodhead himself cannot explain why Wizardry hit it so big with audiences in Japan—was it because it defined the makings of RPGs, or was it because it simply struck a chord with players? Regardless, Wizardry's DNA is in any RPG that has come out in the last 40 years. Furthermore, with the original being largely inaccessible for almost 20 years (and having a clunky Apple II interface), it is not a game easily enjoyed by newer players.

Not anymore! Digital Eclipse's Wizardry remake runs off of the Unreal engine but still operates off of the original Apple II code. Players can even bring up the old Apple II interface as an overlay if they want. Digital Eclipse will release the game in early-access for Steam and Good Old Games. They have spent the last two years getting things off of the ground and want to add the finishing touches with player input. Future features include fun stuff like a bestiary. I don't know how much Robert Woodhead will be involved, but he has separated from game. His old gaming studio, Sir-Tec, folded about 20 years ago (ironically, around the same time EA completely bombed the Ultima series). These days, Woodhead is better known for being the head of Animeigo, responsible for licensing and releasing many beloved anime classics in the US like Gunsmith Cats and Bubblegum Crisis. He is reportedly very humble despite being so influential to an entire gaming genre.

You can read more about Woodhead and his input on Wizardry via Jeremy Parish's old write-up (it's a stellar read and goes into a ton of fun history about the game's development). You can also try to track down the old Wizardry OVA from the 80s, inspired by the games. It's reportedly bad, and Woodhead has stated in the past that he would only talk about it under the influence, "and [he doesn't] drink!". Yeah, an American game got so big in Japan that it got an anime—sit down, Cyberpunk. If you want to try a more recent Wizardry, you can also try a ton of them on Steam! And, once again, the remake of the original is up on Steam and Good Old Games on Early Access. Bring your graph paper. (Seriously, making your own map adds so much to the experience!)

A few weeks back, we reported on Square Enix's decision to cut down on their "mid-tier" titles and focus on their "AAA" games. As a reminder, this is a bullcrap decision, and considering that these "mid-tier" titles include such beloved titles as the Game Awards-nominated Live-A-Live remake and Octopath Traveler II, this is a tremendous loss for us all. While Final Fantasy XVI was a big critical success for Square Enix, it apparently wasn't big enough of a success. This is an age-old song for the game developer; a decade ago, the critically-lauded Tomb Raider reboot succeeded in selling 3.4 million copies in its first month of sales, but this infamously wasn't enough to meet Square Enix's expectations. The developer was similarly let down by Final Fantasy XVI's performance; while its initial sales of 3 million copies in one week was applauded and referred to as "extremely strong" by the publisher, Square Enix is still reporting losses of US$2 billion. Some have framed this as a fault of Final Fantasy XVI, but the fact is, this has been a long time coming.

Lest we forget, over the last few years we've seen Square Enix faceplant with no less than three high-profile live-service games, all of which failed rather spectacularly; these were Babylon's Fall, Chocobo Racing GP, and Final Fantasy VII: The First Soldier. On top of these, there was also the extremely high-profile failure of their Avengers title (the one that looked like it had all of the stunt doubles of the MCU actors), as well as the failure of Forspoken—an otherwise alright game that was tanked by its horrid Whedonesque writing. This is less a failure of Final Fantasy XVI and the mid-tier Square Enix titles than it is Square Enix making lots and lots of very costly mistakes that they need a very big shovel to dig themselves out. Many folks have also pointed to Final Fantasy XVI being a timed PS5 exclusive as part of their problem; while it definitely couldn't have helped, this is surrounded in a ton of console war nonsense that I have no desire to involve myself with. Microsoft faithful are going around acting like it's okay for their company to become a national monopoly, Sony faithful are acting like people can just afford a $500 paperweight, and both of them make excuses for why it's unfair for Nintendo to make their own successful console that costs less and has outpaced them both in sales while also having some of the most successful brands in gaming. I have no desire to track that mud into my house.

Unfortunately, while it should be the goal of a company to provide value, they instead dedicate themselves to seek ever-increasing profit. Square Enix has many titles that could potentially appeal to a great deal of their fans and would be big-ticket sellers. But they aren't AAA titles, and they're certainly not the sort of thing that could budge the needle even if they were released en masse. Seeing SaGa Frontier and Chrono Cross get ported to the Switch was a delight, but those are a drop in the bucket to Square Enix's enonomic woes. I think we can all agree they'd dig themselves out of this hole a lot faster if they stopped chasing after that "live service" money. I don't care how many summer outfits they slap onto Tifa, we all know Final Fantasy VII: Ever Crisis is going to be sent to the glue factory sooner than we think.

Along the lines of arbitrary "AAA" lines, there is news from Square Enix that seems to imply part of their decision to emphasize "AAA" games over their mid-tier titles is their current decision to review their back catalog of IPs to see what is worth giving the "AAA" treatment, in lieu of making new (and risky) IP. Again, this puts the cart before the horse in a lot of dumb ways. While I don't think anyone would be opposed to, say, a fanciful Live-A-Live sequel with all the bells and whistles, that kind of thing isn't why we love Live-A-Live. Sure, the average RPG fan has never even heard of a SaGa title, let alone played one. But SaGa has an identity all its own, separate from gaming budget or presentation. You can't buy SaGa's brand of reputation; likewise, SaGa's daring decisions (spotty as they may be) don't come from focus testing. They come from letting Akitoshi Kawazu go absolutely bugnuts with gaming ideas. To this day, people still don't know how Glimmers (the process by which characters learn new skills with weapons) trigger. And I think people have long since given up, they just make do with the lobster-man being a party member.

While people make lists over which of Square Enix's lesser-known games deserve the big budget treatment, be it Bahamut Lagoon, The Bouncer, or one of the Star Ocean games, I feel like people are forgetting that budgets aren't the end-all, be-all of a game. Undertale was made for far less than six figures.

This is news that I want to be careful with because it's very easy to get clickbait-y. This year has seen Microsoft bogart the news cycle for all the wrong reasons. Instead of garnering attention due to it developing new titles or engendering excitement among gamers, it's over its desire to instigate a total monopoly of the gaming industry by acquiring Activision-Blizzard. The battle has gone back and forth between the companies and several multinational trade commissions, with Microsoft taking advantage of gamers' suspicions towards anything not gaming-related to pass the idea off as a positive thing for consumers. Microsoft and the American Federal Trade Commission (FTC) have shared many sensitive documents, but courtesy of a recent flub on Microsoft's behalf, their mask slipped much too early—and the moment their face was visible, we saw they had a whole carton's worth of eggs on their face.

As a part of the ongoing trials with the FTC, Phil Spencer had to disclose some of his personal documents. In a mix-up, some of these documents were accidentally made public. Much of them disclose fairly pedestrian things—a new controller with accelerometers, remakes for Fallout 3 or The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion. Discussions confirm a rumored attempt on Microsoft's behalf to buy out WB Gaming or Valve. But the biggest lightning rod was Spencer's pie-in-the-sky discussion over the possibility of Microsoft buying out Nintendo. While he admits it's essentially a non-starter, he still entertains the idea with his superiors. Key points are Spencer underlining that Nintendo needs to see that "their future exists off of their own hardware," which is "taking a long time" (note: these emails date to 2020, right around when the Switch was exploding courtesy of Animal Crossing: New Horizon). Spencer also points to a former Microsoft Board of Directors member currently buying Nintendo stock, "which could create opportunities [for Microsoft]" as prior Board of Directors member ValueAct is likely "pushing for more from Nintendo Stock." "I don't think a hostile action would be a good move, so we are playing the long game," Spencer wrote.

There has been plenty of buzz over this news. And while there is plenty of "the sky is falling"-sentiment from folks concerning the discussion of Microsoft acquiring Nintendo. No, they're not currently buying them—but it's not like they don't have their pieces in place over it all. Spencer himself views the possible merger as the ultimate tribute to his career (for some reason, Bob Iger-types who lack creative ability only value possession). This isn't the first time Microsoft has borne the green-eyed monster towards Nintendo; early in Xbox development, they approached Nintendo for a partnership. Head of business development Bob Mcbreen's pitch reportedly was "[...] their hardware stunk, and compared to Sony PlayStation, it did. So the idea was, 'Listen, you're much better at the game portions of it with Mario and all that stuff. Why don't you let us take care of the hardware?'" The response was, famously, laughed out of the room. Microsoft had to content itself with acquiring Bungie, which led to the rise of Halo: Combat Evolved as their killer app, and Rare, which led to a whole lot of nothing unless you really liked Kameo: Elements of Power or Banjo Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts. (Though Rare would later develop Sea of Thieves, which deserves immense props for having the best water physics in the entire industry, bar none.)

But as the years went by, Microsoft never did stop wishing someone from Nintendo would do them the favor of working for them. In old interviews with Electronic Gaming Monthly, Spencer idly talked about trading his expensive sports car in exchange for Shigeru Miyamoto working with Microsoft. Microsoft had to settle for hiring Alexey Pajitnov, better known as the creator of Tetris, who created Hexic for Microsoft. Microsoft would go on to continue to acquire Obsidian Entertainment (Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic), ZeniMax media (who themselves own Bethesda), Ninja Theory (Heavenly Sword, DmC), and Mojang (Minecraft). So, y'know, only some of the biggest studios in the industry with some of the biggest games on the market, not like they can compete with anyone else.

While most reactions to this were people itching to see Phil Spencer's team getting laughed out of Nintendo's offices a second time, this has resurrected several people who seem to hate Nintendo having their consoles. While it is true that the Nintendo Switch is relatively underpowered, this has been part of what makes it such a hot commodity: it's cheap to produce and, as such, cheap to sell to consumers. A more substantial Switch with bleeding-edge tech passes those costs onto the consumer—for further view on how all those teraflops shake out, look at the $500 PS5. Many people want to see Nintendo abandon their home-grown consoles in the hope of seeing their games on PC—again, for a better look at how that shakes out for people, look at Sony. Many nevertheless invite the opportunity for Microsoft to acquire Nintendo because of the possibility of playing Nintendo on anything that isn't a Switch.

But such an arrangement is damaging to Microsoft; as someone said, Microsoft would never be willing to go through with the Wii U in the hopes of possibly getting a Switch. Microsoft is perfectly cool with layoffs and mergers; Nintendo has a philosophy of taking care of its employees, leading to it having the highest employee retention rate in all of Japan. Spencer would trade his Porsche for Miyamoto; would he slash his executive paycheck in half if it meant not seeing a single Nintendo employee laid off? Microsoft spent a year "polishing" Starfield so it could wither in Baldur's Gate 3's shadow. Would it be willing to start development over on a high-profile game like Nintendo is with Metroid Prime 4? For all of the gripes people have with Nintendo (and entirely with the knowledge that Nintendo is itself a corporation that is nobody's friend), it nevertheless does have a philosophy of treating its games as lovingly constructed worlds. Even if a Nintendo game is built upon nothing but bad ideas, those bad ideas will be executed as well as they ever will.

How will this affect the FTC trials? I don't know, but it's pretty damaging to Microsoft's case to see them rubbing their hands and drooling at continuing to acquire other, bigger parts of the gaming industry. With Phil Spencer showing up to this weekend's Tokyo Game Show, I'd advise him to keep his distance from any Nintendo reps as best he can.

We talked about a lot of entertaining games last week, between the Nintendo Direct and Sony's State of Play. But several games don't see any discussion on behalf of Nintendo's Directs—because certain games are excised from the American stream and only discussed in Japan. We have two of these games to discuss today, and both merit some attention.

First up is Stray Children, a game from Yoshiro Kimura. You may not recognize that name, but you should—Kimura is previously known for the development of the beloved PS1 "anti-RPG", MOON. Its studio, Onion Games, also has quite an impressive pedigree; while all of its games are pretty obscure, they command the affection of people who know them. Among their prior releases are such beloved cult classics as the off-kilter PS2 Chulip (a game where you interact with the world by kissing everything); the cult-favorite PS2 horror title Rule of Rose; and the Wii classic, Little King Story. Stray Children takes a ton of cues from MOON, seemingly; a child is sucked into another world via a computer and finds themselves exploring a realm inhabited by strange monsters who have a very cozy (if not bizarre) society. It's possible to fight monsters, but it's possible to speak to them to hash things out and end matters peacefully.

If this sounds a lot like Undertale, that's because Kimura's 1997 MOON served as a significant influence to Undertale. Famously presenting itself as "the Anti-RPG," MOON had you playing a game where you explored the world of monsters after a hero runs in and makes a mess of things under the pretense of "saving the world." Players break into innocent villagers' houses and steal all of their spare change, that kind of thing. Instead of killing monsters, the player must save their souls and collect enough Love to improve their lives and restore their world. While the original MOON wasn't released in the U.S. until 2020, it became a rather famous hit. It influenced Toby Fox greatly in developing Undertale. It'll be interesting to see Kimura's recursive use of these themes again in a game, especially since he announced this will be his last video game before retiring. Thankfully, we can look forward to Stray Children releasing in the United States! Onion Games has yet to set a release date for us, but they're very excited to share more info. I'm looking forward to it.

The other game that curiously didn't see any discussion in the American Direct was Mystery Dungeon: Shiren the Wanderer 6! Carrying the subtitle "Toguroshima Tankenroku," according to DeepL, shows Shiren and his ferret-friend Koppa traveling to a new land with a giant stone pillar resembling a rising dragon. Curiously, this dragon pillar is also the stylized "6" on the game's logo.

The subtitle "Mystery Dungeon" should be familiar to many players; several Japanese rogue-likes have used it, so much so they are often called "mystery dungeon games." One of the more famous "mystery dungeon" spin-offs is the beloved Pokémon Mystery Dungeon games, although originally, these games featured Torneko Taloon from Dragon Quest IV: Chapters of the Chosen. The Mystery Dungeon games eventually settled on Shiren the Wanderer being the primary "face" of the franchise outside of series crossovers, such that their crossover with Etrian Odyssey in the form of Etrian Mystery Dungeon even featured a "Wanderer" class based off of Shiren.

As for how Mystery Dungeons play; they operate off of the logic of rogue-likes. You can move your character in eight directions throughout a randomly generated dungeon floor consisting of rooms connected by thin hallways. Each action—moving, attacking, using an item, changing equipment, what have you—consists of a "turn," allowing monsters to take a turn of their own. You delve into the dungeon to the lowest floor, where... well, whatever it is you're looking for will depend on the game, but the item is usually pretty good.

There are a ton of X-factors, though; monsters, for example, have all kinds of strange properties that require a bit of lateral thinking in how you approach them. Some monsters steal your items, others will change them into other items, some monsters might be made of fire and thus immune to ranged weapons, and some might even grow stronger if you throw the wrong weapon at them. Monsters might also grow stronger if they kill another monster, which can snowball into a super-powerful monster roaming the dungeon as it makes a beeline toward you.

The dungeon also features all kinds of surprises: treasure might be hidden in secret rooms, requiring you to dig your way through them with a pick-axe. There might be a trap underfoot, doing anything from summoning more monsters to putting you to sleep. Sometimes, you descend into a dungeon floor only to find a Monster House: an expansive floor with no walls and loaded with monsters of all sorts. Death comes quickly and easily in a Mystery Dungeon game, which costs you all your items and experience and forces you to start the game over again from square one.

But Shiren the Wanderer isn't designed to be beaten on the first try. Each loss or reset progresses the story of NPCs you meet in your travels, leading to some even joining your trek through the dungeons. The DS port of Shiren the Wanderer also had a fun "rescue" feature: upon dying, you could either copy a password that other players could use to chase after you in your dungeon to find your fallen body and resurrect you. Or, you could upload your save to the now-defunct Nintendo DS WiFi network so other folks could randomly rescue you. Either way, you'd be allowed to continue your run.

Mystery Dungeon games have been brought over to the US for ages, like with the aforementioned Torneko games or Chocobo's Dungeon on PS1. But they came into their own during the Nintendo DS days, courtesy of that console being conducive to their design, what with the dual screens. I imagine plenty of Mystery Dungeon fans cut their teeth on Pokémon Mystery Dungeon on the DS... but as many of my longtime readers know, I cut my teeth on Izuna: Legend of the Unemployed Ninja.

Shiren the Wanderer's releases in the US are relatively spotty, with Shiren the Wanderer: Tower of Fortune and the Dice of Fate being the most recent release. The Switch version features a nifty mode optimized for streamers that handily discloses all of the info on your current run; convenient in today's day and age! It'd be nice if more games featured that. Regardless, there's no news on Shiren the Wanderer 6 getting released in the US. It's a pity; we could always use a new Mystery Dungeon game. They're like solitaire: you can't always beat them, and some runs are impossible to win, but it's always fun to poke around with it.

We are big fans of Yuzo Koshiro here at This Week in Games. There is an extensive, fat list of classic games that feature his stunning soundtracks. Koshiro isn't just beloved for being so phenomenal at making great house/dance soundtracks (as can be seen in his work on Streets of Rage); his breadth crosses genres. Koshiro is also best known for his absolute mastery of the FM Synthesizer. This ancient programming suite gave all of those old PC games their particular sound and would go on to give the Etrian Odyssey games their unforgettable soundtracks. So in-demand is Koshiro's work on the FM Synthesizer that he'll even add FM versions of the game's soundtracks as DLC; Gotta Protectors on the Nintendo 3DS featured an entirely 8-bit aesthetic and soundtrack, but Koshiro was nice enough to sell us the proper FM Synth versions of the songs so we could play it as God intended.

Currently, Koshiro and his crew at Ancient (his video game company) are gearing up for Earthion, a brand new shoot-'em-up in development for... the Sega Genesis/Mega Drive. Yeah, I'm just as surprised as you are—but it's a cool idea. LimitedRun Games brought back El Viento and even produced brand-new working Genesis cartridges for it a few months back, and the tech for making new Genesis games hasn't exactly gone away. It'll be nice to have a new shoot-'em-up, but Koshiro has let fans know on Twitter that we'll get much more information on it, including its release date. Presumably, it'll get released to other consoles later, but it amuses me to see a Genesis prioritized. Kids out of the pool; it's time for the adults to play!

This isn't so much "news," but it was a cute thing to see from Koshiro; Koshiro tends to have a pretty nice back-and-forth with his fans on Twitter, talking about old songs and games he's worked on. He's good at archiving his old music files, so he likes to dig up plenty of stuff to show off to his fans. One thing he brought up last week was his work on Namco×Capcom; specifically, its intro, Brave New World. Sadly, according to Koshiro, he doesn't have access to the old recordings, but he was able to find the the Project X Zone 2 version. Koshiro was also amused to see so many fans of both Namco×Capcom and Project X Zone. While he is limited in what he can do, hey, it would always be nice to see those games ported or brought back in some capacity. Super Robot Wars OG: Endless Frontier too, people forget that game was also canon to the unofficial "×" series.

Hey, Cotton is back! Success Corporation brought back Witch Cotton last year with Cotton Fantasy. For the uninitiated, Witch Cotton is a long-running series of "cute-'em-ups" starring a witch named Cotton who's seeking her favorite dessert, "Willow." With the help of her cute little fairy-in-a-bikini, Silk, Cotton rides her little broom and tosses spells at waves of enemies in games that challenge you to beat your personal best score. While Cotton didn't see any games on the Nintendo DS, Success did bring her in as a cameo for their big, ambitious take on Fire Emblem, Rondo of Swords. Success is gearing up to bring back Cotton in a big way!

Cotton's new adventure sees her going to Japan and dressing as an oiran, shooting down waves of yokai. Little else is known, as the game has only just been announced. We don't even know if it'll be coming to the United States yet—but considering the previous Cotton did, it's a safe bet.

Of course, anyone who knows me knows I wave the banner for Success's other beloved cult-favorite franchise. Still, I've spoken about Izuna: Legend of the Unemployed Ninja enough for one column, I think. We can probably wind this week's column down.

... Or, we can spare the moment to talk about The Thing That Happened™ because Success had another announcement.

Only a few fans hit me up on Twitter. It's only once in a blue moon that I get an email about some hint or other, or someone replies to me because they're amazed that I keep up with Woolie Madden, Pat Boivin, or Vinny Vinesauce. But this past Wednesday evening, while I was eating dinner, I got a notification on Twitter that someone had tagged me in some News­™. Then my lovely editor pings me in Discord. And then I stare at the goddamn computer screen and shout, "No fucking way."

With this, I'm legit beside myself. You don't see miracles very often in the video game industry. We get a lot of bad news about layoffs, harassed developers, CEOs being absolute weapons, and creatives losing the rights to their labor of love. Sometimes, though, you see a miracle—an old dev kit for a once-thought-lost arcade game surfaces in someone's attic. A game lost to legal limbo gets rescued and ported to modern consoles. And sometimes... sometimes... a beloved cult classic gets a sequel. And I'm always happy to see someone's obscure, weird game get a new entry, but man, when it's your obscure, weird game that you've been waving the banner for, you start to understand why Robin reacted the way he did to the NieR: Automata news.

So, let's rip that bandage off. Izuna's back.

I can't watch that teaser without getting at least a little emotional. Announced by Success at the Tokyo Game Show earlier this week, we have confirmation that a new Izuna game is in development for the Nintendo Switch and Steam as we speak. The last game in the series, Izuna 2: The Unemployed Ninja Returns, was released 16 years ago. God, I'm still trying to find the words.

The Izuna games were rogue-likes; we already talked about those with Shiren the Wanderer. And frankly speaking, Izuna does little to set itself apart from the other DS rogue-likes besides having a charming, vivacious protagonist. It feels like a throwback to an SNES-era attempt at a "waifu" game, like the old Athena games or the Valis series, with Izuna being something akin to a sassy Rumiko Takahashi-esque hellion with a heart of gold. It's been a while since developers could sell a game purely by having a sensation as your leading lady.

Izuna—the game and the character—have an unmistakable charm, and its sequel introduced a ton of mechanics that makes me feel like a potential third game released at the time would have just given up the ghost and become a turn-based RPG. Izuna also led to me having a greater appreciation of Mystery Dungeon games, leading me to become a massive fan of Shiren the Wanderer on the DS. Of course, there was a story: Izuna and her family (their "Grand-boss," Gen-an; her adoptive sister Shino, and the loser Sasuke) were fired by their Lord and wandered around Japan looking for a way to make ends meet. Attracting the ire of some local deities, Izuna ventures into their caves to beat the stuffing out of them and lift the curses they've afflicted onto the populace. We also learn that Izuna is some sort of "ambulatory shrine" whose presence allows deities to wander outside their shrines—very useful when several European gods arrive in Japan to start trouble. The mystery of Izuna's family is hanging over it all, specifically her missing mother. We only learn a little about Izuna's family of origin, even though the pictures of her mother's likeness are all over the games and restore Izuna's SP. (She gets her second wind by thinking of her family; it's cute.)

I can point to one thing the games do that stands out, however: most rogue-likes have a stamina system that requires you to maintain at risk of dying. Pokémon Mystery Dungeon has your Thirst meter, while Shiren the Wanderer has your Hunger. In those games, it's just one more thing to keep track of, urging you to move forward and not linger for too long to wait for your health to restore each turn. In Izuna, your Spirit meter pulls double-duty: it not only serves as stamina (and its depletion sapping your health at a great rate each turn), it also serves as a resource. Izuna and her friends could collect talismans that could unleash all kinds of effects, from damaging enemies to warping you out of a dungeon. But these talismans cost Spirit to use—and on top of that, your Spirit also factored into your maximum attack value. Do you spend the SP to use a talisman to wipe out a room of monsters? Or do you retreat to a safer position and hope your Attack can whittle them down? Talismans could also be attached to weapons to strengthen them in various ways—but they had their own SP meters that needed to be watched over.

So far, the new Izuna game has precious little info to go off of. We don't know yet if the story will finally resolve the mystery of Izuna's mother, nor if it will bring back Shino or any of the other older deities. Much like Cotton, we don't even know if it'll come to America yet. Unlike Cotton, Izuna might be a tougher sell. She has an army of loyal fans, sure, and her home studio of Ninja Studio, held her as their Premium Girl for a bit; besides the two Izuna games, Izuna and her sister Shino also cameoed in Rondo of Swords alongside Cotton. Izuna was also playable in Success's ill-fated DS fighting game, Windy X Windam (which I was sadly never able to get a copy of). But after that, nothing. Success never did much with her ever again, and Ninja Studio got bought out by Bandai Namco Holdings shortly before being dissolved in 2010. Cotton is a recognized cute-'em-up, Izuna... well, RebelTaxi also seems to like her? All I can say for sure is Izuna has a brand new look in this new game. So far, Yoshida-On (Izuna's original character designer) seems not involved with the new game, as their Twitter account does not mention it. They are making a ton of Inugami Korone fanart, though, so good on them. Izuna's still got her pink hair, cat-ear-shaped goggles, yellow scarf, and big, green eyes, though—she's still the same girl I fell in love with in 2007, featured in a dungeon RPG tough enough for a man, but played by a hot chick.

Who knows. Maybe Atlus will bring her back home. Maybe Marvelous will step up to bat. But we'll cross that bridge when we get there. Izuna is back—I honestly didn't think this would ever happen. I can enjoy that much; it makes me very happy to know that miracles still happen, we can still get good news in the gaming industry, and sometimes dreams come true.

That'll do it for this week. I hope the rest of you folks get some good news this weekend. I'd like for you folks to get a chance to be this happy. Chins up, don't lose hope. I'm sure you guys will get your miracle, too. Be good to each other; I'll see you in seven.