Onechanbara Z Kagura on the Xbox 360 is a bucket of over-the-top hilarity complete with swords, chainsaws, zombies, demons, jiggle physics, the jabberwocky, vampires, bikinis, and of course, vampires in bikinis. But nothing exemplifies the core of what Onechanbara Z is better than Kagura’s collection of pre-asskicking one-liners. At the beginning of nearly every boss…
Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney is quite a powerhouse franchise in Japan. There have been no less than six games (selling millions of copies in Japan alone) and even a feature film. But back in 2009, Capcom and the Takarazuka Revue took the series into another medium with a musical based on this game series. The…
Onechanbara Z Kagura is the latest budget title in a long series of budget titles. Originally part of the Simple 2000 series (a set of over 100 games that cost less than $20 US on the PS2) it grew into a somewhat popular franchise through its cunning use of bikinis, swords, and busty women. While…
Let’s face it. With movies ranging from 28 Days Later to Pirates of the Caribbean and TV shows like The Walking Dead, it’s quite clear the world has itself a case of zombie-mania. In the realm of gaming, the Japanese have contributed to this as much as anywhere else with game series like Resident Evil,…
Last week Kotaku brought you word of The Legend of Alfur, a Japanese-made first person shooter, developed by a small indy game studio using the Unreal Engine. With Japanese-made FPS titles being something of a rarity—especially compared to how many are developed in the West—this seemed the perfect game to check out in more detail.…
Zombies. They are everywhere, and Japanese games are no exception. However, while in the West a shotgun blast to the head seems to be the most efficient way of killing them, the Japanese have instead found the “natural enemy” of the walking dead: schoolgirls. Nowhere is this more prevalent than in Suda51’s upcoming title, Lollipop…
What if one day you went to sleep and when you woke up your teenaged neighbor was The President and you the vice president? Then what if all fell to you to defend the country from terrorists, a mad Korean dictator, crazed fanboys, and Josef Mengele—while returning everything to normal rested on the shoulders of…
Japanese video-sharing site NicoNico Douga is well known for having its own unique net culture and memes. One of the most interesting of these is the “tegaki” style of video. “Tegaki,” literally meaning “hand-drawn,” refers to a type of video where a popular clip —usually an anime or video game opening—is altered to portray a…
After finding out about The Legend of Alfur, a Japanese indy-made FPS for the PC, it struck me how weird it was to hear the words “Japanese-made” and “FPS” in the same sentence. While typically thought of as “overly violent games from the West” in Japan, they have recently grown in popularity here in Japan.…
One of the greatest things about PC gaming is the ability to modify games. Since Doom, fan-made sprites, levels, and even tweeks to gameplay can be found for any number of classic and modern PC titles. Recently, games like Mass Effect 2 and Dragon Age have received amazingly detailed texture packs for all their characters,…
The PlayStation 3 had been out for several months when I started looking into buying one. My PS2 was making loud grinding noises and I feared it was on its last legs. Moreover Sony had just announced that PS2 backward compatibility would be cut from the next model of PS3, so it seemed as if…
This last weekend, Sony kicked off a nationwide promotional tour for the June 7 release of Tokyo Jungle at Yodobashi Camera in Akihabara. While the event consisted of little more than a spokesperson and two demo stations, I was able to spend almost a half hour with Sony’s newest big name PS3 title. The demo…
In Japan, one company has embraced the DLC business model more than any other: Bandai-Namco. To anyone who has ever thought a piece of DLC was a bit pricey would be screaming in rage if the Japanese prices for Bandai-Namco DLC were to become the norm. Click through the gallery to see some of the…
Allow me to start off with a euphemism. I am not exactly the biggest fan of the Japanese pop-idol group AKB48. This presents me with a problem. With 12 number-one singles since 2009, the popularity of AKB48 in Japanese culture is to the point where I can enter my local 7-11 and buy anything from…
In Bandai-Namco’s Idolm@ster series, you take on the role of a music producer and create and manage a group of teenage popstars. By mixing Japan’s idol and video game cultures, it is no surprise that this series has a fanatic following among Japanese otaku (geeks). But is this following deserved, or is The Idolm@ster nothing…
Among hardcore Japanese otaku (geeks) there are few games more popular than those of The Idolm@ster series. The premise is simple. As a music producer, it is your job to take a group of recently debuted teenage “idols” and turn them into Japan’s most popular popstars. Or to look at it another way, it’s a…
The Idolm@ster series is (in)famous for giving gamers the ability to create and manage their own teenage female popstar group. But what exactly does that entail? Well, besides a lot of talking and dialogue trees, The Idolm@ster 2 is mostly a collection of music mini-games combined with light RPG elements. You 1) do lessons to…
Right outside Akihabara Station’s Electric Town exit is the Gundam Cafe. Every day, countless Gundam fans line up outside the small restaurant to catch a quick bite as they explore Tokyo’s otaku paradise. But with a usual wait line of 45 minutes or more, some people just can’t stop shopping for that long. Luckily, right…
When I first heard that a visual novel centered around dating girls with physical disabilities was being made, my first thought was “only in Japan.” Of course, I was completely wrong. While made in the style of a typical Japanese visual novel—and even based on a Japanese sketch—Katawa Shoujo was created by a group of…
Suda51 (Goichi Suda) is one of Japan’s most famous game directors. In the West, this is due to his cult classic PS2/GameCube title, Killer7, or his best-selling Wii series, No More Heroes. In Japan, however, he first became famous for another game entirely: Super Fire Pro Wrestling Special on the Super Famicom. Back in 1994,…
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