PixlBit

In the case of Demon's Souls, Atlus saw an opportunity for the game after Sony passed on selling it in the US. Once that game became a success, there was no way a small publisher like Atlus could have hoped to outbid a megapublisher like Namco.

Atlus did a lot of publishing work on the HD consoles for other small publishers, stuff like Spectral Force 3, Operation Darkness, and the Game of Thrones video game. Their in-house work, however, was devoted to handhelds, but I think Atlus has made a solid reputation for itself this generation. It was an almost completely unknown publisher until the final years of the PS2. Hopefully Catherine's relative success will encourage them to develop more on the PS4.

The PS2 was considered difficult to program for. But since it was so popular, game designers sucked it up and developed for it, and they got pretty damn good at it after a couple of years. They even figured out how to compensate for the PS2's lack of built-in antialiasing. If the PS3 had the same kind of huge popularity edge over the 360 as the PS2, again as I've noted above, developers would have been more willing to find ways.

One of the most commonly cited problems developers had with the PS3 was its memory structure. The PS3 has 256MB of RAM and 256 MB of VRAM, while the 360 has 512MB of RAM. A lot of developers, including John Carmack of Id Software, felt the 360's RAM was much more flexible since it could be allocated as they saw fit for the game or the graphics. On the PS3, if you needed more than 256MB of RAM, you were SOL as you couldn't borrow from the VRAM. Obviously, a lot of developers got a good grasp of the PS3 and made some amazing games for it, but a lot of multiplatform developers optimized for the 360 and left the PS3 version as an afterthought.

I think the PS3 version of Vesperia was more wishful thinking than anything, as Namco never specifically promised that one. I wish they had, though. I own the 360 game, but since I'm a PS3 guy now, I'd love to have the PS3 version. Plus all the added content.

FFvXIII, I think they ought to just fold that one into FFXV at this point, hopefully using the stuff we saw in Agni's Philosophy. I wish Square Enix had considered making Type-0 a HD remaster for the PS3.

The South Park game was picked up by Ubisoft, I believe.

Never played the NES version. For nostalgia reasons I stick with the original. There are also versions available for iOS, Android, and I believe Xbox Live.

It's kind of tough to run through this game quickly. A lot of the gameplay is very trial-and-error, and people tend to make a lot of errors in this game.

I always thought Rockford looked like an ant in the original.

A lot of the reason why so many Japanese companies skipped the HD generation is because the HD consoles failed to sell very well in Japan. The PS3 crawls along at a steady pace, while the 360, despite being a bigger Japanese success than the old Xbox, is all but dead. I guarantee you that if the PS3 had been as big of a hit in Japan as the PS1 and PS2 that Japanese companies would have been out in force in the HD generation.

That said, some Japanese companies did well in the HD generation. In particular, Namco has been very active this generation and, thanks to some strategic acquisitions, has grown into one of the world's largest game publishers. They did four console Tales games and a number of other HD RPGs, and published outside works like Ni no Kuni and Dark Souls. And From Software has risen from obscurity to stardom on the backs of the Souls games.

Where is this festival?

Have you ever seen a Baby Pac-Man machine there?

I think Pac-Man will almost certainly be in SSB, and Lloyd, being the star of the most popular Tales game of all time, will probably make it if Namco and Nintendo decide to use Namco characters in the game. I could see KOS-MOS making at least a cameo appearance, given that the game is between Namco and Nintendo.

I'd say Jin Kazama has a fair shot of making it into SSB as well.