Just in time for the holidays, Arika has released Jewelry Master Twinkle for Xbox Live Indie Games. It costs 400 MSP. It looks like it's even been localised in English. Here's a video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ztg04RuSmDY I won't have time to try this right away, but I'm very excited!
Re: Jewerly Master Twinkle I haven't really played Jewelry Master on PC all that much. I'll look into buying this though. Btw you can get the free PC version over here.
Re: Jewerly Master Twinkle I can't figure out how to buy this. If anyone finds it on the marketplace please do share the link.
Re: Jewerly Master Twinkle I'm away from my Xbox, so I can't check on Live...but it's not listed on either the North American or Japanese indie game website. Keep in mind that Arika can choose which regions the game will be sold in. It's possible they won't even make it available in North America. (I don't know why they'd do this, but likewise I don't know why they region-locked TGMA.)
Re: Jewerly Master Twinkle I don't think it was their decision. I mean, in theory they could have bought a worldwide license. But in practice it just wasn't economically feasible. I'm not sure of the exact publishing arrangement, but I think Microsoft may have funded part of the game development or license as part of an initiative to make the system cater more to Japanese tastes. ACE was actually a featured launch title meant to show off Live. At any rate, I say the fact that the youtube video description appears to have everything in English and Japanese is a promising sign that it'll be an international release.
Re: Jewerly Master Twinkle Nearly every single Japanese 360 release is region locked. The only title I can think of that was not would be Mushihime-sama Futari.
Re: Jewerly Master Twinkle I see one significant difference form PC version. Jewels merge colors without being surrounded in this version. So as son as you join R G and B together, you have white, and everything touching it is automatically white. This significantly reduces difficulty.
Re: Jewerly Master Twinkle Hahaha, that's debatable. The randomizer has changed quite a bit... There are a lot of gems to deal with! Also, Another gets pretty darn fast!
Re: Jewerly Master Twinkle The game has been approved and can be found over here on xna with a link to the marketplace. mihara has announced the game on his blog too. It's is available in all regions so I'll be downloading the demo later today. Game difficulty is reduced, but it could be that there are different modes with several difficulty levels. The PC version has 3 modes: Normal, Hard and Death. Quite a lot of TC members on the rankings of the PC version. EDIT: Just played the demo for about 20 minutes. No xna over here in Belgium so I created a new Japanese account to access the Indie Games section. There are 3 difficulty levels: Normal, Hard and Another. Only Normal is available in the demo and you can play for about 4 minutes. Managed to get over 200.000 points in one game. Definitely feels easier than the PC version.
Re: Jewerly Master Twinkle You can get in in the USA and Canada, at the very least. I also found a rather curious looking game developed by Arika while searching for information on Jewelry Master Twinkle, which appears to be the source of some of Jewelry Master Twinkle's media.
Re: Jewerly Master Twinkle Does anyone know the conditions for different dialogue routes? I've tested by score and by time and neither test yields consistent results. Maybe it's a TAP-like grade system?
http://news.dengeki.com/elem/000/000/226/226895/ Would someone good at Japanese be kind enough to translate this for me? From machine translations I can understand that there's some sort of hidden scenario in Normal mode, and that the first 10 people to discover it will win some sort of prize...? But it would be great to know more precisely what the details are.
This is what I got from using machine translation and my very limited knowledge of the language. The hidden scenario can also (or only?) be found in Normal mode of the free trial. There doesn't seem to be any details on how to get the special background though. But if you can get it in the trial then it shouldn't be that difficult to discover as you're only limited to about 4 minutes of play during the demo. Probably some special (cascade) line clear or pattern. Maybe something Mahjong related? From the people who discover the hidden scenario with special background and send a picture there will be 20 who'll get drawn via lottery. 10 will get their trial version upgraded to the full version and 10 others will get a Taikyoku Mahjong: Net de Ron! original game book. The competition is open until the end of the month and if you participate you need to specify what gift you'd like to get. This may not be as accurate as it sounds... EDIT: Played the trial a little more just now and it seems like you can play more than the 4 minutes I mentioned above. I was able to play more than 5:30 in one game. Score was over 300.000 around level 430 when I died. So I could have played even longer. I think the special background can be unlocked by some special gem pattern. Maybe gems of a particular color are necessary.
Haha, that was quick! I already activated the hidden scenario with the orange background. I actually remember seeing it before, on maybe the second day of playing it, but at the time I wasn't aware there was anything special about it and just carried on playing thinking nothing of it. I still have no idea what the conditions for activating it are though...
I wonder if people outside Japan are eligible to participate? Or maybe it doesn't matter if you create a Japanese account? It would be nice if I don't have to bother with buying MS poinst in another country to play the game. Do you remember the text in the bubble when the hidden background is unlocked Edo? EDIT: I'll give it a try because 10 winners will be sent a code via e-mail to unlock the full game.
"Don't you remember me? It's me. Naoko. We went to the same junior high." Here's a video ending just before the background changes, it might give you some clues as to what the requirements may be: http://www.sendspace.com/file/g0pqc1
I believe I have an idea of the conditions necessary to get the background after watching your video and the picture posted on the site you linked to before. Will definitely attempt to obtain the hidden scenario by the end of the weekend. Thanks!
