I really should stop doing these tab clearing posts

But they’re great for when I don’t really want to devote a whole post to any one thing (and for when I can’t come up with a substantial post on a real topic!).

Thinkgeek is selling an Aperture Science 1970s era coffee mug. Right down to the retro form factor!

Bill Amend has put together a few Foxtrot collections formatted for the iPad.

The Japanese have gone and made an anime series about a moe anthropomorphization of Nyarlathotep. Because nothing says eldritch horror like taking the Crawling Chaos and turning it into this.

Nihon Falcom has added more details to the Nayuta no Kiseki official site. They’re marketing it as an action story RPG (whatever that is), and have posted character profiles and some battle screenshots.

Sega, Capcom, and Namco are collaborating on a Super Robot Wars style crossover mashup SRPG, Project X Zone. It’ll have Ryu and Ken (Street Fighter), Shinguji Sakura and Ohgami Ichiro (Sakura Wars), Kurt and Riela (Valkyria Chronicles 3), Jin and Xiaoyu (Tekken), KOS-MOS and T-elos (Xenosaga), and Yuri and Estelle (Tales of Vesperia). And that’s not even an exhaustive list!

And finally, Looper comes out this fall, starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Bruce Willis in an action-packed SF time travel flick. The trailer looks pretty good:

Hey, it’s my blog…

And if I want to take a break from ranting about the economy, the militarization of the police, guns, and everything else to talk about Tales of Xillia, that’s my right!

The first commercial (images taken from andriasang)has hit the airwaves in Japan; with roughly 2.5 months to go until release, Namco’s doing what they can to build demand. They’re hyping the game as celebrating 15 years of Tales games.

It also plays up the preorder bonuses you get; a random of four keychains, several themes for the PS3, and DLC costumes for Jude and Millia (Cress for Jude, and Stahn for Millia).

They can’t show much in the 15s the commercial lasts, but we see anime shots of the party characters (presumably from the opening movie), and several battle clips.

The commercial ends with 「揺るぎなき信念が未来を切り開く」; “Unwavering conviction will clear the way to the future.”

Each Tales of game is a JRPG, but Namco makes up their own specific subgenre for each game; Tales of Xillia is an “RPG of Unwavering Convictions” (Phantasia was a “Legendary RPG,” Destiny was an “RPG of Destiny,” and Vesperia was an “RPG to Enforce ‘Justice’”).

I’ve made no secret of my fondness for Tales of Vesperia

The characters, the plot, the world, the music; it’s all very well done. If you like JRPGs at all, you’d do well to give it a try.

The news that Funimation is bringing the movie prequel over to the states is wonderful.

Set a couple years (IIRC) before the events of the game, the movie focuses on Yuri and Flynn’s first experiences as members of the guard; from the game we know that something caused Yuri to leave the guard and strike out on his own, but we don’t know exactly what it was (Or maybe we do; I haven’t played the game in over a year and I might be misremembering).

The movie is animated by Production IG; their work on the Ghost in the Shell movies and TV series was of the highest quality (and some damn good SF, to boot). They’ve animated the cutscenes and cinematics in many of the Tales of games as well, and are particularly known for their ability to blend computer graphics and more traditional animation.

Lately I’ve been watching anime more and more on Hulu and Netflix, but I think that this might deserve a purchase.

Fury Sparks (火花散らして)

Tales of Vesperia, the first current-generation installment in Namco’s popular Tales of franchise, was well received even in Japan, where the 360 has trailed the Wii and PS3.

Fury Sparks is a battle theme that only plays during one specific battle: the showdown between the main character and his best friend/rival.

Motoi Sakuraba might get a bit repetitive with his compositions, but when he wants he can certainly get your blood up for a good fight.

Due to various circumstances beyond my control

I haven’t been able to post about Tales of Graces F‘s impending stateside release until now.

Hopefully it will do well enough to guarantee the release of Tales of Xillia; if it doesn’t sell enough, I imagine Bamco will just write off the North American (or for that matter, non-Japanese speaking) Tales of market, and just focus on hocking DLC over the PSN.

It’s a good game.  If you liked Vesperia, you will like Graces (assuming the character designs don’t put you off).  The developers did an excellent job with the battle system, and the plot is not as tropish as it could have been (which, depending on how much you like tropes, could be a plus or a minus).

Buy it!

Buy it if you love Tales and don’t want Bamco to forsake the non-Japanese market!

Namco doesn’t need the US market

Not when Japanese fans will fork over ¥400 per Tales of Graces F downloadable character costume.

They probably have some underpaid flunky code those up in an afternoon, and then sell the full set for half the price of the actual game; when they finally finished making costumes (I think they’ve finished, anyway) for the PS3 port of Tales of Vesperia, I think the cost of the costumes was more than the cost of the game.

Namco has done this before; the DLC for the PSP iDOLM@STER releases totaled more than the cost of the actual game.  I think the cost discrepancy was even more glaring with the 360 edition.

It makes sense that they would focus their efforts on nickel and diming their Japanese fan base with DLC instead of localizing the Tales games for foreign release; I don’t think the series has ever done as well outside Japan.  Their focus on DLC gets them a good return on a minimal investment, whereas localizing the games for release abroad could prove chancy should they not be well-received.

Of course, that’s not what non-Japanese fans want to hear.  Unfortunately, the poor reception of Tales in the US (relative to Japan) has made it less likely for future games to be released here; those that do get released will probably continue to under preform versus the Japanese releases, making it even less likely that the next game will be localized, and so on.

There really isn’t any way I can see to improve the situation; I bought the US release of Tales of Vesperia when it was released, and the Japanese PS3 rerelease.  I had hoped that the PS3 edition would make the jump across the Pacific, but it was not in the cards (a shame, since many people only have one major console, and I imagine many JRPG fans gambled on the PS3 over the 360, given its track record in the previous two console generations).

Tales of Graces hasn’t even been mentioned for prospective release in the US (in either the PS3 update or the original buggy Wii edition); since Tales of Xillia is initially being released on the PS3 (instead of first on one of the other two consoles, with a “complete” edition on the PS3 to follow), it’s marginally more likely that it will be localized for sale in other regions than Japan.  If it does, I’ll probably pick up a copy (not that any foreign release will be any time soon; the Japanese release doesn’t have a date beyond 2011 at this point, so I’d imagine the soonest any English version could be released is 2012) if only pour encourager les autres (I did the same with the Japanese and English releases of Valkyria Chronicles).

In the mean time, though, I’ll try to maintain my Japanese skills; after all, it’s one thing to be optimistic regarding an English release, but we would do well to prepare for the worst.