Sorry, but I don't have a one-word reaction to share RE: yesterday's Nintendo Direct

I do have a few words to say about it, though--if anyone's interested in hearing them.

This latest Nintendo Direct broadcast, which focused on third-party 3DS games, began with Satoru Iwata showing some new footage of Tomodachi Collection: New Life, the sequel to a Japan-only DS life sim that's sold more than three million copies to date.

I don't know about you, but Iwata had me hooked at the get-go thanks to his Famicom-themed room.



The question is: will the game, which will be released in Japan on April 18, do what its predecessor did not and make its way westward? I hope so, although I have my doubts.

Iwata then went on to discuss a number of upcoming third-party games, some of which I'm interested in and some of which I'm not, including Level-5's Professor Layton and the Legacy of Super Civilization A (aka Professor Layton and the Azran Legacies) and Youkai Watch, Success' Touch Detective: Funghi's Big Breed (a match-three spin-off of the company's Touch Detective series) and Namco Bandai's Dragon Ball Heroes: Ultimate Mission and Super Robot Wars UX.

Far more intriguing to me was the news that Level-5's Guild 02 compilation will now be released digitally rather than via retail. That said, only one of the Guild 02 titles really intrigued me, with that title being Spaceship Damray, a "suspense adventure" that's being developed by game designer Asano Kazuya and novelist Takemaru Abiko.

Atlus' Shin Megami Tensei IV and Capcom's Monster Hunter 4 wrapped up this installment of Nintendo Direct, and both looked pretty great to these presser-weary (after Sony's PS4 event of a few days ago) eyes.



I've been on the Shin Megami Tensei IV hype train since it was first announced, of course, but I haven't always had such a favorable impression of Monster Hunter 4 (or any Monster Hunter game, for that matter), so it'll be interesting to see if I follow through and buy the series' latest entry should it be released here in North America.

I have to admit that I was hoping a few new 3DS games--like a Final Fantasy V remake using Bravely Default's engine--would be announced during this broadcast, but I guess it wasn't meant to be.

Maybe next time, Nintendo?

I don't know about you, but I've always wanted to play a game called St. John's Wort

In this recent article about Level-5's Guild 02 over at andriasang.com, that site's proprietor mentions that one of this 3DS-based release's contributors (like its soon-to-be-released predecessor, Guild 02 will be a compilation of sorts) previously worked on an old Super Famicom "sound novel" called Otogirisō--or St. John's Wort, in English.

Thanks to my love of the Mystery Dungeon series--Final Fantasy Fables: Chocobo's Dungeon, Shiren the Wanderer and Torneko: The Last Hope, especially--I'm always up for a ChunSoft-made game.

As such, I followed andriasang.com's link to Otogirisō's Wikipedia page, which describes the 1992 title thusly (and, yes, I do believe this is the first time I've ever used the word thusly on this blog):

"Kohei and his girlfriend Nami were on the midway when their car got accidentally hit by a tree felled by lighting. After that main characters got stuck in a forest in the middle of nowhere. They decided to spend the night in a large deserted western-style mansion nearby."

Aside: It took nearly all of my willpower to not fix the many spelling and grammatical errors in the paragraph above.

Anyway, despite the rather, um, quaint nature of the aforementioned description, I'm finding myself intrigued by this so-called sound novel. In part that's because it takes place in and around a deserted mansion (I've always been a sucker for such settings) and in part it's because of Otogirisō's ominous box art (right), which seems to include a depiction of said mansion.

Unfortunately, there's no reason for me to add this game to my ever-growing (much to the chagrin of my husband) collection, as I neither know Japanese nor own a Super Famicom. Thankfully, I've been able to experience a bit of it by watching the segmented playthrough--it's broken up into 22 parts--that YouTube user reinofheart uploaded a few years ago. (Watch part one here.)

I don't suppose any of you have played Otogirisō--or are interested in playing it now that you've read this post?