We've known about Megaton Musashi, Level-5's next big project, since 2016 — when it was announced as a multimedia event spanning toys, anime, and video games. After last hearing about it in 2019, we were wondering where it had got to — but now it seems like it's almost ready to land, just not on the 3DS as was originally planned.
Megaton Musashi is a robot-battling RPG set in a reality where 90% of the Earth's population has died.
Alongside the game release on November 11th, 2021, there will also be an anime series that covers the same events. A physical version of the Switch game is also on the cards, but both the physical and digital versions will only be released in Japan, following Level-5's withdrawal from the West.
It is unknown whether Megaton Musashi is related to Level-5's "urgent" hiring a few weeks ago.
Comments 28
I hope they'll at least partner with another publisher to localize this for the west eventually, like they've done with the Ni No Kuni series. I'd buy anything Level-5 released here! They're one of my favorite developers.
Level 5, don't abandon the West! I want to play this game.
This looks fun, and if they localize I’ll check it out. God I miss Chrome Hounds on 360…. Really wish some company would make a mech game similar to that, especially a single player one. I wanna be able to make melee, sniper, gunner, and artillery mechs again….
I dont understand how a big Japanese studio just starts to refuse to bring its games to the west. Like we are back in the 90s. Isn‘t making the game the most costly and time consuming part of development? So if a studio invests money and time into making a game, wouldn‘t it make sense to invest a little more time and money for at least an English localization for a digital release instead of settling for the small Japanese market? I dont get it, but maybe I just don‘t understand the business side of games.
come on Level 5
don't think just Japan wants to play your games
i still want to play that Switch remake of Yo-Kai Watch 1 (in English)
@HefHughner They stopped doing it, since they never made much money selling their games over in the west. Series like Yokai watch underperformed, and I believe they also had internal issues with workers, so they ended up having to cease American operations.
There's a slight chance that we could get some of their games over here, brought over by other companies, but at this point I just doubt it.
@DragotheKomodo The switch remake is moreso just a port with cleaner textures and a few extra areas from 2 I'm pretty sure. I'd much rather have 4 over that honestly, given 4 is a brand new game.
@HefHughner Level 5 probably saw everyone being offended by everything in the West (at least, that’s how certain groups display the world online) and thought to themselves, “Well, Japan cut itself off from foreigners for hundreds of years before and that worked out okay. Maybe we should do that again so we don’t have to deal with that nonsense.”
I mean, it was probably for financial reasons or just them not wanting the hassle of localisation, but I dunno, I kinda like there being some old fashioned Japanese game developers left but I also wanna play their games in English so it’s tough.
Why does every single one of their games need an anime series?
Looks good enough that Nintendo or Xseed will pick it up?
Looks good. I'll import it from anywhere if there is an English language version. I'm also willing to do that too for Trails of Cold Steel 1&2 for Switch as well but that's up to XSEED sadly...
Japan has video games now? Wow. Good for them. Olympics really put them on the map.
looks coool
"Hmm, is that it? Can you think of someting more to say?"
typo
This looks lit. I'm sad to hear about Level 5 officially abandoning the West. I knew we had missed some of their games, but didn't know it was an orchestrated withdrawal.
ETA: I would definitely check this out if it was localised. In case anyone from L5 is reading this, you know.
Looks awesome!!
See why aren’t amazing games like this localized more!? I absolutely positively want this game but western people only care about the same genres of games. Really hope that someone localizes it or like some of you said that it has an English track when importing it.
Aww. This looks great. Shame.
@HefHughner Localization is still pretty costly. Especially japanese to other languages like english is particularly quite the hurdle.
Like, just in the early day there were issues in UI interface itself because japanese language is kinda "symbol" based so every single kanji can be comparable to a full word in other language... so trying to translate relatively compact japanese scripts would often see game runs out of space/character limit because a single character in japanese could be equivalent to a 6-12 letters word for example... but character limits for item names/etc(and the space allocated in the UI) were often patterned after the compact japanese script so words often had to be abbreviated, often in hard to parse fashion.
This is (slightly) less an issue in modern games, but then voice-acting has begun being involved and with those we're talking about recording studio, recording session/etc and still making sure the text flows nicely/sound okay and that the translation/localization was done well.
Also another issue I've heard of is that text in japanese is often very different from european language in that just in speech a lot of non-japanese speaker do when trying to speak japanese is "using too many words rather than not enough".
A lot of japanese text is very short, almost seemingly simplistically so if it was purely translated word-to-word but that's because rather than using "tons of word" they let context give other nuances of a situation.
So you can't "just" translate text from japanese to english but instead very much need to further develop the text so it's easier to parse/etc by western audience which is a process which can see a lot of hit and misses if you don't know what you're doing.
Well this is a fine "Screw you", given I've been waiting to see this game for about 2 years, and now it looks like I never will.
Was so hyped until I saw the end of the title. Hope this gets localized.
The "Among Us" team noticed enthusiastic fans were translating the game into multiple languages they didn’t officially support. So they made them official!
Level-5: "That's just too crazy..."
Love mechs, love Level-5, this is perfect. Just hope it gets localized for the West.
I really like Level 5 but lately their decisions have been embarrassing at best and offensive at worst. They keep making these games as multi-media vehicles and failing every single time. I'm just over their crap. The fact that this game won't even get an Western release this year is another reason why I just don't care anymore.
Looks better than Daemon X Machina, I want this on switch too
This company would be huge right now if only they had hired a native English speaker to come up with good names for their (excellent) games. With names like Little Battler's Experience, Jean d'Arc, Yo Kai Watch and Ni No Kuni, how did they expect to sell millions of games in the English-speaking world?
RIP Yokai Watch 4 and this game!
@HefHughner Well, for one.. they're not actually a very large developer. And their margins are pretty thin, they've not had a lot of success in the US. It's business. And if business is bad, they're going to abstain.
Late to the article, but wow- I forgot about this one! I love my mechas and this looks like a fun action RPG beat-em-up to me! Plus the young guy with a ‘fro really resembles Cosmo from Ideon.
Playing this will be easy after all the Japanese practice I’m getting in Super Robot Wars. 😅
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