No More Heroes: Heroes Paradise Moves onto NA

This week, Konami has officially announced that it is bringing the Playstation 3 edition of No More Heroes: Heroes Paradise to North America in 2011.

Back in 2008, No More Heroes was released for the Wii. This product is an action-driven, extremely violent and altogether punk-inspired adventure starring Travis Touchdown, an Otaku who, after killing the Number 11 assassin, is dragged into an intricate collection of showdowns against maniacs and professional killers alike. Not to mention it has a myriad of small jobs to take on in order to afford the increasingly deadly fights. It received a number of decent reviews, and it sold well enough for a sequel, No More Heroes: Deadly Struggle, to be released in 2010.

Heroes Paradise, meanwhile, is an upgraded port of the original title for 360 and PS3, originally released in Japan through Marvelous Interactive. Konami will only be bringing the PS3 version to other shores, alas.

The HD edition will contain a new "Rebout Mode" in which players will be able to fight old foes again, and a new Super Sweet difficulty is available in which each character in the game sports a new pair of digs, ripe for the mauling. Furthermore, the game offers players the ability to watch the game's cutscenes at their discretion, once completed, of course.

Those unsure about controls will be happy to know it supports normal controller and Move control methods. It is expected to be released in the Spring.

SOURCE: IGN

MMV Producers move to Grashopper

Two of the higher development leads from MMV (otherwise known as Marvelous Interactive) have announced that they will be moving to key positions at Grasshopper Manufacture, the development company led by Suda 51.

Yasuhiro Wada and Yoshiro Kimura were two lead directors at Marvelous Interactive. Wada-san is perhaps best known for creating the Harvest Moon franchise, which he has helped produce since. Kimura-san, meanwhile, is the creator and lead director for Little King's Story, one of Marvelous's biggest productions this generation.

After the move, Wada-san will become the Grasshopper's Chief Operating Officer and Kimura-san will be the company's Chief Creative Officer. This is not necessarily the first time the two have worked with Grasshopper: in fact, the No More Heroes franchise is published by Marvelous in Japan. As for what the two are doing specifically, it is too early to know.

Marvelous Interactive is a smaller publisher which is best known for being the Japanese publisher of Harvest Moon and other franchises related to the series. This generation, it started its focus on heavily supporting the Wii with brand new IPs, including No More Heroes from Grasshopper, Arc Rise Fantasia from imageepoch, and Little King's Story with the help of Cing. The company has been having poor activity as of late, and it is retracting its focus on smaller projects to survive.

Grasshopper Manufacture, run by Suda 51, is best known for having developed the No More Heroes franchise, but it has also produced a number of smaller projects, including DS's Contact and Flower, Sun and Rain, as well as Killer 7 last generation. The company is currently working on Shadows of the Undead with Shinji Mikami and EA as well as Codename D for Kinect.

SOURCE: Famitsu and NintendoLife