[Professor Layton] A Masterpiece Coming to US?

The "Professor Layton" series is a very smart move by game publisher level5. Right now there are so many brain teaser games on NDS. Most of them make me feel bored. So it is really a breath of fresh air when level5 combines the mini-games and puzzles with a rich story, attractive animation and great voice-overs. Oh! FYI, Maki Horikita, a really cute and famous Japanese actress, did the voice-over for "Luke", who is a student of Professor Layton and a major character in the games. Below is her picture.

The first game in the series is "Professor Layton and the Curious Village". It is coming out to a US release on 02/10/2008. The game is already out in Japan in February, 2007. It received quite a number of outstanding awards there since its release.

The game official web site is here. There is a web trial version. You can try it out by clicking here here

The name of the second game can be translated as "Professor Layton and the Devil's Box". There is no official English name yet and no known US release date. It is out in Japan in November, 2007 and it does very well on the Japanese game sales chart for a while.

The game official web site is here. There is a web trial version. You can try it out by clicking here here

From these trial versions of the games, you can see the game play is very simple. You follow the story and at certain point, a puzzle will be presented to you. You solved the puzzle and the story will continue.

The final installment of the seris cane be translated as "Professor Layton and the Final Time Travel". It is not out yet in Japan. You guys can probably check out the official "Professor Layton" site (http://www.layton.jp/index.html) from time to time to get the latest news. Here is a teaser photo for now.



Let's hope the first "Professor Layton" sell well in US so that we can get all three of them ported here.