Hemispheres – February 7, 2011

Welcome to Hemispheres, a Polygamerous-style look at what’s happening in the video game world in places that aren’t the United States! Let’s dive right into it, shall we?

• Guess I won’t be deleting my Catherine demo after all… Atlus tweeted that the demo for the PSN was pulled because it had reached its desired distribution numbers. In essence? They ‘ran out’ of demos. Oh, and if you’re interested in this one, you’ll want to brush up on your Japanese – an email to Aram Jabbari, Atlus USA’s manager of PR and sales, confirmed there are no plans to bring Catherine westward for the time being.
• Speaking of no localizations, sorry Australia: you aren’t getting Shantae this week. WayForward sounds like they’ve run into issues getting it released there, saying there’s no word of a release Down Under for the time being. A video game? Having trouble getting published in Australia? Perish the thought.
• The kids are alright: Nippon Ichi Software, which last year posted net losses of 231,213,000 yen (close to $2.5 million USD), this year reported only a loss of 8,730,000 yen ($105,000 USD) – and the video game division actually turned a profit, reporting an operating profit of 4,806,000 yen ($53,000 USD). Siliconera reported on the company’s financial turnaround today, and also mentioned that Disgaea 4 will be released in Japan during the 4th quarter of this fiscal year – today’s numbers are actually for the 3rd quarter – and that should definitely give a boost to their coffers. People do love their crazy level-grinding Netherworld inhabitants.
• Lucky bastards – Europe is getting a special edition release of Yakuza 4, but not us. The Yakuza 4 Kuro Edition includes new costumes for each character, a black metal case for the game itself, and three new game modes.
• Virtual Console aficionados are aware that the games you pay for are often very close to the original releases. There are a few changes, of course – the ads in Wave Race, the word “yo-yo” in Startropics (fun fact: it’s a trademark!), and so on. This is a Nintendo policy. However, Sega must have some friends on the inside, as they somehow convinced Nintendo to let them add online multiplayer to the Virtual Console release of the arcade version of Puyo-Puyo in Japan. Nintendo, if you’re there? Add some online multiplayer to the original Super Mario Kart!

And finally, from Andriasang comes this delightful Google Translate trick. PlayStation: it’s Japanese for xbox.