Guest article: Feature: Introduction to Mind Zero, part 1

This Guest article is guest submission by Jirka Lacina @Dessel757.  we all thank him for the time and effor the put into this submission.

Last week, GameStop leaked and later that day Aksys Games confirmed that Mind Zero, a dungeon crawling RPG, is going to be localized for both America and Europe. I think is unknown for many people (I may be wrong) and it's a pity in my opinion, so I, as someone who has been hyped for this game since its announcement, will provide you some information about this game, because it's worth giving a chance. This article is a summary of the game, aimed at everybody. In this part I'm going to tell you something about the game in general. Who was it developed by, something about the announcement, localization etc. 

Mind Zero was co-developed by studios Acquire (Way of the Samurai series, Akiba's Trip series) and Zero Div (Bakumatsu Revolution) and published by GungHo Online Entertainment. I’m not sure if GungHo Online Entertainment reminds you of something, but this company is know for hosting a Japanese server of Ragnarok Online and developing Ragnarok DS for Nintendo DS. Companies Aquire and Zero Div had already cooperated before Mind Zero, on game RPG called Class of Heroes, which was released for PSP in 2008 in Japan and in 2009 published in US by Atlus. Class of Heroes received mixed reviews (RPGamer - 4.0/5, "Great"; IGN 5.1/10 "Mediocore"). 

Some pictures of Class of Heroes:

The characters of the game were designed by artist Kyo Kuroichigo (http://www.pixiv.net/member.php?id=380857 or twitter @rubus_mesogaeus), the scenario was written by Minato Kushimachi and sound created by Zizz Studio, which was experienced in creating soundtracks for visual novels, mainly for companyNitroplus. One of the most known visual novels with the sountrack from Zizz Studio is Saya no Uta(Windows; localized in 2013, 10 years after the original game).

Kei Takanashi, the protagonist 

The first signs of Mind Zero came directly from Acquire, who teased a new PS Vita game by launching a teaser site at Mind0.net on March 14. The site contained 4 cities in the background, the text “Are you alive? 80,655 -2010-” in the centre and another text in bottom, which was referring to the next Weekly Famitsu Issue, which was going to be released next week, on March 21st. Well, you can look at the teaser page here:

On March 21st, Famitsu came out and Mind 0 (stylized as MIND≒0) was officially announced as „a dark and stylish school dungeon RPG". What was shown in Famitsu:

There were no words about localisation, until February 2014 when Gamestop leaked the information (including the western release date) about it by allowing to pre-order the game. The leaked release date was told to be 5/27/2014 and as I already said in the prolog, Aksys Games confirmed the release date a few days later. One of the first English screenshots:

In the next part, I will tell you something more about the game itself (characters, setting etc,), stay tuned!