The first duo of trailers for the 2010 Professor Layton animated movie have been released, featuring the intrepid professor and his sidekick Luke in all their puzzle-solving glory.
Look, it’s no secret that I absolutely adore Professor Layton and the Curious Village, and I’m not alone in that here at The Escapist. The game was challenging – curse you, sliding block puzzles! – with an interesting mystery-focused story, but above all else it just had this sense of charm. You couldn’t help but love the top-hatted Professor and his young sidekick as they unraveled the enigma of St. Mystere.
There are more games in the series than just Curious Village, but they’re all across the Pacific in Japan – and it isn’t just games, either. Professor Layton and the Immortal Songstress (also known as Professor Layton: The First Movie), a full-length feature film, is slated to be released in Japan next January. A pair of recently-released trailers shows the puzzle-solving pair doing, well, what they do best. (Psst, the answer to both puzzles is eiga – Japanese for “movie”)
Professor Layton and the Immortal Songstress is a completely original story penned by Akihiro Hino, the series creator – encouraging news, for sure. If anyone can get the feel of the series right, it should be the man who created it in the first place, no? I’m also pleased to see that the movie keeps the series’ aesthetic – Layton and Luke look exactly like Layton and Luke down to the dot-eyes and the tiny little noses.
It might not have the touch-screen interactivity or all the puzzles to solve like the games do, but here’s hoping that Immortal Songstress will do the series justice. It’d be nice to see it come out here in the West (particularly since the voice work was actually fairly well done), but let’s not hold our breath for that, shall we?
(Via Kotaku)
Published: Mar 9, 2009 05:15 pm