Assault Suits Valken title due soon
Remember Cybernator? Remember how you ignored it because it was a tenner in Woolworths? You disgust me!
Japanese developer X-Nauts has announced Assault Suits Valken Zero for PS2, due out on July 1st in Japan according to import folks Play-Asia. Although very little is known about the game at this stage, its relationship with the Valken series caught our attention.
"Why?" you might ask. "What's Assault Suits Valken?" Good question! (We like you.) Assault Suits Valken is probably better known in this country as Cybernator, the name Konami used in publishing it on the Super Nintendo, and despite some pretenders to the throne, it wasn't really bettered in terms of 2D mech shoot-'em-up antics on the 16-bit systems, despite the same team's work on Front Mission: Gun Hazard for Square (never released outside Japan, and really very rubbish anyway). Things that made Cybernator ace included: little men who ran around your mechanical ankles trying to kill you with the equivalent of flea-launchers, and an end-of-game boss that towered three screens high.
Although there's no guarantee that Assault Suits Valken Zero will reach the same heady heights (and it's almost certainly 3D), we're cautiously optimistic, and will be using all of our various voodoo mecha powers to try and influence its design. And, er, we'll be playing Cybernator this evening. For research.