Treasure interview, new shmup

[Zero Gunner]

Besides Ikaruga XBLA, did Treasure develop anything else for the 360? No? I still don't get why they would rather cancel the 360 shooter when the other shooter developers are working on a port of their arcade games. The other posts here made are right: Treasure should make an arcade version first, then a 360 port. Then they don't have to worry about not making enough money for it.

It seems Wii, and the Nintendo handheld seems to be the home for Treasure's money making for now. Besides working on those shooters, they made those Bleach games published by Sega.

Agreed. I really don't even buy their claims that they had to cancel the game because of the 360's "failure" in Japan; their claim of course going with the traditional logic that their games mostly only sell in Japan (with a few exceptions). Yet the same company then claims that Sin and Punishment surpassed expectations on Wii VC and they're bringing S&P 2 to the US....right.....I'm certain all the soccer moms Nintendo constantly falunts as being their new demographic are going to buy tons of copies of S&P 2. Just like they did for Mad World, No More Heroes, HOTD: Overkill, Zack and Wiki, Klonoa, and every other hardcore-gamer-centric title. Oh wait a minute, EVERY SINGLE HARDCORE GAME ON WII HAS BEEN A FLOP! So instead of supporting a console with a guaranteed user base (both in Japan and abroad) for their product Treasure is content with gambling on the casual, non-gamer crowd with S&P 2. Yeah, that makes tons of sense! Shit, at least games on the 360 and PS3 actually sell. What the 3rd party game has sold well on Wii that didn't include "play", "sports", "wii", "olympics', in the title or was a stupid collection of minigames?

And notice too now how every title released since Ikaruga is either someone else's franchise OR a sequel/psuedo-sequel port of an older Treasure game (something they insisted they'd never do):

Tiny Toon Adventures: Buster's Bad Dream AKA: Scary Dreams
Hajime no Ippo: The Fighting
Wario World
Dragon Drive D-Masters Shot
Astro Boy: Omega Factor
Gradius V
Advance Guardian Heroes
Gunstar Super Heroes
Bleach: The Blade of Fate
Bleach: Dark Souls
Bangai-O Spirits
Bleach: Versus Crusade
Sin and Punishment 2

Admittedly some of these were very good and I'm certainly looking forward to S&P 2. But I just can't buy the excuses coming out of Treasure when a company like Cave is bringing its titles to the 360. The easily deducible fact of the matter is that Treasure has built a good relation with Nintendo due to their NDS games and apparently that's all they can do now. What a shame....

[Zero Gunner]

BTW why the hell are there like 3-4 new threads on this? It's been months now since they mentioned the game was scrapped. Why all the excitement over absolutely nothing?

[Twiddle]

BTW why the hell are there like 3-4 new threads on this? It's been months now since they mentioned the game was scrapped. Why all the excitement over absolutely nothing?

[Necronom]

@zerogunner

Apples and oranges, my friend.
Realistically speaking Cave is bringing next to nothing to the 360 since all their ports stay in the supertiny JP-only ghetto. Compared to this, Sin and Punishment 2 will probably sell A LOT MORE since it's going to be published by "almighty" Ninty itself. A worldwide release is pretty much guaranteed here.
Treasure always had a tendency to choose "odd" platforms for their more original titles. Hell, they even published Ikaruga on a dead system first. My guess is that they go after systems that are easy to develop (and publish!) for and don't have an overwhelming amount of competition.
360 and PS3 are flooded with action-oriented hardcore titles, the chances that something like S&P2 gets buried under them is very high.
For hardcore games the Wii is a dangerous territory but also one with the chance to hit the biggest jackpot - Resident Evil 4 being a good example here which sold extremely well. We'll see how the Conduit and the next Metroid will do...

[lgb]

Funny how nobody bitches about regional locks on PS2 games, or old Saturn titles, or any other console for that matter....

To be fair, both of those together can be purchased for about $50, with minimal searching. They're also easier to region hack, with multiple methods. Also, they're both emulated at a decent level.

Treasure has built a good relation with Nintendo due to their NDS games and apparently that's all they can do now. What a shame....

It makes them money, and people like the games.

Same with 8ing and them doing basically fighting games only; I'm sure they could scrounge up a Mahou Daisakusen... if they wanted to.

[WarpZone]

Iuchi has posted something about Project RS-3 on his blog (Feb. 7 entry), but knowing not to trust machine translation, I won't speculate:

http://www.vgmaterials.com/notebook/

[Rai82]

Iuchi has posted something about Project RS-3 on his blog (Feb. 7 entry), but knowing not to trust machine translation, I won't speculate:

http://www.vgmaterials.com/notebook/

From what I can tell, Iuchi (for those who don't know, Hiroshi Iuchi is the director and producer for Radiant Silvergun, Ikaruga and Gradius V) is talking about how he sent a project draft book of concept work for Project-RS3 to the company for approval. However, due to various reasons that Iuchi didn't elaborate on, pre-production was discontinued, which happened early last year. He also mentioned that Treasure actually done a small survey to ask the public if they would like a brand new shooting game. Turns out a lot of them wanted one and it to be RS3 (so there was support for a sequel!). They actually worked on RS3 when they received the survey results, although due to the above reasons the game never materialized. He also apologized to the people who wrote RS3 in the survey, and says that they do listen to the gamer public.

Next...The pic. New project? Talks about a world recovering from a nuclear war and a man who struggles to survive and battle for the last 50 years...blabla. Shooter? I hope so.

[Zweihander]

Besides Ikaruga XBLA, did Treasure develop anything else for the 360? No? I still don't get why they would rather cancel the 360 shooter when the other shooter developers are working on a port of their arcade games. The other posts here made are right: Treasure should make an arcade version first, then a 360 port. Then they don't have to worry about not making enough money for it.

It seems Wii, and the Nintendo handheld seems to be the home for Treasure's money making for now. Besides working on those shooters, they made those Bleach games published by Sega.

Agreed. I really don't even buy their claims that they had to cancel the game because of the 360's "failure" in Japan; their claim of course going with the traditional logic that their games mostly only sell in Japan (with a few exceptions). Yet the same company then claims that Sin and Punishment surpassed expectations on Wii VC and they're bringing S&P 2 to the US....right.....I'm certain all the soccer moms Nintendo constantly falunts as being their new demographic are going to buy tons of copies of S&P 2. Just like they did for Mad World, No More Heroes, HOTD: Overkill, Zack and Wiki, Klonoa, and every other hardcore-gamer-centric title. Oh wait a minute, EVERY SINGLE HARDCORE GAME ON WII HAS BEEN A FLOP! So instead of supporting a console with a guaranteed user base (both in Japan and abroad) for their product Treasure is content with gambling on the casual, non-gamer crowd with S&P 2. Yeah, that makes tons of sense! Shit, at least games on the 360 and PS3 actually sell. What the 3rd party game has sold well on Wii that didn't include "play", "sports", "wii", "olympics', in the title or was a stupid collection of minigames?

And notice too now how every title released since Ikaruga is either someone else's franchise OR a sequel/psuedo-sequel port of an older Treasure game (something they insisted they'd never do):

Tiny Toon Adventures: Buster's Bad Dream AKA: Scary Dreams
Hajime no Ippo: The Fighting
Wario World
Dragon Drive D-Masters Shot
Astro Boy: Omega Factor
Gradius V
Advance Guardian Heroes
Gunstar Super Heroes
Bleach: The Blade of Fate
Bleach: Dark Souls
Bangai-O Spirits
Bleach: Versus Crusade
Sin and Punishment 2

Admittedly some of these were very good and I'm certainly looking forward to S&P 2. But I just can't buy the excuses coming out of Treasure when a company like Cave is bringing its titles to the 360. The easily deducible fact of the matter is that Treasure has built a good relation with Nintendo due to their NDS games and apparently that's all they can do now. What a shame....

Wow. This guy is like my own clone. NOW NEITHER OF US WILL BE VIRGINS

Also, ITT: People expecting the world of Treasure and their 12-man development team... I love Treasure just as much as the next guy, when they're not making Stretch Panic or Advance Guardian Heroes, but c'mon, I'd rather have patience for a small team to make something great, than a team of 50 or more making garbage. (see: most EA titles, Mortal Kombat sequels, Dante's Inferno, etc.)

[WarpZone]

[Next...The pic. New project? Talks about a world recovering from a nuclear war and a man who struggles to survive and battle for the last 50 years...blabla. Shooter? I hope so.

I hope so too. I thought maybe the pic was referring to the discontinued project.

Thanks, Rai.

[junkeR]

Iuchi is a god. I hope something great comes out.

[Drum]

Besides Ikaruga XBLA, did Treasure develop anything else for the 360? No? I still don't get why they would rather cancel the 360 shooter when the other shooter developers are working on a port of their arcade games. The other posts here made are right: Treasure should make an arcade version first, then a 360 port. Then they don't have to worry about not making enough money for it.

It seems Wii, and the Nintendo handheld seems to be the home for Treasure's money making for now. Besides working on those shooters, they made those Bleach games published by Sega.

Agreed. I really don't even buy their claims that they had to cancel the game because of the 360's "failure" in Japan; their claim of course going with the traditional logic that their games mostly only sell in Japan (with a few exceptions). Yet the same company then claims that Sin and Punishment surpassed expectations on Wii VC and they're bringing S&P 2 to the US....right.....I'm certain all the soccer moms Nintendo constantly falunts as being their new demographic are going to buy tons of copies of S&P 2. Just like they did for Mad World, No More Heroes, HOTD: Overkill, Zack and Wiki, Klonoa, and every other hardcore-gamer-centric title. Oh wait a minute, EVERY SINGLE HARDCORE GAME ON WII HAS BEEN A FLOP! So instead of supporting a console with a guaranteed user base (both in Japan and abroad) for their product Treasure is content with gambling on the casual, non-gamer crowd with S&P 2. Yeah, that makes tons of sense! Shit, at least games on the 360 and PS3 actually sell. What the 3rd party game has sold well on Wii that didn't include "play", "sports", "wii", "olympics', in the title or was a stupid collection of minigames?

And notice too now how every title released since Ikaruga is either someone else's franchise OR a sequel/psuedo-sequel port of an older Treasure game (something they insisted they'd never do):

Tiny Toon Adventures: Buster's Bad Dream AKA: Scary Dreams
Hajime no Ippo: The Fighting
Wario World
Dragon Drive D-Masters Shot
Astro Boy: Omega Factor
Gradius V
Advance Guardian Heroes
Gunstar Super Heroes
Bleach: The Blade of Fate
Bleach: Dark Souls
Bangai-O Spirits
Bleach: Versus Crusade
Sin and Punishment 2

Admittedly some of these were very good and I'm certainly looking forward to S&P 2. But I just can't buy the excuses coming out of Treasure when a company like Cave is bringing its titles to the 360. The easily deducible fact of the matter is that Treasure has built a good relation with Nintendo due to their NDS games and apparently that's all they can do now. What a shame....

Oh god, really?

[Limbrooke]

Iuchi has posted something about Project RS-3 on his blog (Feb. 7 entry), but knowing not to trust machine translation, I won't speculate:

http://www.vgmaterials.com/notebook/

From what I can tell, Iuchi (for those who don't know, Hiroshi Iuchi is the director and producer for Radiant Silvergun, Ikaruga and Gradius V) is talking about how he sent a project draft book of concept work for Project-RS3 to the company for approval. However, due to various reasons that Iuchi didn't elaborate on, pre-production was discontinued, which happened early last year. He also mentioned that Treasure actually done a small survey to ask the public if they would like a brand new shooting game. Turns out a lot of them wanted one and it to be RS3 (so there was support for a sequel!). They actually worked on RS3 when they received the survey results, although due to the above reasons the game never materialized. He also apologized to the people who wrote RS3 in the survey, and says that they do listen to the gamer public.

Next...The pic. New project? Talks about a world recovering from a nuclear war and a man who struggles to survive and battle for the last 50 years...blabla. Shooter? I hope so.

This is awful news. RS3 or bust. What a lame ending to the saga to be sure, although with Treasure's best days behind them it's not hard to have seen coming. Lame lame lame.

[evil_ash_xero]

Iuchi has posted something about Project RS-3 on his blog (Feb. 7 entry), but knowing not to trust machine translation, I won't speculate:

http://www.vgmaterials.com/notebook/

From what I can tell, Iuchi (for those who don't know, Hiroshi Iuchi is the director and producer for Radiant Silvergun, Ikaruga and Gradius V) is talking about how he sent a project draft book of concept work for Project-RS3 to the company for approval. However, due to various reasons that Iuchi didn't elaborate on, pre-production was discontinued, which happened early last year. He also mentioned that Treasure actually done a small survey to ask the public if they would like a brand new shooting game. Turns out a lot of them wanted one and it to be RS3 (so there was support for a sequel!). They actually worked on RS3 when they received the survey results, although due to the above reasons the game never materialized. He also apologized to the people who wrote RS3 in the survey, and says that they do listen to the gamer public.

Next...The pic. New project? Talks about a world recovering from a nuclear war and a man who struggles to survive and battle for the last 50 years...blabla. Shooter? I hope so.

This is awful news. RS3 or bust. What a lame ending to the saga to be sure, although with Treasure's best days behind them it's not hard to have seen coming. Lame lame lame.

Treasure has disappointed me a lot in recent years, but have you played Sin and Punishment 2? One of their very best. They can still deal the goods out sometimes.

[Phellan Wolf]

I can't believe this. 10 years have passed since Ikaruga and they haven't done a sequel. IMO it 's lame. I know that Treasure is a really small company, but this is ridiculous. It seems that they only work on stupid Bleach games.....booooring.
Come on Treasure, do your best with another terrific shooting puzzle game.

PD:I haven't tried S&P 2, but I will do it as soon as I receive my copy from PA.

[Ebbo]

Treasure just isn't a shmup company in a same way as CAVE. They still make good games (most of the time), regardless of the genre. Bleach: Dark Souls was a decent fighter with lots of options and polish, atleast for a DS game. That being said, S&P2 is most likely one of their best games since Gradius V. Also, I don't think Treasure has ever stated that they wouldn't make sequels.

Come on Treasure, do your best with another terrific shooting puzzle game.

Bangai-O Spirits?

[Mortificator]

a sequel/psuedo-sequel port of an older Treasure game (something they insisted they'd never do)

Did someone at Treasure really say that, back in the day? I've heard that online as well, but never with a source attributed.

I agree that Treasure's been pretty abysmal at developing new IP in the last decade, though.

[Phellan Wolf]

Come on Treasure, do your best with another terrific shooting puzzle game.

Bangai-O Spirits?

IMO both Ikaruga and RS are puzzle shooting games, and I want a sucessor plain and simple.

[spadgy]

I'd just love Iuchi and Treasure to do another (forced scrolling) shooter. I don't give a crap if it's a sequel or not.

In fact, maybe I'd prefer new IP.

[Limbrooke]

Treasure has disappointed me a lot in recent years, but have you played Sin and Punishment 2? One of their very best. They can still deal the goods out sometimes.

Regardless of what I am missing out on, I do not like the system S&P2 is on, repeat, do not. I would never look to own a machine so consequently the few titles I would be interested in fall by the way-side. I can barely stand the fact S&P is on Nintendo 64, but despite my absolute distaste for that system as well, I don't think I'd mind as much having capability to run S&P versus S&P2.

I'm not going into detail beyond that pardon it's documented that S&P2 takes a very long time to clear, which can provide lots of replay value but as I've seen nobody seems too keen on this aspect despite that.

As far as sequels are concerned, something Treasure seems to be on a roll with, the potential RS3 project was something to look forward to considering how the chaining concept would be enchanced and with what other mechanics differentiate. It's a real mystery (to me) what could be done differently from the first two titles so it was to be a very interesting reveal, if and when. The fact there is yet to be a clear reason why this was put on indefinite hold is disappointing through and through. If Treasure is making a new/original shooting game, it's likely not to be out for a while yet leaving almost no interest (for myself) towards what direction the company goes. Gunstar Super Heroes came out Oct. 2005 and since then I've had no interest in any new Treasure work, and I unfortunately don't see that changing for a long time to come.

[Drum]

Pathetic.