Tail Concerto‘s new spiritual sequel for the Nintendo DS, Solarobo, has had three short gameplay demonstration movies released as well as some nice coverage over at Game Watch.

While their brevity (and the lack of sound) doesn’t tell us too much about the game, what we can see does inform us that the game is coming along nicely. The promotional art’s almost ‘watercolor’ style seems to have very much inspired the game’s current 3D graphics, and the character designer, Nobuteru Yuki, has not only done character designs for video games with similar ‘watercolor’ graphics styles (most notably a few games in the Mana series), but also has worked on mecha-oriented productions before, most notably Visions of Escaflowne and Five Star Stories.

From the gameplay previews here we can also see that the camera angle changes in response to different gameplay needs. A few sections look much like any other 3D game on the Nintendo DS with an overhead view, while other sections make the game look more like an old PlayStation sidescroller instead. Hopefully this willingness to experiment will create a unique flavor for the already somewhat crowded Nintendo DS platformer market.

We also see the character leave the confines of his mecha to do some exploring on his own, which is something that, when done well, has led to good things in the past by making the difference between mecha and man (well, animal man in this case) more obvious. The mecha itself has a unique design, looking as much like a bird as it does a mechanical man, with arms that remind me of the robots both from Laputa: Castle in the Sky and from Tokobot. Those same arms seem capable of stretching a great deal in the gameplay videos, even allowing continuous “combo” throws of enemy mecha.

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