More details of Disgaea: Hour of Darkness DS emerge
But is it one or two Disgaea games coming to DS?
It can be tough keeping up with the ever growing family of Japanese-developed RPGs. It sometimes seems like they're breeding more frequently than Davina McColl (is it just us or is she always up the duff?) and � to make matters more confusing � sometimes they sort of in-breed or are re-born or cloned or something to different parents (or rather, formats).
Disgaea on DS is the latest game to get us a bit confused. At the start of the month scans from Japanese magazine Famitsu seemed to imply a brand new Disgaea game entitled Prince of the Demon World and the Red Moon was in development for DS.
Which is still the case, as far as we can gather, but we missed the bit publisher NIS America announcing a few days later that a PS2/PSP port of the original Disgaea: Hour of Darkness (Afternoon of Darkness on PSP) was coming to DS.
That's definitely the case. The game is due for release there in summer this year and is essentially exactly the same grid-battling, tactical RPG as before but with a few enhancements made for DS.
And courtesy of US site Crispy Gamer that's been chatting to NIS America's PR manager, Jack Niida, a few of those enhancements are now confirmed. For starters, the game's main feature is its multiplayer mode, but this will be a little different thanks to the DS dual-screen and the game's new stylus control.
Battle features include Geo Cubes in multiplayer battles, which you can use to enhance abilities and summon monsters and randomly generated items that appear on the battlefields called Demon Gadgets.
According to Niida, some concessions have been made in terms of resolution (graphically the DS couldn't handle a straight port from PS2/PSP) but the voice acting and cut-scenes from the original game are all intact.
So there you have it: western DS gamers are definitely getting themselves Disgaea. But they could get two if Prince of the Demon World and Red Moon comes our way too. Assuming it's a different game. Which Koei's European office seems to think it might be.
Expect clarification on the latter as soon as we can get to the bottom of this. It currently seems trickier to unravel than Lost's plot.
