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The floodgates for Trauma Team publicity are open, starting with the screenshots and now continuing with promotional videos. Atlus takes us behind the scenes of Trauma Team -- wisely choosing to feature the game's voice recording over, say, the medical research the team did.

In the first of two videos (above), Atlus offers a tour of PCB Productions, the company producing the voice work for the multidisciplinary medical adventure. In the second (after the break), we meet a few of the actors portraying the quirky medical team, allowing us to put different faces to the voices behind the cartoon characters. Trauma Team is currently scheduled for an April 20 release date.

click to cut open the galleryIn case you've forgotten about Trauma Team (it has been a while), Atlus's expanded Trauma Center sequel stars a group of six medical professionals, each an expert in a different discipline. These new screens feature each of the game's six simulated medical practices in action: surgery, forensics, diagnostics, first response, endoscopy, and orthopedics.

They all seem to involve similar activities: jabbing, cutting, and otherwise manipulating human bodies with Wii Remote motions. Still, the variety of methods through which you manipulate said bodies should help keep the Trauma Center formula from going stale, as should the personalities of the six quirky doctors (the "Drama Team," if you will).

After the completion of Persona 4, the team responsible for the game at Atlus split in two, with one half tasked with creating Persona 3 Portable, while the other half got to work on "an original new game." According to a translation by Andriasang of the P3 Portable creator's blog, that first game is "nearing completion," and the two teams will re-form [insert Voltron reference here] in 2010.

Persona 4 producer Katsura Hashino says that the re-unified team will work on "an even bigger title" in the coming year, though no details have been formally announced. We'll just have to giddily think about the impending release of 3D Dot Game Heroes in North America, while we wait for Hashino to dish.

[Via Andriasang]

Atlus' Demon's Souls will take pity on the masses this holiday as the game shifts to the "pure white tendency" this holiday. What this means is that "new areas and special NPCs" will exist in Boletaria during that time -- as a bonus, enemies cause less damage and players inflict more. Pure white is not easy to achieve, so this is a great opportunity for players. Atlus does note that adventurers may need to "log in and out a few times before [the] tendency shifts to match the server."

Demon's Souls had a similar event during Halloween, but that was "pure black." There is no shame in using the game's official wiki and, for soul's sake, we recommend using it.

Update: We followed up with Atlus and received a more specific time for the event: "Noon PST to noon PST, 12/21-28." Happy hunting!

At some point, people are going to get spoiled by Atlus's (coincidentally named) "Atlus Spoils" program, in which the company includes some kind of bonus item with pretty much every game it releases. When the publisher doesn't release a game with an artbook or soundtrack or figurine or something, somebody out there is going to be irritated to buy just a game.

That won't happen with Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey, though. Atlus announced today that every launch copy of the first-person RPG will include a soundtrack disc. You'll have to wait a bit longer to get that launch copy: the publisher also announced that the release date has moved from the March 10 date found on Nintendo's Q1 schedule to March 23.

The trailer we've placed below the break for XBLA's Zeno Clash: Ultimate Editiion is a failure. It's not that you won't get a good idea of the first-person-brawler-slash-shooter's gameplay -- you will. It's that the clip doesn't come within a million miles of communicating just how skin-crawlingly creepy the experience of playing Zeno Clash is.

Just for the record, it's kind of like taking a shower in Neil Gaiman's bathwater after its been filtered through David Lynch's birth certificate. Cr-eepy.

The latest Famitsu reveals a third entry in Atlus's hardcore dungeon RPG series Etrian Odyssey (Sekaiju no Meikyuu). Etrian Odyssey 3 ditches the series' forest setting for the seaside town of Armolode, in which an earthquake has recently uncovered -- surprise! -- a big labyrinth.

According to the 1UP translation, the new game will include new character classes "including prince/princess, phalanx, monk, pirate, and shinobi," and will allow players to explore the ocean by ship when they aren't being killed in the labyrinth. The game will be released March 4 in Japan, and has a pretty good shot at a North American release: not only has Atlus USA translated the previous games in the series, it continues to show willingness to publish first-person DS RPGs like The Dark Spire and the upcoming Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey.

Using its cost-effective ESRB method of announcing new games, Atlus revealed a new DSi program called PhotoWorld. As you may expect from a game with that title, it involves taking pictures with the DSi camera. Players shoot a self-portrait and then "customize the pictures with a variety of stamps, photo effects, and text boxes."

As Siliconera notes, Atlus already sort of has a program like this on DSiWare. Nintendo's Sparkle Snapshots is based on Atlus's popular Print Club (Purikura) booths. We look forward to finding out how this one differs -- there's absolutely no way it could be any more sparkly, that's for sure. Of course, we aren't even sure this is DSiWare -- while this sounds like the kind of thing you would sell as a download, all we know is that it's for the DSi.

Atlus revealed a password system for its upcoming Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey, through which players will be able to trade copies of their customized, leveled-up, fused demons. In addition to being able to generate your own passwords to share your awesome demons with others, Atlus will release passwords for some rare creatures.

In addition, the updated box art image shows an M rating. Clearly, demon hunting is serious business, to be left to the big kids! As Siliconera notes, there are only ten DS games with M ratings, out of 1,366 total releases.

A beautiful, atmospheric trailer (after the break) introduces us to the story of the new Shiren the Wanderer ... such as it is. Basically, Shiren's master, knowing that Shiren likes dungeons, gives him the key to the Karakuri Mansion, which is a big dungeon. There's more, like a cursed princess and some time travel stuff, but the essence is that Shiren goes into another dungeon. It's rather lucky for us that Shiren's wanderings are so often directed toward dungeons and dungeon-type environments.

Atlus also highlights Shiren's pal Koppa in the trailer, allowing us to hope that the company will choose to bundle the game with Sega's Koppa Wiimote stand.

Atlus announced a North American localization of Sega and Chunsoft's Shiren the Wanderer at E3, and hasn't said much about it until now. The company just dated the game for February 9 and released a bunch of screens & art for the punishing roguelike, along with a bit of sad news regarding the online connectivity.

"Despite our best efforts, the North American version of Shiren will not include the Rescue, Versus, or Item Transfer online features," Atlus's Aram Jabbari said in the announcement. "However, the downloadable dungeon content from the Japanese version will be included on the disc." Jabbari said that Atlus felt compelled to alert fans because "the absence of these features may influence some fans' decision to purchase the game."

The most identifiable feature of any Shiren game -- repeated, unavoidable death -- should remain intact.

If you're anything like the majority of the Joystiq staff, you spent the bulk of your formative years slaying all manner of pixelated beasties and saving incredibly low definition damsels in distress. If so, watching the first English trailer for 3D Dot Game Heroes is likely to take you way, way back. If, on the other hand, you're not an old codger like us, you can still appreciate the game's wonderful art style, which is a breath of fresh air in these brown times.

3D Dot Game Heroes is set to pixelate North American PS3s (and our hearts) on May 11.

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In a late-night press release, Atlus announced that it is in fact the company publishing 3D Dot Game Heroes in North America, confirming its status as the publisher of choice for fans of both Zelda homages and From Software games. The company even went so far to give the PS3 game a precise date: May 11, a day which will play host to an unheard-of number of underlines and gold stars on our calendar. GameStop, however, says May 3. We're willing to accept "May" as specific enough for now.

We've got some delightful new screens in the gallery below, if, like us, you're nowhere near over the novelty of giant pixels rendered in HD.

Update: Commenter Orchard Pear points out that the GameStop listing also prices the game at just $39.99. If that turned out to be the final price, it would basically be a miracle performed by the gods of retro gaming.

Atlus has announced that it's previously revealed Demon's Souls strategy guide replacement program is now active. If you purchased the deluxe edition and wound up with a defective strategy guide -- the defective units have "unusual cover ink wear / fading" -- then all you have to do is visit the replacement program website and follow the instructions. In short, it amounts to filling out a form and shipping off the front cover and first page of the guide. Within 8-12 weeks, players should receive a shiny new copy.

All requests have to be postmarked by December 31, 2009, so hop to it if you've got a defective copy.*


*The editors of Joystiq realize that this post doesn't include a single crack about how incredibly difficult Demon's Souls is. Please accept their heartfelt apology.

Perhaps you've heard, but Demon's Souls is a hard game. Like really hard. Like bone-crushingly, soul-scathingly hard. Speaking to Game Informer, Demon's Souls director Hidetaka Miyazaki explains why. According to Miyazaki, the difficulty was designed around giving players "a sense of accomplishment," specifically in regard to the soul collecting mechanic. For those who haven't played the game, souls act as currency and you lose all of them upon death. They can be regained, but only if you make it back to your bloodstain without dying twice more. Trust us, it's not as easy as it sounds.

According to Miyazaki, "If the Souls could be recovered anytime, there would be no suspense or sense of accomplishment." He added that he wants players to feel like, "I did it! I made it to my bloodstain!" Of course, Miyazaki fails to mention the sense of utter, despairing failure one feels when they don't make it back to their bloodstain (a frequent occurrence).

Regarding the possibility of a sequel, Miyazaki said he couldn't give a direct answer, but noted that the team learned a great deal on Demon's Souls and there were several things that didn't make it into the game. Given the opportunity, Miyazaki said he would "welcome the chance to create an even better game in the same style." Gluttons for punishment that we are, we'll take it.