[E3 2010] Young Thor Joins the Minis Camp
Courtesy of Frima Studio, the bite-sized PSP/PS3 will apparently get a ringing endorsement from Sony next week.
Published: June 11, 2010
The Minis initiative that Sony rolled out alongside the launch of the PSP go has been... well, it wouldn't be unfair to call it disastrous. Sure, there have been the odd bright spots here and there (many of them coming from the guys over at Halfbrick, who seem to be taking the idea of 100MB-or-smaller downloads with the kind of seriousness that it deserves more than even Sony's Japan Studio is), but by and large it's a wasteland of weak-sauce one-off concepts with too high a sticker price in what feels very much like the worst parts of the App Store without breadth of experiences or the impulse buy prices.
That's changing -- however slowly -- and things are starting to look up. Mini's are finally starting to sell for just a buck and the success of devs like Halfbrick and Quebec-based Frima Studio are leading the way in showing that not everything has to be an overpriced bit of 15-second gameplay. Case in point: Zombie Tycoon an RTS that felt far more like a retail product than 99% of the Minis out there. We can only hope the success of that spurred on the devs to take another stab at it, but regardless of the reason why, quality Minis may well grow by one with the release of Young Thor -- at least SCEE seems to believe in the game enough to showcase it at their part of the Sony booth at E3 next week.
The key, it seems, is the fact that Young Thor isn't a port from the iPhone (like most Minis), nor any other platform for that matter. It's an honest-to-goodness ground-up Mini effort, made just for the platform and playable on both the PSP and PS3. Either Frima wants to become the new kings of the Minis program or they're crazy (or they were approached by Sony personally, but we like the crazy and/or brave ideas better), but we're definitely curious to see how the adventure will turn out. Since we're in full-on E3 lazyiness mode, we'll let the good folks a reveb sum up the game thusly:
As young Thor, you'll have to travel to both Midgard and Asgard, battling hordes of mythical monsters as you strive to put an end to Hel's evil designs. The three Norns – Urd, Skuld and Verdandi – have gone missing, leaving no one to tend to Yggdrasil, the World Tree. Can you save the day and restore balance? Do you have what it takes to be the mighty god of thunder?
Well? Do you? We guess we'll see when the game finally ships on the PSN, eh?
That's changing -- however slowly -- and things are starting to look up. Mini's are finally starting to sell for just a buck and the success of devs like Halfbrick and Quebec-based Frima Studio are leading the way in showing that not everything has to be an overpriced bit of 15-second gameplay. Case in point: Zombie Tycoon an RTS that felt far more like a retail product than 99% of the Minis out there. We can only hope the success of that spurred on the devs to take another stab at it, but regardless of the reason why, quality Minis may well grow by one with the release of Young Thor -- at least SCEE seems to believe in the game enough to showcase it at their part of the Sony booth at E3 next week.
The key, it seems, is the fact that Young Thor isn't a port from the iPhone (like most Minis), nor any other platform for that matter. It's an honest-to-goodness ground-up Mini effort, made just for the platform and playable on both the PSP and PS3. Either Frima wants to become the new kings of the Minis program or they're crazy (or they were approached by Sony personally, but we like the crazy and/or brave ideas better), but we're definitely curious to see how the adventure will turn out. Since we're in full-on E3 lazyiness mode, we'll let the good folks a reveb sum up the game thusly:
As young Thor, you'll have to travel to both Midgard and Asgard, battling hordes of mythical monsters as you strive to put an end to Hel's evil designs. The three Norns – Urd, Skuld and Verdandi – have gone missing, leaving no one to tend to Yggdrasil, the World Tree. Can you save the day and restore balance? Do you have what it takes to be the mighty god of thunder?
Well? Do you? We guess we'll see when the game finally ships on the PSN, eh?
