Atlus Alters Handheld Release Dates

An email announcement just came in from quirky publisher Atlus, announcing a handful of release date changes for games coming from the company in the near future.

The PSP's Hammerin' Hero (pictured at right) will now see release on April 7, while the Nintendo DS games Steal Princess, The Dark Spire and Tokyo Beat Down will reach stores on April 21, April 14 and March 31, respectively.

While this is crucial information for those planning to pick up any of these games, less crucial (but more amusing) is the explanation offered by Atlus PR for the delay:

Atlus
U.S.A., Inc. today announced that its central supercomputer, tasked with planning and scheduling upcoming Atlus titles, recently suffered a critical hardware failure, rendering the planned launch dates for a small handful of Atlus games obsolete. As technicians scrambled to repair the mainframe, hoping to minimize fallout, they discovered that the machine had become self-aware and was plotting to take over the world.

"Unfortunately, a few Atlus titles will have to be slightly rescheduled as to their date of release, but the changes will be minimal. Also, every working day for us passes in constant fear, terror, and paranoia with the knowledge that our primary computer is now plotting to destroy us," commented an Atlus engineer on the subject of release date changes and the now-sentient supercomputer with a hunger for manflesh.

Image courtesy Atlus