Ar Tonelico Slips
Sorry, guys, you're going to have to wait until next year to get your Moé fix.
Published: September 11, 2006
It's probably a given that most folks who even know about Ar Tonelico would know about the whole Moé... thing, but in the interest of helping the general populace understand it, we'll offer a little explanation. Moé is probably best described (or at least it was to us) as generally being "cute" with some kind of borderline sexiness, though it's probably a little more than that.
The term has caught on with the Japanese Otaku there, enough that entire subgenres of anime have sprung up around it, and it was really only a matter of time before the video games that followed would make the leap to the US. Not surprisingly, it's going to arrive on our shores by way of NIS America through Ar Tonelico. It's just that it's going to arrive a few months later than originally intended.
“Because Ar Tonelico was such a huge hit in Japan, and it is an extremely distinctive title, I would like to provide the localization team more time to work on this game in order to bring the highest quality product of this very new and exciting simulation role-playing game to our local customers," explains NIS America president Haru Akenaga. "Moreover, Ar Tonelico is well known for the “Moé” (pronounced “mo-éh”) style RPG in Japan. I want the localization team to be able to express this popular Japanese feeling of Moe to the American gamers through the gameplay.”
We're certainly not against localization doing its thing, but the fact that the game was originally slated to go up against the RPG juggernaut that is Final Fantasy XII meant that it probably would have been swallowed up in the RPG Holiday rush. Pushing things back into 2007 (just February, for those curious), means that the game will miss the all-important Christmas shopping season, but that it won't be lost amid the PlayStation 3/Wii launches.
It'll still have to go up against Rogue Galaxy, Sony and Level 5's mega-epic, but at least it'll have a bit more of a fighting chance. That NIS was smart enough to realize the game would just be buried shows just how agile and responsive a small-time publisher can be. We'll have more on Ar Tonelico as we get closer to that revised February 2007 release.
The term has caught on with the Japanese Otaku there, enough that entire subgenres of anime have sprung up around it, and it was really only a matter of time before the video games that followed would make the leap to the US. Not surprisingly, it's going to arrive on our shores by way of NIS America through Ar Tonelico. It's just that it's going to arrive a few months later than originally intended.
“Because Ar Tonelico was such a huge hit in Japan, and it is an extremely distinctive title, I would like to provide the localization team more time to work on this game in order to bring the highest quality product of this very new and exciting simulation role-playing game to our local customers," explains NIS America president Haru Akenaga. "Moreover, Ar Tonelico is well known for the “Moé” (pronounced “mo-éh”) style RPG in Japan. I want the localization team to be able to express this popular Japanese feeling of Moe to the American gamers through the gameplay.”
We're certainly not against localization doing its thing, but the fact that the game was originally slated to go up against the RPG juggernaut that is Final Fantasy XII meant that it probably would have been swallowed up in the RPG Holiday rush. Pushing things back into 2007 (just February, for those curious), means that the game will miss the all-important Christmas shopping season, but that it won't be lost amid the PlayStation 3/Wii launches.
It'll still have to go up against Rogue Galaxy, Sony and Level 5's mega-epic, but at least it'll have a bit more of a fighting chance. That NIS was smart enough to realize the game would just be buried shows just how agile and responsive a small-time publisher can be. We'll have more on Ar Tonelico as we get closer to that revised February 2007 release.