Over the years, sticker picture (“purikura” or “print club” in Japanese) machines in arcades have offered an array of features. They’ve removed blemishes for perfect skin and have even sported virtual hair extensions. But one trend hasn’t gone away: big eyes. And it hasn’t gotten better. It’s gotten worse During the mid-1990s, Atlus (with some…
Especially when it’s the Queen’s Gate version of Tekken 5 character Lili Rochefort Queen’s Gate was originally a Lost Worlds style “combat picture book game” and has been published in Japan for the last couple of years. In three words, it’s pure fan service. Queen’s Gate features only female characters and has showcased the likes…
Yesterday, much of Asia and parts of North America witnessed a solar eclipse. The result was beautiful. However, add in some welding masks and some little kids, and the result was adorable Check out the above gallery, with pics of miniature eclipse gazers from across Japan. 溶接面で金環日食を楽しむ人々 [Naver via RocketNews]
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…
Atelier Ayesha: The Alchemist of Twilight Land, the latest entry in the Atelier role-playing games, shows off its gameplay in this new clip. So. Whaddaya think? Atelier Ayesha: The Alchemist of Twilight Land is out this June in Japan on the PlayStation 3. In case you missed it, here’s the game’s opening.
Last week, entertainer and filmmaker Beat Takeshi came under fire due to comments he made on Japanese television about gay marriage. When shown footage of people celebrating President Obama’s support of gay marriage, Takeshi said, “Obama supports gay marriage. You would support a marriage to an animal eventually, then.” Everyone is entitled to his or…
Over the weekend, a new photo surfaced of what’s supposedly the Wii U controller. It looked, well, different. But how different? This is not perfect, but here is a GIF that shows just how the controller has apparently changed between summer 2011 and this spring. The photo showed a new square button on the left…
After over a decade in Japan, this week I got a letter from the Japanese government. It said that the alien registration card (外国人登録証明書), or informally “gaijin card”, was vanishing. Starting this summer, the credit card sized i.d. will be replaced. This is a card I’ve had since I’ve been in Japan, and one that…
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I don’t just mean visually, because let’s face it, these days what you’re seeing here isn’t that out of the ordinary. But look at the game mechanics on display, compare them to PC games of the same ilk and wonder why the hell hasn’t anyone done this earlier? Autumn Dynasty, a former 2009 IGF China…
During the Mass Effect trilogy you fight a few friendly species “re-appropriated” as bad guys by the Reapers. But not all of them. So concept artist Andrew Ryan decided to imagine what it would be like if the Reapers had been a little more thorough. There are some major and predictable races on show, like…
Despite the fact it featured fighting robots, Real Steel was a massive disappointment because it had too much human drama, not enough fighting robots. Not that this matters when it comes to action figures based on the movie. Because they can simply be giant, badass robot action figures. And they can be works of art…
You know what CAPTCHA is? It’s that thing that makes you enter letters and numbers on a website to prove you’re a human, and not a machine hell-bent on learning our human ways and killing us all by downloading a .zip file. It’s probably the thing I hate most about the internet, so it’s lovely…
Chinese artist XiaoPeng Xing, aka Pink77, has been working in the games industry for eight years now, lending his talents out to clients like Activision/Blizzard and online juggernaut Tencent. His calling card? Bright colours and the female of the species. Some of these images are for professional projects, others – like his King of Fighters…
Video game clothing emporium Meat Bun returns just in time for my Australian winter with a range of shirts based on that most timeless and unchanging of genres: racing games. The four news shirts draw on everything from Ed “Big Daddy” Roth to Mario Kart to OutRun to a Daytona x Transformers crossover. My body…
Not in an advertising sense, “missing out” on pointless features. You will quite literally be missing out on some games, as EA has revealed that come 2012 a whole range of titles using DICE’s Frostbite 2 engine – the one powering games such as Battlefield 3 – will need a 64-bit operating system to even…
It’s a predictable tragedy, but a tragedy nonetheless: both of the recently-released Game of Thrones video games suck Those wanting to mess around with a virtual Westeros, though, know that all is not lost, because some mods for existing games are here to help soften the blow. While these aren’t official, standalone titles – and…
In 1988, Taito released Akira, cash-in on the hugely-popular animated film of the same name. Just in case you were wondering if Japanese developers somehow made better movie adaptations in the 1980s, no, they did not. The game was terrible. Still, that’s mostly second-hand information, as most Westerners have never actually played the game, since…
Before the internet, before people even really cottoned onto the idea of games magazines, publishers had to sell things the old-fashioned way: with TV ads and catalogues. Most catalogues were simple affairs, all bright lights, screenshots and slogans, but sometimes publishers went a little left field. Like Activision did in 1984 when it basically commissioned…
You know what they say about Sex Panther… Hi there Kotaku, and welcome to another week under the sun. Here now, some things to read and maybe talk about. “The Real World” has turned 20 – Well that is quite a while ago. Our Father’s Not in Heaven: The New Black Atheism – Super provocative,…
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