Atlus Announces Shiren the Wanderer Wii for Spring 2010
June 2, 2009 6:00 AM | Eric Caoili
It's always a surprise to hear a Shiren the Wanderer game announced for U.S. release. Sega didn't release Mystery Dungeon: Shiren the Wanderer for DS stateside until the franchise had already flourished in Japan under developer Chunsoft (Dragon Quest) for 12 years. And U.S. sales for that DS title were rumored to be so dismal that Sega passed localizing Shiren's subsequent releases, as did niche game publisher Xseed.
Atlus USA, though, already familiar with publishing Eastern roguelikes, what with two Izuna titles under its belt, revealed this morning that it is releasing Shiren the Wanderer Wii, or Shiren the Wanderer 3: Sleeping Princess in the Clockwork Palace as its known in Japan, in the States in Spring 2010. Unlike the DS title, which is remake of the original SNES Shiren, this Wii game is a new 3D entry introducing features such as an online multiplayer versus mode:
"The grandfather of the rogue-like RPG, the legendary Shiren series (also known as Mystery Dungeon) is all about tough-as-nails battles, thrilling exploration, finding tons of items, growing in strength, and most important of all: staying alive! With beautiful, colorful 3D graphics, multiple control options, numerous lengthy dungeons, thrilling boss battles, and classic rogue-like gameplay, Shiren the Wanderer delivers the ultimate hardcore RPG experience to Wii!"
If you're completely unfamiliar with the roguelike series, you really should read John Harris' posts about the Shiren games in GameSetWatch's @Play roguelike column -- they're what made me (and many others!) fall in love with the franchise.
You can watch a Japanese commercial for Shiren the Wanderer Wii, which shows off the game's many, many deaths while Beethoven's 5th Symphony plays, after the break:
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1 Comment
While I take issue with Shiren being called the "grandfather of the rogue-like RPG"--really, wouldn't that game be Rogue--it is very nice that this is being localized.
Maybe I'm just being narcissistic here, but I really think I know how Atlus could make Shiren popular in the U.S. The thing that got me first interested in the game, over a decade ago, was a series of posts posted in rec.games.roguelike.nethack. I linked to them in one of the @Play columns.
They each detail a game in which the player is doing pretty well until they make a fatal miscalculation. They explain the strategy involved, and they make the gameplay, and the failure, into a narrative.
That's really what makes roguelike games interesting, the evolving story of the game. Good roguelikes don't have hard-coded stories decided by the developers, which nearly always suck, but allow the player to effectively write his own in the process of playing.
What Atlus needs to do in the advertising for this game is to demonstrate, in a narrated playthrough, a good player demonstrating a couple of cool game features, but then losing due to making some mistake, and explaining what the mistake is. To demonstrate that it's a game about skill, and about, to steal an idea from Tarn Adams, how much fun it can be to -lose-.
John H. | June 5, 2009 8:30 AM