News: Another Century’s Episode Portable Announced
Posted on : 13-10-2010 | By : Cacophanus | In : News
Hardware: PlayStation Portable
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In the latest Famitsu, a new entry to the Another Century’s Episode series has been announced; titled Another Century’s Episode Portable, it will be released exclusively on the PSP. There are a fair few cool things about this version that should also help assuage the genuine player anguish caused by the last PS3 effort, ACE:R. The first of which is a return to the straight mission setup of the PS2 games, rather than the series scenario adopted by the recent game. Not to mention the similar mission based “secrets” seen in the first ACE that will require multiple replays in order to accrue various unit unlocks. They’re also offering resupplying areas now too, similar in setup to Gundam Senki 0081 – where ammo and health will be replenished during the mission. The big and absolutely awesome aspect of this new version is the epic and wonderfully old school series roster the game will have. Admittedly, many of these are from the PS2 games but we’re still chuffed that Layzner and Dunbine are back (the full list is linked below).
The big and somewhat scary unknown is whether this ACE will revert to the boosting setup seen in the older PS2 games or stick with the idiotic new approach from ACE:R. Considering there is no real chance of retaining the camera look from the PS2 games, the least they could do is return to the old and brilliant boosting setup. With any luck, the legacy animation from the PS2 unit assets will force Banpresto to take a step back and let From Software do their jobs again. As this is the main aspect that helped the older games, as Banpresto were unwilling to fund substantial rewrites so From Software got to control their code and asset base more effectively (without publisher interruption) – hence the consistent functional improvements between each of the PS2 iterations.
In any case, we’re cautiously optimistic that this new ACE will be a return to form. It’s released on January 13th next year for 6,279 yen.
Update: Famitsu now has the screenshots up on their site too.
I don’t know if the always visible boost bar in the screens is an indication of returning to the old engine so I’m crossing my fingers.
What has me worried is the fact that weapons don’t replenish now and need to be restocked outside of missions. The only way this won’t be cumbersome and restrictive is if the developers scale down the amount of enemies back to the level of the original ACE game. Ever since the 2nd game the series threw endless hordes of enemies to pad out mission length at the expense of variety, also evident in how your default weaponry gained exponential increases in ammo count.
I also wonder what that timer visible in all the screens is about.
Oh hey when something you like gets its entire cast recycled(Save 2 and a half series) from the past 4 ACE games you don’t flinch and accept it with open arms. But oh lord no, SRWL is reusing sprites from all the way from the GBA!!! Heavens, Banpresto are a failure of a company they are going to doom us all!
ITB: We are hypocrites.
Hahah! SRW is completely different in the fact that the animations are fixed and meant to be watched. In ACE they’re functional glue that holds the player’s movement together – the animation is a means to a functional end, if anything it’s better if the animation rig(s) are standardised as it means your controls are consistent throughout. SRW’s animations are meant to be eye candy – that’s their only purpose. Recycling those makes it look cheap.
Cheap? Banpresto have been reusing sprites for ages. You behave as if they are doing some kind crime only recently. Off the top of my head:
Impact’s sprites were used to create MX’s.
Many of Impact, MX, OGs and Alpha 2/3 were used in the creation of A’s.
Many of Alpha 3’s were derived from Alpha 2, some didn’t even get any polish, just being put straight into A3.
Alpha/Alpha Gaiden/Alpha 2 were used as basis for many of the GBA OG sprites.
Half of J’s were used to create W.
Then there are those remakes from the early 00s, Complete Box, IIRC many of those were simply taken from Alpha and Alpha Gaiden.
The only one’s I can think of that were built from the ground up were K’s, Z’s and possibly Impact.
Its not like they are placing the old sprites back into L unchanged, they’ve said and shown us that they are spicing them up. It just baffles me how you can continue to take such a stance.
It’s more baffling that you insist the series has diplomatic immunity from such a stance.
Simply because they are meant for show, they aren’t functional animations. The whole purpose for the combat animations in SRW is to show off the series in question and have the player sit and watch – they’re basically cutscenes don’t forget. Re-using the same sprites and (some) animations over and over again defeats the point of the “eye candy” in the first place. It’s not that all SRW is re-hashed either, as SRWZ was actually pretty decent on that front. It’s just the DS games feel really cheap now and from what I played at TGS, SRWL doesn’t look to really change that.
Nobody said the ACE series is exempt from criticizing its recycling of assets. But this is only the 5th game in the series and the first to start such mass reuse of assets. If you weren’t too busy attacking the blog because you don’t like its opinions you’d understand that everyone should more concerned with the series finding its direction, because the 90$ tech demo that came out last August certainly wasn’t driving with the headlights on.
SRW on the other hand, is going some 40+ games strong and has long since settled into a comfortable niche of pumping out 1-2 games per year that practically play the same along with the occasional experiment (Neo, Scramble Commander, Saga). So yeah, it’s not really sacrilegious to ask that they stop reusing a graphics engine that’s been in 4 games now. Maybe they’ll follow the GBA games’ pattern and the next DS SRW will have brand new graphics, who knows?
Not enough UC Gundam.
Greg, nobody and nothing is perfect–you can’t always get what you want. 😎
Not enough G Gundam either.
Well, this has piqued my interest. I confess to not playing any of the games in the ACE series; I did not know of the games themselves until only a couple of years ago (Hey! Put down those pitchforks and torches, okay?).
But, I have learned more about the series (well, in part due to this site) and I am interested in this game. As a fan–and owner–of several PSP mecha games, this could be good addition, if it turns out well.
jeez people quit yapping about the game. if you got nothing good to say just don’t say anything at all. if you have complains about the game then don’t write it here. go tell it to the company itself!
The inclusion of Knights of Lamune definitely made one of my friends more interested, as it’s a favorite series of his, but I have to say what has me most intrigued is the inclusion of (finally) Gundam 00, and the return of Layzner and L.Gaim, both of which rocked in the previous games.
The only disappointment in series inclusion is Pocket Full of Rainbows, which was significantly inferior to Eureka Seven the series, IMO, but still, I’m more interested in how the game’s mission structure works.
Is it a set of smaller missions with more player freedom for play order? How much strategy will be involved in picking the proper units and equipment? Will it be another case of “fixing what isn’t broken,” like ACE R? And how many playable units will their be? As of current, we’ve seen one per series at most, but I can’t imagine that would be the case. Oh, and will there be some new ACE originals, or possibly the return of the fantastic Ixbrau and Gunark from the earlier games? So many questions, so much time to answer them.
@Laura: I guess when more details of the game are released, we’ll find the answers to the questions you have (which are valid, btw).
But remember, changes made to the “normal” ACE structure are due to the PSP’s specifications…but it will be interesting to see if this matches up to the mecha games that Artdink has done for the series. They have certainly utilized the technology of the PSP to the max, and have made great games for it.
I was thinking of Artdink when I first saw this story, though I was also thinking of Armored Core’s recent PSP ports. From the screenshots, they appear to be making some concessions to accommodate for limited input buttons, but I’m really hoping I won’t need to pick up an analog stick converter for my PSP’s thumbpad (playing The Red Star is a great way to showcase how that thumbpad is a terrible movement control system).
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