# Level 5 press conference- Fantasy Life (DS), 512 megabyte DS game



## granville (Aug 25, 2009)

Heads up for a long post. Here's some of the highlights of a Level 5 press conference. We hear about their new game, Fantasy Life (DS), as well as a previously announced DS game, Ninokuni, a spectacularly animated turn based RPG. The big new here IMO, is *Ninokuni will be released on a 4gigabit (512megabytes) DS cartridge, the largest DS game ever, and the only one to date to use this size*. Here we go-

Previous trailer from Ninocuni: The Another World from last year-

Screens of Ninocuni from the conference-






















MORE here- http://www.andriasang.com/e/galleries/2009/08/25/ni_no_kuni/

(god that is the most gorgeous game!) 
	

	
	
		
		

		
		
	


	




Some screens of Fantasy Life-
















http://www.famitsu.com/game/news/1226975_1124.html

- 5,580,000 sales for the Layton series worldwide
*- the fourth entry in the Layton series is kicking off the "Professor Layton Second Season" says Level 5*
- Important tidbits from the for the 4th Professor Layton trailer: new character Remi (female) is show, Luke has the ability to see how the world will end, game takes place 3 years before the original Layton
*- hits Japan on Nov. 26th*
- Remi is voiced by Aibu Saki, and ending theme is sung by Ando Yuuko
*- "London Life" is announced, working with Brownie Brown on the project*
*- "London Life" is said to resemble Mother 3*
- "London Life" is a life sim with the goal of making people happy. Level 5 expects 100 hours of gameplay
- details from the Professor Layton and the Eternal Diva movie trailer (title is a rough translation): hits theaters in Japan on Dec. 19th, includes characters from the 4th game, involves a puzzle that grants eternal life when solved
- the studio behind the Pokemon films is working on the movie
- Level 5 has plans to make a film every Winter
*- Inazuma Eleven anime was just renewed for 2 more years*
- Inazuma Eleven 2 storyline includes aliens coming to earth to play soccer, and these aliens have special attacks that involve flying into space and kiacking fireballs
- Inazuma Eleven 2 has 4 player local multiplayer
- due out October 1st in Japan
- the Inazuma Eleven manga is the most popular in CoroCoro comic weekly
- Nakata Hidetoshi (ex soccer player) to be in the game as hidden character Hide Nakata. He also lends his voice to the game
- Inazuma Eleven 2 has two versions, and each version will feature its own beginning and ending
- the tournament from the game is being turned into a real-life tournament
- Atamania games are getting word and math puzzle game sequels, as well as a "Mystery Room" sequel
- "Mystery Room" is about Pocho and Sly, two guys locked in the mysterious room
*- details from new Ninokuni trailer - battles look similar to Dragon Quest, the mysterious land in the game is filled with dinosaurs and various creatures, due out Spring 2010 in Japan*, female character voiced by Nagasa Masami, Oizumi You does the voice of "Gyro", and main character Olivier is voiced by Tabe Mikako, music done by Hisaishi Joe
*- Ninokuni will be on a 4GB ROM, making it the biggest ever for DS. This was done to fit the music on.*
- Ninokuni theme sung is performed by "Mai" and written by Hisaishi Joe
*- new game shown which is called "Fantasy Life", which looks like a DS RPG (Famitsu says it's for the DS - thanks Kadir!). Once again, Brownie Brown is involved, and 21 songs provided by Nobuo Uematsu.* Each of the 21 songs pairs up with a character in the game, including their own small story and ending. These all lead up to the final ending for the game.
- rumored version of Inazuma Eleven for Wii is not ready to be shown
- TGS booth will have demos of Inazuma Eleven 2, Professor Layton 4, and more. DVD will be given out with game footage

http://gonintendo.com/viewstory.php?id=94312


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## DarkRey (Aug 25, 2009)

this reminds me of "Bob's Game" 
	

	
	
		
		

		
		
	


	






			
				QUOTE said:
			
		

> Ninokuni will be on a 4GB ROM, making it the biggest ever for DS. *This was done to fit the music on*.


I bet the story is gonna be short


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## granville (Aug 25, 2009)

@DarkRey

I can assure you that when a developer decides to use a large size like this, they tend to go all out. The game doesn't just feature music, but what sounds like full voice overs. And you should have a look at the backgrounds, all of which hand drawn. The game looks like a work of art.

And I realize I said this, but in the shoutbox, you said the game would trim to 64MB. It NEVER works like that. For starters, the bigger the cartridges get, the more expensive they are. Developers would NEVER use them unless they intended to go all out on a game. And if a game could trim to 64MB, they'd USE a 64MB card, or at most a 128MB one. Spending money on huge ass sizes just to not use it is a complete waste of money. This is a big budget game. They'll use every bit of that 512MB they can. And I seriously doubt it will be short. Suikoden Tierkreis was on a 256MB cartridge. Most of the game was fully voiced. And it was quite a long game.

And Bob's Game? WTF? Are you kidding? I hope so. He's the biggest joke ever. This game is made by professionals who have already proven themselves. LMAO


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## Cyan (Aug 25, 2009)

Fantasy life graphics (especially the last picture) reminds me of Mother, and a mix with Zubbo for the second picture's cubic graphics.

London life is another game to looks like mother ?

I found this : 


			
				QUOTE said:
			
		

> London Life is unlockable content from the fourth Professor Laytonhttp://www.nintendoeverything.com/?p=22317
> 
> QUOTE- Professor Layton's London Life (winter), an RPG-ish adventure where you run around the pseudo-olde-style London that Layton lives in.


http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3174408


Edit : 
Ah, this is right, it's shown on the official Layton website,
http://www.layton.jp/majin/index.html
On the "intro" menu, and the "100" button.


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## redact (Aug 25, 2009)

this game looks epic, since it would waste a chunk of my downloads anyway i will prolly buy this game if it is localized...


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## Cermage (Aug 25, 2009)

granville said:
			
		

> - Ninokuni theme s*o*ng is performed by "Mai" and written by Hisaishi Joe



i might just buy this game because of this fact.


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## Satangel (Aug 25, 2009)

I can only encourage bigger DS games, but I would rather have some better graphics then a shitload of music.
Just my 2 cents.


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## granville (Aug 25, 2009)

The graphics really couldn't get much better than this for 2D. And that's what the DS admittedly excels at. I love me a 3D game, even on DS (Kingdom Hearts DS is one of my favorites on the system). And I detest when developers don't even try, and end up making a cruddy looking 2D game that could have been on GBC or GBA. But there's a LOAD of detail in Ninocuni. It's absolutely GORGEOUS. And I can pretty much guarantee that music isn't the ONLY thing that made the game huge. There have been games 1/4 the size of this one with fully orchestrated and voiced soundtracks. I'm sure they're making good use of the data space.

Now, the REAL question is what sort of issues or protection will they put in a huge budget game like this? I'm sure such a game would make the developers protective of their stuff from pirates, especially considering the price they had to pay for 512MB. We'll see.


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## Master Mo (Aug 25, 2009)

Ninokuni looks absolutely beautiful and I guess there will be many videos as well on the cartridge. I don`t really care, how big a game is but 512mb is definitely huge!!! That`s like nearly usual PSP-size game. 

But is that a smart move of Level5, since these cartridge are so expensive?


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## granville (Aug 25, 2009)

Well, you have to remember that cartridge prices tend to drop in price after a while. It's been quite more than a year now since the first 256MB DS game (ASH) was released. Since then, more and more developers have been using 256MB cards such as Namco, Square Enix, Sega, even Lucas Arts. I'm going to assume that prices for 512MB tech has become somewhere near affordable nowadays. Plus they have pretty much all star development teams to back it up. I think they intend to build up a lot of hype so the game will sell really well.

Trust me, a company like this would not use this size unless they knew exactly what they were doing. I'm sure they have plans for how to get their money back from this investment.


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## shakirmoledina (Aug 25, 2009)

i dont expect it to be too much like 70$ avg.
fantasy life totally looks like mother (earthbound) as cyan said but ninocuni doesn't seem like it's gonna be localized as it doesnt in sites such as gamefaqs but they may see the audience reaction and definately looks good
gran i am surprised lol tht u mentioned 3 diff. spellings  ie.) ninokuni,ninocuni,ninocuna
RUMOR says it will be released on the early months of 2010 and i think the size is mainly taken for graphics and more so for cutscenes as games usually take ALOT of space for cutscenes eg.) FFCC as u can see a few scenes though the game aint tht huge or Chrono trigger which is a very small file on the snes but huge on the ds bcz of sys change and few cutscenes


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## wchill (Aug 25, 2009)

Wait... I remember reading that due to technical limitations games can't be over 2Gbit (256MB) without bankswitching. So does this employ bankswitching or not? If what I read was right, then we may have some problems running this game on flashcards...


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## Maktub (Aug 25, 2009)

Studio Ghibli, anyone?


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## Cyan (Aug 25, 2009)

wchill said:
			
		

> Wait... I remember reading that due to technical limitations games can't be over 2Gbit (256MB) without bankswitching. So does this employ bankswitching or not? If what I read was right, then we may have some problems running this game on flashcards...
> It's like Snes, it was technically limited to 32Mb cartridge, and they could release 48Mb with the software(right?) (Tales Of phantasia) or hardware (Star ocean) custom adress processing.
> I don't know about the DS flashcard capabilities, I suppose if it's software bank shifting it will work with current card/firmware.
> 
> QUOTE(Maktub @ Aug 25 2009, 01:44 PM) Studio Ghibli, anyone?


Yes, nice to heard Joe Hisaishi music 
	

	
	
		
		

		
		
	


	



are there any ghibli animator too ?


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## jgu1994 (Aug 25, 2009)

Can't wait, level 5 hasn't disappointed me so far.


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## CockroachMan (Aug 25, 2009)

Technically, the DS can read up to 4 Gigabytes cartridges. But one of those would be too expensive.

I was expecting a lot of movies in this game, since Ghibli is working on it, but 512Megabytes is a lot for a DS game.


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## Maktub (Aug 25, 2009)

Cyan said:
			
		

> Maktub said:
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Not sure, but from the animations I'd say there must be. It doesn't look like Hayao's work but rather like the latter Studio Ghibli's movies (the moving castle and so on, with rather small work by Hayao).

Looks very good, actually.


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## Domination (Aug 25, 2009)

If you have been following the game, Ghibli says they were going to produce 5 minutes of _high quality_ animations per month. Makes me wonder how many minutes there are now since they said that. Maybe thats the reason for the big memory.


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## Guild McCommunist (Aug 25, 2009)

Fantasy Life looks like Mother from those screens. Is it that same as London Life? Did I skip something? From those graphics, I'm waiting for, at the next press conference, them to rip off the title "Fantasy Life" to reveal "MOTHER 4". That would make my day, week, month, and year.

Nokuni's graphics just took the shortcut of very nice 3-D models over a 2-D background. Kind of a bummer, since I'm more a fan of all 2-D or all 3-D. A lot of the size of the game is probably just taken up by animated cutscenes. It looks like it'll have a lot. It's not looking too interesting to me though.

Atleast is Brownie Brown is involved in some games. It's a Nintendo subsidary so it'll essentially be a Nintendo game. While some of you may think Ninty is the anti-Christ, you can't admit most of their games look good (outside of Fossil Fighters...)


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## zuron7 (Aug 25, 2009)

Hope it is good.
Might crash frequently like other huge games.


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## Rayder (Aug 25, 2009)

I've heard 2 different stories as far as DS cart sizes go.   First, I've heard that the max size can be as high as 2gig, but it seems I also remember hearing that the size of the DS cart can be whatever a developer needs.  I wonder which is correct.

At any rate, a 512MB cart would be enough to fit good old FFVII on there.......


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## mrfatso (Aug 25, 2009)

although, i likely doubt that SE will ever do that, if they did, why hasn't ps3 gotten their version yet? 

/end fanboy

Anyway, well, i just hope that we get to see an english localised version in the future. A mother 4 on the DS would be pretty swell


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## Cablephish (Aug 25, 2009)

The trailer gave me several chills down my spine, so I'll definitely like it. And also, those graphics and sprites remind me of the Mother series. I will definitely play this game, even if I have to get a new DS.


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## megawalk (Aug 25, 2009)

this game is huge. my heart is pounding out of a shock at the moment
and personally i agree with rayder.
about FFVII
it is very likely possible to do it


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## vergilite (Aug 25, 2009)

Ninocuni: The Another World is looking pretty swag 
	

	
	
		
		

		
		
	


	




 but then again as mentioned before i think the protection will be VERY high, i mean this will cost lots of money for the investment in the 512 cart so i really don't see the developers just pissing money down the drain by letting pirates get it for free 
	

	
	
		
		

		
		
	


	



Also i wonder if there will be some hardware developments in the 512 cart that a flash cart could not reproduce causing it to be unusable on flashcarts.


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## skawo96 (Aug 25, 2009)

Wow, a DS game by the size of Wii's nand.


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## Domination (Aug 25, 2009)

vergilite said:
			
		

> Ninocuni: The Another World is looking pretty swag
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LOL... the game will come with a "spellbook" of sorts... where there will be spells and bestiary inside. Pretty good protection IMO. 
	

	
	
		
		

		
		
	


	




And the correct spelli is with a "k" not "c".


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## Gullwing (Aug 25, 2009)

Meh...too bad they didn't announce a new Dark Cloud...ohh how sweet that would be...


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## pasc (Aug 25, 2009)

4GB ? Holy crap...


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## Hop2089 (Aug 25, 2009)

Ninokuni will rock because of all the fine details, music, and visuals but will be a short game, absolute worth buy, however Fantasy Life completely sucks, looks like a souped up Bob's game and I won't buy it.  Also, Ninokuni is a 512mb game that's going to cause problems for people who don't buy the game not to mention the required book.


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## Gamer (Aug 25, 2009)

Hop2089 said:
			
		

> Ninokuni will rock because of all the fine details, music, and visuals but will be a short game, absolute worth buy, however Fantasy Life completely sucks, looks like a souped up Bob's game and I won't buy it.  Also, Ninokuni is a 512mb game that's going to cause problems for people who don't buy the game not to mention the required book.



I actually think  Fantasy Life looks great, I like a lot the Mother 3-style. I also like a lot the Brownie Brown developed games... yeah, they get mixed reviews, but at the end I'm plenty satisfied (Magical Starsign, Heroes of Mana), so can't wait for this and for the London Life mode in Layton 4. 

Oh, and yeah, I'm sure Ninokuni will be absolutely beautiful (hope we can see it in NA sometime).


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## mrfatso (Aug 26, 2009)

Hop2089 said:
			
		

> Ninokuni will rock because of all the fine details, music, and visuals but will be a short game, absolute worth buy, however Fantasy Life completely sucks, looks like a souped up Bob's game and I won't buy it.  Also, Ninokuni is a 512mb game that's going to cause problems for people who don't buy the game not to mention the required book.



and u forget the language barrier is gona screw us up badly


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## Hop2089 (Aug 26, 2009)

mrfatso said:
			
		

> Hop2089 said:
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Yes for most people, I have nothing to worry about except if the game doesn't get shipped once I import it and if I don't get the required book by some mistake.


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## updowners (Aug 26, 2009)

pasc said:
			
		

> 4GB ? Holy crap...
> It's 4 gigabits which equals 512 megabytes.
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## War (Aug 26, 2009)

Layton RPG is gonna be so fucking epic.


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## granville (Aug 26, 2009)

For reference, a normal CD-ROM disc generally holds 600-700 megabytes. This game will be 512 megabytes. Impressive for a DS cartridge. The space could theoretically go as high as flash memory apparently, but we'll probably never see how high it COULD go.

The key here is BITS. Which is different from BYTES. Without all the mega and giga parts, 1 bytes = 8 bits. BITS are the usual measurement size for game cartridge capacity. We translate that into bytes when we make them into a PC file. Here's some examples of DS cards and their byte conversions-

64 megabit = 8 megabytes
128 megabit = 16 megabytes
256 megabit = 32 megabytes
512 megabit = 64 megabytes
1024 megabit = 128 megabytes
2048 megabit = 256 megabytes
4096 megabit = 512 megabytes -*This is the size the new DS game will use*

So there you go. Basically 1 byte = 8 bits. That's the smallest of the data sizes. So just divide the bits by 8 to get the byte/megabyte/gigabyte/whatever value.


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## manaphy4ever (Aug 26, 2009)

damn i am so happy for level-5 with new inazuma eleven 2 game and new professor layton and many new games i can't wait to play all of them including inazuma eleven 2 and Ninokuni  
	

	
	
		
		

		
		
	


	




 thank you level-5 for bringing those awesome games


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