Infinite Line director Hifumi Kouno of Nudemaker showed up at last night's Platinum Games event (fully clothed, to our surprise) to debut the studio's forthcoming sci-fi RPG for DS. The game is built around two key concepts: Players command (1) a "highly-customizable" spaceship through (2) a "large and expansive" world that encompasses two galaxies. The team has prepared over 150 ship models, as well as more than 150 potential crew members that can be stationed around the ships. The insides of the crafts are modular, so players can place the bridges, engineering rooms, fire control rooms, etc. as they see fit.

As per The Space Opera Mandate® of 1941, Infinite Line will explore "what it means to be human" in this touching adventure around the stars. Nudemaker plans to show off some actual screenshots -- that will apparently "blow you away" -- in the near future.

Stupid name, lines are infinite, line segments are the ones that end.

Those screenshots don't look very appetising to me, but I'm sure to check it out if it gets an NA release. As long as they don't do a trying-to-be-sci-fi-but-stuck-on-medieval-planet-anyway like Star Ocean: Till the End of Time, I'm sure it'd be fine.

Whatever is with overly ambitious names anyway. "TWEWY", "World Destruction" and now "Infinite Line".

Infinite Line
Next up was a DS game which had a lot in common with games like Elite. You play a starship captain with the ability to design the outside and inside of your space ship, choosing your equipment, crew and even room placement. Again, very little was shown, but it appears to be in line with those classic space exploration/trading games, which is definitely a genre the DS hasn’t tapped yet. So yay for that!

SEGA proudly displayed a slew of Nintendo DS games this year and one of the more popular titles was Patinum Games' Infinite Space. When this game was first revealed in May it was described as resembling a Star Trek type experience where players could captain and customize their own ship. Today we saw what they meant.



Although the intro was entirely in Japanese, I was able to advance through the game's prologue which has players control one of the most powerful ships in the universe. The combat is very much inspired by naval battles where there are general attacks that have a high percentage of hitting and more specific shots that will likely miss their targets but can inflict huge amounts of damage. The camera can be moved from the bridge of your vessel to various views of the ships you encounter in the cosmos. The bottom screen shows a map of the ship's functions while the top screen displays the action. It truly is an epic undertaking on such a tiny device.



We asked the producer Kono San what his inspiration for the battle system was and he jokingly replied "There was no inspiration for the system because I am a genius, I thought of it myself." He went on to describe what the combat resembles: "I'm very familiar with the military ships from WWII and that inspired this battle system." 



The story line will involve two planets and ten major powers that are at war. The war will include more than 200,000 powers on each side. The theme behind the story is based on the belief that the human race needs to be at war in order to go on. Kono San feels that the human race will die out if peace ever prevailed. 



We asked specifically why the DS was the best choice for such a large undertaking. "The volume and length of the game is very long, so gamers should be able to pick up and play at any time." He went on to say "I would like to see more games like this on DS only if the creator was coming up with something new and unique." Infinite Space is certainly unique, hopefully we'll have the chance to experience the game in English sometime soon.