NIS targets casual audience with obscure puzzle game
by JC Fletcher 
{ Nov 20th 2007 at 12:20PM }
We remarked on Puchi Puchi Virus's vivid 2D art when we saw the first screens in March, but we never thought we'd saw the game again. It was just another low-profile Japanese puzzle game. But Nippon Ichi has surprised us by announcing that they're localizing Puchi Puchi Virus for a U.S. release in February. The press release mentions a website, but that site has yet to go up.Since NIS's usual fare has very little casual appeal (and by 'casual' we mean 'people who have less than 15 hours a day to spend playing games), they have decided to bring out a nice, light puzzle game as their first DS release. Of course, they're still being true to themselves-- it's just about the most random Japanese game they could find.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Dash @ Nov 20th 2007 1:31PM
But I believe the true question is: after this casual fare, are we going to get a crazy, over-the-top enourmous SRPG? Because I want one for my DS so bad.(Disgaea, Soul Nomad, bring anything NIS)
Safiel @ Nov 20th 2007 1:57PM
Yeah, this will be great. I've loved most all of their other stuff, and although this is different I'll give it a shot without question (and I'll keep buying there games without question until I find one I don't like).
They should bring Disgaea 3 to the DS! I really don't want to have to spend the money on a ps3 (maybe if it was $250 w/ backwards compatibility). I have wondered now for a while why they would already be making the push to the ps3, since they are already catering to a niche market, the ps3 hasn't sold a ton of units (at least not yet), plus any ps3's sold for a little while longer are backwards compatible, plus the ps3 is all about graphics and power.. but nippon ichi isn't really the sort of developer to push the graphical limit.
Also, with that list of nippon ichi games, not all of those are really their games like the Atelier Iris series or Generation of Chaos. They've been helping publish games for a few other companies in the US here for a couple years now. Saying those are all nippon ichi games is like saying Disgaea is a Atlus game...