Ketsui coming to the Nintendo DS?

(NOTE: Take all this with a grain of salt... It is near April 1st after all...)

There are few things in life that truly shock me. I mean absolutely really shock me. So, when I was sent a link to a video with the title, "You Won't Believe This", I was a bit pessimistic. People tend to be a bit over zealous when it comes to e-mails they send me. Something that someone usually claims "I'm not going to believe", I tend to shrug off as being "neat", but not necessarily the awe-inspiring event that they originally made it out to be.

I was wrong to be pessimistic with this one.

The link that I was sent directed me to a K. Mihara blog. As a bit of a background, K. Mihara is the head of Arika and over saw the responsibilities of the home releases of Dodonpachi Dai Ou Jou and Espgaluda. I was familiar with the blog address from a rather disappointing entry that he had posted earlier informing us that the Arika-lead home port of Ketsui (Kizuna Jigoku Tachi) to the Playstation 2 had hit a wall due to an issue with the fifth stage of the game proving to be too taxing on the systems hardware. Since the game was not able to be perfectly replicated, Mihara delivered the news that we would more than likely not see a Playstation 2 release of the title.

But wait... What was that at the bottom of his blog post?

I was shocked to see it in action, but Ketsui lived. Albeit in a slightly different form. The video which I've posted below, is the final boss (DOOM) of Ketsui playing on the Nintendo DS.

Amazing.

I assume that an Arika port to the DS would be given a lot more latitude when it comes to how "close" to the source the game would need to be. Unlike the PS2 game where K. Mihara was demanding perfection, the DS title would probably be a reinvisioning of the original, scaled for the hardware, but still delivering the manic shooting experience that everyone expects from the series. Do I think this is a possibility?

Perhaps. It is rumored that Mihara has requested feedback on this project to see whether or not there is enough fan support for such a port. It may be disappointing to have witnessed the death of the PS2 version and it is a bit sad that this may be offered as our consolation, but the fact that the game may live on to see a commercial release is a technical feat in and of itself. It's about time we received some manic shooting action on the DS anyway...