First point of notice is that the latest two additions to the long-running RPG Maker (RPG Tsukuru) series developed by Enterbrain – RPG Maker Plus (Nintendo DS) and RPG Maker VX Ace (PC) have today been released to the Japanese public. These games offer improvements to their original counterparts and hope to make your RPG game creation experience even easier, with several new feature improvements. While there is no word on if the DS version of the game will ever see the light of day outside of Japan, the team behind the English RPG Maker releases seems to be hard at work and in the process of translating RPG Maker VX Ace for an eventual English release… however no release date has been set yet. For now however, you can check out an English demo game – Princess Princess by Archeia and Rhyme from rpgmaker.net which can easily be accessed HERE and was developed entirely within the limitations of the Japanese trial version.
However that is not the only thing of interest when it comes to the RPG Maker releases. You may recall a few weeks back I did a review on the PSP game Corpse Party, recently released in English by XSEED Games and is proving highly regarded within the gaming press community, and personally recieving an A grade from me and a candidate for my Game of the Year 2011. That version of the game was infact an enhanced version of the original game… which I doubt many of you would have played or will even get the chance to play. Released by Team GrisGris in 1996, Corpse Party was developed using RPG Tsukuuru Dante98 for the NEC PC-9800 series of computers… and while having what was then considerable limitations, the plot became so well received that it achieved a fanbase many indie games could dream of, resulting in Corpse Party Zero, despite no official release being made for 12 years. In 2008 with the spawn of many murder-horror themed titles such as Higurashi no Naku Koro ni, Team GrisGris returned with Corpse Party: Blood Covered which while not being developed on RPG Maker software… retained much of the old charm with many improvements developed by fans over the years such as character and so forth.
Despite moving away from the RPG Maker platform, it does not seem that Team GrisGris has forsaken its roots, with the inclusion of Corpse Party portrait art and character sprites which are available for download over the Nintendo Wi-fi system exclusively for RPG Maker Plus, allowing you to develop your own side-stories from the game or perhaps have them fight monsters in Heavenly Host Elementary School (The original game only had a final boss while the future versions had none). From the looks of it, they have only included the five “Main” characters from the game – Satoshi, Naomi, Yoshiki, Ayumi and Yuka…. but considering the limited number of party members allowed, it should still be plenty to work with. Below, I have included some more screenshots of the content – sourced from Famitsu.
