It looks like Bandai Namco are gearing up to announce a new iDOLM@STER game next week.

Well, I say that, but that page does seem to confirm that an actual sequel, rather than yet another rehash of the same materials, is in production, but they may not release many details on that until the fifth anniversary next summer. Bummer.

Which kind of makes this non-news, really. I do wonder if the “Next Game Project” mentioned towards the bottom of the page will actually turn out to be something different to the sequel, though – it seems like kind of a long period for them not to be doing anything in the game-space release wise for the series, and it seems to me that they haven’t milked SPs new characters for all they’re worth yet. I wouldn’t be astonished if they actually announced a PS3 version of the game or something.

Or, of course, I could just be completely misreading the page – it’s not like I actually read moonspeak to any degree of competency.

Yes, I did buy all three versions. At least I’m not crazy like that crazy Japanese fan who bought 39 copies of the game (Sankaku, so possibly NSFW) in order to get all the different stores pre-order bonuses. Instead, I just got three sets of the alternative sleeves for the game. Sourcing import PSP games in the UK is actually a bit of a pain, as a few of the more popular retailers won’t ship PSP or PS3 releases over due to Sony winning a court case against Lik-Sang for selling import PSPs before the UK release. As such, my copies are the marginally more expensive Japanese release of the game. It’s nothing to do with being snobby (though I’m aware a few import gamers are a little anal about the fact), but rather it was easiest version to source back when I pre-ordered. Apparently the marginally cheaper Asian release not only comes with everything pictured above, but also a no-doubt useful English instruction manual, so it probably a better purchase if you can find it.
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Yes, I’ve heard the news that iDOLM@STER is coming to PSP by the end of the year – or more accurately, coming to PSP three times by the end of the year. I can’t say I’m particularly surprised that they are doing three separate releases due to the amount of audio data in the game – aside from all the spoken dialogue, there’s obviously all the song data, stored multiple times for each character. Hopefully we’ll get the 360 and Live For You songs as a trade off for the missing characters, but there’s not been anything said about the song selection yet.

Anyway, in a move that probably isn’t a surprise to anyone reading, I’m presently planning to buy all three versions. For those who haven’t been following the news, or hasn’t heard everything yet, I’ll sum up what I presently know about these releases…

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This is mostly going to be about the OAV, since there really isn’t much to say about the game. It’s kind of fun, though there really isn’t all that much to it – it is a pretty easy 1000 gamer points, though the amount of travel in the 360 pads face buttons makes the higher difficulty settings a little harder than they should be. I really need to go back through and play all the tracks whilst wearing headphones in order to properly judge the remix tracks, but they are a real mixed bag. Some of them really, really don’t work – they’ve tried to turn My Best Friend into a trash metal track for it’s A-mix, and the disconnect between the backing track and the vocal is horrendous (the unreleased chip-tune-tastic B-mix at least sounds better) – whilst some of the others are great. My favourite is probably the A-mix of Aoi Tori, which is dropping in so much gothic malice that it really wouldn’t sound out of place in a Vampire movie.

Anyway, onto the OAV…
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