North America may very well be seeing their first DS Tales title some time next year. Namco-Bandai has reportedly trademarked the “Tales of Hearts” name in the US, leading us to believe that they plan to bring the title stateside. For those unfamiliar, Tales of Hearts is the upcoming DS title that follows Vesperia in the “Mothership” Tales series. It will reportedly sport a 2 gigabit cart, containing cutscenes in both 3D CGI and anime-style, allowing the player to choose which s/he would like to view.

No official press release or date has been set, so let’s hope this isn’t something like Chrono Break.

[Siliconera]

Tales Summer continues as the website for the Tales of the Abyss TV series opens for business. The site showcases a splash image, seen above, and the staff and cast for the show. The original Japanese voice actors from the game will be returning as their respective roles. The site doesn’t mention how many episodes the show will run for, though 13 would be a safe estimate.

Tales of the Abyss joins ToraDora! in this fall’s lineup.

This year truly contains more Tales games than one can healthily shake a stick at. On top of Tales of Symphonia 2, Tales of Vesperia, Tales of Hearts, and Tales of the World: Radiant Mythology 2 comes a fifth (That’s right. Five.) Tales game in development. This would be the rumored PS3 Tales game that Famitsu was hinting at awhile back. However, this latest Tales game will be appearing on the Nintendo Wii instead of the Playstation 3, which continues to receive little-to-no love from Namco-Bandai.

Few details are known; Namco-Bandai has yet to announce even a title. However, this will be a “mothership” game, meaning it’s part of the “main” Tales series along with Vesperia and Heart. Normally I’d worry about such a large volume of games coming out in such quick succession, but if Namco-Bandai has the staff and the talent to make each a worthwhile game I’ll be nothing short of ecstatic.

[IGN]

Okay, so maybe “overlords” isn’t the right word. The words “Tales of”, despite how I want to believe otherwise, will never hold the same gravity in terms of gaming as “Final Fantasy.” They also aren’t shoo-in US releases: We have yet to see stateside releases of much of the Tales of the World spinoff games, Tales of Destiny 2, Tales of Rebirth, the Tales of Destiny PS2 remake, Tales of the Tempest, or Tales of Innocence, but at least it’s good news to hear the series is doing well for itself overseas.

That being said, new magazine scans from Japan have revealed yet another Tales game on the horizon: Tales of the World: Radiant Mythology 2. For those who never played the first Radiant Mythology game (It DID come out in North America), this will be a spinoff crossover game where characters from no small number of Tales games come together to fight a greater evil. From the scan we can see Tales of Vesperia’s Yuri, Tales of Symphonia’s Presea, and Tales of the Abyss’ Guy among others.

Here’s hoping this gets the English treatment. Namco-Bandai US seems to appreciate the PSP more than the DS.

[Siliconera]

Amidst all of the excitement about Chrono Trigger DS (I’m excited, are you excited? I’m excited!), from Shonen Jump comes a tiny cut-off scan of what could very well be yet another Tales game for the Nintendo DS, Tales of Heart.

All that’s on the web now is this image, which shows two different styles of character art and presumably the two lead characters, Shing and Kohaku. The game will be sprite based in 3D environments, unlike the 3D models of Tales of the Tempest and Tales of Innocence (Both of which have yet to receive any stateside release).

Hopefully the newfound popularity of the series will pave the way for at least one DS Tales game coming stateside. Please, Namco? We’ve been good!

[Wii @ Everyday]

Hey, hey, hey! Missed me, fellow DDN-reading people? I’m back again with another one of my anime reviews. Some of you may concur, some others will lift their clenched fists in disapproval, but nevertheless we’ll get to remember (or meet) great, awful, bizarre, and even moe anime from great Japan.

This time, one OVA of one of the best RPG sagas out there, makes its DDN debut: Tales of Phantasia. Still, even though the games are great, sometimes franchise expansion goes somewhat unplanned. . .

Read more!