Post Oficial VANILLAWARE [A Cruel Angel's Thesis, E.T. y pan yakisoba] 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim

"¡Muerte por kiki"  

"On PlayStation 3, you use the analog stick [like a cursor] to select objects such as healing items. We wanted to take advantage of features on Vita, like the touch screen, so on Vita you can do the same thing by touching objects on the screen,"

"In addition to items, you can touch parts of the background. Walls, for example, may collapse if you touch them opening new paths."

"You can give character data to a friend and even if you’re not there they can use your character in the game. When you play Dragon’s Crown online, fallen characters leave corpses on the map. The body collection system allows players to collect these corpses from the battlefield and bring them back to town."

"Pay a fee and you can revive these characters and use them inside your game. In a single player game, revived characters are computer-controlled NPCs and if you’re stuck you can select a more powerful character to assist you."

George Kamitani, head of Odin Sphere and Muramasa: The Demon Blade developers Vanillaware, is not a man who forgets. When he comes up with an idea, he wants to finish it -- even if it takes a decade or so. That's the story behind Dragon's Crown, his latest game and one that has its origins in Princess Crown, a fighter title he developed for the Saturn in 1997.

"The idea for the game itself had its start around 13 years ago," Kamitani told Famitsu magazine in an interview published this week. "Dragon's Crown was concepted immediately after Princess Crown -- it was originally a Dreamcast project. I worked on [Capcom's] Dungeons & Dragons: Tower of Doom before that, and ever since then, I've always been hoping I could work on something like that again. It was hard to convince a publisher to greenlight the idea, but I rewrote the project plan after finishing up Muramasa and finally managed to get Ignition to sign on with the game."

What's the goal of Dragon's Crown? "The challenge here is to advance the genre of games like Golden Axe and The King of Dragons, which I love, while still keeping them 2D," Kamitani said. "Hopefully we can work some new stuff in there that we didn't manage with Muramasa. For example, there's a red dragon boss that's sleeping atop a massive pile of treasure. If you try to take the treasure, he'll wake up and attack you. You can try taking him on directly, but it'll be a tough battle. You have the option of escape, of course -- he'll chase after you, but if you can make it over a stone bridge, it'll collapse under the weight of the dragon and he'll fall downward. That sort of thing. We want to have these sorts of rescues for the player when he's fighting difficult bosses. If the player comes across an enemy he's too low-level for, I want to be sure there's always a way he can survive."

Dragon's Crown is an online-ready 2D title featuring teams of player-controlled parties exploring a vast labyrinth, slaying foes and hunting for treasure. "It's still being fine-tuned," Kamitani said, "but currently, each weapon has a durability stat, and if you rush in with it, you run the chance of having the weapon blown out of your hands. You can pick it up again if it's right nearby, but it's possible you might lose it entirely, in which case you'll have to fight barehanded until a thief in your party picks up another weapon."

How will online play work? "Online, players can fight with any of the game's classes they like. There will be RPG-like elements, and you'll be able to look for more powerful weapons and learn assorted skills. You can't chat online, but there will be greeting and dying messages you can define." Dying messages? "This is still in the works, but as you play, the game gathers information about other players online, and when they die, their bones appear in your game. You can then see their dying message by examining the bones, and you can take the bones back to the temple and resurrect them to have the characters fight for you as NPCs. That's the plan, anyway."

Vanillaware isn't a big outfit, and Kamitani has a tendency to talk about every project like it's the last one he'll ever do. Judging by his tone in the interview, though, he's incredibly excited about finally bringing Dragon's Crown to life. "For someone as into arcade games as I am, Dragon's Crown is a project I absolutely wanted to make happen before I die," he closed. "I'm putting everything I have into this! We're working on a lot of other ideas we aren't talking about yet, but as always, we're short on people. Vanillaware is hiring programmers right now, so if you think you're up for it, let us know!"