Ultimately Golden
Naruto and company are finally ready to duke it out on US shores.
Published: June 6, 2006
Clearly there's something special about Naruto. That it took off like crazy not only in Japan (it grew from a feature in Weekly Shonen Jump in '99 to a graphic novel series that has sold over 59 million copies), but here in the US (the VIZ Entertainment-licensed property is one of the Cartoon Network's most popular series, and if you're brave enough, you can run a search on YouTube for "Naruto" and laugh for hours at the number of results you'll get). That says something about the show, one would think. It also means we're missing out, though we aim to change that here very soon.
Chiefly among our aides for getting immersed in Masashi Kishimoto's ninja-filled series is Ultimate Ninja (nee Narutimate Hero), Namco Bandai's upcoming Naruto fighting game. Yes, it's a fighting game, and a licensed one at that, but before you roll your eyes and click away lest you be inundated in useless details about the game, check out our preview of it first. Seriously, it's not as bad as you'd expect -- and far better than we first throught it'd be.
See, the idea is that you get to fight with more than a dozen characters from the show/manga across 12 arenas with multiple tiers and depth planes to jump between. Since there's a whole lotta teleportin' goin' on, the game actually plays a lot like a suped-up version of Power Stone-meets-Super Smash Bros., and that's not a bad thing. The build we played with the game for our preview was nearly finished, but we've finally gotten word that the game has officially gone gold just weeks before its release later this month.
That means it's done, folks, and needs only to be shipped off to Sony to get mass stamped and labeled with that silky smoove label that all the PS2 games have. We'll have a final review of the game here in the next few weeks, so keep your eyes peeled, and don't be surprised if you see yet another news story on the game's release date (it's still a nebulous "June" right now).
Chiefly among our aides for getting immersed in Masashi Kishimoto's ninja-filled series is Ultimate Ninja (nee Narutimate Hero), Namco Bandai's upcoming Naruto fighting game. Yes, it's a fighting game, and a licensed one at that, but before you roll your eyes and click away lest you be inundated in useless details about the game, check out our preview of it first. Seriously, it's not as bad as you'd expect -- and far better than we first throught it'd be.
See, the idea is that you get to fight with more than a dozen characters from the show/manga across 12 arenas with multiple tiers and depth planes to jump between. Since there's a whole lotta teleportin' goin' on, the game actually plays a lot like a suped-up version of Power Stone-meets-Super Smash Bros., and that's not a bad thing. The build we played with the game for our preview was nearly finished, but we've finally gotten word that the game has officially gone gold just weeks before its release later this month.
That means it's done, folks, and needs only to be shipped off to Sony to get mass stamped and labeled with that silky smoove label that all the PS2 games have. We'll have a final review of the game here in the next few weeks, so keep your eyes peeled, and don't be surprised if you see yet another news story on the game's release date (it's still a nebulous "June" right now).