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 guess this means I'll have to get myself a copy of Danganronpa (PSP) soon

Although I remember being intrigued by the Spike-developed and -published PSP title, Danganronpa: Kibō no Gakuen to Zetsubō no Kōkōsei, around the time of its original Japanese release back in late 2010, it fell off my radar pretty quickly when it became clear it'd never see the light of day outside of the Land of the Rising Sun.

That all changed a few days ago when I discovered that not only has someone (or a team of someones) decided to produce an English-language fan translation of this portable "murder mystery visual novel," but a patch containing said translation already is available for download at danganronpa.wordpress.com.

My own personal reason for wanting to play Danganronpa has less to do with the unique quality of its content, by the way, and more to do with its absolutely superb art style. Cases in point:

I mean, really--who wouldn't want to play a game that's filled with illustrations like the ones above?

If that's not enough for you, though--and there's certainly nothing wrong with that--here's the fan-translation team's rather enticing description of the title:

"Danganronpa ... is a unique kind of adventure game. Described by its creators as 'psychopop' and 'high-speed action mystery,' [it] takes your typical whodunnit mystery and straps it to a rocket, fusing puzzle-solving with real-time action elements inspired by shooting and rhythm games–and it does so to incredible effect."

My only qualm with all of the above at the moment is that I'm pretty sure I'll have to softmod my PSP in order to patch the game (after I pick up a physical copy of it, of course), and for some reason I'm a bit nervous about doing so. Should I find a way to overcome those fears, though, you can bet your butt I'll play through this thrilling-sounding sucker as soon as possible (i.e., after my Animal Crossing: New Leaf obsession wanes a bit).