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Hudson's Rune Jade

With older games like Rogue and Nethack and newer games like Diablo and Dragons Quest Monsters (called Dragon Warrior Monsters in North America) becoming more and more popular, many developers are catching on to the popularity of randomly-created dungeons. Hudson of Japan is no different, as they have revealed news on their network RPG for the Sega Dreamcast, called "Rune Jade."

The game is very similar to Blizzard's "Diablo" in appearance and in play style. Players will be able to create an account with up to eight characters, who can also be saved to the VMU, but it is not known at this point if there will be a mini-game or if it is simply to take your character with you. Character professions that are known at this point are knights, ninjas, monks, and magicians, and there are likely to be more.

Rune Jade will have both a single-player and a multi-player network mode for the DC modem or the DC cable modem, when this is eventually released. Hudson will also most likely take advantage of the upcoming DC keyboard so that people playing online can chat with each other. There will be over 100 maps available for play, but only around 20 or so will be available in single player. A player's profession will also determine what map he or she gets in single player mode. In multiplayer, as long as you have mixed professions, you will be able to play in almost all maps.

Perhaps one of the most exciting things about Rune Jade is that Yutaka Minowa is doing the character designs. Yutaka Minowa is most well known for working on the 'Records of Lodoss War' and 'Ninja Scroll' animes. His keen mind will surely help Rune Jade's style become truly unique.

At this point, Rune Jade is scheduled to be released in Japan this Summer, but no North American publisher has been announced. Hopefully someone will get the publishing rights to this game soon. This genre of game is very popular in North America right now, and it would be hard to believe if no one took advantage of it.


by Doug "Stom" Hill    
Source: [Videogames.com]
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