Gunslinger Stratos is a four-versus-four third-person shooter for Japanese arcades made by Square-Enix. But it’s not just your average TPS team deathmatch arcade. It’s also a lightgun game—a dual wielding lightgun game at that. But the gimmick goes so far beyond simple dual wielding. To switch between your weapons—which range from pistols to gravity guns—you…
The Wolf Children Ame and Yuki is the newest film from Mamoru Hosoda, the acclaimed director of Summer Wars and The Girl Who Leapt Through Time. In many ways, the film is reminiscent of the best Ghibli movies. It is a modern fantasy tale, filled with themes relating to family, nature, and growing up. So…
Here at Kotaku East we have had a lot to say about Japan’s most popular virtual idol, Hatsune Miku. But just because she is the most popular one doesn’t mean that she is the only one. Back in 2006, Tetsuya Mizoguchi—creator of Space Channel 5, Rez, Lumines, and Child of Eden—teamed up with record producer…
Macross: Do You Remember Love? is one of the defining anime of the 1980s—which explains why this year’s Blu-ray 30th Anniversary Box is so full of amazing additions. We at Kotaku East have already looked at the hybrid pack’s PS3 title Macross: My Boyfriend is a Pilot 2012, but there is a download code included…
While comparatively unknown in the West, Macross: Do You Remember Love? was one of the most important anime of the 1980s in Japan and was one of the most ambitious hand-drawn animation projects of all time. A remake of an already popular TV series, the film bled into the main stream with the success of…
Games, movies—these days everything seems to have its own collector’s edition. Filled with art books, statues and mini posters, few of them are really worth the extra price. So it’s always a surprise when a collector’s edition like the Macross: Do You Remember Love? 30th Anniversary Box comes along. First, the Macross: Do You Remember…
Recently, I sat down with School Days HQ, a Japanese-made visual novel famous for the juxtaposition of its high school love triangle and shocking, ultra-violent endings. However, upon my completion of the game, I found my ending to be rather mundane—a happy ending like those found in many similar stories. My first time through the…
Rurouni Kenshin (sometimes known by the title Samurai X) is a manga and anime series that grew to great popularity around the turn of the millennium in both Japan and America. Half-fighting and half-romance, Kenshin is a historical fiction set in the years after Japan’s final civil war and dissolution of the samurai caste. It…
Macross: My Boyfriend is a Pilot 2012 is the newest game included in one of Bandai-Namco’s hybrid packs which attach a brand new game to its corresponding anime for the Blu-ray release. In this case, MBIAP 2012 is attached to the HD remaster of the classic 1984 film, Macross Do You Remember Love. We already…
School Days HQ is a visual novel about a highschooler trapped in a love triangle with the girl of his dreams… and the friend who helped him get the girl of his dreams. Recently released in the West in the form of an HD remake, it is one of the most famous visual novels in…
This last week I took my annual trip to the US to visit family. Like always, while I was there, I made sure to hit up the used game stores and buy games that have never come out in Japan—i.e. Dead Space, Command & Conquer Red Alert 3, etc. Despite having lived in Japan for…
Starting a bit over two years ago, Bandai Namco began an experiment of releasing small original PS3 games along with their most popular anime titles in “hybrid packs.” The latest of these is Macross: My Boy Friend is a Pilot 2012 which shares a Blu-ray with the classic anime remaster of Macross: Do You Remember…
Hatsune Miku, the virtual idol, is truly a star in Japan. From a lowly beginning as a piece of music composition software, she now does everything from TV commercials to live concerts via hologram—in addition to “singing” thousands of fan-made songs across the internet. Since 2009, Miku—and her many virtual idol friends—have starred in a…
Hatsune Miku is more than a little big in Japan. She appears on billboards, in TV commercials, and gives sold-out concerts to legions of fans the world over. Of course, being a popular singer in and of itself isn’t something that out of the ordinary. However, what makes her unique is the rather large obstacle…
Hatsune Miku: Project Diva Extend is a music game starring virtual idol Hatsune Miku. It plays similar to most music games. When a shape lines up with its corresponding shape-outline, press the button on the PSP that matches the shape. The game also includes an edit mode which not only allows you to remake the…
Dragon Quest X is a game perfectly tailored to bring Japanese players into the world of MMORPGs for the first time. It’s part of a big-named series, it’s very easy to pick up and play, and it’s on a system that 12.5 million Japanese already have sitting in their living rooms. However, it’s the very…
In Japan, Dragon Quest is the unquestioned king of RPGs: Even the Final Fantasy series comes in a distant second. The last game in the series, Dragon Quest IX, sold over 4.3 million copies, making it the 6th best selling game on the Nintendo DS in Japan. Many speculated the next DQ game would surely…
MMORPGs are far from popular in Japan, especially when compared to the West. There have been a few MMO successes—e.g. Phantasy Star Online and Final Fantasy XI—but the MMO market is so small in general that even MMO juggernaut World of Warcraft has never been released here. On one level, this is because most MMOs…
Dragon Quest X is the newest game in the immensely popular Dragon Quest series. It is also the series’ first MMORPG. While the prologue of the game (the first two hours or so) is a strictly single player affair, the game soon opens up into a massive online world. But as Dragon Quest X is…
While doing our Kotaku East live stream of Dragon Quest X last week, the most common question I got was “What is the battle system like when you’re in a group?” Well, at that time, I was just starting out and had yet to get a full group going. However, since then I have spent…
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