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Conduct of Code

Many wrote off Code of Princess when it was first announced. Its graphics were muddy, its developer was unproven, and its entire reason for existing seemed to be a Kinu Nishimura illustration of a warrior woman clad only in a few coin-sized pieces of armor. Well, things changed. Subsequent previews looked better, the development staff sported former Treasure employees, and the princess of the title…well, she still looks completely ridiculous. But Princess Solange is joined by a bunch of other playable characters, including a spindly thief, a zombie sorceress, an imposingly armored nun, a belted-up martial artist, a cat dressed in Egyptian regalia, and a pint-sized witch accompanied by a huge skeletal snake monster. And they're all in a belt-scrolling brawler.

Perhaps the biggest attention-grabber is the resemblance between Code of Princess and Treasure's classic Guardian Heroes. Staffers Masaki Ukyo and Tetsuhiko “Han” Kikuchi worked on Guardian Heroes and other Treasure projects, and Code of Princess has similar features: combo-friendly moves, a guard button, dashing, and stages where characters jump between planes, lending the combat a tighter feel similar to a fighting game. It also emulates the impressive multiplayer moves of Guardian Heroes, culminating in a four-player battle royale that offers control of any character from the game's story mode, right down to the humble villagers. It all moves a little slower than Guardian Heroes, but it's hard to be too picky. There's a lack of decent old-fashioned brawlers on the market, and Code of Princess turned out better than anyone expected at a glance.

Import Barrier: Aside from that pesky regional lockout on Japanese 3DS games, Code of Princess is quite playable.

Chances of a Domestic Release: Not so bad. Agatsuma is definitely interested, and at least one gaming site hinted at an U.S. version before the news was suspiciously retracted.

Fire Emblem: Awakening is a shade disappointing now that we know its background. See, Nintendo and Intelligent Systems originally threw around ideas about setting the game in the modern world or on the planet Mars. And while those are brilliantly insane concepts, they probably wouldn't be the same Fire Emblem that fans have known since the days of the Famicom. So Awakening is still a strategy-RPG set in the same sort of fantasy realm shared by past Fire Emblems. It follows two denizens of the Iris Kingdom: one's a lordly swordsman named Crom, and the other is a character of the player's creation—male or female, big or small, flattering or not. Such customized heroes are nothing new to the series (the first Fire Emblem game to make it here positioned the player as an in-game tactician), but Awakening takes the series to new places. As in past Fire Emblems, supporting characters can start relationships, and this new installment lets the player's avatar marry any compatriots of the opposite sex.

Awakening casts the typical Fire Emblem aesthetics in slightly darker tone. From the opening animation to the look of the characters, it's all a tad more subdued and realistic. The underlying mechanics don't change that much, though. The players commands a wide range of followers on the battlefield, and each of the 40 different varieties of warrior has unique strengths and weaknesses. A wide-ranging world map and specialized skills return from past Fire Emblems, and Awakening also lets characters team up when they attack in battle. The Fire Emblem brand of permanent death is also back, and every man and woman who falls in battle is gone for good…in the game's harder mode, that is. There's an easier setting where characters can be magically revived upon dying. You know, just like real life.

Import Barrier: Most of the game's going to be lost on players who can't parse Japanese. Then there's that regional lock.

Chances of a Domestic Release: Pretty good. Nintendo of America already registered a website for the game, so it probably won't end up like…

It now seems a touch odd that Pandora's Tower fell under the same banner as the much-demanded RPGs Xenoblade Chronicles and The Last Story. Pandora's Tower is an action game instead of an RPG, and it's by a largely unknown developer of anime-based fighters. But it had timing. It arrived just when Xenoblade and The Last Story were taunting English-speaking Wii owners with ambitious RPGs they might never get to play, and Pandora's Tower looked like another promising import ignored by Nintendo's American branch. Fortunately, it was embraced by Nintendo's European branch.

It also helps that Pandora's Tower takes several cues from the perpetually prestigious Shadow of the Colossus in its tale of a warrior doing desperate things to save someone important. In Pandora's Tower, that warrior is a young soldier named Aeron, and he's trying to cure a cursed woman named Elena. The two of them are directed to a series of towers by a curious peddler who couldn't possibly have an ulterior motive in all of this. Aeron scales the towers and destroy their hideous denizens, all to bring back monster organs. Elena then devours these in a morose attempt to stave off the curse, which is slowly turning her into something horrific. Aeron also talks with Elena in between his tower forays, and the player directs their relationship to some extent. Perhaps it's a video-game allegory for the trauma and desperation of watching a loved one slowly die right in front of you. Or maybe it's just a love story!

Whatever turns the plot takes, Pandora's Tower styles itself as a medieval-fantasy action title. Aeron plays much like any other brawling game protagonist as he hacks at various creatures, but a turn of the Wii remote brings out his Oraclos Chain. A versatile weapon, the chain ensnares enemies, sets up combination attacks, and functions as a long-range grappling hook. While most of the monsters are easily dealt with, the game includes some creative fights with bosses, some of whom seem docile at first (that'd be another nod to Shadow of the Colossus). It may not do for action games what Xenoblade does for RPGs, but Pandora's Tower certainly deserves just as much of a chance on these shores.

Import Barrier: No worries. The European version is entirely in English. Strangely acted English at times, but English all the same. And it's not hard to get it running on a North American console.

Chances of a Domestic Release: Murky. Have Nintendo and other publishers already written off Pandora's Tower? Or are they waiting to see the sell-through numbers for Xenoblade Chronicles and The Last Story? And what of the rumor that GameStop mentioned Pandora's Tower in some internal documents?

There's something sad about a Mortal Kombat game that puts all of its bonus characters on the cover. When I was a kid, Mortal Kombat's extra fighters were well-buried secrets, and we'd spend days trying to find Reptile or Jade or whatever hidden Kombatant existed only in the lies of some older arcade-goer. But we live in a different era now, and there's no point in hiding characters when you can sell them as downloadable extras or promote them as new content. The Vita version of last year's Mortal Kombat has everything in the complete—sorry, Komplete Edition of last year's fighting game, including the bonus roster of Skarlet, Kenshi, Rain, and Freddy Krueger. There's little that's new to the Vita version aside from a tower-ascending mode and a few costumes. Like the Vita editions of Marvel vs. Capcom 3 and BlazBlue, this is merely a portable version of a successful console fighting game.

And that's not necessarily bad. Last year's Mortal Kombat largely succeeded in evoking the same campy, solidly made gameplay of the franchise's highest points. In a testament to just how messy backstories had grown in previous games, the 2011 Mortal Kombat staged a time-travel plot and retold the events of the first three Mortal Kombat titles, conveniently bringing in every important character (plus the irredeemably lame Stryker and Nightwolf) in the process. It's still a 2-D fighter in gameplay, but there's a new combo system to go along with the familiar four attack buttons. Much of the game emphasizes graphic violence in new ways, such as x-ray scenes that show bones shattering inside opponents. Fatalities are also common and sure to upset parents, who will complain that the gory fighting games they played were much more tasteful. Ah, the circle of life.