Earlier this week, Japanese entertainment company Mages announced 3 Japanese games to come out for the Xbox One console. Considering the western-centric image the Xbox brand has had over the years, this is a good thing. The three titles, Psycho-Pass, mystereet F, and Chaos; Child are all text-based adventure games. Needless to say, for those…
“There’s a middle-age Europe-themed amusement park in Japan that’s getting a game museum.” “… Wut?” So, apparently in Nagasaki – the place that was nuked in WWII (not Hiroshima, the other place) – there’s a theme park, a la Disneyland or Universal Studios, that has a middle-age European motif to it. Called “Huis Ten Bosch”…
Coming off of their recent movie release, THE IDOLM@STER girls are back with a new game that looks like it’s learned from past mistakes. The latest addition to Bandai Namco’s ever popular IDOLM@STER franchise, THE IDOLM@STER ONE FOR ALL came out on the PS3 last week and so I decided to see what it had…
“Yokai Watch? WTF is that?” was my first response when I heard about the 3DS game that had Brian ransacking toy stores Yokai Watch (妖怪ウォッチ) is pretty much a Pokemon style game from Level-5 of Professor Layton fame, where the objective is to collect cute little fairy-like monsters – called Yokai – to battle with.…
Hyrule Warriors is Zelda meets hack-and-slash. It’s an idea just crazy enough to work. “With the Warriors series, we’ve had collaborations with Gundam, Fist of the North Star, and One Piece, but we also wanted to do something with Nintendo.” Hyrule Warriors producer, Hisashi Koinuma said in an interview with Weekly Famitsu. According to Koinuma,…
Why pay 30 bucks to download a game from Steam when you could shell out ¥179,450 (Roughly US$1,760.76) for the Japanese package version? Hearts of Iron III is a grand strategy war game that was released in 2009. It’s not an unremarkable game, but the current price on Japan’s Amazon for its Japanese version has…
How many Twitter followers do you have? How many Facebook friends do you have? How many would be willing to die for you? Welcome to the world of Real Account – A world where all social networking services have been unified under a single, universal, all-encompassing, and deadly service. What It’s About Ataru Kashiwagi is…
This week in his semi-weekly column, Super Smash Bros. creator, Masahiro Sakurai talks about VR technology and how it can make his dreams come true. With the Oculus Rift getting Facebook backing and Sony’s Project Morpheus, things are moving towards VR headsets as the potential future of gaming and entertainment. As a developer and a…
A famous Japanese food manga takes on the “truth about Fukushima.” The Japanese manga, Oishinbo (美味しんぼ) is a long-running food manga that has been ongoing since 1983. In his latest chapter that was recently published in the magazine Big Comic Spirits, author Tetsu Kariya depicted the manga protagonist, Shiro Yamaoka, as he returned from a…
Four developers competing in the same genre sit down to have a friendly conversation. The multi-player large-boss-hunting genre is huge in Japan. It’s hardly a stretch to say that the Monster Hunter series saved both the PSP and the 3DS in Japan. After the juggernaut that is Monster Hunter made its mark, every other Japanese…
From a rocky start to now, with over 5 million units sold, the Xbox One seems to have found its footing. Next stop, Japan. But how will Microsoft’s black monolithic hope fare in a market where its predecessors haven’t exactly enjoyed the lion’s share? Following the September 4th Japanese release date announcement, Japanese gaming mag…
Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure is famous for its unique art style with characters making fabulous poses that cosplayers love to mimic. One underappreciated aspect of the manga is the interesting facial expressions. Underappreciated, except by one man. Twitter user Sekaichizu Kinoshita has an entire twitter feed under the user name @jojogaobot dedicated to mimicking the various…
Here’s the latest trailer for the next Tales game – with subtitles, so you can kind of understand what the hell they’re saying The next Tales game features a story involving legends, fates, and strange world-specific terminology. Kind of like every other RPG. But it still looks pretty cool. The following is latest trailer for…
This. Is. The Great Hamburger War! An RPG about a priest of the Hamburger Cult who is turned into a hamburger when he speaks against his church and swears to get revenge. The first thought that ran through my head upon hearing that description was, “WTF!?” The Great Hamburger War (ハンバーガー大戦争) is a free game…
A humorous look at the creation process and just what went wrong. I’m reminded of the Gary Larson comic in God’s kitchen, where God is sprinkling jerks onto Earth “just to make it interesting.” In Japan, the reason why some things are the way they are have been explained by a simple doodle depicting a…
First she was a singer, then she went on to be a dancer, a holographic performer, and even the star of her own game series. Now Hatsune Miku is branching out to her new career as… a teacher’s assistant? The character of Hatsune Miku has become world famous ever since her modest beginnings as a…
Hollywood’s latest take on Godzilla is hitting theaters next month, and while we’ve already heard some of Japan’s response to the new and improved giant city-destroying monster, that was before they got a full picture. So what do they think of him now? From Japan’s largest internet forum, 2ch, while some think positively of the…
They say great minds think alike, but sometimes it’s more entertaining when they don’t. Akira Toriyama: Creator of the world-famous Dragonball and long-time character designer for the Dragon Quest series. Masakazu Katsura: Creator of such classics as Video Girl Ai, DNA2, and the ongoing Zetman manga series as well as the character designer for the…
Canadian music artist Avril Lavigne released her latest music video for her song, “Hello Kitty,” and it has some people up in arms claiming it’s racist. It’s really not. The music video for “Hello Kitty” has Lavigne singing and dancing on site in Japan with a backup cast of Japanese women dancing and waving with…
Japan’s biggest gaming phenomenon of 2013 has hit its 1 year mark, and to mark the occasion, I finally utilized one of the more recent added features to the game. In one year, the Japanese browser game known as Kantai Collection (艦隊これくしょん) – aka Kan Colle (艦これ) – has amassed over 1.9 million users, or…
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