55 years of Kimba (Jungle Emperor) - The Kimba videogame story (so far)

THE KIMBA VIDEOGAME STORY SO FAR

Kimba fans (especially in Japan) don't seem to have luck in playing with their favorite white lion on their computer or TV screens. So far there were 2 attempts (in Japan only) of making a Jungle Emperor/Kimba video game, but unfortunately both of them have failed. Compared to this, AstroBoy video games for already 4 different videogame systems (FC, SFC, PS2, GBA) have been developed from 1988 to date, and two of them were recently released in the U.S. However, this state might change soon in the upcoming years, since some new plans to finally bring Kimba/Jungle Emperor to the video game screens have been made.

The first video Kimba/Jungle Emperor game project was started in the mid-80s, and it was developed for the Nintendo Famicom (Family Computer), the 8-bit Nintendo video game console introduced in Japan in 1983 that was released in the U.S. as the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) in 1985.

It is known is that this was developed by Taito and that it was planned to be a platform game (the Japanese websites also mention that it was supposed to be an action game with horizontal scrolling).

The game was supposed to be released in 1990 (or in Autumn 1991, according to another source), and in Spring 1990 a handbill with a calendar and with screenshots of announced Taito games on one side, and a big poster with characters from the

Kimba/ Jungle Emperor videogame on the other side, was published by Taito.

Taito has issued in 1990 a booklet titled "Preview - Pick up preview of Taito new games" which featured Kimba on the cover page, and an announcement with several screenshots of that game inside the booklet.

Because of all this, it is believed that this game was almost complete at the time when it was cancelled. Since it is said that Taito has been doing many great games for the Famicom, this could have been a good game as well. What went wrong?

The next and so far the last Jungle Emperor game project was started by Nintendo in the mid-90s for the Nintendo 64 video game system. Mr. Shigeru Miyamoto (the creator of Mario) with his team of programmers and of course Tezuka Productions (now owned by Mr. Makoto Tezuka, the son of Mr. Osamu Tezuka) were involved in this project. In the beginning the game was announced to be released on an 128-meg cartridge, and later was mentioned that an add-on for this game will be available for 64 DD, the disk drive system for the N64.

The game had its first on-video appearance at the 1996 Tokyo Shoshinkai Show, after which the game was announced to be released in spring 1999. A little bit later only a few scenes from the game were shown at the Nintendo Space World in 1998. The game looked great at that time, and it seemed that this game project will finally take off.

However, later that year in an interview made on 1998's E3, Mr. Miyamoto mentioned "that the project is in a bit of trouble and may take longer to complete than originally expected, mainly because the producer doesn't have much experience with creating games". This seemed to be an indefinite hold (since the license for the Jungle Emperor is very expensive in Japan, it was believed that Nintendo might still continue with the development of this game) but it was unfortunately soon followed by the cancellation of this project.

In the meantime, according to the official announcement from Sega of Japan from May 2002, Sega has acquired the worldwide rights for the next 7 years from Tezuka Productions to make video games based on nearly 700 works by Mr. Tezuka, including Astro Boy, Jungle Emperor, The Phoenix and Black Jack. It is also said "that the games are going to be developed for home video game systems, arcade games, PC and other hardware".

As a result, Astro Boy made it again to the video game consoles (previously it was developed by Konami for the Famicom in 1988 and by Zamuse for the Super Famicom in 1994): it has been released in Japan for the PlayStation 2 in March 2004, and for the GameBoy Advance in December 2003. Both games have been released in the U.S. on 17^th August 2004.
(Update: Dororo, another game based on Tezuka's work of the same name was also released for the PlayStation 2, but a little later - in Japan on 9th September 2004, and in the U.S. under the title "Blood Will Tell" on 21st September 2004)

And so, after the Astro Boy (and Dororo) game projects have been successfully launched, Kimba/Jungle Emperor might be the next game project based on Mr. Tezuka's works made by Sega. However, according to a rumor from May 2003, Nintendo is not giving up, and it will again try to develop the Jungle Emperor game. It is also said that this time the game will be developed for the Nintendo GameCube, and that it will be developed by the same crew that worked on the N64 version (Mr. Miyamoto's team of programmers and Tezuka Productions).

Another rumor on the same topic is out that the Jungle Emperor video game for the Nintendo GameCube might be developed by a less-known Japanese company called Pax Softonica (パックス・ソフトニカ) for which is said that it previously developed several video games for Nintendo (some of these games are "Tennis", "Balloon Kid" and "Moguranya"/"Mole Mania" for the Nintendo GameBoy, "Donkey Kong" for the Super GameBoy and the "Hamtaro" game series for the GameBoy Color and GameBoy Advance). Pax Softonica was established in Yokohama in 1983 and was developing games for microcomputers like Fujitsu FM-7, MSX, Sharp PC-8001 and Sharp X1 before developing videogames for Nintendo.

Probably the reason why Pax Softonica is expected to be working for Nintendo on the Jungle Emperor game project for the Nintendo GameCube is an interesting info that Pax Softonica took part even in the development of the "Emperor of the Jungle" game for the Nintendo 64, but it wasn't officially mentioned and credited as one of its developers just like it wasn't credited within the above mentioned games previously made for Nintendo.

Anyway, if the things develop the way they were planned (no matter who releases this game first), Leo/Kimba fans could enjoy playing with their favorite white lion on their computers/video game consoles pretty soon. Let's keep our fingers crossed!

References: [use http://www.excite.co.jp/world/english/web to translate Japanese pages to English]

http://beraboman.fc2web.com/mihatubai.htm (in japanese)
http://www.disgruntleddesigner.com/chrisc/secrets1.html
http://niwatori-goya.ciao.jp/tirasi023.html (in japanese)
http://www.ne.jp/asahi/oroti/famicom/mab03.html (in japanese)
http://blogs.yahoo.co.jp/gamesmasa/38609882.html (in japanese)
http://blogs.yahoo.co.jp/gamesmasa/1455382/38742166.html (in japanese)
http://ign64.ign.com/objects/003/003766.html?fromint=1
http://sega.jp/release/nr020517_2.html (in japanese)
http://www2u.biglobe.ne.jp/~nanko/news.cgi?id=2003050906 (in japanese)
http://www3.kcn.ne.jp/~tatoma/cgi-bin/index.cgi?mode=al2&namber=19216&page=20&rev=0&no=0 (in japanese)
http://airforest.com/contents/report/pax/ (in japanese)

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