At this year's Electronic Entertainment Expo, we were exposed to Buena Vista Interactive's original Nintendo DS title Spectrobes. It was here that the game made its public debut, but honestly, E3 isn't a very good venue to show off a deep concept like Spectrobes -- so it's a good thing that Buena Vista made the trek over to our offices this week so we could get a better idea of what to expect in this upcoming action RPG.
Spectrobes is in the works at Japanese development studio Jupiter -- you might recognize the name as the team that worked directly with Square Enix and Buena Vista for the Game Boy Advance "continuation" of Kingdom Hearts. That relationship has apparently strengthened with Buena Vista, as the two companies are working together to establish a brand new RPG universe for Nintendo DS gamers. Spectrobes has a lot in common with Pokemon, but there's a lot here that's unique to Jupiter's design, and it's at least a game that pushes a lot of the unique capabilities of the DS hardware.