
	Platform PSP Genre Fighting Publisher Majesco Developer Arc System Works ETA Q1 2006
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Guilty Gears Judgment

Up to this point Guilty Gears, the heavy metal laden fighting game series with a flair for 2D art, has had both feet planted squarely in the realm of console gaming. However, Arc System Works is taking the franchise to the handheld market with Guilty Gears Judgment for the PSP. All signs point to the game aiming to be the sort that squeezes all of the important parts of the GG series into a handy, pocket-sized form for players to whip out when on the road.

From the start, the game will bombard players with a fairly robust roster of popular characters from the series. Clocking in at 20 selectable characters, players will be able to select from a number of series mainstays including Dizzy, May, Potemkin, and Sol-Badguy, among others.

While each character has their own personality traits, and basic story behind why they’re in the game, Guilty Gears Judgment also has a larger over arching story to it. In a nutshell, one of Villtania’s leading academics, Raimond, was creating new war machines and biological wonders to help feed his nation’s thirst for conquest. Unfortunately, all of these gadgets and creatures got out of control, and turned on the local populous, turning the whole country into one big blood bath. With that, the game’s characters have come to Villantia to stop the chaos in the name of justice, or at least to make a fast buck.

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There will be a variety of game modes to choose from in this portable title, such as story mode, versus, survival, boost mode (a mini side-scrolling brawler), as well as #Reload (a mode that taps into the arcade versions of Guilty Gears). Versus, boost, and #Reload modes will actually take advantage of the PSP’s wireless capabilities, ensuring that there’s a decent amount of multiplayer options in Guilty Gears Judgment.

What will ultimately prove to be the linchpin in the whole game is how well

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the controls pan out. There have been a number of complaints from fighting game fans regarding how the layout of buttons on the PSP makes playing games in the genre difficult, reducing one's hands to gnarled claws by the end of a session. The controls for Guilty Gears Judgment are already getting a hefty retooling in order to translate the classic moves of the series so that they will work on the handheld. Hopefully during this process the game’s developers will find a way to work some ergonomics into the picture.

Up to this point, there haven’t been a whole lot of fighting games to hit the PSP, in all likelihood due to the complaints about how troublesome the layout of the control pad is on. Maybe this game will be the one to show that the genre can actually work out pretty well if done right. We’ll just have to wait and see.

Mr. Nash

(September 15, 2005)