Panther Software, one of the few small developers in japan to support the Xbox, has announced that the port of the PC avg Kana ~Imouto~ has been cancelled, due to the company’s perceived inability to make a profit on the game, now two years into development, according to RPG Fan. The company has made other contributions to the platform in the past, such as the Metal Dungeon RPG, and the AVG aoinamida.

Hot on the heels of the Alien Hominid GBA port news, it has become known that a mobile version was released on the 23rd of may. The mobile version was developed by Tuna technologies, and comprises four minigames in the Alien Hominid universe. The game is playable on all java-equipped phones, and was put out by Player X in concert with Zoo Digital.

Remember that cute MMORPG named Wiki, that borrowed a bit too much from the first Zelda installment on the Gamecube? Webzen Games, which you heard of recently on IC, came back with a second wave of media displaying their good will at not totally infuriating Nintendo by… slightly changing their logo and the characters’ hairstyles. Oh, and they also made the effort of giving up the WindWaker-like outfits… and instead go for costumes matching the ones of the next Zelda. It looks like IP lawyers get all the fun these days. You can check a bunch of new pictures and download a new 98MB trailer on their dedicated website.

Iggy just translated some arcade-related news from Alpha-Station, summing up the info at a recent Sega Private Show. Here’s what we learned: Sega announced that SNK Playmore’s NeoGeo Battle Coliseum will be the last game using SegaSammy’s AW-Net service, which copied Virtua Fighter’s VF-Net and asked you to play hours of the tedious KOF NeoWave in order to unlock hidden characters (among other annoying examples). Games like KOF XI and Samurai Spirits Tenkaichi Kenkyakuden will remain offline.

Speaking of “Tenkaichi”, operators aren’t found of it. The two previous Samurai Spirits releases had less than stellar incomes, and august will also be the month of Capcom/Banpresto’s new Gundam Seed game. Not only that, but NGBC’s control problems seem to have been fixed, and the operators think that NGBC will be commercially above SvC, at the level of Neowave (which triggered strong income in spite of being panned critically). Now, as NGBC launches in late july and as the SNK audience isn’t ubiquitous, Tenkaichi supporters have reasons to be pessimistic.

SNK isn’t the only one to have calendar issues, though. Notice the upcoming releases: NGBC in july, Tenkaichi in august, GGXX#reload/ in september, Hokuto no Ken in october and KOF XI in november. The whole AtomisWave 2D fighting scene is shooting itself in the foot with five games released in five consecutive months, a dream for fans but a nightmare for operators – the upcoming arrival of Spectral Vs. Generation (new movie here) on Type-X notwithstanding.

As Rid noticed, the site for Sengoku Cannon on PSP was put online saturday, exactly two months before the game’s release.

This weekend’s loketest gave away a lot of details on the first Samurai Spirits for AtomisWave. Most people were favorably impressed by the game, although it is still not clear who is responsible for the development. Here’s what we know right now: Tenkaichi Kenkyakuden is a “dream match”, which means it doesn’t follow any specific storyline, therefore allowing a mix of characters that wouldn’t normally meet (As in KOF ’98). However, in order to fit the setting of the Samurai Spirits series, “Tenkaichi” is set during a matsuri festival, which leads the game into colorful backgrounds, no blood spilled and a couple of matsuri-spirited original characters.

The cast is huge: 36 characters as of now, and there is room for 4 more. They all come from the main series and only Earthquake (from SS), Chamcham, Kuroko, Sieger (from Shin SS) and Poppy (from SS Zero) miss the call as of yet. This means that along with the previously announced Wan Fû, old characters Nicotine and Gen An are back. The 3 original characters are Sugoroku, Andrew and Ochamaro. Sugoroku is a matsuri organizer reminiscent of the cast in Ie, Tatemasu! and fighting with an array of original attacks. Ochamaro is a robot filled with theatrical gimmicks. Andrew is a bishônen-type american guard with a bayonet.

To make full use of this impressive roster, Tenkaichi also allows to select one amongst six different fighting “spirits” – in a fashion similar to the numerous grooves in CvS2. Those fighting modes are based and named after each different title in the (main) series plus an original mode, and offer quite different styles of gameplay. Tenkaichi also uses the AtomisWave trademark fifth button of course.

For a load of informations and comments on characters and modes, check the appropriate MMC thread.

For those looking for an Ys VII fix, check out this translation of Falcom’s website for Ys: The Oath in Felghana. It does a pretty good job of translating all the useful information and keeping the original Falcom site’s execution… right down to weird menu code bugs with the download link! (Hint: Get to download from the front page.)

About 17 seconds ago, Crystal Light Stage released a new version of their conventional but cute puzzle game Magical Feeling 2. It’s a 20MB tiny config-friendly freeware, so I don’t see why you shouldn’t just rush to their website and launch the download, save from reading that neat little guide for Electroplankton on NTSC-UK.