When I first played Diabolical Pitch, it was at the Tokyo Game Show 2011. There at the Microsoft booth, I played this Kinect title in two-player coop mode with a beautiful Japanese booth babe. I had a lot of fun. It was only when I played the game at home alone this last week that…
Girl’s RPG Cinderellife is the newest 3DS title from Professor Layton creator Level-5. Marketed as a “girl’s RPG,” Cinderellife is the story of a plain girl coming to live in the big city for the first time. Before long, she is working in a Japanese hostess club and dreaming of finding true love amongst her…
Over the past few weeks, I’ve been playing the fan-made visual novel, Katawa Shoujo. Like the name of the genre implies, there is a heavy emphasis on the story to the point where you’re almost reading as much as you would with a print novel. In fact on one path through Katawa Shoujo, there are…
I was 21 years old the first time I heard the word “soapland” and upon finding out exactly what one was, I reacted with confusion and disbelief. The concept just seemed too absurd to be true. But really, it shouldn’t have. After all, one of the best-selling and most renowned video games of all time…
Earlier this week, I wrote about my first hour playing Girls RPG: Cinderellife. For a laugh, I poked and prodded the game, pointing out its less-than-inspiring portrayal of women—though this is nothing new when it comes to games or any other popular media really. Most of the things I poked fun at were a direct…
“You have to pet their egos,” said Elizabeth. “That’s what a hostess does.” Now, in her early 30’s and married, Elizabeth is living a very different life but was still eager to share her experiences. But only a few years ago, she spent six months working at a hostess club here in Japan. Elizabeth came…
Originally, Girl’s RPG Cinderellife was going to be a 3DS version of the popular cell phone title Kyabajoppi. In Kyabajoppi you manage a host club that is frequented by many famous anime characters. And while, Cinderellife now has you living the life of a single hostess instead of managing the club, the anime characters still…
Girl’s RPG: Cinderellife is the newest game by Level-5. Far from the puzzle solving of Professor Layton or the giant armored suits of White Knight Chronicles, this title is directed toward the female gamer demographic—just as the name suggests. But what exactly is a “Girls RPG,” I wondered. Is it about a strong female protagonist,…
Last year at the Tokyo Game Show, Level-5 announced they were making an RPG on the 3DS specifically targeted toward girls. I was interested by the idea. What exactly is a “girl’s RPG.” Would it present girls with a strong female role model or would it just be a traditional princessy love story? But whatever…
Girl’s RPG: Cinderellife on the Nintendo 3DS purports to be—as the name suggests—an RPG for girls. But what exactly does that entail? Mostly running around a city, buying clothes, talking with men, and finding true love—all in a hostess club setting. And while the setting is more than a little questionable, the game is presented…
The PSP role-playing game Heroes Phantasia takes nine popular fantasy and sci-fi anime—Blood+, Read or Die, My-HiME, s-CRY-d, Darker Than Black, Slayers Revolution, Sorcerous Stabber Orphen, Rune Soldier Louie, and Sgt. Frog—and mixes them into one giant cross-over adventure. And while fans of these shows will no doubt be excited to play as their favorite…
How I ended up living and working in Japan is a long and complex story, but like many, anime was a big part of it. In my highschool years, my friends and I were watching at least one 26 episode series a week by means of trading VCDs with strangers off of message boards, importing…
While trying to learn more about all the anime characters in the PSP crossover RPG Heroes Phantasia, I became interested in Read or Die. After watching the 2001 anime, I found myself already hunting for a game from the series. But despite eleven books, a manga, and two anime series, no game has ever been…
For years Bandai Namco has been releasing mega crossovers of giant robot anime—ranging from Gundam to Evangelion to Voltron—in the Super Robot Wars series. But having made many other types of anime tie-in games in the past, giant robot anime aren’t the only anime Bandai Namco holds the licenses for. So earlier this year they…
Heroes Phantasia, the anime crossover RPG, has playable characters from a total of nine different anime. But how lame would it be if you could only choose three or four party members like most JRPGs? Fear not! Heroes Phantasia has a complex battle system that allows you a grand total of 16 characters in battle…
As Kotaku‘s own Kirk Hamilton pointed out last week, one of the most amazing things in Square Enix’s DS hit, The World Ends With You, was its techno/pop/rap soundtrack. While we aren’t getting a new game in the series anytime soon (if ever), we are getting the next best thing, Kingdom Hearts 3D: Dream Drop…
Kingdom Hearts is one of those series whose quality varies wildly from game to game. Sometimes they are nothing but near pointless filler while others are as solid as the numbered iterations in the series. Much like the “even-number Star Trek films curse,” fans of the series believe those Kingdom Hearts titles released on Nintendo…
Ever wonder what it’d be like to play a massive 100-person game of Bomberman? Well Konami read your mind and released 100-Person Battle Bomberman late last month for smart phones in Japan. While it seems like an amazing idea to have 100-man Bomberman battles, this game has one major downside: 99 of those people are…
Way back in the year 1999, Sega took its successful horror light-gun game, House of the Dead 2, swapped guns for keyboards and released it in arcades under the name The Typing of the Dead. Two years later this typing tutor was released in America on the Dreamcast and PC. It was—and still is frankly—the…
Kingdom Hearts is a polarizing series to say the least. People seem to love it or hate it with few standing in between. I am no different except that I fall into both categories. While I am a fan of the series, I am also incredibly critical of it. So with Kingdom Hearts 3D: Dream…
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