Level-5 announces Guild 01, a fourway superstar collaboration for 3DS
The games in this pack are too goddamn bizarre to sum up in one line.
Level-5, that Japanese talent megahouse has gone and done something crazy. They could have just kept making new Inazuma 11 and Layton games. This is the path to becoming incredibly rich. Instead, they’ve gone and announced a 3DS game called Guild 01, a collection of four sub games made by some of Japan’s eminent game designers. Except the one guy who isn’t. We’ll get to him later.
The first game in the package is made by Yasumi Matsuno, whose name you might not recognise. I certainly didn’t. But it turns out this is the guy behind Final Fantasy Tactics Advance, Vagrant Story and Final Fantasy XII.
Wow. I wish I was that dude. So he’s making a game that sounds pretty normal, although that could just be because details are pretty scarce. While we don’t know anything about the game yet, we do have a rough translation of it’s blurb, which features a “chaser” living in a world 1000 years before magic was common and witnessing the discovery of said magic. I’m going to take a stab and say it’s probably a JRPG. Not so crazy, although Matsuno’s particular style of JRPG’s is to always be way different to everyone else, so that’s cool and depending on how substantial it is, probably enough reason to get your hand on the cart right there. But we’re still only 25% of our way through this madness.
Next up is everyone’s favourite punk rocker-cum-video game designer Suda 51, who’s making a high energy shooter where you play an anime schoolgirl who is also the president 100 years in the future who pilots a giant mecha shooting something. While crazy and fabulous, I get the suspicion I’ve already heard of an anime with that core premise, which is kinda dissapointing. Supposedly the game relies on touch screen controls, which perhaps suggests a Rez/Child of Eden style shooter? I can see Suda doing some real cool stuff with two screens and 3D. Definitely look out for this one.
Speaking of crazy stuff that I think I’ve actually already seen, the next game actually comes from a Japanese comedian, rather than a game designer. Although he did say that he’d always wanted to make a game. Apparently that game is a carbon copy of indie darling Recettear, the his doujin game that set Steam on fire last year. For those who havn’t played it, the gist of both games is that you’re controlling the guy who stands there selling weapons to people, rather than the guy who has all the fun actually using them. Whether Mr. Yoshiyuki Hirai has it in him to make something different enough from the excellent Recettear is something we’ll all have to find out, although it can’t just be a coincidence that his name begins with Yoshi.
That’s gotta be a sign. The last game on the list is sadly, the most mundane, if perhaps nonsensical. Yoot Saito, the man behind 1994’s smash hit SimTower (which we all played on school computers) is making a baggage handling game. Titled Air Porter (the rest of the games have impossible Japanese names so I didn’t list them), you’re in control of an airport and you have to make sure baggage gets to planes on time. Otherwise they don’t take off.
(That’s how you know this game is a complete fantasy…)
Anyways, it contains all your usual modern trappings of being able to upgrade your airport and planes if you do well. Supposedly if you do well enough Airforce One will even land. At which point I suppose you accept a large bribe from a bearded Russian man and steal the President’s luggage and the game becomes far more exciting.
Or not. Sadly it seems that the entire game is detailed aside from how the actual baggage sorting works. Are you playing Flight Control or are you playing Chu Chu Rocket? Let’s just hope it’s not Diner Dash.
As per usual, these Famitsu leaks have no auxilliary information in them, such as dates or anything. If you have an Aussie 3DS, I wouldn’t nessecarily get your hopes up for ever playing this one either. It seems like the kind of rad thing that never leaves Japan.
Source: Andriasang
