Amazing Island
From Sega Retro
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| Amazing Island | ||||||||||||||||||||
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| System(s): GameCube | ||||||||||||||||||||
| Publisher: Sega (JP), Sega of America (US) | ||||||||||||||||||||
| Developer: Hitmaker, Ancient | ||||||||||||||||||||
| Peripherals supported: Game Boy Advance Cable | ||||||||||||||||||||
| Genre: Action | ||||||||||||||||||||
| Number of players: 1-2 | ||||||||||||||||||||
| Official in-game languages: | ||||||||||||||||||||
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Amazing Island, called Kaiju no Shima: Amazing Island (カイジュウの島 ～アメージングアイランド～) in Japan, is a video game developed by Hitmaker and Ancient and published by Sega for the Nintendo GameCube. It was released in the US on 24 August 2004.[1][2]
Contents
Story
A mysterious painter created a book with a mystical island called Amazing Island 1000 years before the game's present time and it was created through the painter's imagination. The book was a well-known one, but time passed by and it was forgotten. A tribe of people called Maboo thrived there. The Maboo, humans, and Monsters lived together in harmony, until about 100 years ago, humans left because the story was forgotten, and an evil race of demonic monsters known as Evilings started to appear and put curses on the Maboo, decreasing their population until there were hardly any left.
When the Evilings took over the Island, they all merged together to create the Black Evil and the island was headed towards its doom until a Hero from the human world (Amazing Island takes place in the dream world inside the book) came and destroyed the Black Evil. The island was at peace for some time until the Black Evil came back and started wreaking havoc once again. The Maboo were unable to fight back, because they couldn't fight. Only a human with all eight artifacts called Vision Orbs could stop the Black Evil. Calling for help, one of the Maboos (named Lagu) gave an eleven year old child from the human world a Monster Card so they could go to their world to help save them once and for all.
Gameplay
Amazing Island is a minigame collection with a well developed avatar creator. Your character is a Boy or Girl and their monster partner. By completing courses they gain Vision Orbs, which drives off the Black Evil, restores portions of the Island, and gain new abilities and items to customize their monster partner. The further in game, the more difficult the challenges are until the Black Evil itself is confronted. Upon purging the whole Island of Evil the villagers and the player hold a celebration.
Monster customization
Any time the player visits the Hall of Life they can customize an existing or create a new monster. Creating a new monster costs nothing and will grant the player an additional Chance Star. If your creature loses all of its Chance Stars, your creature will be destroyed, and you will have to make another creature.
A new monster is created by talking to Folu. He will let you choose a Frame which acts as a skeleton for various body types e.g. dragon, hamster, giant, hero. Then the player can draw limbs and body part and choose how thick or thin they are to be. New frames are gathered from completed Courses and more advance drawing tools such as a Stamp or Resize are gained from Vision Orbs.
Next the player will talk to Chinto to customize their monster. Patterns are textures that drawn on the body that can range from materials e.g. Glass, Rock, Lava; skins e.g. Dog, Cow, Parrot; or outfits e.g. Ninja, Santa, Cute Robot. Eyes are the type of eyes the monster will have. Voices are the sounds the monster will make. Accessories are various objects from horns, to wings, to weapons, to jewelry that can be placed anywhere on the monster. In addition to the basic choices each monster component except for the eyes has variation. E.g. Not only can the player choose a Dragon pattern, but a Red, Blue, Green, or Yellow one as well. More component variations and tools can be gained from Vision Orbs. New monster components can be bought from Shops or found in silver chests from Courses and imported from Monster Cards. (See below.)
Finally the player names their monster and takes their Foto. (A Foto is a card that is a monster's link between the human world and Amazing Island.) If they wish to save their monster or change between saved and preset monsters, the player can talk to the Elder. Preset monsters are fully designed ones from monster cards acquired in gold chests. The player cannot modify these monsters at all, but they do not take space on the Nintendo GameCube memory card.
If the player does not want to design an entire monster from scratch they can take a random five question personality quiz from Folu to have one auto generated. Although the body is permanent (though at a certain point in the game you can edit the final product) an auto generated monster can still have its accessories customized.
There are at least 18 Frames, 30 patterns, 20 voices, and 150 accessories.
Every aspect of a monster; frame, accessories, actual drawn body shape and thickness, affects its stats. They are Speed, Mental, Power, Stamina, Weight, Element, and Class. Various events rely on different stats e.g. races will use Speed, while fights Power. Monsters in their element e.g. Fire in a Spin (lava) stage will gain an advantage. Finally the higher the class the better the monster.
Multiplayer
Amazing Island offers multiplayer options where two to four players can complete on the Courses or link up in Monster Cards.
In the main game players can compete an entire Course or specific event. They also have the option to use multiple memory cards to import their own monsters and cross reference new high scores between saved data files. While playing, events are automatically completed either simultaneously or in turns depending on appropriateness. Like Practice Mode only money is awarded in the events.
In monster Cards, up to four Game Boy Advances can link up to battle each other. If arranged close together all four screens form an entire battle view. The last survivor will be awarded a chest.
Versions
Localised names
| Language | Localised Name | English Translation |
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| English (US) | Amazing Island | Amazing Island |
| Japanese | カイジュウの島 ～アメージングアイランド～ | Kaiju no Shima: Amazing Island |
Production credits
- Original Concept: Yuzo Koshiro
- Chief Planner: Kataru Uchimura
- Planning: Kazuyuki Higashida, Tetsuya Kawabata, Keisuke Miyanaga
- Art Director: Ayano Koshiro
- Chief Cg Designer: Makoto Wada
- CG Designers: Kevin Chung, Rie Takahashi, Hiroshi Chiba, Yasuyuki Sato (Digital Scape), Tetsuya Tatejima (Digital Scape), Misao Yoshida
- Sound Director: Yuzo Koshiro
- Sound Effects & Music Composition: Yuzo Koshiro, Tomonori Hayashibe, Motohiro Kawashima
- Chief Programmers: Kazutoyo Kobayashi, Tsuyoshi Sato
- Programming: Hideki Koyama, Hiroshi Takahashi, Masato Mizukami
- Monster Editor Programmer: Hideki Koyama
- TEDDY: Takeo Igarashi (The University of Tokyo)
- GBA Programmer: Kazutoyo Kobayashi
- Marketing: Kenta Ueno, Yasushi Yamashita
- Promotion: Takayoshi Ohuchi
- Publicity: Yasushi Nagumo
- Title Logo Design: Toshiki Yamaguchi
- Packaging & Instruction Manual: Yoshihiro Sakuta, Hiroki Osawa, Naohiko Iida, Yoshitake Ohta
- Debugging: Jun-ichi Shimizu, Akira Nishikawa, Akira Terasawa, Kazuhiko Morii, Chihiro Tanikawa, Satoshi Yamagata, Daisuke Suzuki, Takahiro Kodama
- Documentation: Hiroshi Ogata
- President: Hide Irie
- Vice President of Marketing: Scott Steinberg
- Product Marketing Manager: Lori Von Rueden, Mark J. Polcyn
- Director of Product Development & Localization: Osamu Shibamiya
- Localization Producer: Kevin Frane
- Supervising Producer: Klayton Vorlick
- Senior Media Manager: Teri Higgins
- Creative Services: Robert Schonfisch
- QA Project Lead: Shawn Dobbins
- Tester: Lee Frohman
- Localization Support: Emi Yamane
- Special Thanks: Hitoshi Ariga, Benri‑ya san, M, TOMO‑chan, All Ancient Staff, All Sega Staff
- Illustration: Ayano Koshiro
- Sub‑Director: Kataru Uchimura, Makoto Wada
- Director: Junichi Tsuchiya (Hitmaker), Keisuke Miyanaga
- Co‑Producer: Kazuhiko Yoshida
- Producer: Seijirou Sannabe
- Executive Producer: Hisao Oguchi
- Manual Production: Yoshihiro Sakuta, Hisakazu Nakagawa, Satoru Ishigami, Colin Restall
Magazine articles
- Main article: Amazing Island/Magazine articles.
Promotional material
also published in:
- Nintendo Power (US) #189: "March 2005" (2005-0x-xx)[6]
Physical scans
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60 |
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| Based on 6 reviews | |
| GameCube, US |
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 Cover
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 Disc |
| GameCube, JP |
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   Cover
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| GameCube, JP (Okaidoku-ban) |
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 Cover
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Technical information
- Main article: Amazing Island/Technical information.
ROM dump status
| System | Hash | Size | Build Date | Source | Comments | |||||||||
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1,459,978,240 | Disc (US) | |||||||||||
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1,459,978,240 | Disc (JP) |
External links
- Sega of Japan catalogue pages (Japanese): GameCube
- Official website (Japanese) (archive)
- Nintendo catalogue pages: JP, US (archive)
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 Press release: 2004-08-24: SEGA SHIPS AMAZING ISLAND ON GAMECUBE
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 http://www.nintendo.com/gamemini?gameid=8635c7b6-8f54-4a7f-97a6-c43e3c628abc (Wayback Machine: 2006-11-16 16:37)
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 http://www.nintendo.co.jp/ngc/software/gkaj/index.html (Wayback Machine: 2013-08-21 18:20)
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 http://sega.jp/gc/kaiju/ (Wayback Machine: 2004-12-31 08:10)
- ↑ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TDbtIm6vs-4
- ↑ Nintendo Power, "March 2005" (US; 2005-0x-xx), page 7
- ↑ Edge, "November 2004" (UK; 2004-09-30), page 91
- ↑ Electronic Gaming Monthly, "October 2004" (US; 2004-08-24), page 120
- ↑ GamePro, "September 2004" (US; 2004-07-27), page 87
- ↑ Game Informer, "September 2004" (US; 2004-0x-xx), page 112
- ↑ NGC Magazine, "February 2005" (UK; 2005-01-20), page 74
- ↑ Nintendo Power, "October 2004" (US; 2004-xx-xx), page 124
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Main page | Comparisons | Development | Magazine articles | Reception | |
