Spectrobes 2 official title revealed

Today Disney Interactive Studios released some new details on its upcoming sequel to Spectrobes, the company’s first original franchise. The prior game was a bit of a success on the DS, shipping a million copies worldwide, making it the best-selling third-party DS game of 2007, the highest honor a non-Nintendo developed game can hope to achieve.

The second game’s official title is Spectrobes: Beyond The Portals. It continues the story of Rallen and Jeena (who is a playable character this time), two youthfuljourneymenon their excavation of fossils that then become monsters that won’t fit in your pockets. The titular portals and what exists beyond them is a mystery that those two adventurous youngsters aim to solve.

The game will add new maps, battle features, and a new three-dimensional view. But the most significant detail is whether the game has a sufficient amount of new Spectrobes, the monsters that are nothing like Pokemon. Though new creatures are promised, Disney and Jupiter Corp., the Kyoto-based dev of the game and its predecessor, are vague on the actual number.

Perhaps most interesting is how this game takes advantage of the DS’s Wi-Fi capabilities. Using Disney’s DGamer tech, which circumvents Nintendo and their 16-digit friend codes with security of its own, the second Spectrobes will allow for online matches between players. It will also provide its own community, avatars, and the like that will be connected between all future Disney DS games that incorporate DGamer (the first being the Prince Caspian tie-in for May).

As odd as it seemed for Disney to actually make something new and not featuring any of their thousands of characters, it is great to see that it is working out for them so far. Let’s cross our fingers that it keeps going with Spectrobes’ planned release in fall of this year. Until then,hereare the first screens.

Mar 19, 2008