YUKIKAZE, a company founded by the core team that created Shadow Hearts, announced a spiritual successor coined Penny Blood. A “Double Kickstarter” campaign to fund it and a Wild Arms spiritual successor coined Armed Fantasia will be launched on August 29.
Armed Fantasia: To the End of the Wilderness and Penny Blood will share a mutual funding goal of $750,000, which will secure a PC release for each game, while a nearby stretch goal will secure ports to PlayStation 5, Xbox Series, and the newest Nintendo hardware at the time. The “Early-Bird Combo” pledge level will allow early backers to pledge for both games at a highly discounted price.
Story
Matthew Farrell, a lone wolf private detective in New York working for the Bureau of Investigation, despite hating the accursed powers he inherited from his father utilizes his fusion transformation abilities to hunt down monsters at the behest of the Bureau.
One day, Matthew is tasked with investigating a strange incident that occurred at a mental asylum in New York. After rushing to the asylum, he finds it teeming with grotesque, rampaging creatures. Utilizing his hidden power, Matthew manages to achieve a narrow victory.
In order to unearth the truth behind the bizarre incident, Matthew’s investigation will take him from America to the distant continent of Asia, including Japan and China, as well as to the far corners of Europe. Along the way, he will encounter those who fight for vengeance, those who seek to utilize the aberrant horrors for their own gain, and those who simply wish to destroy. Penny Blood tells the tale of a man who must become that which he seeks to vanquish.
Universal Entertainment filed a trademark for “Shadow Hearts” on April 27 in Japan, which was made public on May 11.
Back in March 2021, a Universal Entertainment representative said there were no plans for a Shadow Hearts “remake, sequel, or the introduction of game machines using its characters or stories” at the time. However, with things such as Sony Interactive Entertainment‘s renewed PlayStation Plus service featuring a catalog of classic PlayStation titles including PlayStation 2, it is possible those plans have since changed.
I let the domain expire nearly 8 years ago or so and allowed the site to fade into a forgotten memory. However the domain became available to obtain again at some point and recent events renewed my interest in the Shadow Hearts verse so I opted to reobtain the domain and bring the site back.
Luckily I had the old site files stored on an old drive. However being as dated as it is there is plenty of modernizing needed for the site so expect some slow updates as I work on converting the site over to a CMS and modernizing the site design a bit. I'm hopeful I'll eventually get to updating content pages and finally adding many of the new content pages I had written up years ago but never added to the site itself.
This is pretty old news, but I felt it should be mentioned.
Following the Japanese release of Shadow Hearts: From The New World in mid-2005, the popular RPG series has disappeared from the public view.
Several Japanese websites have since offered a simple explanation for the lack of news: Aruze (the Shadow Hearts series publisher in Japan) had supposedly dissolved the development studio behind Shadow Hearts, Nautilus.
When approached in an interview, an Aruze representative confirmed that no new Shadow Hearts installment was in planning at this point in time.
The representative would not confirm whether or not Nautilus had indeed been dissolved, though. It should be noted, however, that Nautilus does not appear in Aruze's financial reports anymore.
Some of you may remember an old Shadow Hearts fansite named The Judgement Ring. Well it can be said that Shadow Hearts Infoholic is it's successor. After closing The Judgement Ring due in part of my lack of time and willingness to work on the site, it always bugged at me. The first Shadow Hearts game is like my favorite RPG of all time, and the lack of fansites for the series doesn't help the fact that the series as a whole wasn't well known and often underated.
I took the remnants of the old layout from The Judgement Ring and have done quite a bit of fixing up to it. As I really liked the layout but felt there was something that could be improved upon. I'm trying to present the site in a very nice manner and make everything really detailed and nice to look at and read.
Of course it's going to take a lot of time and effort, but I hope that I can make this site blossom into a fantastic source for pretty much everything Shadow Hearts related. One I hope you can continue to enjoy visiting.
