Sigh. The official Japanese site for Another Code: R has opened - mere hours after I said news of its delay wasn’t worth a story of its own - and, besides some lovely relaxing music and a nice water ripple effect on its front page, there’s a bit of background about the characters and four gameplay videos.
Naturally, it looks completely brilliant and pretty much exactly how a modern-day point-and-clicker should look. The art style is delightful, the animation impressive, and the puzzles look to make excellent use of the Wii remote, much as the original DS adventure did with its host console (the stamp and mirror riddles in particular).
You’d think Nintendo, with its vast sums of money, might take the occasional chance with this sort of small title - a game which surely wouldn’t cost too much to bring to the west and could potentially be a surprise hit with a bit of decent marketing and good word of mouth. (Much in the way movie giant Miramax funds small critically-acclaimed indie titles with the profits from its bigger films.) But sadly, it’s likely the game will never be seen outside Japan.
Not only does Nintendo UK know nothing about the game - never a good sign - but a poster over on NeoGAF received an email from Nintendo of America that gave a pretty clear indication that the game wouldn’t be likely to see the light of day in the US, either.
So in all likelihood we’re not getting it. Which is hugely, hugely disappointing. I’ll import and hope for a GameFAQs translation guide, but it won’t be the same.
It could be worse, of course. If this does well in Japan, it makes a Wii Hotel Dusk sequel more likely. And if that remained Japanese-only…well, I wouldn’t be responsible for my actions.
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