So, who's buying some version of The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky SC today?

Is it weird that I decided to publish a post about a game--and game series--I know very little about today? I guess so.

So many people have been talking about the long-awaited North American release of The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky SC, though, that I couldn't help myself.



The thing is, I really am quite uneducated when it comes to this game and to developer Nihon Falcom's Trails in the Sky series in general. Given that, I'm going to hand the reins over to you fine folks.

Specifically, I'd love to hear from those of you consider yourselves at least somewhat knowledge about The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky SC. What should I and other people like me know about it? Why is it so appealing?

Also, for those of you who picked up either the PC or the PSP version of this highly acclaimed RPG or are planning to do so soon, what pushed you down that particular path?



As for me, I may buy the PSP iteration--for my criminally underused Vita, of course--of The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky SC down the road, but before I do that I want to buy and play the first Trails in the Sky game that Xseed so kindly brought to North America a couple of years back.

If any of you are in a similar situation, by the way, you still can purchase the physical version of the first Trails in the Sky title at Amazon for just $19.99.

Calling all present and future Vita owners: here's a Q&A about DanganRonpa that's worth a peek

I'm going to have a very interesting decision to make once Sony finally gets around to announcing the Vita TV's North American release: am I going to buy one of those sleek (and cheap) micro-consoles--along with a handful of games, of course--or am I going to buy a regular ol' Vita?

Regardless, I think the writing is on the wall that I'm going to buy a Vita in some form over the next 12 months or so--thanks in large part to the release of delicious-looking games like Spike Chunsoft's DanganRonpa: Trigger Happy Havoc.



Speaking of which, DieHard GameFan's Joshua Moore recently picked the brains of two Nippon Ichi Software of America staffers about their employer's decision to localize this enhanced remake of the first DanganRonpa title, which achieved a respectable amount of attention from Japanese PSP owners all the way back in 2010.

A few of the passages of this Q&A--with Phoenix Spaulding, the NISA editor working on the project, and David Alonzo, the company's marketing coordinator--that particularly stuck out for me:

Spaulding on why NISA decided to work on this title--"We’d been doing a lot with the Vita and wanted to do something that was a little bit outside of our normal wheelhouse. The tone is really different from anything we’ve done and the gameplay is different, but we saw with 999 and Virtue's Last Reward that there’s an audience [for this type of game], not just in Japan, but an establishing audience here as well."



Spaulding on DanganRonpa's being like 999 mixed with Phoenix Wright--"In terms of style, I guess that closest thing that a lot of people would know would be the Phoenix Wright games, where there’s sort of two components: the research and investigative part, and the trial portion. It’s sort of an information game where you have to keep track of a lot of details and look for those little points in the game." Also, like 999 and Virtue's Last Reward, the tone and style are "very dark, where you can’t really trust anyone and your life is on the line, while you’re sort of under pressure to figure out what’s going on."

Spaulding on the title's "hardcore gameplay"--"A lot of people tend to describe [the game] as sort of a visual novel, or that kind of thing, but I think people will be surprised that there’s a lot of hardcore gameplay elements that people don’t realize: there’s a lot of timing-based stuff, once you get to the class trial you’re not just sitting there. It’s very active, you have to be paying attention. There’s a lot more than just sitting there reading a lot of text."



To read the full comments of Spaulding and Alonzo, direct your browser of choice to diehardgamefan.com.

DanganRonpa: Trigger Happy Havoc will be released in both Europe and North America--and in both digital and physical formats, I believe--in early 2014, courtesy of NISA. Pre-order the boxed US version here.

I've got to admit, I'm intrigued by the PS Vita TV (and the PS Vita 2000, too)

For the woefully uninformed: during a press conference early yesterday, Sony's Japanese arm unveiled a new PS Vita model--to be called the PS Vita 2000--as well as something known as the PS Vita TV.

The former will be 20 percent thinner and 15 percent lighter than the original PS Vita, according to the chaps at tinycartridge.com. Oh, and it'll ditch the first model's much-slobbered-over OLED screen in favor of an LCD one while bumping up the handheld's battery life by an hour and built-in memory to a full gigabyte.

The PS Vita TV, on the other hand, is a screen-less, button-less Vita that, when plugged into your favorite TV, with allow you to play most of the same games a regular Vita can--from (some) physical Vita carts to digital Vita, PSP and PSone titles--using a PS3 controller.

There's more to both systems than what I've just mentioned, of course--such as the PS Vita 2000 (pictured below) will hit the streets of Japan on Oct. 10 and will cost about $190, while the PS Vita TV will be released in that region on Nov. 14 carrying a price tag of approximately $100--but I don't really feel like going into all of that here. If you'd like to know more, though, may I recommend clicking here (for an official press release about the PS Vita 2000) or here (for a press release about the PS Vita TV)?



No, what I want to do here is talk about my interest in both of these systems. Does that mean I'm going to buy one or both of them in the end? Of course not, but I'm definitely considering it.

It shouldn't be much of a surprise to hear that I'm intrigued by the PS Vita 2000, of course, as I've mentioned on many occasions that I'd like to own a Vita and a number of its games at some point.

That said, there's only two reasons I'd pick up a PS Vita 2000 over the original model at this point: the former's lower price, and the fact that it's available (or will be in Japan) in pink.

Unlike most folks, I don't much care if my future Vita system has an OLED screen or an LED one, so that trade-off (some would say downgrade) doesn't bother me in the least.

As for the oddly named PS Vita TV (pictured below): the interest there is that it's an appealingly sleek--and tiny--system that would allow me to play certain PSP and Vita games on my not-at-all-high-end television using an actual controller.



The last bit of that sentence is a bigger deal for me than you may think, as my hands have been all but tortured by the PSP's d-pad and analog nub while playing much-loved games like Cladun: This is an RPG, Hot Shots Tennis: Get a Grip and Patchwork Heroes over the last few years.

If I were to guess, I'd say that it's far more likely that I'll pick up a Vita of some sort than a PS Vita TV, but it's hard to say for sure at this point in time.

How about all of you? Were any of you wowed by the PS Vita 2000 or the PS Vita TV to the point that you can see yourself buying one or both of them in the near or distant future? If so, what aspects or features make you feel that way?

And if you weren't blown away by Sony's latest announcements, what was it that disappointed--or bored--you?