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Underdog Rising

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Michael "Macstorm" Cunningham
EDITORIALS CURATOR

It's no secret that the Nintendo DS has dominated Sony's PSP since the PSP's Japanese release in 2004 and North American release in 2005. The DS is cheaper and has Nintendo's first party support behind it, so with Mario Kart, New Super Mario Bros, and Pokémon all behind it, how could it fail? Well, it hasn't failed and isn't going anywhere anytime soon. So forget the DS for a minute; is the PSP too far behind to matter? It may never catch the DS, but I don't think it really has to in order to be a success. I had stated in a prior editorial that the PSP was nothing but a port-churning machine. Has that pattern changed? I think so.

I stated last October that Valhalla Knights, Elder Scrolls Travels: Oblivion, Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII, and Jeanne d'Arc were the possible saviors of the PSP. The only one of those that has even been released is Valhalla Knights and it wasn't really up to par. Thankfully, there is more on the way. While Jeanne d'Arc is the closest of those games, the PSP now has a few other games that could really help it.

Along with the port of Disgaea is now the port for Final Fantasy Tactics, but the list is not overflowing with remade games. Crisis Core is still on the way, with a Japanese release finally scheduled, so hopefully a North American release won't be too far off. Brave Story, one game I'm really looking forward to, should be out around the end of July. Classic RPG gameplay on the PSP and the game isn't a port? How could you not like that? That's much more than has been offered, so anything the PSP can get is a plus. Plus, there is Tales of the World: Radiant Mythology. It may not be a classic Tales game, but maybe it will help to get Namco to work localizing others in the series.

It's going to be tough having to compete against the DS, but I think that the PSP might start being able to stand on its own. The DS has a good number of games coming this year: Luminous Arc, Heroes of Mana, Dragon Quest Monsters - Joker, and Final Fantasy XII: Revenant Wings. However none of those coming are your traditional RPG style, so perhaps the PSP will get a bit of help from that. Not that the underdog has a chance of catching the DS, but it's nice to see it gaining ground. The PlayStation and PlayStation 2 both did the same thing, but the competition they had wasn't as strong as the DS. Today's competition is much stronger, but that's never a bad thing, is it?