Japanese Soul Bubbles Ain't Just a Graphical Overhaul

[Hadrian]

Some may know that the Japanese are getting the excellent but undersold NDS game Soul Bubbles but they will get one that looks different to the Western release. Apparently the developers of the Japanese version are fixing other things that were kept in the Western release.

A portion of an N-Sider interview with Mekensleep’s Olivier Lejade and Omar Cornut…

NS: I understand there are some “tweaks” to levels; how extensive does this get? Do you have any examples?

Omar Cornut: We tweaked some things but they are for most extremely minor changes. Some reworked level curves, fixed a few “holes”, did some interfaces tweaks, fixed a gameplay bug that affected left-handed players, etc. but nothing to hold your breath for, seriously.

We increased the number of calabashes required to reach Agartha to 70, because players who skipped the harder fourth and fifth levels in each world usually faced too much of a difficulty spike in Agartha, and it also tends to increase the game duration for those players.

Finally we added a second save profile to the game, as requested by many players. We really wanted to get that inside the original release but only thought about it late in the process and it was too late for QA to accept it into the build. It’s my fault and I really wanted to have it fixed for the Japanese release!

I prey that it does better over there than here but I know it wont. I'm hoping that one day it could hit WiiWare or DSiWare

Screens of Japanese version:

 

[Edgedancer]

This seems like the type of title that the Japanese would like. I hope it gets a bit more recognition over there.

 

[Vague Rant]

I wonder what the chances are of this version including English, or in the case of it being Japanese-only, how hard it would be to copy across the English script.

 

[twisteddeeds]

it might be worth picking up anyway... its not that difficult a game to figure out.

its a shame it didnt sell better. i think its the bubbles thing maybe people thought it was too "kiddy"

 

[Psyfira]

its a shame it didnt sell better. i think its the bubbles thing maybe people thought it was too "kiddy"

Personally I'd point the finger at the boxart; it's a decent image but it pegged itself with a young target audience. Remember the DS's wide casual user base, to people who don't read internet reviews and just browse the shelves in Game, boxart is everything. While the price tag may have been attractive, they missed a trick there.

Though do we actually have an accurate estimate of the sales figures? If they're taking it overseas then it cant've done that badly

I prefer the little monkey dude, he fits in better with the rest of the graphics than bright purple