When people think of Square Enix and online games, Final Fantasy XI and Final Fantasy XIV—and perhaps the upcoming Dragon Quest X—are probably the games that come to mind. But late last year, Square Enix tried its hand at a free-to-play browser game by the name of MONSTERxDRAGON. MONSTERxDRAGON is a strategy RPG/card game hybrid…
Lots of people play fighting games. Many are happy to use their standard control pads. But real fighting game enthusiasts insist on playing fighting games the way they were meant to be played: on an arcade-style joystick. And no stick I’ve ever played with has felt more like sitting at an actual arcade cabinet than…
When people think of Japanese fighting games, they think of Street Fighter, Tekken, King of Fighters and BlazBlue. But would it surprise you to know that one of Japan’s most popular fighting game series hasn’t made it out of Japan since the GameCube era? The Mobile Suit Gundam VS series of games can be found…
Evolved from a PSN title to a disc-based release, Sony’s newest PS3 game, Tokyo Jungle has caught the attention of many with its interesting urban environment, animal survival concept. But does this title bring gameplay equal to its unique narrative base or does it never completely manage to escape its budget title roots? Good —…
Last month, goo Research polled 1,939 Japanese people from ages 15 to 44 about their manga reading habits. Questions ranged from which manga they read to who their favorite character is—they even asked about favorite one-liners. So if manga is your drug of choice, read on to see which are the most popular in Japan…
Trading card games are big in Japan—from Yu-Gi-Oh! to Pokémon to Magic: The Gathering. And given the popularity of video games also, it’s really not surprising that videogame makers figured out how to combine the two. Today, outside of fighting games and medal games, these card/video games are the most popular thing you’ll see in…
At the 2009 Tokyo Game Show, Keiji Inafune, creator of Mega Man, Onimusha, and Dead Rising uttered the following: “Man, Japan is over. We’re done. Our game industry is finished.” I hope Inafune was watching E3 this year. It’s true that over the past half-decade Japanese and Western gaming markets have gone in different directions.…
Playing the story mode of Tokyo Jungle, I took control of a lot of different animals: deer, cats, and dogs, just to name a few. I helped a lonely Pomeranian survive in this new human-less world and played both sides of a war between Beagles and Pit Bulls. One mission even had me as a…
Tokyo Jungle is set in a world where humanity has disappeared and the animals of Tokyo battle to find their own niche in the urban environment. The goal of the game is simple: survive. To play, you pick an animal—anything from a house cat to a T-Rex—and start in front of Shibuya Station. You are…
These days, most Nintendo-published video games are eventually released across the planet. But every once in a while, a game slips through the cracks. Thus it’s more than a little ironic that Captain Rainbow, a game about Nintendo characters who have slipped through the cracks, is one of these Japan-only titles. But did Captain Rainbow…
Captain Rainbow is a Wii adventure game centering on a Power Ranger-style superhero who has come to Mimin Island looking for a magical star that will be able to reignite his popularity. However, he’s not the only person who’s come to this island in search of a second chance. Everyone else on the island is…
This last weekend, Blood-C: The Last Dark was released in select theaters across Japan. This movie is the conclusion to the story-arc started in the 2011 anime Blood-C. It is also the latest in the Blood series—which started with the feature film Blood: The Last Vampire (2000) and was continued in the anime series Blood+…
Almost all Nintendo published titles have made their way West sooner or later, but not Captain Rainbow on the Wii. This adventure game is filled with mini-games, C-List Nintendo characters, and stars a Power Ranger-esque superhero. It’s known in the west for its quirky sense of humor, but how does it look in action? Check…
Always on the lookout for crazy games, I dove into my local game store’s bargain bin and came up with Captain Rainbow. This adventure game follows the titular Captain Rainbow, a Power Ranger-like transforming superhero as he encounters many of Nintendo’s C-grade characters. I expected it to be weird, but I never for a moment…
As I tend to play all the big name Japanese titles months before their western releases, I am often bombarded with questions wanting more specifics about the game itself or it’s overall quality. But every once in a while, I will get the question that always throws me for a loop: “Is the game worth…
Blood: The Last Vampire was one the big anime movies of the late-nineties anime boom alongside other films such as Ghost in the Shell, Ninja Scroll, and Akira. Since then, it has had a live action remake, a 52-episode anime series (Blood+), three games (four if you count Heroes Phantasia), and several manga adaptations. This…
Before the 128-bit era, many Japanese games, especially RPGs, never left Japanese shores. But over the years, many of these classic, never-before-localized games have been released in English on consoles and handhelds. Walk Over My Corpse (Ore no Shikabane wo Koeteyuke), however, remains one of the few great JRPGs unplayed by western audiences—despite a PSP…
While playing the remake of classic JRPG Walk Over My Corpse on the PSP, I couldn’t help but be dazzled by its traditional Japanese “Sumi-e” art style. Sumi-e, for those of you who don’t know, is a kind of painting where an artist uses nothing but black ink, brush, and rice paper to create a…
What do adultery, wasting money, not doing housework, and video games have in common? All are grounds for a divorce in the eyes of Japanese women. According to a recent online survey of 721 Japanese women by goo Ranking, “playing video games all day” came in as the fourth most cited reason for splitting up…
Walk Over My Corpse (Ore no Shikabane wo Koeteyuke) is one of the great Japanese RPGs of the PS1 era that was never released outside of Japan. With its Sumi-e style graphics, complex class-based battle system, and in-depth breeding mechanic, missing out on it is truly a loss for RPG fans the world over. Luckily,…
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