Blogger and financial investor, Ichirou Yamamoto recently wrote for website 4Gamer on the danger and “slot machine-like” gambling nature of mobile and social games. In his article, Yamamoto writes about the recent spread of social games that utilize a collectible card game random draw mechanic with “rare” items that are often sold via internet auctions…
Headed to the Xbox 360 this year, game developer Boost On will be releasing a series of Kinect-only dance adventure games. Titled Love☆Tore, the game will have three versions, “Sweet,” “Mint,” and “Bitter,” and are scheduled for release in 2012 Summer, Fall, and Winter, respectively. In the game, the player takes on the role as…
This week, Dainiji Super Robot Wars Z: Saisei-hen, the latest in the Super Robot Wars series, came out for the PSP making it the 64th Super Robot Wars related game in a series that is nearly 21 years old. The Super Robot Wars series was born from the most basic mindset of any fanboy: “What…
This week in Weekly Famitsu, Namco Bandai Games CEO, Shin Unozawa sat down to discuss the company’s 2011 performance, and some plans for the future. Despite a shaky start last year, Namco Bandai managed to pull in massive sales totaling ¥440 billion by the end of the fiscal year. Most surprising, Unozawa pointed out, were…
Namco Bandai’s idol simulator is taking the Japanese mobile game market by storm and burning holes in players’ pockets. The Idolmaster game series is well known among Japanese gamers for its cute virtual girls and plethora of costly DLC. Now it seems the mobile phone version of the game, Idolm@ster Cinderella Girls, (better known among…
The latest game in their Atelier series, game developer, Gust has announced that Atelier Ayesha will be released in Japan on June 28th on the PS3. A series spanning back to 1997, the Atelier series are JRPGs with a bit of alchemy to them. Players go on adventures to gather ingredients to make items that…
As the release date for game developer Crispy’s Tokyo Jungle approaches, more details of the game have been released. The latest info is survival points and a costume feature. Survival points, as they are aptly named, are obtained by surviving the environment. How long your animal avatar has survived, how many calories they’ve consumed, how…
Takeshi Hirai, the main programmer for Shenmue and the technical director for Space Channel Part 2, is bringing rhythm and tactical warfare together to the PS Vita. Scheduled for release in Japan this summer, Orgarhythm is “music strategy” genre game published by game maker Acquire, in which the player takes on the role of a…
This week, Weekly Famitsu asked its readers about their gaming habits and brought back some interesting results. For consoles owned, the responses were pretty much par for the course. The Nintendo DS and the Nintendo Wii dominate the market with nearly 50 percent of responders owning one or the other (2070 viable reader responses). A…
Ever since the days of the Game Boy Pocket, color variant models of game consoles have become the norm. In fact, very few consoles have only one color version (not including limited edition releases) Now with the latest new console, the PS Vita, Weekly Famitsu asked its readers what color variant they would like to…
Gearing up for the release of Kingdom Hearts 3D: Dream Drop Distance, this week, part deux of Tetsuya Nomura’s interview was featured in Weekly Famitsu. Nomura discussed the latest in the Kingdom Hearts series (and added some more very vague references to Final Fantasy Versus XIII). With the latest installment to the Kingdom Hearts series,…
Weekly Famitsu hit the magazine racks today, and if you picked it up eagerly looking for more information about Final Fantasy Versus XIII in the interview with Nomura Tetsuya (more than just the leaked tidbits of info), well you were probably let down… But if you picked it up looking for information on Kingdom Hearts…
Samurai & Dragons is an online fantasy game for the PS Vita from Sega. The game system is divided into 3 parts: dungeon exploring, territory development, and territory expansion. A somewhat standard game system with, er, unique art, what makes Samurai & Dragons different is that it will be completely free to play. Weekly Famitsu…
Konami’s New Love Plus is a remake/upgrade of the virtual girlfriend dating game Love Plus, and was released to much fanfare this past Valentine’s Day. As a remake, the game allowed players of the original to import their save data to continue their virtual relationships, and as an upgrade, the game incorporated the 3DS’s capabilities…
Among hackers and modders, Sony’s PSP is a favorite for its hack-ability. Depending on one’s knowledge, the portable console can be altered to play custom games and programs (homebrews) as well as pirated games. Taking all it’s learned from the weaknesses of the PSP, Sony developed the PS Vita with safeguards against such hacks and…
A strong innocent youth with a thirst for adventure, a soldier with a sense of duty and honor, an outcast warrior… The heroes of the fantasy RPGs of yesteryear have always been people of strong moral fiber and a will to stand up and fight. Now, game developer e-smile in their new game Ore-ni Hatarakette…
March 11th this year will mark the one-year anniversary of the 2011 Tohoku Earthquake. Since that time, a great deal of time effort and money has been offered for the rebuilding of the North-Eastern area of Japan from all parts of the world. Including the gaming world. Weekly Famitsu has gathered reports from numerous major…
After nearly 9 months, game developer Crispy’s has broken their silence and announced new information, including the release date, of Tokyo Jungle. Originally announced at the 2010 Tokyo Game Show, Tokyo Jungle garnered interest for its depiction of a post-apocalyptic human-less Tokyo city overrun by forest and a multitude of animals. The game is an…
On Feb. 26th, at the Xbox 360 event in Akihabara, I got a chance to take a look at Dragon’s Dogma, Capcom’s upcoming game for the Xbox 360 and Playsation 3. When news first broke of the game, I had assumed it was just a fantasy-based Resident Evil or Devil May Cry, but after a…
On a chilly afternoon this past weekend, well over 100 people waited in line in Akihabara to see Microsoft’s “Xbox 360 Kansyasai in Akiba” (Xbox 360 Festival of Thanks in Akihabara). The event was a joint effort between Microsoft and Capcom, to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the Japanese release of the original Xbox (February…
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