Previews

You're Terry: space adventurer

Prepare for Contact – your latest, favourite, quirky, Japanese role-playing game

You're Terry: space adventurer
|
DS
| Contact

Just as the words 'pounding headache' and 'vodka' make for a potent cocktail in British culture, so for our Japanese game playing chums the combination 'mind-expanding' and 'role-playing games'. Maybe in both cases it's all about escape from a claustrophobic culture – don't ask us, we're no psychologists – but what we can say for sure is that the latest, weirdest DS role-playing game coming out of Japan is Contact.

As you can see from the screenshots, the most obvious strangeness in Contact is the split of artistic styles between the DS' top and bottom screens. On top, in a clean flash-art style, you can see the Professor and his faithful dog pottering around in his laboratory. Alas, his spaceship has crashed on a mysterious planet and he's lost all his Cell power sources.

So it's up to you, a fearless young man called Terry, to venture out into this brave new world and track down the Cells required for the professor to return to his home planet. Your daring-do will take place on the bottom screen in a more realistic 3D view, and as you continue your explorations, the professor will contact you (hence the game's name) to provide advice.

As for the activities you'll get up to, expect plenty of variety, with creator Grasshopper boasting of animal-training, item-collecting, monster-hunting, old-school mini-games, and action-based combat, with powerful graffiti or decal attacks, whatever they might be?

It's currently early days for Contact, so we imagine that more bizarre details will leak out in the coming months. There's no UK release date confirmed yet either, although if we were a betting website (and considering our poker face, you'll be pleased to know we're not), we'd anticipate we'll be playing Contact by late autumn/early winter.

Jon Jordan
Jon Jordan
A Pocket Gamer co-founder, Jon can turn his hand to anything except hand turning. He is editor-at-large at PG.biz which means he can arrive anywhere in the world, acting like a slightly confused uncle looking for the way out. He likes letters, cameras, imaginary numbers and legumes.