SNK has announced the following lineups for their New portable hardware, NeoGeo Pocket.

Samurai Shodown
Real Bout 2
Gekka No Kenshi (Last Blade 2)
Metal Slug
Flying Power Disk
BioMotor Unitron (RPG)
 
 
 

-Done on 10/24/98-
3D Fatal Fury for NeoGeo 64 Announced
Copyright SNK, 1998

Last week, SNK had announced the decision to create a polygon version of Fatal Fury for the NeoGeo 64.
 
In related news, comments were made live in radio on 10/22 by Terry's voice actor Satoshi Hashimoto that its voice recording for the game has already finished, and in his case with muscle strains after shouting too much.
 
 

-Done on 10/24/98-
More Additional news and Pics on final Fantasy VIII
Copyright Square, 1998

Check the Menu on the left.
 
 
 

 
-Done on 10/24/98-
New Pics on Ergheiz
Copyright Square, 1998
 
 
Pictures of Yuffie and Vincent in Ergheiz have been released, as well as additional pictures of Cloud ding his meteor move and Sephriroth's throw done with his Sword as a combo finisher.
   
 
Bigger images of above and The Rest of the Game shots can be found in the Image Archives
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 

-Done on 10/20/98-
Additional news and Pics on final Fantasy VIII
Copyright Square, 1998
 
 
4 New scoops&shots have been released by square concerning Final Fantasy VIII.
The first is Squall and Rinoa's meeting of fate in the Garden's Dance party. At this time Squall already seems to have his scar from Seifer's Duel.

 
 
The second is a shot of Rinoa together with Edea the witch, which makes rumors of the two having a relation solid.

 
 
The third is a new mascot character to the Final Fantasy series, called Munba (may be spelt differently).
It's charm points are suppsoed to be its brush-like hair and tail, and likes cleaning things with its tail as a hobby.
Munba is a cautious animal and also a bit chicken, but has a sence of duty.

 
 
The fourth Is the mechanical fortress known as the Sand Prison. shaped as a drill, The mechanical prison can do into the sand.

 
 
Also, Final Fantasy VIII is PDA compatible, with a game to raise a Chocobo.

 
 
More Game shots and pics can be found in the Image Archives
 
 
 
 
 

 

-Done on 10/14/98-
News and Pics on Last Blade 2
Copyright SNK, 1998

SNK announced news on their upcoming Last Blade sequel, named
Bakumatsu Roman Dai ni Maku -Gekka no Kenshi- Tsuki ni saku Hana, Chiri yuku Hana
(Last Blade 2nd- Moon's blossoming beauty, falling flowers)

Pictures and minute informaion on Last Blade 2 has been revealed. At the current moment, the following has been confirmed-
1- Evelopment in the Parry system
2- Additional new systems
3- New characters
4- All the backgrounds changed

Three totally new characters are in LB2. The first is Sanada Koujirou, a group leader in the same team as Washizuka from LB1. The second is a man who came from the Demno's Gate opened by the last boss Kagami Shinnosuke in Last Blade1.  The last is Takane Hibiki, a girl who uses Iai-kuki sword tachnique (same as Ukyo from the Samurai Shodown series) and is traveling to find the silver heaired killer of her father.
 

The Character images and Game shots can be found in the Image Archives
 
 
 
 
 

 

-Done on 10/11/98-
Tokyo Game Show In-Depth
Well, it's that time of the year again!!!!
 
 

-Done on 10/09/98-
Quick update on what's to come in 24 hours -TGS News
Copyright Cesa, 1998
 

Right now the madman is hot on the keyboards typing up articles and scanning pics. The special articles on TGS will be up hopefully by 5PM JST, tomorrow.
 

Quick overview--
This year's TGS seems to be based on portables. losts of Gameboy color games, NeoGeo Pocket, Playstation's portable officially announced, and a new portable game called Swan that runs on only one AA Battery has been announced from Bandai. Swan has a nice number of games on the way including a Card game version of Tekken and Chocobo's Dungeon, and even something interesting as a "A day in Rome" game.
 
 

Sony
Biggest news seems to be the new Playstation-related portable. Other game displays are IQ Final, Crash Bandicoot 3 to name a few.
More news tomorrow.

Sega
A gratious number of Dreamcasts were on display, playable. Virtual Fighter 3tb was playable with limited characters-- the game seems to be quite complete and the transparancies are present. BioHazrad- Code:Veronica  has finally, offically been announced. D's Diner 2 has been set back to the year 1999. Two new titles "July" and "Blue Stinger" has also been announced.

Nintendo
As usual Nintendo did not attend as a member of the TGs, although they are a member of the Cesa.

PC
Enemy Zero, Sakura Wars, Virtua Fighter 2 Special pack, Sonic R are some of the few titles released in the PC division.
 

Square
A rack full of demo machines with Final Fantasy 8 were present, and also many machines with Ehrgeiz were present. Yuffie, Sephiroth and Vincent were completely playable-- more on them later.  The new Chocobo race game was announced and two screens of movie videos were constantly on display-- Squall's being slashed by Seifer is very well animated and knocks off FF7's movie CGs completely, unfortunately security was very tight at Square's booth and shots could not be taken.

Namco
The new remake of Tales of Fantasia for the Playstation was on display-- more on this tomorrow.

Capcom
Most of the booth were filled with playable demos of SFA3, which seemed very complete already. The Capcom generations and a new puzzle game was also on display.
While I myself have not played enough SFA3 at the arcades to make a complete comparion, the Playstation version did not seem choppy at least (ie:dog in R.Mika's stage had 5-6 frames of animation, etc) and the polygon effects seemed very natural and fit into the game-- in fact most players probably would not even realize it unless told so.
SFA3 for the home version seems to have 5 additional hidden characters besides Juri, Juni and Balrog. Unfortunately they were sillouettes and not playable, at least in the TGS version. Also the game's characters can be grown up with Playstation's new portable PDA module.

Konami
Beatmaina was in the heat. Perhaps the biggest release this time was the N64 version of Castlevania which is 3D (somewhat Turok style) action game, very different from the past series.

Koei
After 20 years, Koei has changed their logo. Their huge release for TGS seems to be the previously announced Nobunaga's Ambition- playable on net'.

SNK
Most of SNK's booth was filled with NeoGeo Pocket. I was able to ask some questions to SNK officials, hopefully even more tomorrow.
More in 24H.
 

Many pics will be available in 24 Hours-- stay tuned.
 
 
 
 

-Done on 10/09/98-
SNK announces Polygon Fatal Fury
Copyright SNK, 1998

SNK has recently annouced their decision to create a polygon Fatal Fury sequel. No other information has been released at the current time.
As usual the Madman's Cafe will keep on track the latest news in relation.

 

-Done on 10/04/98-
Konami announces Gradius IV
Copyright Konami, 1998

Konami announced their release of hit shooter series, Gradius VI. It has been 9 years since GradiusIII was released.

Gradius IV had been shown at the AM show in Japan on September 17, 98 at a completion of 40%. At the time 5 stages, all in distinct Gradius style were playable-
Plant stage, crystal & bubbles stage, Volcano stage, Moai Stage and Bio stage.

In addition to the classic type weapons, some new attacks are now present, such as Vertical mine, Armor piercer and Flying Torpedo.
 

 More Stages & Images can be found in the Image Archives
 
 
 
 
 

 

-Done on 10/04/98-
House Of The Dead 2 & Blood Bullet Update
Copyright Sega, 1998

Naomi's first game release- House of the Dead 2

House of the Dead 2 takes place 2 years after the incident in House of the Dead1. Thsi time, the stage is much larger in scale and is no longer a single mansion- it is a town. House of the Dead 2 is scheduled for arcade release in November.

 
 
 
 

Blood Bullet

Blood Bullet, AKA House of the Dead 1 1/2 is not a gun shooter game but an action game with a horror background similar to its gun shooter series.

Blood Bullet uses an analog controller and 3 buttons- Guard, fist attack and gun attack. Various combinations of attacks can be done using the fist as weapon. The player must choose out of 3 characters to go through the game with.

 
More Images can be found in the Image Archives
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

-Done on 10/04/98-
SNK Announces Last Blade 2 
Copyright SNK, 1998

While not much information has been released, SNk has announced a Sequel to their sword fightign game "Gekka No Kenshi", AKA Last Blade. So far there has been annoucnements of some system changes, and three new characters.

 
 

-Done on 10/04/98-
Dreamcast delayed to 11/27, and other related news
Copyright Sega, 1998

Due to speed of manufacturing and ***, Dreamcast's retail debut has been delayed from 11/20 to 11/27, 1998.
In other news, Dreamcas'ts media has been officially announced as "GD-ROM", a disk ROM which can hold up to 1 Gigabyte of memory.
 

Also, while Dreamcast comes with a 33.6 bps modem, it is detachable in order to keep up with the increasing speed of moderm communications.
 

 
 
 
 
 

-Done on 9/25/98-
SNK Officially Joins Dreamcast- Announces port of King Of Fighters 98'
Copyright SNK, 1998

While SNK's decision to create the Dreamcast compatible machine NeoGeo Pocket basically showed signs on Joining in, SNK officially made their announcement to do so.  SNK's first title for Dreamcast has been announced as The King Of Fighters 98'. The Dreamcast version & game system of KOF98' will be created with the arcade version as the base, with arrangements of high speed screen effects and instertion of animation movies.
KOF98' for Dreamcast will be compatible in some form to KOF-R1 for the NeoGeo pocket, but details have yet to be announced. The price and release date has not been announced as of yet.

 
 
 
 
 

-Done on 9/25/98-
New Characters for Square's Ehrgeiz Announced
Copyright Square, 1998

The extra characters from Final Fantast VII which have been scheduled for appearance in Ehrgeiz have finally been announced.
The characters other than Tifa and Cloud are- Sephiroth, Vincent Valentine, and Yuffie Kisaragi.
At the current time only images of Sephiroth have been released out of the three new characters.
 

 
 
 
 

-Done on 9/25/98-
Street Fighter Alpha 3 Announced for Playstation Port
Copyright Capcom, 1998

SFA3 for the Playstation is scheduled for December.
  More Images can be found in the Image Archives
 
 

-Done on 9/25/98-
Additional Info on Final Fantasy VIII
Copyright Square, 1998
 

While the Madman's Cafe has not been reporting much on FF8 for the past months, here are some new information.
 
 
Edea the Witch

Edea is the "witch" who was chosen out of all the females in the world to inherit the previous witch's magical power, as it is custom to do so. While it was also customary for witches to be feared and hated, Edea is hailed by the people, perhaps becuase of her charisma, or perhaps by using her powers to brainwash them. While it is not hard to imagine that Squall will be in a position to fight agianst her, Rinoa Heartilly seems to have some connection to Edea.
 

Seifer's Teamup with Edea the Witch

By some relation, Seifer Almasy seems to team up with Edea in the storyline as the picture shows.
 
 
 
 

The Junction

In addition to the new systems in FF8 such as the draw and Guardian Force, a new system called Junction has been announced.
In junction, a character can equip a physical item together with another object that is not physical- such as a Guardian Force or magic. By doing so, the player can customize characters in innovative ways.

For Example,
By junctioning a Guardian Force(GF) to a character and winning battles, the GF itself will aquire Ability Points(AP). With enough APs, the GF will level up and learn new abilities- some will effect the GF itself, other will effect the junctioned character or give out extra options in the game menu. Each GF has a list of learnable abilities, out of where the player can decide which to learn by clicking ON or OFF.   There are many abilities such as Hit Point 20% Up, extra battle commands, extra attack power, "mix items", "negocitate prices", etc.

 More Images and A Squall Banner can be found in the Image Archives
 
 
 
 
 

 

-Done on 9/25/98-
Sega's Dreamcast compatible Arcade Board "Naomi" Announced
Copyright Sega, 1998

Sega announced their new Dreamcast compatible arcade board Naomi at the Tokyo Big site's AM show (8/17-20). Naomi is more powerful than Dreamcast itself but game conversions from Naomi to Dreamcast is easy sincce both machines use similar architecture. Sega plans to release Naomi in November with its first game "House of the Dead 2", and plans to release 2 other games within the year: Dynamite Baseball 98' and Blood Bullet- The house of the Dead Side story.
 

Other third party companies which will join Naomi goes as follows:
Capcom, Tecmo, Treasure, Saikyo, Keibu, Jaleco, Visco, Sammy, etc (20 Companies total)
Capcom has already presented an action game Power Stone for Naomi while Tecmo also announced the sequel to their hit fighter game Dead Or Alive 2.
 

Naomi's specs goes as follows. Also, the Dreamcast's Visual memory module will also be usable for Naomi, although there are no current plans to use it in the games.
 

-Done on 9/25/98-
Marvel Super Heroes VS Street Fighter for Saturn Date Scheduled
Copyright Capcom, 1998

Sega Saturn's port of Marvel SuperHeroes VS Streetfighter has been announced for October 22nd.

-Done on 9/25/98-
Virtua Fighter 3tb and Sega Rally 2 Announced for Dreamcast
Copyright Sega, 1998

Virtua Fighter 3tb- a version of Virtua Fighter 3 with minor adjustments and a  Tag battle mode, has been announced for Sega's Dreamcast.
Sega Rally 2 will also be converted to Dreamcast, with additional courses, cars and the ability to race with others over the modem.
While the exact prices and dates of the two games are not yet announced, they will be coming out near the end of this year.

In an additional Note, the Virtua Fighter 3 scheduled for Sega Saturn has been canceled.
 
 
 
 
 
 

-Done on 9/25/98-
Shock Troopers 2 Announced for NeoGeo
Copyright Saurus, 1998

The sequel to Shock Troopers- Shock Troopers Second Squad, has been announced for the NeoGeo.
In place of the Team Battle in its previous series, ST2 now has 3 vehicles which can be used and driven on- Tank, Armored Truck, and Patrol Robot.
There are also extra weapons such as Flame throwers, missile launchers, round chargers and boomerang Guns.
 
Controls-
A Button- Attack. Hold on to keep on shooting in one direction. Also, charged shots can be fired when on vehicles.
B Button- Jump. Invincible while in air, no limited usage.
C Button- Special Attack. Limited usage.
 
 
In place of the old members from Shock Troopers 1, there are four new characters.

From the left- Leon, Angel, Toie and Lulu.
 
 
 
 
 
 

-Done on 9/25/98-
KOF Kyo Game Info
Copyright Yumekoubou, 1998