During my senior year of high school, I had a barbeque in the school parking lot on prom night. Similarly, NIS America annually trolls the Tokyo Game Show with its own press event in a nearby hotel. Hey, there are a bunch of foreign journalists there already, and doing this is way cheaper and probably more effective than having a TGS booth. Everybody wins. This year bought a couple of localization announcements.
First, European Persona fans can look forward to getting Persona 4: The Golden for Vita. On behalf of Atlus USA, NIS America will be distributing the game to the European market some time in the spring of 2013.
Next, the company will be bringing the new Hyperdimension Neptunia to North America for the PS3. Called Hyperdimension Neptunia Victory, it takes place a couple of years after the most recent game, with Neptune sitting around and being so lazy that she fell to level one. Don't you hate when that happens? She stumbles upon a new dimension and meets Irisheart, who is the CPU of Planetune in her native dimension.
Gameplay in the new Neptunia will introduce the Scout System. With it, players can send allies out to find dungeons, rare monsters, and places where there might be sweet items. The team seemed really excited to tell us the game now had a jump button. Players can increase their stats like something out of an Elder Scrolls game; jumping leads to higher jumping level, investigating things leads to better vision, and so on.
Also on the topic of Neptunia, the team introduces a free iPhone application that lets one of two characters run a PDA. Users select either Noire or Neptune, and that character will be the theme of your schedule, alarm, calendar, and stuff like that. One can also put the girls in a frame and take fun pictures with her, making it look like there's an anime girl chilling at your house or attending your rebellious BBQ. The PS3 game is set to launch in the spring of 2013, while the iOS app should be ready this winter.
Rounding out the revelations was a PSP game, Generation of Chaos: Pandora's Reflection. The other Generation of Chaos games on PSP were hardcore strategy RPGs, but this one's key features are said to be that it moves faster and is a lot more simple; it still clocks in at 50 hours, though. There's a rhythm game aspect in the battle system, requiring precise timing of certain combos to get the most out of them. Since PSP games don't do too well in North America, it will only be available via the PlayStation Network. Neither a price nor a specific release date were revealed, but the window of spring 2013 was named as the current expectation.
None of the games were playable. Watch for more info and media as we get closer to release time.
