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For Japanese otaku, itasha—literally "painmobile"—are about as geeky as they come. This past weekend, diehard itasha gathered and gawked in Tokyo's Odaiba. More »
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Fullmetal Alchemist animator Satoshi Kubo has publicly stated on Japanese social networking site Mixi that he refused to work on a Super Robot Wars project. He cited the involvement of a certain staffer for the reason why. More »
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Sixty five years after the end of World War II, the second world war seems to have lost its attraction for video game developers. More »
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AKB48, the most popular idol group in Japan at the moment, will be singing the ending theme for anime series Dragon Ball Kai. More »
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One perk that an old Ratchet game unlocks in the forthcoming Ratchet sequel is useful. The other perk, is not. More »
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Word from Electronic Arts today is that Maxis, the studio behind The Sims and Spore, suffered layoffs today. No word on how many people were affected. EA described the cuts as an attempt to "focus" the studio. More »
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Word has it that upcoming PS3 exclusive Ryu Ga Gotoku 3 requires, like a lot of PS3 games do these days, a mandatory install. Sign of the times! More »
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Tecmo's Japanese marketing team has recruited "entertainer" Hard Gay to help promote the upcoming Rygar: The Battle of Argus in Japan. Over there, they call it Argos no Senshi: Muscle Impact and use CAPS LOCK. More »
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Tales of Hearts is Namco Bandai's latest entry in the Tales series — though this time Namco Bandai is releasing two versions. One is a realistic CG version, and the other one is cutie anime version. If that wasn't enough (it's not, really), Namco Bandai's Tales team has joined forces with Circle K convience stores to offer Tales of Hearts mabo curry. This edible promotion isn't out of left field: Apparently mabo curry appears in game as a power-up item. Priced at ¥500 (US$5.17), the limited edition dish is available from December 9 to December 22 at Circle Ks across Japan. Chow down! More »
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What seems like every week or so, I get emails from readers asking where they should go in Akihabara. While I don't mind answering emails, here's a book I can point them to: The Best Shops of Akihabara. It's forty pages of an English-language manga-style guidebook. As a nice bonus, the book even points out which retailers are capable of helping customers in English — a major plus for non-Japanese speaking tourists. It goes for US$10 and is in PDF format. So yeah. More »
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From the awesome Subotron Shop, a retro gaming museum/store in Vienna, Austria comes word that they are currently looking for female applicants for their spring 2008 artist in residence program. The chosen entrant will receive free studio space at the museum and money to cover their expenses. The topic of this year's residency is Gender & Gaming and all applications must be turned in by December 14th. Past alumni include indie game designer Januz, street artist Space Invader, character designer Ryoskuke Tei, gameboy-sequencer Oliver Wittchow and that irrepressible troubadour, Jonathan Mann aka Game Jew. More »
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Good news for multi-billion dollar revenue making hardware manufacturers! This week's Japanese hardware sales chart, courtesy of Media Create, shows that everyone had a pretty decent week. Well, at least better than last. This week may signal the end of the Wii's low point, as Super Mario Galaxy is due to influence next week's sales. More »
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An anonymous Gamestop tipster has informed us that Gamestop/EB is revisiting their PS3 trade in deal that was available for a short time a few months ago. With your trade in of a fully functioning PS2 with cables and controller, a second Sony PS2 controller and an 8mb Sony PS2 memory card, you will receive $100 dollars off your purchase of a PS3. As the 20 gig Ps3's are no longer readily available (and apparently will no longer be available at all), your trade in will most likely have to go towards the 60 gig version. More »
]]> http://kotaku.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=248643&view=rss&microfeed=true Damn, there a ton of games coming out this week. There were more than I could reasonably list here, so I put together a list of some of the highlights for you. I'll be picking up Cooking Mama: Cook Off to provide a nice balance to my relentless bloodletting in God of War II, but everything else will have to wait...even the Turtles. Flynn De Marco More »
]]> http://kotaku.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=245119&view=rss&microfeed=true After weeks of waiting and seeing pretty much the entire game in clips, God of War II is finally here. Not to much more terribly interesting but since I'll be spending all my time with Kratos anyway, I shan't need to pick up anything else. Hopefully, I can manage to stretch this one out until Bioshock comes out, but at six months I don't think that's very realistic. Flynn De Marco More »
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Guess this is what they call having your cake and eating it too. More »
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Asked the wife to pick up some sponges at the local supermarket here in Japan, and this is what she brought home. God only knows what they have to clean the toilet... More »
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