Fist Of The North Star at MCM 2010

“The game has already sold over 600,000 in Japan.” Product Manager Masa Hayashi tells me, with obvious pride. And why not? That’s an impressive figure in anybody’s book. The game launched there at the end of March, and Tecmo Koei is obviously hoping for similar success with the Western release. Masa watches people’s reactions to the playable demo carefully, including mine. He is surely aware that releasing the game outside of Japan is a gamble, and one that he hopes will pay off. As we all know, a game that shifts an impressive number of units is not necessarily a good one. How does it actually play?