Bandai Namco spins more Tales

This year marks the 11th anniversary of Bandai Namco's Tales role-playing series, which debuted back in 1995 with Tales of Phantasia on the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. The publisher revealed through its official Tales Web site this week that it will be adding several more titles to the Tales lineup--in addition to Tales of Tempest, which was announced already.

The newly unveiled titles are a Sony PSP port of Tales of Phantasia: Full Voice Edition, another PSP title called Tales of The World: Radiant Mythology, and a PlayStation 2 port of Tales of Destiny. Furthermore, a port of Tales of Destiny 2 will be added to the PSP lineup in 2007.

Phantasia: Full Voice Edition is named so because, in contrast to the original PlayStation version of Phantasia, which added recorded voices to only some parts of the game, the PSP version has voices for the full main story. In addition, battles have been upgraded to allow three characters to fight instead of two, and some elements and characters from the original PlayStation and Game Boy Advance versions have been incorporated into gameplay. It's set for a September 7 release.

The Tales of Destiny update, scheduled for release this winter, is a drastic overhaul of the earlier PlayStation version. The game map will be rendered in full 3D, and combat will use a new system called Aerial Linear Motion Battle. As for Radiant Mythology, the latest in the Tales of the World spin-off series will let players create customized characters and will employ the Flex Range Linear Motion Battle system from Tales of the Abyss.