As creator of tent-pole franchises like Kirby or Super Smash Bros. you might think Masahiro Sakurai is a pure bred Nintendo loyalist. So what do you think he has to say about Sony’s newest console? “First off, the console looks cool.” Sakurai wrote in his semi-weekly column in Weekly Famitsu. “As hardware evolves, people tend…
The first time you ever heard of him may have been from his character designs in Final Fantasy VII, but Tetsuya Nomura doesn’t consider Square Enix’s biggest hit to be his turning point in the video game industry. Nomura is currently the director for the latest installments of two of Square Enix’s major franchises –…
Freedom Wars is the upcoming hunting game for the PS Vita where you play a prisoner working off a million year sentence. In the game, players work together along with android companions called “Accessories.” Apparently these Accessories can talk and I want to hear what they have to say. In Freedom Wars, Accessories act as…
First you take a world-shaking event, add some superpowers, and you’ve got, well, the basis for most of your generic superhero stories out there. Now add messed up character relations involving romance and murder, and welcome to Big Order Big Order is a manga that my fellow Kotaku writer, Richard, previously spoke very highly of…
Whenever I’m given an option in a game, be it choosing what my character says or how he/she acts, I always want to make the “best” choice. So when I’m faced with two equally bad options, I lock up – and right off the bat, it looks like Nippon Ichi Software’s newest game is going…
The latest game in the Yakuza franchise is loads of fun. Seriously, after over 30 hours, I still haven’t had enough. Yakuza: Ishin!, much like one of the previous Yakuza games, Yakuza: Kenzan!, is not a direct sequel in the series, but instead takes the cast of the Yakuza series and places them in a…
Square Enix announced the latest Mana game yesterday with a trailer forRise of Mana. So what’s the game about? I mean, aside from a tree. The newly released trailer begins with the following narration: It was a place called “heaven” The side of light, Lasta, where the Great Tree grows, and the side of darkness,…
February 22nd! Launch day for the PS4 in Japan! What games were people buying? We were dying to know. Of course, nobody in line was really thinking about other consoles. But, we had to ask anyways. Launch day of the PlayStation 4 in Japan started at midnight with a Sony countdown event and some stores…
Do you think they’ll do the Antonio Banderas move? The official release date of the PS4 in Japan is February 22nd. However, at the Sony building in Ginza, Tokyo, Sony is offering to sell 100 PS4s a day early on the 21st. Of the 100, 30 will get to participate in the special PlayStation 4…
It’s an alien invasion! Blood, guts, mutilation, and morphing-blade-headed aliens. This manga has it all. *Note* This article contains graphic images of carnage that some may find offensive or disturbing. “寄生獣” or “Kiseiju” (pronounced “kee-say-joo”) is a manga that debuted in Japan in 1990. Why am I bringing up a manga that’s over 20 years…
It’s been a year since game creator Kenji Eno passed away, but his spirit lives on as his friends and fellow creators seek to make what was his last game proposal a reality. It’s been a year to the day since Kenji Eno, musician and game creator passed away from heart failure induced by high…
One thing that Japan will be getting for its PS4 launch that other countries didn’t/won’t is the latest Yakuza game, Yakuza Ishin!. And for those who can’t wait for the game, there’s a new free PS Vita app to let them experience some of the Yakuza Ishin! world, if not the story. Yakuza Ishin! Free…
Who doesn’t want to live forever? I mean, yeah, there is that problem that everyone around you dies. But you don’t have to. Think of all the video games you could play with all that time. Well, here’s a manga that offers a different perspective on the issue. The manga is titled “亜人” or Ajin…
Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS/Wii U are scheduled for release this year and can’t come out soon enough. Why does Japanese game development take so long? In his semi-weekly column for Weekly Famitsu, Super Smash Bros. creator Masahiro Sakurai addressed a fan’s concerns directly. A fan wrote to Sakurai: “It appears that the time…
You know him as the director of the original Resident Evil and the man behind the upcoming horror game, The Evil Within, but back before he joined Capcom, when he was a starry-eyed youth, Shinji Mikami just wanted the free food… and ended up with a free copy of Willow “When I was a student,…
The latest chapter in The iDOLM@STER franchise, THE iDOLM@STER MOVIE: Kagayaki no Mukouhe (Beyond the Radiance), came out this past weekend, and while it doesn’t stray too far from the established story, it does open up some interesting possibilities. Just be prepared for some lengthy depressing moments. A paternal relationship between a naïve, starry-eyed young…
“Japan’s Beethoven,” Mamoru Samuragoch* (pictured), has admitted that he is a fraud. Now, his ghost writer/composer is bringing his deafness into question. Today in Japan, Takashi Niigaki, the admitted ghost writer/composer for Samuragoch, held a press conference in which he told his side of the story. As reported by Gadget Tsuushin: “For 18 years, I…
The new Wonder Momo game is shaping up to be fun, sleek, and cool, while successfully giving me flashbacks of my traumatic experiences with the original. If you’ve ever gotten through the original Wonder Momo, be it the arcade version or the port on the Turbografx-16 or Wii Virtual Console, then congratulations; you’re a better…
27 years after her original debut, Wonder Momo, one of Namco Bandai’s older IPs, is getting a franchise. Wonder Momo was originally an arcade game released in 1987. A fairly simplistic (by today’s standards) side-scrolling beat ’em up game, featuring a transforming, hoop-wielding heroine. Since its release, the game has been ported to the PC-Engine…
Please stop releasing games on portable consoles that I end up being too embarrassed to take out of the house. This is Exstetra, a JRPG for the Nintendo 3DS and PS Vita that was released late last year. The game had managed to get under my radar, but I picked it up at the store…
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