What if inside the internet and other technological wonders, lived these digital creatures that battled each other, and changed from small, fairly weak looking creatures to big hulking brutes capable of massive power? That is the core idea of Digimon World, an upcoming RPG for the Nintendo DS, and Killer Betties got to be involved with a conference call last week with Brian Glazebrook - the Localization Manager at NamcoBandai - who answered some questions about the upcoming game.

Question: Could you give us a brief overview of the game?

Answer: The game is based off the anime/manga and all that stuff, and it has been here in the US for quite some time. Essentially there are these digital animal creatures that are in the computer that you can use to battle digimon to digimon. This time around, the story is very simple, very easy for people to get into as opposed to the some of the more popular or harder to jump into RPGs. The main character gets sucked into the computer, the digimon world, and is invited to become a trainer, so he you get to gather data of various digimon out there, and create his own and train it, nurture it, make it gain experience and evolve into more powerful digimon. And as you are going through this, you find there is this big evil that is going on in the digital world, so you are called upon to put things right.

In terms of the gameplay itself it is a very pure RPG type of game, turn based battles, but beyond that you have various different aspects, like you have your digimon farm where you can put digimon to train on their own to collecting various digimon data to when you want to evolve them into an actual digimon to collecting online with other players to kind of trade data and create a digi egg, which makes a more rare digimon in the game.

Question: How is the game laid out between the two screens?

The top screen, at first is not really used until you get in the world, and when you do that the top screen basically shows you what is going on in your digi farm. Once you start collecting excess digimon you can only have three digimon at one given time. Now, the extra digimon you have you can throw them on the farm and let them train on their own, so when you call on them again they're not a level one, they'll be training on their own leisure and working on the farm, giving you money and food and such. While you are at the farm, you can also buy equipment, so they'll be training based on the type of equipment you buy from the farm. So basically the top screen is used to monitor your digimon and see if they are doing what they are supposed to while the bottom screen is used for the battles and adventuring.

Question: Are there any touchscreen or microphone controls.

Microphone – no. As for the touchscreen, in terms of tapping you'll select moves for the characters, but nothing like slashing movement to attack or anything like that.

Question: Can you talk about the digimon? Are there new digimon, old, or a mixture of the two?

A mixture of the two. There are some classics from the previous anime series and games, but because this is a new game there will be a lot of new digimon as well.

Question: Do the digimon have grid evolution or EXP elements?

First off, to go back to the front, when you are fighting certain digimon on the field, every time you encounter a specific digimon you get X percent of the digimon, and when you reach 100 you'll be able to take that data and make your own digimon, however, you don't have to just go to 100, as you can go to two, three, four, five hundred, so the higher the number before you evolve it, the base stats will be significantly higher.

Second, after every battle, you get experience points, and based on the experience points it will change aspects such as how happy they are with you, so they can evolve into different digimon, like third, fourth levels, and those are all determined by various parameters, obviously your XP being one, but not the only one players must adhere to.

Turn Over To Page Two For The Rest Of The QA