Fist of the North Star: Ken's Rage
Hisashi Koinuma, the game's producer said that the staff aim to create a "new realistic feel" for the "Fist of the North Star" series while still being faithful to the original's roots. During this process, he mentioned his concerns for the characters' body structure, muscles, and other minute details (such as perfecting the model for Raoh's wrinkled forehead). He noted that the official mode for this title carries more action adventure tones than other "Warriors" titles thus far yet gave his assurance that "Warriors" fans can easily feel at home in the game's original story mode. He personally spoke his thoughts regarding the game at Yodobashi-Akiba, Biccamera Yurakucho, and Biccamera Ikebukuro on March 22 and March 25. He also played a rock-paper-scissor game for attendants, the winner of the crowd obtaining an original T-shirt signed by the game's voice actors.
History of Eastern role-playing video games
In 2000, "Phantasy Star Online" on the Dreamcast introduced online gaming to consoles and was responsible for pushing console gamers "to dial up with the Dreamcast to play online and to experience a new style of play." It resulted in taking "consoles online" and defining "small-scale multiplayer RPGs," paving the way for larger-scale MMORPG efforts such as "Final Fantasy XI", setting the template for small-scale online RPGs such as Capcom's "Monster Hunter" series and some of the later "Dragon Quest" and "Final Fantasy" games, and giving rise to "an entire pantheon of multiplayer dungeon crawlers that continue to dominate the Japanese sales charts." More generally, "Phantasy Star Online" made "both online gaming and the concept of fee-based services a reality for consoles," paving the way for the online gaming services later provided by all three of the seventh-generation consoles. That same year, "Vagrant Story" introduced a pausable real-time battle system based on targeting individual body parts, using both melee and bow & arrow weapons; similar body-targeting battle systems were later used in Bethesda's "Fallout 3" (2008) and Nippon Ichi's "Last Rebellion" (2010). That year also saw the release of the PlayStation 2, which would become the best-selling game console of all time, due in large part to its large variety of Japanese RPGs (including franchises such as "Final Fantasy", "Grandia", and "Tales") that established its dominance over the RPG market.