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Phantom Dust (Xbox)
If it's not coming out outside of Japan, why is there a fully translated English version? 

By Ryan Payton
6/22/2004

Phantom Dust's initial planning sessions must have been interesting. The Tokyo development team's pitch to Microsoft suits probably went like this: "We know what Japanese guys like -- battle royals, collecting stuff, and cyberpunk attitudes. And now we have Phantom Dust, a new Xbox game with a large serving of Dragon Ball Z-like fisticuffs, Pokemon-inspired collectable skill cards, and cyberpunk bad boys stripped right out of Akira -- all dosed with a post-apocalyptic backdrop of ruined cities and a struggling human race."
We attended the game's formal unveiling at Microsoft's press event in the fashionable Harajuku district in Tokyo last week, and lead game director Yukio Futatsugi (whose design credits include Panzer Dragoon Saga) was on hand to offer press members a chance to play the near-finished game. In the game, players are thrown into arenas populated by friends and foes after viewing cut scenes that explain why you should lay the hurt on your opponents. Once defeating your enemies, players are then taken back to a mission selection screen not unlike Mechassault's. The game's 200-plus single player missions should keep players very busy.

Phantom Dust follows the story of a gang of nomads looking to restore their memories after a disastrous event that left most of the world as wandering amnesiacs. All they know is that the surface is overrun by fiends that embody people's worst thoughts and nightmares. Mysterious particles Phantom Dust populate much of the land and are key to regaining once-forgotten memories and skills. In their effort to explain their world, your gang must battle through some nasty foes -- some living, some not.

Accumulating skills is the key to building your character and winning fights against increasingly stronger foes. Before matches, players can choose a handful of the skills they have collected in previous rounds and take them into battle. Skills range from defense upgrades, short and long range fireballs, and agility boosters that let players hover in mid-air as they take the battle to the sky. New skills can be found on the battleground in the form of colorful orbs. Most players will probably seek out new skills before engaging enemies at the beginning of a match. A total of over 300 skills can be collected throughout the game, some more rare than others.

The real-time fighting feels intuitive and fluid. Players lock-on to enemies by pressing the right trigger, flicking it again to revert back to normal movement, and jumping requires a click of the left trigger. Each of the colored buttons on the Xbox controller can be assigned one skill. When walking over a skill orb on the battlefield, players can assign the skill to one of the A, B, X, or Y buttons. While your customized button layout is displayed in the bottom right-hand corner of the screen, our time with the game revealed it gets difficult to remember what skills you have assigned to each button in the heat of battle.

Futatsugi was eager to show off the game's multiplayer features, as well, since Phantom Dust will support both system link play and online battles through Xbox Live. A total of four players can battle in one arena online, each bringing their preferred collection of skills to the battle in a nod to card battle games like Magic: The Gathering. Some skills will be available after beating opponents online, while other rare skills will be available only as downloadable content. Players will also be available to download maps, upload statistics, create clans and participate in tournaments on Xbox Live.

Graphically, while the game suffers from a drab color palette of oranges and grays, the voluminous power-ups that players gain add colorful explosions, and various gameplay moments damage the arenas as well. The most impressive visual scene we witnessed was an environment with highway overpasses collapsing and craters forming on the concrete when players fell to the ground.

Clearly the most surprisingly element of Phantom Dust is its music; it's anything but run-of-the-mill. Microsoft Game Studios outsourced the game music to a studio in Japan that has provided the game with a jangled, technical electronica soundtrack that is reminiscent of Aphex Twin, but is far more listenable.

In a surprise announcement earlier this month, Microsoft admitted having no plans to release Phantom Dust outside of Japan. The company gave no explanation in its press release, but we have uncovered an interesting twist to Phantom Dust's fate. Not only did director Futatsugi admit that his team developed an English version along side its domestic Japanese build, he even loaded up the fully-translated English version on one kiosk at the press event, eager to show it off.

Microsoft's polemic decision to scrap plans to release Phantom Dust outside of Japan is something of a brewing controversy within the company, with game designers and public relations people urging Western Xbox fans to embrace the game and demand its release stateside. One Microsoft representative told me that if demand is strong enough in North America, Microsoft may reverse its previous decision.

Japanese Xbox players will be the first to find out whether this game is worth fighting for once it is released on September 23rd. Although the game runs smoothly and has a great sense of style, the real-time fighting can feel overwhelming. Players must juggle hand-to-hand fighting, selecting and assigning skills to buttons on the controller, and collecting orbs, so it'll take some time to fully explore the gameplay and see how effective it will be.