Takeda2

Takeda2, the best selling game of 2006, was moved to the PC and the Sony PlayStation. Today, the company announced a PSP version of the game, and that it will be released in Japan this fall.

Takeda2 will bring online play to a variety of gaming platforms. As you can imagine, that's going to be a big selling point, and it's very unlikely that other players will be able to play with them. The gameplay is essentially based on Quake 3 Arena, which is one of the most popular FPS games in recent years. The basic structure of the game is a deathmatch-like action game, and it seems that Takeda2 will make a great addition to the PSP's library of online multiplayer games.

The online play system seems to work well. First, it's easy to hop into a game and get some kills. You have the option to upload your gameplay to the Takeda2 community site, and you can use it to share your kills online with others in the game. When a player logs into the game, he or she can play as you would in any other shooter, and the game auto saves his or her progress and is accessible from any Web browser. You can also choose to install a separate game-specific file for when the PSP has been plugged in, or the game will automatically update itself when your data is uploaded. (Once the game is installed, you can play on the game's executable to boot from the PSP's Internet, and you can download files as well.) You can also download a new game-specific file, called the "Game Filter," which expands your game's potential to run for a limited amount of time (more on this later.)

The game will also feature several other features. When in a game, the PSP's keyboard is used to make selecting a game easy--the more you type, the more "leaks" you get out of the game. We got to see several different types of puzzle games. One of them was a sliding puzzle game. You tap and hold on the screen to move objects in the various maze segments. Another was a chess game, and in the demo, the first one we tried was a brief minigame based on chessboard. The other was a high-speed rhythm-based game in which you run the game clock by tapping the screen in time to the music, and you have to beat the higher score to win.

The game will have a general minimalistic look and feel to it. The deck of cards is laid out on a grid in the center of the screen. Each card in the deck is divided up into two colors, with white and black cards serving as color-coded cards. When you have one color floating up in the middle of the board, it turns into a white card, and as soon as you're color matching the card, the game changes colors into an emerald or blue card. As you're playing, you will have three rewards to receive from winning. For instance, you'll earn a simple point bonus to every time you win a game, so if you win the first game of the game, you will get a token reward. Once you have nine, you'll have to earn a token and will have to play five games. But if you win every game of the game, you'll earn a token for every time you win. So in a way, the game makes you think about what you might want to do next and that you can take it from there, because if you do, you might as well continue working to earn that token to the next round.

The trick in the DS version is that the depth of the card system has been improved. You can now collect cards, use them in your deck, and also use them in your deck. For example, if you're playing a card game with just five cards, you'll see one of the cards pop up in the deck, and if you use the cards in a deck, it will appear in the card list. And if you use five cards in a deck, it will appear in the game. So in a deck like the original DS card game, all you have to do is add the card to your hand, and you have an opportunity to use the cards as though you were a regular card.

It's an excellent system and a very elegant system, and a great way to add some interesting depth to your game. We've made some adjustments to the system, and some of the design choices have certainly surprised us.

NL: Do you think that Nintendo's first handheld console will have a distinctly underappreciated library of games? How are the third-party developers making games for it?

AP: Not really, because it's a completely different market, but there are some very strong third-party developers, and Nintendo is a company that focuses so much on core games and gives them so much control that they can do their jobs very well.