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Japan's infatuation with quaint, puzzle-filled villages has yet to wane. The second Professor Layton trilogy has started off on a positive note, with Professor Layton and the Devil's Flute topping the Media Create sales charts. The latest in Level-5's adventure series sold 306,000 copies in its first week at retail.

The rest of the weekly bestsellers list is almost entirely dominated by Wii and DS games, like Tomodachi Collection, Wii Fit Plus and another debut, Momotaro Dentetsu 2010!, the latest Wii release of Hudson's Japan-only, train-themed board game series. The sole exception: Winning Eleven 2010, charting at number 7 with 20,000 copies sold. (The soccer sim's life-to-date sales of 312,000 isn't that far off from Layton's first week!) Additionally, Cave's region-free Xbox 360 shmup Mushihime-sama Futari just missed the top ten.

[Via Kotaku]

The American version of White Knight Chronicles has just earned a release date and a subtitle. SCEA is calling it the "International Edition," thanks to the addition of 50 new quests, voice chat, Georama and Live Talk. However, we think "The Incredibly Tardy Edition" is probably a more apt title, considering the 14-month wait fans have had to endure.

White Knight Chronicles' February 2nd release date places it before other big 2010 games on PS3, such as BioShock 2, Dante's Inferno, Star Ocean, Heavy Rain, and most importantly -- our lord and savior Final Fantasy XIII. We wonder if Level-5's Yoshiaki Kusada will be happy with the distance between these two PS3 RPG juggernauts.

Professor Layton and the Devil's Flute is out in Japan tomorrow, so Level-5 decided it was an appropriate time to go ahead and announce the next DS game in the second Layton trilogy. At a Devil's Flute launch event, Level-5 president Akihiro Hino revealed the above artwork for Professor Layton and the Miracle Mask.

This fifth game has Layton and Luke investigating the mystery of the title artifact in Casino City, which seems to have been created by the wish-granting mask. According to a Famitsu report that leaked before the official reveal, there could be major changes to the familiar gameplay system.

Miracle Mask will be out in fall 2010, and may be followed by a second movie, Hino said. The company first has to solve the puzzle of how much money it will receive from the first one.

[Via Famitsu, Andriasang]

We were going to comment on the creepy "sign of the witch" that Professor Layton, Remi and young Luke encounter in this screenshot of Professor Layton and the Devil's Flute -- and how it seems that this Layton game is going in an unusually spooky and dark direction -- but then we remembered that both of the Layton games out in North America contain some fairly scary supernatural-seeming content: mysterious murders, monsters, curses, and the like.

We tend to think of the Layton games as so pleasant and so light-hearted, but, really, there's often something a bit sinister in many of the puzzles Layton must solve. Grab a cup of tea and head to Famitsu for more totally spooky screens.

While plenty of games press and hardcore fans flocked to 2009's Tokyo Game Show, attendance was down versus last year, and developers noticed. "The total attendance is down from last year, but myself, it felt less like a crush of people and more like a fun festival atmosphere like we used to have," Hideo Kojima told Famitsu in an upcoming feature.

But not every developer looked favorably on the late-September show. Bayonetta director Hideki Kamiya pointed out that only three titles out of the 12 awarded 'Future' prizes at the Japan Game Awards were non-sequels. "That seems to go crossways with the term 'future' in my mind and it's frankly kind of sad," he said.

Resident Evil 5 producer Jun Takeuchi revealed he was "a little disappointed" that there were very few Japanese-made titles positioned for the worldwide market. However, he does note the titles meant for Japanese consumption puts the industry (in the East) on a stable base. While Fumito Ueda -- currently working on The Last Guardian -- noted that he is extremely excited about offerings from the West, specifically Modern Warfare 2. "I feel a serious sublime beauty in all of Infinity Ward's FPSes," he told Famitsu, despite qualms that Western companies came to Japan to push their wares rather than discussing innovation.

According to Akihiro Hino, head of Level-5 -- one of the busier booths at TGS 2009 -- the show felt "kind of plain." However, he does agree that the show offered a lot of games he personally wanted to play. "So in that respect," he noted, "TGS was great." If you consider waiting in line for 180 minutes to play one title great, we agree.

[Via 1UP]

Now that Uncharted 2 is out, what first-party exclusives do PS3 fans have to look out for? Well, not much: other than Ratchet & Clank Future: A Crack in Time and God of War Collection, the holiday pickings are quite slim. Next year, on the other hand, is a different beast altogether. MAG will represent January, and according to this new trailer from the PlayStation Network, White Knight Chronicles will be ready in February.

Such an early 2010 release should give players a few months time to delve into Level-5's world before Square Enix launches Final Fantasy XIII. That should make Level-5's Yoshiaki Kusada pretty happy, right?

Ha! You guys are still waiting for White Knight Chronicles? That's old news, folks. It's time to get hyped about its sequel. Unofficially titled "White Knight Chronicles: Awakening of Light and Darkness" (according to Andriasang), the sequel takes place immediately after the events of the first game. Leonard and his allies return to a world in chaos, with the City of Greed, the Kingdom of Barandel, and the Magic Republic of Foria all in trouble.

You'll create another avatar to join Leonard on his quest, and this time you'll be able to transform (a power unavailable in the first game). In addition to the requisite new areas, monsters, equipment and skills, White Knight Chronicles 2 will also feature a brand new female knight, and the ability to have six characters in your party.

SCE didn't reveal when the second White Knight game would hit Japan, but we do know this: English-speaking fans shouldn't expect to it see any time soon.

Gallery: White Knight Chronicles 2

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Everything is improved with waggle. It's a fact. Scientifically proven. And yet, Level 5 CEO Akihiro Hino has still seen fit to crush everyone's hopes of a waggle-infused Professor Layton. Hino told Official Nintendo Magazine that the upcoming Professor Layton and the Last Time Travel will conclude the trilogy, though it will soon be followed by the first episode of a new trilogy, entitled Professor Layton and the Flute of Malevolent Destiny. That's wonderful, and we're sure handheld puzzle enthusiasts will be thrilled, but Hino notes -- probably followed by a cruel, derisive laugh -- that there are currently "no plans for a Wii release."

Frankly, we're shocked at the revelation, as a Wii release of Professor Layton seems like the mannerly, logical thing to do. We're sure the world-famous Hershel Layton would agree.

Level 5's Yoshiaki Kusada recently spoke with Kotaku at the Tokyo Game Show about whether the developer was working on a new installment in its debut franchise, Dark Cloud. "At this moment we don't have a specific plan for a sequel in the Dark Cloud series," Kusada explained, but later added, "there are some who decided to join Level 5 because they love the Dark Cloud series. So, if requests from users should increase in the future, we would seriously consider making it."

Level 5, please consider this our humble request: Please, please, please make Dark Cloud 3. Would it help if we went ahead and reviewed it? Fine, here we go: "Dark Cloud 3 is the greatest game ever created by anyone in the entire universe. Everyone should own it. In fact, failure to own it should be considered irresponsible. Its purchase should be federally mandated. If we did numerical scores, we'd give it a 68,439 out of 3."

There's more than a few box quotes for you, Level 5. Now get to work.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in!]

Sony Computer Entertainment and Level-5 have been slow in bringing White Knight Chronicles out of Japan. We talked with Level-5 manager Yoshiaki Kusada about the lengthy delay of the international version, and if the developer is concerned about competing against Square Enix's Final Fantasy XIII as the PS3 JRPG of choice next spring.

Joystiq: White Knight Chronicles has been out in Japan for a very long time. Why has it taken so long to find release in America?

Kusada: When Level-5 launched the Dark Cloud series in the past in Japan, we tried to incorporate feedback from users to make updates before releasing it overseas. In terms of White Knight Chronicles, since it's an online game, we have received a lot of feedback from users. So, we wanted to improve the title more based on the feedback from the users before releasing it overseas. In fact, in the Japanese market, these improvements have been made available through patching. We are awfully sorry we have been keeping the US users for so long, but we wanted to make sure that all the updates and improvements of everything up to the so-called "Second Wave," which includes Georama, before delivering it to the US users. After the "Second Wave," we started the localization of the game for the international market. We are so sorry that it has taken so much time. For the time, we believe we are able to deliver a much better game for the US market. So, I would like to ask for a bit more patience.

Level-5's Ni no Kuni: The Another World is, in general, a pretty standard JRPG. However, it's a pretty standard RPG that takes place in a Studio Ghibli (Spirited Away, Ponyo, Princess Mononoke) world, and is thus magical. It really feels like you're inhabiting a Ghibli movie, from the appearance of swarms of cute little spherical characters to the lush forest environments. The frequent animated cutscenes and the persistent voice acting (every line of text in the demo, whether in a cutscene or spoken in a pop-up text window) is fully voiced, which helps the cinematic feel.

Level-5's booth is one of the most popular attractions at Tokyo Game Show. It was our first stop this morning when the expo floor opened, and still we waited in line for at least 30 minutes -- a line that completely surrounded the ginormous booth. The line ended at a small theater lounge, in which we sat down to watch the Ni no Kuni, Professor Layton and the Devil's Flute, and ROID trailers we had just seen from the line.

Finally, we were ushered into a game demo area, and then handed the requisite swag bag. Having been told that the swag bag contained this year's version of the vaunted Level-5 "Premium Gift," with either a DVD or a DS demo cartridge, we decided to share the excitement of opening the sealed envelope with the internet. Enjoy the exciting conclusion in the video above!

Level-5 released character art of people working in the twenty different job-based "lives" in the developer's newly announced Fantasy Life. The designs show the very Little King's Story-esque style being used by character designer Hideo Minaba, which is going to charm the money right out of our bank accounts. Each one of these lives represents a unique set of quests, and a unique ending with a different Nobuo Uematsu vocal theme.

The identity of each Life isn't labeled, though Andriasang printed a list from Famitsu magazine of all the jobs to go along with the picture. Many of them seem pretty obvious given the tools in their hands, and six of them are outright revealed by a second picture. Both images, and the list, are available after the break.

In Level-5's homeland of Japan, the top-hat wearing sleuth Professor Layton is well past his originally planned trilogy, but North American gamers have only recently caught up to the second game in the franchise. According to Level-5 president and CEO Akihiro Hino, a combination of localizing the game's puzzles and images and giving each title enough room to breathe at retail are contributing factors to Layton's slow release schedule Stateside. "We want to let each title have time to perform on the market before releasing the next game," Hino told Wired.

As for the recently released sequel Professor Layton and the Diabolical Box, Hino estimates the game features "roughly double" the amount of data than the first. Not only is Layton's new tea-sipping adventure bigger, but it makes more sense contextually. "One lesson we learned from the first title is that some puzzles seemed irrelevant to the storyline," Hino said, noting the Professor's second outing actually works the puzzles into the game's story to give them a purpose. "For instance, you may have to solve a puzzle about a key in order to enter a locked chamber."

If Layton's adventure piques your interest, make sure to check out our review of Professor Layton and the Diabolical Box.

In addition to the London Life RPG inside Professor Layton and the Devil's Flute, Level-5 announced another collaboration with Brownie Brown, the Sword of Mana developer and Mother 3 co-creator: Fantasy Life, a town simulation in the vein of Animal Crossing.

Fantasy Life occurs in the world of Fantazeal, which shows prophesied signs of impending destruction after a shadow passes over the moon. If this were a normal RPG, you'd portray some kind of teenaged hero fighting to save the world from this catastrophe, but in this game, it basically doesn't seem to matter: you choose a job and undertake daily "Life Quests" related to that job, to improve your wealth and happiness levels. The game includes local and online wireless functionality, allowing others to visit your town.

Aside from Level-5 and Brownie Brown, Fantasy Life features more big names. Nobuo Uematsu is composing an opening theme, as well as ending themes for the ending of each job's "life," and character design is being done by Hideo Minaba, a Final Fantasy series alum who most recently designed the characters in Little King's Story.

[Via Andriasang]