really funny how even konami has forgotten that there are suikoden games past 2
Coming back to this after today’s news that Keiji Inafune left Level-5 Comcept in the middle of last year and that the studio’s been officially taken over as Level-5 Osaka—coming off the top here, a status report on their various IP, goings-on, etc:
Yokai Watch: YW4 (Switch), which is ~5 years old now, was not exactly a flop but did poorly enough that they produced a PS4 port in the hopes that it’d help matters, but it barely made an impact, and there’s been zero talk of a global release. There are still some mobile spinoffs in operation but they haven’t done anything on consoles for years now; they finally figured out the series needed to cool off, years later than they should have.
Professor Layton: post-Layton 6, they had a drastically different “Layton 7” in the works for mobile that went through multiple overhauls (including one based on werewolf, years before Among Us blew up), only to never deliver; there was a more comedic, quasi-episodic soft-reboot starring Layton’s daughter that didn’t really move the needle, and they’ve announced a full-on conventional Layton sequel that’s nebulously scheduled for this year. They did at least remaster some of the classics for smartphones.
Inazuma Eleven: has been in development hell since 2016 for reasons that are impossible to comprehend; the media-mix crap that was supposed to accompany this game wrapped up in 2018, and the current ETA is sometime in 2027(!)
Ni no Kuni: Netmarble’s running a mobile game that I know nothing about, but it seems to be doing fine
Fantasy Life: they put out a f2p version that kinda did okay outside of Japan, mostly out of demand for a real sequel, but it was terminated a while back; there’s a new home version coming in May.
Snack World, the would-be successor to the Yokai Watch empire, which came with an anime and a NFC keychain gimmick: initially did okay in Japan on 3DS but had no staying power, and launch worldwide on Switch, directly to bargain bins
Megaton Musashi, the would-be successor to the Snack World empire, which launched alongside an anime; they initially announced it as a PS4/3DS game in 2016, with some sort of high-end diecast robot toy gimmick, but it eventually launched for Switch/PS without the toy stuff. There’s been three revisions of the game: the initial paid version, a f2p version and then another paid deluxe version that got a PC port and was specifically intended for global audiences. I don’t think it was a flop, exactly, but my impression is that they’ve stuck with it for lack of anything else going on more than anything else.
Decapolice: announced via Nintendo DIrect for release on Switch/PS in 2023; current ETA 2026
Level-5 IA: established to handle global publishing/localisation away from Nintendo, but floundered (and was allegedly hell to work at); it’s been dead for a minute
Level-5 Comcept: L5 acquired Inafune’s company in 2019; they released an original mobile game called Dragon & Colonies that was launched, pulled, completely remade and pulled again within the course of ~6 months; they then went on to work on a Fantasy Life sequel for consoles, which was announced in 2023 and, as we’ve just learned, had to be retooled when Inafune left last year; it’s still scheduled for global release on consoles and PC on May 21.
Ushiro: a horror game announced for PSP way back in 2008 that refuses to fully die; the last we heard, years ago, was from president Hino reannouncing the game for Switch in some random interview, to the obvious bemusement of his colleagues
tl;dr they wanted to become the Ubisoft of Japan and by god it’s happening
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Everhood 2 came out
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Looks like I’ll be playing Tony Hawk on Slurpee Day 2025
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i remember really wanting to get Snack World, but upon seeing that it had a localization with so many bad jokes and references, I thought Victor Ireland did it, right in the rubbish.
fwiw that’s not totally out of step with how it was originally written—it’s been a minute but it always struck me as taking conscious influence from US cartoons and media of the day. very post-Adventure Time, but also a lot snarkier than you might expect
the success of Layton overseas (and specifically, the oversized success of Layton in Europe, based on NOE’s tweaks) was a double-edged sword for L5 overseas—it taught their president Hino the value of proper localisation, but it also poisoned them to be completely unwilling to release games globally without a massive regional marketing strategies in place, and when you factor in their obsession with cross-media junk, it became harder and harder to deliver and/or find partners willing to go as big as they wanted, which ultimately led to a point where they just stopped trying.
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i just really hated the covfefe café they threw in. it broke me. when that typo happened it was one of the worst weeks online
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fair, I’d certainly purged it from my mind
Reveal of the decade tbh. Earthshattering news for me personally
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Level 5 acquired Comcept in 2017. It’s significant because 2017 is pretty much the year when the wheels came off (although all the bad decisions like Abby and the focus on mobile come from 2015):
- Hino, who possibly got burnt from supporting the Nintendo 3DS too early at launch, shuns the new Nintendo Switch and bets everything on mobile.
- L5 spends the entire year 2017 prepping, delaying and rebooting an infinite number of mobile games, including the mobile port of Yōkai Watch 1, two YW spin-offs, Otome Hero and Fantasy Life 2 which is renamed Fantasy Life Online in the course of the year.
- Level 5 Comcept announces its first own game, Dragon & Colonies, for a service debut in 2018 (it will debut in 2019 and shut down eight months later).
- Level 5 Comcept will then switch to supporting Fantasy Life Online (finally released in 2018 in Japan and 2021 in English).
- As a result, Fantasy Life Online, a mobile sequel to a decent seller with a faithful base of 3DS players in Japan and Europe, spends six years (2018-2022) integrally missing out on the Nintendo Switch’s success, the pandemic bubble, and the potential audience from games like Animal Crossing and Stardew Valley, for a grand total(?) of around four million free downloads.
- 2017 is also the year L5 releases three significant 3DS games: the aforementioned Snack World, Yōkai Watch Busters 2, the first game in the series to flop (signalling the end of the Yōkai Watch craze in Japan), and Layton Katrielle’s Journey, which is rejected for not involving the titular Professor Layton nor the quality puzzles that adults enjoyed the series for in the first place. 2017 is both the rapid end of the 3DS dominance in Japan and the end of L5’s golden age.
- 2017 is also when Minna no Golf comes out for PS4, which is significant here for having one of the more senior ex-producers of L5 and some other L5 folks at the helm to help Sony and Clap Hanz. Basically Hino is alone at the wheel having to take care of everything.
It’s not the first time Hino goes against all odds. He survived the initial flop of Dark Cloud and cancellation of TFLO with the successful US localization of Dark Cloud and the DQ8 contract job. He then survived the sputtering of his two golden gooses Layton and Inazuma Eleven (and failure of Gundam Age) in the stumbling first year of 3DS with somehow pulling Yōkai Watch out of his buttocks. It’s always possible he’ll do miracles once again, but it’s been an impressive decade of (putting it nicely) “misfortunes” since the founding of Abby.
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Hey, the positive way to approach this news is they will eventually need new characters if this gatcha does well. The success of Romancing SaGa Re:Universe since 2018 is pretty much why Kawazu has been able to make new games and remasters all these years.
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Omigod I could not be more excited
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I heard about this journal from the Video Game History Foundation. Super fascinating history/ideas!
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It’s over.
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Right when Microsoft is moving to finally shut down Skype, too. I wonder where we’ll all be moving next…
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I’m ready to go back to Quakenet at any time.
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Damn, I’m gonna have to make an account pronto, that place seems legit
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