This Week in Games

Welcome back, folks! I’m not much of a miHoYo fan. It’s nothing personal; I just don’t gel with their games—the gacha rates are too unfair, in my opinion, and the games straddle that uncomfortable zone where they’re too sophisticated to feel comfortable playing on a phone but too grinding to feel fun to play on a console. That said, miHoYo‘s Zenless Zone Zerorevealed a new character, Burnice White… and I’ve been obsessed with this airhead and her TikTok dance moves for (at the time of writing) the past three days. I have a problem. Shout-out to Risa Mei, her performance as Burnice helps elevate her into an unstoppable brain worm.

This is…

Major Leak at GAME FREAK Rocks Industry

Long-time readers know that, by and large, I don’t cover leaks or rumors. This is a conscious decision, mostly stemming from my personal belief that a rumor and three bucks get you a cup of coffee. Despite the weird self-righteous indignation people get about spoilers in fiction and games (yes, dear, we won’t spoil for you that Elder Scrolls 6 will be an open-world game), people also tend to foam at the mouth for upcoming details about stuff—and nothing gets folks quite as rabid as details on Nintendo‘s products. Fans will read tea leaves or entrails to see if Nintendo will “keep up their schedule” about when a Direct will get announced. Wouldn’t it be easier if someone could steal information from Nintendo and share it with the rest of the world without Nintendo stopping them…?

This past weekend saw the announcement of what’s being called the “TERALeak,” a leak of almost a terabyte of data from GAME FREAK‘s offices relating to numerous Pokémon projects. The data is pretty extensive, assuming it’s reliable; it allegedly includes beta designs for Pokémon from the Gen 3 to Gen 5 games, a map engine for the Gen 3 titles, some alleged lore that involves human-Pokémon relations (that I’m not convinced some Channer tossed in to freak people out)… and, also allegedly, source code for upcoming Pokémon projects that haven’t been announced yet, including the Pokémon Legends: Z-A, as well as what would be the Gen 10 titles (hitherto unannounced).

According to the leak, the translation on Legends: Z-A is mostly complete, barring sidequests. There were also leaks of Pokémon side media, movies, and television programs, as well as ancillary details such as internal memos about possible features for Pokémon games or discussions about retiring Ash as the protagonist for the anime, (it was disproved pretty quickly by Ash/Satoshi’s voice actress, Rica Matsumoto), and the private information of 2,600 GAME FREAK employees, including past employees, current employees, and contractors. That last one was the thing that made GAME FREAK CEO and creator of Pokémon Satoshi Tajiri announce the leak; his first and main concern was that of the privacy and security of his employees. And because this isn’t enough of a Howitzer shell to the head, the leak may have gathered sensitive information on the upcoming Nintendo console.

Provided, it might be that just about everything but the private data is completely unreliable. As the data was picked over, more than a few beta designs were revealed to have been fakes made by users on 4chan and tossed into the data. Also, the scrapped backstories allegedly involving human-Pokémon relations were machine-translated, taking them extremely out-of-context. It turns out, even though machine translations are “getting better,” in the here-and-now, they can’t read kanji and credited the work to someone who doesn’t exist. Surprise, folks made up a woman to get mad at when the correct name translation belonged to a man, Suguru Nakatsui.

That, and because the machine translation chose… shall we say, “stronger” language for certain Japanese terms, made the stories far darker than they were. Twitter user Roltas has a phenomenal thread breaking down not only the issues with the attribution of the stories but also how the stories take on actual Japanese folklore. So all the tempest-in-a-teapot and unfunny jokes about Typhlosion were much ado about absolutely nothing. That’s zero-for-two on American fans going into a tizzy over machine-translated works taking stuff out of context, between Pokémon and the interview with Kazuhiko Torashima and Yuji Horii from a few weeks ago.

I’m not about to shed any tears for the big multi-billion dollar corporation, but this sucks. Our colleagues over at This Week in Anime covered it well; it’s not the suits who get hurt by the leaks, it’s the creators. Folks who worked hard to create the anime and games put in long hours creating stuff and hoping for folks to enjoy it. When the suits decide something has to give because of leaks, the creative teams are the ones who have to scrap their plans and start over. And remember: they not only have to field tons of abuse from fans on Twitter because the in-game splines weren’t reticulated enough, but they also had their data stolen as part of the hack. Excuse me if I think you’re not Videogame Robin Hood because you have the moral high ground not to spread private information you stole in the first place.

That’s the long and short why I shake my head at this whole hack. A lot of the hack includes stuff that would otherwise be catnip for me. Beta designs for old Pokémon generations, concept pitches for certain characters, or minutes from meetings on certain mechanical ideas that didn’t make it into the final game. All of that would make for a phenomenal art book. Yeah, it sucks that GAME FREAK has never put any of those old designs out in an official capacity… but also, I grew up learning that just because I wanted something didn’t mean I was entitled to it (also, game devs go back to old concepts for new games all the time). And that’s before you get into something like stealing source code for a game. A lot of Pokémon fans resent the state of the actual games, but I’m not sure what making your own Pokémon Z with blackjack and sex workers is going to achieve since you’re painting a target on your own back for IP infringement. Y’know, the thing that Nintendo is infamous for suing people for?

What does this mean for Pokémon? From where I’m sitting, there’s not a lot for now. What are they going to do? Admit to years’ worth of sensitive information and business deals still tied up in NDAs being leaked by some hacker on the Internet, causing them to lose face in front of all of their business partners and potentially spoiling their business deals for the next few years? Validate stolen information? Reward the hackers with social prestige for not only sticking it to “Big Bad Nintendo” but also being on the money? Of course not. No doubt there are a ton of fires that they’re busy trying to put out. Several creative changes might happen behind the scenes with certain projects and concepts, especially if it’s early enough in the planning phase for them to rework strategies. I pray to God that there’s mercy on whoever got phished as part of this hack (if that’s what happened). And whoever’s got the source code for all those Pokémon, their soul better belong to Jesus because Nintendo is going to have their ass.

So much of “leak culture” seems to stem from a desire some fans have to outsmart the creators; an antagonism between self-styled fans and creatives where fans believe creators are against them and don’t want them to have things when the reality is that media is produced on a schedule and have very complicated marketing contracts to be released on a strict timetable for all of the related co-productions associated with a project go off without a hitch. People are so hung up on the idea of “self-censorship” that they see creatives leaving stuff on the cutting room floor as proof of a “purer” work that could have been and not something that didn’t work with what was being made. (I mean, I thought Fallout 3 was also pretty mediocre, but I won’t pretend Van Buren was somehow going to be inherently better.) So, instead of trusting anyone with actual industry insight, folks would rather trust some nebulous figure whose stuff is only verified after the fact.

Information is worthless if it isn’t contextualized; that makes it news. That’s my job; I point out why a new Wario World game is relevant and how it might stack up in light of, say, X-developer’s stance on crediting contracted translators, or with the recent fortunes of similar Nintendo software. There’s a lot I don’t bring up in this column, not only because it doesn’t relate to Japanese games or media but purely because there’s nothing to say about it. It’s the news equivalent of finding a bubble at a car wash. There’s a big gap between journalistic integrity, “the public’s right to know,” and sharing stolen information. And remember: plenty of fields have rules against information that’s been acquired by less-than-savory means (see: “Fruit of the Poisonous Tree” doctrine). It’s not my job to be friends with any of these big companies (and anyone who’s read my columns knows that I’ve carried all major publishers to task for their inexcusable decisions). There’s a big gap between doing actual legwork to gather information without ruining people’s careers and hacking people’s work PCs to determine if Stunfisk will be in the next Pokémon game. You’ll forgive me if I’m not trawling through Reggie Fils-Aimé’s trash on the hunt for news of Mother 3 with the same fervor Woodward and Bernstein had for investigating the Watergate scandal.

No, Nobuo Uematsu Isn’t Retiring—But He Is Gonna Dial It Back A Little

2024 is the year of RPGs, and one of many phenomenal RPGs due out this year (December 5, the day before my birthday!) is Fantasian Neo Dimension, a new RPG from Final Fantasy creator Hironobu Sakaguchi. And who better for Sakaguchi to hire than his longtime collaborator, renowned video game composer Nobuo Uematsu? Best known for his work across several Final Fantasy games (as well as being a huge fan of Deep Purple), Uematsu is fairly legendary for his musical work. His many collaborations with Sakaguchi run deep, too—besides Final Fantasy, he also worked with Sakaguchi on Sakaguchi’s attempt to kickstart a new RPG series, Blue Dragon. Alas, not only was Blue Dragon kinda fun, but its boss theme “Eternity” was a masterpiece (and allowed Uematsu to collaborate with Deep Purple’s Ian Gillan.)

Earlier this week, Uematsu offered the message linked above on official promotional Twitter for Fantasian Neo Dimension, wherein he announced that Fantasian would be his last game as a composer. Folks were pretty quick to take this as a sign that the esteemed musician was flat-out retiring, which he hastily corrected. At 65, a musical undertaking like Fantasian Neo Dimension‘s entire soundtrack is a bit much for him to keep doing—that said, Uematsu clarified that he was still up for contributing individual themes to a game.

So, let’s not get confused here. While Nobuo Uematsu is slowing down his output, he’s not retiring yet. We’ll be lucky enough to get a chance to enjoy him at concerts for now, along with any other project that catches his eye. Thanks for the great music, Uematsu! We look forward to your sweet tunes in Fantasian and any other future projects you join.

Bandai Namco’s Devs Feel Pinch From Gaming Industry’s Downturn

2024 has been a phenomenal year for RPGs, but it’s been an overwhelmingly terrible year for the people who make games. Nothing but endless layoffs from every major company and plenty of gaming news platforms going dark… It’s hard to like games because the industry’s back end is on a termite-ridden foundation, and many innocent people are falling through the floorboards. Ignoring the terrible loss of established talent and skill in game development (that lack of senior talent is going to lead to a lot of compounding issues for the next few years), this has also ruined the lives of a lot of people who learned to code and made the “mistake” of getting into game design. And that pinch has been felt way off in Japan.

A report from Bloomberg revealed that Bandai Namco has canceled several of their upcoming projects, among them supposedly a project commissioned by Nintendo. The lack of work has also led to many people at Bandai Namco with nothing to do. Now, this is where folks might point out that Japanese labor law prohibits layoffs outside of a demonstrable need for it; it is legally only a last-ditch effort. And that’s true! But it’s reported that 200 of Bandai Namco’s 1,300 employees in Japan had been sent to oidashi beda, so-called “expulsion rooms,” where they’re given nothing to do in an attempt at encouraging them to retire. Folks might recognize this as Konami‘s tactic with Hideo Kojima several years ago.

An anonymous internal whistleblower has set up a blog detailing some of the alleged goings-on at Bandai Namco. Among their allegations is that Bandai Namco has difficulty developing new IP and suffers “decreased development cost rates for confidential copyrighted projects.” The site also alleges that several employees are being encouraged to quit, under claims that they have “no future at the company” due to slight infractions in the past. The site also has a form for other employees to share their stories anonymously.

The gaming industry is shrinking, not in terms of the global market but of how many projects can be sustained at any given time. The reason for this is simple: everyone is broke, and nobody has enough time to play everything that comes out. Game development has bloated in terms of scope and cost, leaving razor-thin profits. That Nintendo also canceled a project—which you don’t hear about often—with Bandai Namco—who Nintendo has a long, friendly partnership with—goes to show that things are rough for the industry. I hate not having more of a concrete answer for what we can do because hell, what can we do? In the U.S., it’s hard enough—there is only so much we can do to signal boost laid-off devs on Twitter in the hopes that they can find a place to land. I’m not sure what American fans can do to help Japanese devs. I especially feel bad for them; while most of my dealings with Bandai Namco’s employees have been on the American side of things, my experiences with them have always been warm and cordial. It’s frustrating and exhausting enough to make you cry. To paraphrase Stephen Jay Gould, I am less interested in the engines games run on or whether new consoles will feature ray tracing than in the near certainty of people who’ve been laid off or turned away from the industry who could have been the next Hidetaka Miyazaki or made the next Cave Story.

I hate to propose that the solution is to “shut up and consume more product.” If there’s something we need to do more often, it’s to let creatives know how much their work means to us. Don’t internet-stalk Sega devs or anything. If you’re enjoying something, talk on social media and tag the appropriate parties. People are way too quick to tag devs or companies for stuff they’re mad about, so at least try to counteract that by letting folks know you enjoyed their work. Will a tweet reverse a game’s fortunes and stop people from losing their jobs? I’m not that much of an ingénue. But the least we can do for each other is be good to each other; it’s a small comfort, but it’s something we can realistically afford developers. It’s rough out there for everyone; the least you can do is give folks some gratitude.

Valis Collection Coming To Steam

For the retro-minded collectors out there, Edia’s Valis collections have been a serious wish come true. Collecting the entirety of the beloved Valis series (minus the porn game from 2006), it compiled the many adventures of Japanese schoolgirl Yuko as she’s whisked away to protect the worlds from various evil entities with the titular Valis, a magical sword. Of course, she did this in a metal bikini—winsome girls in skimpy metal bikinis cutting their way through fantastical worlds full of monsters was a respected institution in the 1980s and 1990s, courtesy of the late Mutsumi Inomata‘s phenomenal character art for Leda – The Fantastic Adventure of Yohko.

Back to Valis: currently, the three volumes of the Valis Collection are available on the Nintendo Switch, each covering the many permutations of the Valis games across the many platforms it was released on (TurboGrafx, MSX, MSX2, Sega Genesis/Megadrive, Super Nintendo, and PC-8801). If you’ve been interested in playing these games on other consoles, you’ve mostly been out of luck. Thankfully, earlier this week, we received news that Edia is going to be releasing the Valis collection on Steam, and they’re available for pre-order right now!

Now, this collection is a bit different from the physical Valis Collection compilations on the Switch; for one thing, this only collects the PC-Engine (read: TurboGrafx) versions of the games. Just as well, they’re often considered the best ones. The other major difference is that the Steam release is mostly just a free-to-download launcher; the individual games have to be bought piecemeal for US$6 a piece, with the addition of an optional purchase for the soundtrack and a digital artbook. I’m unsure why this format was chosen, but that’s still about US$18 for the three TurboGrafx Valis titles. No word yet on the other versions of the Valis games to be made available, but it would be nice if they were.

Thankfully, the games don’t diverge too much across their various ports. While the stories are mostly consistent, their execution differs since so many of these games were ported across different consoles years after the fact. Telenet wanted to make sure later ports of earlier titles were somewhat on par with the newer games in the series. What makes these games stand out is their storytelling. Not for quality, necessarily, but for execution: the Valis games did phenomenal work with voice acting and animated cutscenes, especially on the beefier platforms like the TurboGrafx.

In a lot of ways, Valis helped pave the way for modern video game heroines like Mail from Popful Mail or Eve from Stellar Blade (heck, Eve has the expansive wardrobe to give Yuko a run for her money). Think of her as a female Adol from Ys, a heroine constantly getting wrapped up in new adventures. Sure, the games weren’t groundbreaking, but Yuko kept you interested; she was a premium girl. It’s that style of heroine and game that led to Izuna, a series that lives and dies on how much of a sensation its protagonist is.

I feel like this is something we don’t get much anymore; it’s rather heartbreaking that Adol still gets to go around having new adventures from that era—sure, SNK‘s “Psycho Soldier” Athena is still around, but nobody remembers her old action RPG. They mostly know her as that purple-haired girl in the King of Fighters games. It’s a shame that Valis died and Valis X nailed the coffin shut. It would be interesting to see a new Valis that brought us an older Yuko having to travel across new magical worlds on new adventures of magic and wonder. (I have it in good faith that the age of 30 is in demand, and older Yuko would be very appreciated.)

Might we see a new Valis? Pfft, fat chance. Then again, I’ve been proven wrong before—tiny miracles happen every day. Cotton and Izuna came back, for crying out loud.

Microsoft Partner Preview October 2024—Quick Overview

I’d hate to give Microsoft an unceremonious once-over, but unfortunately, it behooves us to focus on Japanese games on a website like Anime News Network. And it’s hard to report on Microsoft doing anything when they don’t have any Japanese games. You can understand the weird position that puts me in. Not to begrudge anyone who’s been hotly anticipating Alan Wake 2 DLC, especially since I know Alan Wake 2 is good—I just have editorial priorities here. But in the name of fairness—let’s give Microsoft a moment.

Speaking of Alan Wake 2! We have footage of its upcoming expansion, The Lake House. I’ve never played Alan Wake, but I know it’s vaguely connected to the Control games. It amuses me when they have background cutscenes featuring live actors. The Lake House focuses on an incursion of creepy monsters at a facility called “The Lake House,” which might serve to further bridge the gap between Control and Alan Wake. Cronos: The New Dawn also leans into the suspenseful first-person shooter territory, what with a mysterious person in a spacesuit shooting down creepy feral humanoids. Blindfire‘s in-engine trailer looked neat but also suspicious—I’m not that keyed into modern AAA games, but I doubt anything could look that good in motion. Also, yippee! Another sci-fi first-person shooter. Mouse P.I. For Hire is another first-person shooter, but the aesthetics merit a look: it’s in the style of old black-and-white rubber-hose animation, with 2D-looking enemies against 3D backgrounds. Subnautica 2 is finally coming to Xbox, albeit soon.

Animal Well comes too us from Bigmode, a.k.a. “the studio owned by YouTuber Dunkey.” The trailer is not very flattering, coming off too much like Dunkey is trying a skit. The game looks interesting with its pixelated graphics (they’re going so far as to re-create the look of a CRT television set). It’s also out on Steam. Eternal Strands is an impressive-looking action game emphasizing your abilities: burn, freeze, or throw objects around to creatively attack foes. It feels like folks saw the fire mechanics in Breath of the Wild and decided to extrapolate on that further—take that as a compliment; I’m impressed. Mistfall Hunter, on the other hand, comes off as a more action-oriented take on Elden Ring (the trailer emphasizing golden wispy threads doesn’t help). Wheel World seems like an open-world game about bike riding; I’m intrigued by how well it captures the sensation of bike riding down hills. Oh, and Phasmophobia is coming to Xbox, though I’m unsure it can keep its appeal without VR…

It might be easy to sneer at The Legend of Baboo for focusing on its big, fluffy dog partner for so much of the trailer. Still, the game gives me more of a whimsical Prince of Persia: Sands of Time feel with its acrobatic combat and level traversal. It’s got my interest. Wuchang: Fallen Feathers is another action game coming from a Chinese developer, this one from Lenzee. It has amazing-looking bosses, but the game looks very similar to Black Myth: Wukong in tone and aesthetic. It looks fun, but I hope it can do enough to set itself apart. And then there’s FBC: Firebreak, a team-based multiplayer shooter where you and some friends team up to shoot weird feral humans together. This one also comes from Remedy; time will tell if this ties into Alan Wake.

And that’s the Microsoft Partner Stream! Folks haven’t given up on Microsoft‘s black box yet; there’s still hope in the guy.

Let’s wrap up with some quick tidbits

That’ll do it for this week. With the Manga Preview Guide’s work done, I must prepare my two-panel presentations for this upcoming Kumoricon. No rest for the wicked! Don’t forget to carve a pumpkin or get some spooky decorations out, we could all use a fun Halloween. Be good to each other, I’ll see you in seven.

This Week In Games! is written from idyllic Portland by Jean-Karlo Lemus. When not collaborating with Anime News Network, Jean-Karlo can be found playing JRPGs, eating popcorn, watching v-tubers, and tokusatsu. You can keep up with him at @mouse_inhouse or @ventcard.bsky.social.