Anime and games are intimately tied together in Japan: popular games tend to get anime adaptations and popular anime tend to get game adaptations. Thus, over the years there have been a myriad of game-inspired anime—some good, others borderline unwatchable. I saw my first game-inspired anime right at the dawn of my anime watching career.…
Almost as far back as I can remember, I’ve been a gamer. At the age of four, my family got an original Nintendo with the Super Mario Bros., Duck Hunt, and the World Class Track Meet combo game—light gun and power pad included. Until I was in middle school, that Nintendo (and the aging Atari…
Guardian Heroes is often considered one of the best of the Sega Saturn library. It is an excellent brawler complete with a robust story and branching paths. But you know what it needed? Famous anime heroines. That’s where Guardian Heroines: Final comes in. This fan-made game gathers girls from popular visual novels like Kanon, Tsukihime…
Monster Hunter: it has sold millions of copies in Japan. I have personally seen it played in parks, on trains, and in countless fast food restaurants in the Tokyo area by everyone from kids to adults. Simply put, it is one of the most prevalent and popular gaming franchises in Japan. The same cannot be…
Last night at their press event in San Francisco, NIS America announced they would be releasing three new Japanese titles this year. The first of these, Disgaea Dimension 2: A Brighter Darkness, is the newest PS3 title in the long-running strategy RPG series, Disgaea. It is a direct sequel to the first game in the…
To start with, a fair bit of warning: I am not what you would call a Monster Hunter fan. The first (and last) game of the series I played was Monster Hunter Freedom 2 and that experience left me feeling that Monster Hunter just wasn’t the series for me. But then I saw Monster Hunter…
So you have a Vita and love Japanese games. We’ve already shown you how to make a Japanese PSN account and how to reset your Vita region to access the Japanese PSN on a non-Japanese Vita, but why go through all the hassle? Well, maybe you’d rather download the games you want to play instantly…
This past weekend at the JAEPO arcade game expo in Tokyo, Konami showed off Dance Dance Revolution, the latest arcade iteration in the Dance Dance Revolution franchise. The return to the core name makes sense because Dance Dance Revolution will have nearly every song from all 13 major arcade releases in one machine. In addition…
When you think of Japanese arcades, you probably think of fighting games, music games, and racing games. You might, however, completely forget about one of the most popular staples of arcades in Japan: crane games. Late last year I had my own experience with a Japanese crane game—because it taunted me with a figure I…
Groove Coaster was originally a fantastic rhythm iOS game made by the creators of Space Invaders Infinity Gene. This year, however, it moves from its humble touch screen roots directly into Japanese arcades. And at the JAEPO 2013 arcade expo this last weekend, Kotaku East got some hands-on time with the game. Simply put, it…
Perhaps the most creative game at this year’s JAEPO arcade game expo was e Sports Ground. Utilizing a series of motion tracking cameras and projectors, the game transforms the floor into the game screen and your body into the controller. In many ways, e Sports Ground is a retro game collection containing some of the…
Monster Hunter is everywhere in Japan—including the JAEPO arcade game expo. However, this Monster Hunter arcade is not, as you might expect, a co-op boss hunting game. Rather it is an arcade style racing game titled Monster Hunter Diary: Oink Oink Pig Race As you may have guessed from the title, Monster Hunter Diary: Oink…
Later this year, Nintendo and Bandai-Namco will release a new Mario Kart game, Mario Kart Arcade GP GX, in arcades across Japan. Today at the JAEPO arcade game expo, Kotaku East was able to get some hands-on time with the game. Mario Kart Arcade GP GX will feature at least one new character (Don from…
Earlier tonight here in Tokyo, Bandai Visual held a launch event for Ghost in the Shell: Arise, the new Ghost in the Shell anime series announced earlier this year. The event was full of interviews with the various creators of the new series and had several interesting announcements—like the fact that it is a prequel…
Do you have a PlayStation Vita and a love of Japanese games, but feel the games you want to play take too long to get localized or—worse yet—will never leave Japan? Well, there is good news for you: The Vita is region free and can play any game from any region. However, there is also…
No one can doubt that Monster Hunter is a phenomenal success in Japan. One iteration or another has been on every major console of the last generation (sans the Nintendo DS). So it is no surprise that when the Wii U launched in Japan, it had a Monster Hunter to go along with it: Monster…
Have you ever wanted to log on to the Japanese PlayStation Network to download some demos or buy a game or two but have given up on the idea because you don’t know how to read Japanese? No problem. Here’s a step-by-step guide from Kotaku East that explains how to create a Japanese PSN account,…
Growing up, I had two game systems: a barely working Atari 2600 (which lived largely forgotten in our guestroom closet) and an original NES. These lasted me until 1997 when I saved up and bought a Super Nintendo—over a year after the release of both the original PlayStation and Nintendo 64. So, during my childhood,…
Berserk is a franchise (in)famous for two reasons: compelling storytelling and ultraviolence. A dark fantasy, Berserk has its origins in manga but has been adapted into an anime TV series, three anime movies (the third of which was released late last week), and two video games. The first, Sword of the Berserk: Guts Rage, was…
Since the start of the manga back in 1990, there have only been two video games made in the Berserk franchise. The first was the Dreamcast game released in the West as Sword of the Berserk: Gut’s Rage. There was, however, a second Berserk game which never left Asian shores: Berserk: Millennium Falcon Arc: Chapter…
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