MGS Forever!; EU gaming more popular?; Splatterhouse; Tecmo Bowl; SimCity Creator

Back at the beginning of 2001, Hideo Kojima announced that his latest game, Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty, would be the final chapter in the series. He changed his mind later that same year, proclaiming that “Metal Gear must live on.” The latest episode in the franchise, the soon-to-be-released Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots, was widely believed to be the last game, which would complete the story. At TGS 2005 Kojima all but confirmed this, saying, “This fourth [Metal Gear Solid] is going to be the final one for me and [series art designer Youji] Shinkawa… There are other things that [we] want to create.”  Now it seems that Kojima has had a change of heart. In an interview with Reuters, Kojima said, “Metal Gear will always be around. I feel a responsibility to continue this series as long as users demand it.” However, he might well take more of a backseat on future iterations of the franchise. He confirmed, “It doesn’t mean I’m going to sit in completely. I’ll probably take a different role in the next game. Maybe I’ll sit in as producer and let the young staff take control of the new series. I really want to go on to new things.”  Kojima also revealed that although the game won’t be the last in the series, it will tie together all the storylines in the last three games. He said, “I’m not a genius like George Lucas. I didn’t have this story planned out. I always tried to finish the story in each game. But by some miracle in MGS4 I was able to resolve the mysteries left behind in past games and resolve the side stories from past games.”

Wii Fit and a few other exceptions not withstanding, game makers operating on a global scale typically tend to favor the North American and Japanese markets over European audiences when it comes to getting their product on retail shelves. It may come as no small surprise, then, that the latest study by industry trackers Nielsen Games reveals that Europe is second only to Asia in terms of consumer spend on gaming software. The report, which is available in summary through the Interactive Software Federation of Europe’s Web site, indicates Europeans in the region’s nine major markets spent €7.3 billion ($11.3 billion) on software in 2007, a 25 percent year-over-year increase. That’s compared to Nielsen’s estimates of €6.9 billion ($10.6 billion) in the US during the same period and €7.4 billion ($11.4 billion) in Asia in 2006, the most recent statistic available. (According to the NPD Group, US console and handheld sales hit $8.6 billion in the US, with another $911 million accrued through PC software sales.) Further delineating that $11 billion haul, Nielsen said UK gamers led spending with €2.3 billion ($3.6 billion), with France following at €1.6 billion ($2.5 billion), Germany at €1.4 billion ($2.1 billion), Spain at €700 million ($1.1 billion), and Italy at €600 million ($0.9 billion). Nielsen also said that the arrival of the PlayStation 3 and Wii had boosted hardware sales to €5.7 billion ($8.8 billion) in Europe, up from €3 billion ($4.7 billion) in 2006 when Microsoft’s Xbox 360 was the only current-gen console available. Nielsen’s research also produced a font of miscellaneous information concerning the European market. Polling respondents ages 16-49 in UK, Finland, and Spain, Nielsen found that 31 percent of the population considered themselves active gamers. With the average game player aged 35 in the US according to the Entertainment Software Association, Nielsen said UK gamers top out the European active-gamer range at age 33, with Spaniards clocking in at the youngest average age of 26. Across Europe, 40 percent of people who play games do so for 6 to 14 hours per week. Of those who don’t play games, 48 percent said it is merely because they do not have enough hours in the day. The study also found that 81 percent of parents who play games in Europe do so with their kids.

Nostalgia has a funny way of distorting gamers’ perception of older games, and Nintendo’s Virtual Console has done wonders for busting these misconceptions. Case in point: Nintendo revived the TurboGrafx-16 version of Namco and NEC’s Splatterhouse last March, and the aging game’s gruesome beat-’em-up action struck reviewers as decidedly tame and simplistic. However, Namco Bandai is now ready to give the seminal horror action franchise a proper current-generation revival, announcing today that an all-new Splatterhouse will arrive for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 in 2009. A throwback to the 1988 arcade original, Splatterhouse promises a gore-oozing action experience. Splatterhouse features an original storyline by comic-book scribe Gordon Rennie (Judge Dredd, Necronauts), wherein a college student in search of his kidnapped girlfriend happens upon a mask that confers upon him great power but also turns him into “a juggernaut of pure violence and destruction.” However, the game won’t be a simple beat-’em-up. Namco Bandai promises a dynamic combat system in which players will be afforded a variety of methods to slaughter hordes of infernal monstrosities. Weapons include makeshift found items as well as the dismembered appendages of enemies, and players will be able to revive defeated demons to help them in their quest as well as solve puzzles. The game also has a vertical element, with players able to leap great distances as the game’s protagonist. The game’s gore has likewise been updated to 21st-century standards. Namco Bandai says that players will be dismembered if overrun by enemies. “They will begin to dismember him, savagely tearing away limbs and ripping at his flesh to expose his internal organs. To survive, Rick must call upon the power of the Terror Mask to regenerate his mutilated body, allowing players to watch in gory detail as bones, veins, muscles, and skin return to his body in real time.”

While Splatterhouse may not have tickled reviewers’ fancies when it was released on Nintendo’s Virtual Console last March, Tecmo Bowl, which surfaced on the hardware maker’s online portal just one week prior, proved to have some legs. With the Nintendo DS version of the classic remake announced earlier this month, Tecmo has said Tecmo Bowl: Kickoff will also arrive on the Wii. Details on Tecmo Bowl: Kickoff on the Wii are slim, with the developer merely stating at a media event this week that the game will arrive sometime in 2009. The publisher did drop details on the DS edition of the game, however. With Electronic Arts having the official National Football League license wrapped up, Tecmo said the game would feature a generic 32-team roster. However, those teams will feature extensive customization options, where players can tweak club names, color schemes, logos, playbooks, and player names and stats. The look of Tecmo Bowl: Kickoff on the DS will hearken back to the 8- and 16-bit console days, though the game’s hallmark celebratory cutscenes have been given a graphical overhaul. The DS version of the game will also include local and online multiplayer matches. With the Wii version of Tecmo Bowl: Kickoff slated for 2009, Tecmo narrowed the DS game’s release window to this September.

Building and managing virtual cities is one of those genres that doesn’t seem to lose popularity. The SimCity series started in 1989, designed by Will Wright, also the creator of the Sims, and since then a slew of sequels and similar titles, including City Life and Caesar, have followed. Today, Electronic Arts announced a new game in the series for the Nintendo Wii and DS. Billed as an “accessible and light-hearted” title, SimCity Creator will let players customise their cities into a variety of regional styles. These will include American, Asian, and European city styles, although EA isn’t prepared to get country specific just yet. The gameplay for the Wii version sounds as if it will be similar to previous titles in the SimCity series, with the gamer playing as the city mayor and allocating city zones in areas such as business, retail, or residential. There will be a redesigned interface for the Wii Remote, and “hero” buildings will also be available, with some becoming unlocked depending on the current day or the time period. SimCity Creator DS, on the other hand, will have players guiding their city from ancient times into the future. There will be four game modes: Challenge, Free Play, Chance Encounter, and Gallery. SimCity Creator will be released on September 19 in Europe and in Australasia and on September 22 in North America. It is the second SimCity game for the DS, after SimCity DS, and it also follows the Wii Virtual Console rerelease of the SNES SimCity.

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