Don't Let This Metal Slime Vita Run Away

November 12th, 2015. The official PlayStation blog announced a new style of PS Vita today, the Dragon Quest Metal Slime Edition. Created to promote the upcoming Dragon Quest Builders, the new style will go out on January 28th, and retail for 25,980 yen prior to tax. (Approximately $212 at the current exchange rate.) It will come with a small Metal Slime figure that plugs into the Vita's audio jack, a copy of Dragon Quest Builders, a USB cable, AC adapter, power cord, Japanese manual, and original Metal Slime theme pre-installed. The directional pad also features a Metal Slime illustration on its topmost key.

Those looking to import one for Cyber Sleuth or Digimon World -next 0rder- will find the Vita to be an extremely import-friendly handheld, being both region free and able to be configured to English language settings at startup rather than Japanese. The only restriction on Vita importing is that it can only be linked to a single PSN account at a time, which are tied to region, restricting what can be bought through the PlayStation Store. Physical game cards will still function even if one's PSN account isn't of the same region. Hence it's fully possible to import a Japanese Vita and play American or European games on it.

Back view.

Original Cosmic Red Vita.

The Metal Slime Vita is just the latest in a number of limited edition and new color Vita releases, which have been ongoing in Japan since 2012. The original model of Vita is available in four colors in Japan, while the current PCH-2000 model has eight standard colors and countless limited editions made to promote various franchises on the system. The standard for game-original Vita editions is to have one design in black and one in white, but designs like the Metal Slime variant meet this demand halfway with a unified gray color.  In the US the Aqua Blue Vita debuted just last week, as a GameStop exclusive.

-next 0rder- Allows Tamers to Use Two Digimon at Once, Featured in Vita Commercial

September 15th, 2015. Today in PlayStation Japan's latest promotional video for the Vita "PS Vita-ish Daily School Life," several seconds of Digimon World -next 0rder-'s overworld gameplay was featured as part of a campaign to drum up interest in the handheld's 2016 lineup. Although the clip was short, it revealed several key details, most prominently that at least two Digimon can be with the player simultaneously. This breaks a rule that all of the previous raising games, Digimon World, Pocket Digimon World, Re:Digitize, and Decode, each upheld for the past sixteen years. In order to replicate the virtual pet experience, these games only allowed the player to have one active Digimon at any time. The idea to have two at once may have been derived from the Digimon Twin, which was the last virtual pet launched prior to the franchise shifting in favor of RPG-oriented gameplay.

Other details gleaned from the commercial include a weather and season system, and a twenty-four hour clock. The display at the top left of the screenshot above reads "Spring/Week Chart/(Sunday)" and the sun icon seemingly indicates clear skies. Given that in the few seconds that elapse the clock jumps from 07:39 to 07:41, it's clear that time has also been sped up in -next 0rder- as it had been in past World games. The commercial is embedded below.

(-next 0rder- shown from 0:35 to 0:37)
The gameplay implications of having multiple Digimon at once are significant, as it makes possible Jogressing two Digimon to create a new one (i.e. Agumon x Gabumon into Omegamon), and opens up the option of team-based battles, or of tagging in one Digimon when another becomes weakened. Up to now various publications have only shown one Digimon on screen at a time.

Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth English Subbed Trailer

After many hours of work, here's the subbed extended trailer for Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth. The game came out in Japan last Thursday, and my copy of it will be arriving this week. I had to really floor it to get this out over the weekend, so please enjoy it.

Support Operation Decode in bringing Cyber Sleuth and Re:Digitize Decode to the west: https://www.change.org/p/bandai-namco-games-europe-america-localize-digimon-games-again-e-g-digimon-world-re-digitize-decode-for-3ds-digimon-story-cyber-sleuth-for-psvita

Once I have Cyber Sleuth, I'll be providing some translated summaries from the game along with play strategies and some records from the online competition.