Perhaps the greatest combination to ever gattai in our world is the Studio Ghibli RPG made by Level 5. Kotaku has recently posted some new screenshots of this soon-to-be masterpiece. The name of the game is Ninokuni, and will be released for the Nintendo DS; but can you imagine what this game would look like if it was released for the 360/PS3? (dies) This is Ghibili’s first video game in development, and hopefully not the last. It is will be released sometime in 2009, but no official time has been set yet.
The interesting part about this game, other than it looks like a Miyazaki film, is its gameplay elements. The story is about a boy who receives a magic book after his mother dies. This allows him to enter a parallel world where he will be able to revive his mother. This magic book is essential to gameplay, so much so that a physical book will come with the game, and is required to play the game. Meaning people with R4’s are going to be out of luck (until it is scanned.) It reminds me of one of those old computer games that asked you words from the manual every time you played it; bad, bad memories.
Ninokuni is looking great so far, and I hope the game can live up to the hype. Check out more screenshots in the gallery bellow.
On the side, Kotaku also had a story how Hayao Miyazaki hate video game. So there a good change that this will be the only Ghibli game.