Kotaku East

A Look Inside the Smoky World of Chinese Internet Cafes

Chinese internet cafes get a lot of bad press in Western media, most of which involves young people gaming for days on end and then passing… But while the cafes are seedy places, they aren’t exactly bad. Nearly everywhere you go in China that has a steady internet connection, you will find an internet cafe.…

The Queen of Pokémon Will Gross You Out. Again.

Like clockwork, every summer in Japan, you can hear cicada, or “semi” (セミ), throughout the country. That buzzing cry is something that people instantly associate with the season. And like clockwork, idol Shoko Nakagawa is back this August with more stomach-churning cicada photos. Yay? See Nakagawa, who is Japan’s queen of Pokémon, collects cicada skins—and…

That Jet Li MMO Isn’t Half-Bad

Chinese company Woniu.com recently came out with a new martial arts based MMO call the The Ninth Sutra （九阴真经). Despite looking like every other martial arts based MMO ever released, the one thing that set the The Ninth Sutra apart was the fact that they were able to use martial arts expert Jet Li’s image…

This Gaming Laptop Is So Bright, You Gotta Wear 3D Shades

Samsung is giving its first dedicated gaming laptop, dubbed Series 7 Gamer, a not-so-subtle coat of bright yellow gloss. As website Engadget points out, the laptop gets an AMD Radeon HD 7870M and a SuperBright 3D LED display. It’ll be out August 14 in South Korea for the equivalent of around US$2,640. No word on…

The Cosplay Insanity that Roared Through Tokyo

Starting on Friday, the biannual Comic Market (aka “Comiket”) was held in Tokyo. Just as in previous years, the 2012 summer Comiket featured a whole slew of cosplayers milling about and posing for pics. Here are some of them. Sister site Kotaku Japan and cosplay blog Asagawo were on hand to soak up the festivities…

Kazunori Yamauchi won’t say when GT6 is coming out, because people will say it’s been delayed. Talk about forecasting.

This Store Sells Food. Plastic Food.

In Japan, fake food can look very, very real. It’s called “shokuhin sample” (食品サンプル) or “food sample”, and it appears outside restaurants so customers can know what they are ordering. Website DannyChoo.com recently visited a Tokyo shop called “Maizuru” that specializes in selling shokuhin sample. Most restaurants work closely with plastic food makers to accurately…

The Flood Tragedy Is Real. This Viral Photo Is Probably Not.

Last week, torrential rain battered the Philippines. According to CNN, flooding has impacted 2.4 million people. Tragically, the death toll has reached 90, and there are concerns over the spread of disease. Serious stuff. Online in Japan, there are photos of Filipinos dealing with an awful situation the best way they can. Some of the…

Dragon Quest X‘s Uphill Climb in the West

Dragon Quest X is a game perfectly tailored to bring Japanese players into the world of MMORPGs for the first time. It’s part of a big-named series, it’s very easy to pick up and play, and it’s on a system that 12.5 million Japanese already have sitting in their living rooms. However, it’s the very…

This week, the court case over the teen who sold his kidney for an iPad and an iPhone went to trial.

The PS3 and PS Vita Getting a Tamed Down Adult Tactics Game

Sexy war tactics game Eiyuu Senki (Heroine War Princess) was originally released as an 18-and-up PC game. Today, the game’s developer revealed that it was being ported to the PS3 and the PS Vita. And yes, that’s probably minus the original game’s hardcore sex scenes. The developer is also working on a social game as…

Dragon Quest X is Both Forward-Thinking and Backwards at the Same Time

In Japan, Dragon Quest is the unquestioned king of RPGs: Even the Final Fantasy series comes in a distant second. The last game in the series, Dragon Quest IX, sold over 4.3 million copies, making it the 6th best selling game on the Nintendo DS in Japan. Many speculated the next DQ game would surely…

Rebalanced arcade game Guilty Gear Accent Core Plus R beats up Japanese arcades this September.

Does this Japanese Soccer RPG Look Better on the 3DS? Yes.

Level-5, the folks behind Professor Layton, are bringing the first three Inazuma Eleven Nintendo DS games to the 3DS with sharper graphics. Above, you can see how the original graphics stack up to the 3DS ones. As part of Inazuma Eleven‘s fifth anniversary, the three games will be out this winter as a single compilation…

Robot Children, Here Are Your Backpacks

Every Japanese grade schooler lugs around a big leather backpack called a “randoseru” (ランドセル). They’re sturdy and pricey, because they’re supposed last all six years of primary school. Girls usually get red or pink randoseru, while boys get black or blue. Robots? Well, they get randoseru from retail chain Nitori—complete with a six year warranty!…

How Dragon Quest X Could Forever Change the Gaming Landscape in Japan

MMORPGs are far from popular in Japan, especially when compared to the West. There have been a few MMO successes—e.g. Phantasy Star Online and Final Fantasy XI—but the MMO market is so small in general that even MMO juggernaut World of Warcraft has never been released here. On one level, this is because most MMOs…

Japan’s Ugliest Console Game Delayed. Again.

There are three things you can count on: Death, taxes, and Daisenryaku Perfect: Ruler of the Battlefield being delayed. A real Japanese game studio with a real office and real desks and real computers is developing this absolutely crappy-looking game. The game is slated to be released on the Xbox 360 and the PS3 for…

A Bastion for Bigots and Shameless Racists

Yesterday in London (early this morning in Japan), the US women’s soccer team played against Japan for Olympic gold. It was a squeaker, but America won 2-1. While the Associated Press interviewed Japanese fans who said things like, “Given that the United States is such a good team, the result is not surprising” or that…

Koei Tecmo Boss Kind of Sort of Announces a New Game

Tecmo Koei CEO, Yoichi Erikawa recently said in an interview with Weekly Famitsu that the alpha version of the long-missing game, Ni-Oh! was complete and that work on the game was continuing. But that wasn’t all. The interview between Erikawa and Enterbrain CEO, Hirokazu Hamamura, mainly covered the growth of Tecmo Koei since the two…

Attention All Comic Market Fans, Knock Off the Sexualized Bags. Thanks!

This Friday, the summer Comic Market (aka “Comiket”) steamrolls Japan. There will be tons of self-produced manga from famed artists and new talents on sale. A big chunk of it is sexy stuff, and so are the free bags that attendees get from game companies, retailers, manga makers—you name it. No wonder one illustrator is…