Backed by the always reliable Shin Sangoku Musou name and the Monster Hunter Portable inspired multiplayer modes, Shin Sangoku Musou: Multi Raid (aka Dynasty Warriors: Strikeforce) enjoyed a very successful launch in Japan last February, selling more than 350,000 copies even before it’s budget re-release next week. After being ported to home consoles, nobody should be surprised with the announcement of the sequel, to be released on PSP next month in Japan. The first game was a refreshing change to the series, so am really interested to see what they are adding to the sequel. Below is a compilation of the information and screens of the games since it was announced late last year.

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Are you busy collecting stickers for your tanks in Senjou no Valkyria 2? The game was released to some hot reception in Japan last week, selling more than 90,000 copies to debut at second spot of the latest Japanese charts. To begin its strategy guide, Weekly Famitsu ran a little interview with Chief Producer Shuntaro Tanaka, Producer Shinji Motoyama and Director Takeshi Ozawa where the trio share some tips for the game.

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Selected from more than 20 options, Megane Kikuya’s final illustration for .hack//Link box art (click for larger view) is certainly a great piece of art. “I purposely picked deeper colors to point out the scale of this RPG. There are 11 characters in the illustration, four of them drawn in full body, this is the most time consuming work I have done in my life.” she says.

I’m hardly a big .hack fans but this title grabbed my attention for some reasons. The game is apparently the final episode in the series and will have our hero Tokio travel back in time to meet all the characters from the series and partner with more than 30 of them in the game for their adventure. The recent Weekly Famitsu (online version here) report look into its “Cross Over Events” and revealed a couple more characters. There is also an interview with series creator and CyberConnect2 boss Hiroshi Matsuyama, who says that while there will be manga and animes of the series in the future, this will be the last .hack game… unless .hack//Link “sold too well and someone order him to make a game”.

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Gundam is another series that found its new home in Japanese PSP and after four successful games, the Gundam Battle team is launching a new series with a new title called Gundam Assault Survive featuring animes that have never appeared in Gundam Battle series and a couple of brand new systems, Linked Map and Teamworks. Here are some of the early info revealed in the recent Weekly Famitsu, who also did an interview with the producers.

Hirono Kay, producer from Bandai Namco, shares the reasons behind launching a completely new series. “With Gundam Battle series, there are things that we couldn’t produce due to various reasons. This is also the time I feel we must move on to new directions.” “By adding new content and revising the system of the previous games, we manage to further refine its mechanics but it make parts of the game too complicated. We feel it’s time to start from the beginning to make it easier for new players.” added Yagi Masanori, producer from Artdink.

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Lots of exciting PSP announcements recently and Last Ranker, a new IP from Capcom and imageepoch, is my favorite. Dozen of pages were dedicated to the RPG in two recent issues of Weekly Famitsu and together with pictures from TGS 2009, let’s see what we know so far about the game.

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Kingdom Hearts fans already seen or read better translation of the recent massive 11-page blowout that Weekly Famitsu (online version here) did for Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep. But here’s another translation based on the mag to keep myself updated and also a chance to post some of the new screens taken from the newly re-launch official site :)

Note: Director Tetsuya Nomura’s comments during the interview are included.

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Two years after sending the Imperial forces home, Gallia’s tired militia forces couldn’t handle a civil war at the south of the country, where the Gallian Revolutionary Army started a war against the Darcsens race. Since forming a new militia squad (like Squad 7 in the first game) for civil war isn’t allowed in the country, the government decided to seek the helps of our innocent-looking students from Gallia Royal Academy. Full details of Senjou no Valkyria 2 (aka Valkyria Chronicles 2), including new screens and translation of the interview with Chief Producer Shuntaro Tanaka in the recent Weekly Famitsu after the jump.

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Weekly Famitsu has a very interesting weekly column where Editor-in-Chief Katsuaki Kato discuss everything about game with prominent figures in the industry. Previous guests include Shigeru Miyamoto, Takashi Sensui (Xbox Japan boss) and Shawn Layden (SCEJ boss). Tetsuya Nomura is the latest guest and the first part of his 3-part interview is published in issue 7/17 of the magazine. Full translation after the jump.

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We have just past the halfway point of the year and Weekly Famitsu has a feature that offers a look at the big gaming news in the last six months. The feature also lists the five best selling game of each month and developers from the top sellers were asked to share the “secrets that can only be revealed now” of their titles. PSP have a couple of titles, Dissidia Final Fantasy and Tales of the World: Radiant Mythology 2 are the top titles for January and February respectively, check out their “secrets” below.

Dissidia Final Fantasy

Dissidia’s Tetsuya Nomura, who proved to be the most prolific producer with two titles winning the top spot for three months (Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days is the winner of May and June), shares the origin of the fighting game with characters from past Final Fantasy games. It was during the development of Kingdom Hearts, when he thought it would be interesting if fighting can take place in Traverse Town. The originally intended platform was PlayStation 2 using split screens. However, when the project was green lit, Nomura felt it will be better if players can fight against each other with just one screen and decided to move the game to PSP (the same point was brought up during an interview in May 2007).

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Marvelous’ recent PSP release Yuusha 30 (to be published as Half-Minute Hero by Xseed in US) gains a lot of attention in Japan due to its seemingly crazy concept, four different game modes and the amount of artists collaborating for the title. The latest issue of Famitsu PSP+PS3 catch up with the main guys behind the title, Director Kotaro Yoshida (aka UUE) and Producer Kenichiro Takaki, to tell us the origin of the title and how the development process was like.

Yoshida is actually the father of Yuusha 30, he created a Flash game called “30 Seconds Hero” (left) during his free time at his current employer Over Studio and it became the basis of Yuusha. It actually took him only a day to make the game as he doesn’t really play games and hope to create something that won’t take too long to play. Takaki, who was a former employee at the same company, suggested that they should make a retro game for PSP since the system is selling hot at that time. After ruling out a bunch of ideas, Takaki found Yoshida’s game to be the most appealing one because he think office workers won’t have enough time to play games that take a while to finish these days and Yuusha fits perfectly here.

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