Here’s an interesting A9 update from Japan which came as a complete surprise: It appears that Artdink are preparing to release what they call the ‘Building Kit‘.
The kit, as far as I can discern, will come on a CD available from high street stores – rather than it being a digital download. The price will be ¥3800 (£29) for the data CD on its own, or ¥14,490 (£109.530) for the data CD PLUS a copy of A9 which, because of the current strength of Japanese Yen feels a bit pricey at the moment. Read more »
One of the memorable and unique features of the Japanese rail experience is the assortment of jingles to be heard before your train vacates the platform. Apparently the station manager gets to choose the jingle himself – except for in special circumstances such as at Maihama (Disney) station. Here a young lad and his electric piano entertain Tokyo shoppers with a selection of crowd-pleasing jingles.
There’s a talented Japanese artist going by the moniker Vania600 who has been producing the most breathtaking images. The subject matter of his work seems generally to revolve around Japanese trains and anime-style girls in uniform. Take a look!
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Here’s a short video I found whilst browsing YouTube. Some guy, presumably Japanese, has A9 set up to play on two PC screens simultaneously. An intriguing concept to be sure…..
It seems a common feature of Japan’s rail system to name new trains. There’s the Hikari (meaning light beam), the Nozomi and so on. East Japan Railways also held a poll not long ago to name the new E5 series Shinkansen.
The new fast train between Narita airport and Tokyo, which debuted on the 17th of this month, is called, somewhat prosaically, the Skyliner. However, the track it runs upon, between Narita and Keisei-Takasago Station, has the far more inspirational moniker Narita Sky Access.
Here’s a few words on the line and train it self – which is, typically, fast and quite lovely to behold.
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Before I knew about A-Train I discovered another, pretty unique, Japanese train-themed game called Densha de Go!
The community for DDG was friendly and more established than it seems to be for our beloved A-Train (perhaps due, in part, to the pick-up-and-play-ability of the game – quite literally you can get the hang of it in minutes).
So I got hold of a copy, really, really enjoyed it, and lurked around the Densha de Go! forum occasionally. Then (I think this is what happened) some chancer bought the domain name that Butch had been using and made his own – completely crap – DDG site. Butch was rather irritated by this and disappeared in a cloud of red mist. The forum slowly died. Read more »
It’s taken a while to get comfortable with A9. Until last weekend I had mostly spent my time blinking at the numerous menus, experimenting with the schedule dialogue box, randomly building and just looking – It’s easy to get distracted and find yourself exploring the landscape via the excellent intuitive navigation control.
I awoke one morning determined to play a proper scenario – get a better feel for the flow of a game in A9. I chose the first scenario (the designated starter map of the game), consisting of a well-developed office district surrounded by three satellite towns – all eventually, I guess, to be swallowed up as the city expands. Anyway, my point here is that it isn’t until you begin to play for real that attention is drawn to the differences in game play, some subtle – others obvious, and how they’re combining to enhance the game overall.
So, starting today, and for the next few updates, I’ll be looking more closely at the gameplay features new to A9 that are making all the difference. Read more »
I’m busy exploring A9′s nuances. This weekend I’ll hopefully be in a position to share more detailed impressions from actual game play – really, there seems so much about this game that has been tweaked, improved and expanded. It’s such pleasure to sit down and play…
The other day I purchased a new graphics card for my gaming PC. It’s an ATI Radeon HD 5570 – a ‘low profile’ card to fit the small design of my Aspire X3810. It’s about the best LP card I’ll be able to fit into the casing and has pushed the frame rate whilst playing A9 up to a very steady 50 fps on 1600×1200, full AA. The only thing I find that’s killing the frame rate is shadowing which drops it by around 30 fps.
More soon…
A-Train 9 | MarkE231 | 
29/08/2010 15:25 | 
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