General gaming |
- All About Hiroshi Matsuyama's Time in the Concrete Business
- Dangan Ronpa Gets Sequel
- Namco Bandai Unleashes Anime Crossover RPG
- 5pb Announces Robotics;Notes
- Japan Review Check: Growlanser IV, Airu-mura
- Mists of Pandaria May be the Next World of Warcraft Expansion
- Get in the Battlefield 3 Beta Early by Pre-Ordering on Origin
- Windows Users Still Cheap as Humble Bundle Tops $1 Million
- Tekken X Street Fighter Doesn't Know How to Handle Fireballs Yet
- Borderlands 2 Coming in 2012 - Report
| All About Hiroshi Matsuyama's Time in the Concrete Business Posted: 03 Aug 2011 06:48 AM PDT "I was in the concrete business; I was constructing parks and stuff," he told Famitsu magazine in an interview published over the past couple issues. "Once I graduated from school, I got a job at a company based in Fukuoka that made concrete. I got a transfer to their branch office in Osaka, where I got a job in their sales division." Matsuyama had an interest in games, but neither the contacts nor any particular talent for making them. "At the time, I hadn't so much as touched a PC," he said. "I really loved reading manga as a kid, though, and I had a keen interest in anime, games, and pretty much anything else. Ever since I was in college, I knew I wanted to get into the entertainment industry. In the region of Japan I lived in, my university was the only one that really had an arts department at the time. I graduated from that, and they generated a lot of famous game makers and manga artists. I had a lot of friends who'd declare that they'd go up to Tokyo to find their fame and fortune, but most of them would come back to Fukuoka within a year, being all like 'Things are just crazy over there.' That was more than just one or two people, too, that said that. That made me think that you couldn't deal with this industry just because you wanted to be there. So I figured that I'd join some other company for starters as a learning experience, so that's why I started working in concrete." |
| Posted: 03 Aug 2011 05:28 AM PDT Although the story and setting is new (the game takes place in an archipelago of five tropical islands, each with a different city and buildings), the basic ideas is the same. Murders take place among your group of friends, killings that seem to be overseen (or, perhaps, orchestrated) by the weird good/evil living teddy bear seen above. You have to survey the crime scene for clues, then fend off accusations laid upon you by students as you track down the real killer. It's a slight twist on the Ace Attorney series, in other words, albeit one with a little more bite. No release date or price was given for the sequel. |
| Namco Bandai Unleashes Anime Crossover RPG Posted: 03 Aug 2011 05:09 AM PDT Heroes Phantasia's main draw is its story, a massive crossover of sorts that features characters from ten different anime series. The stable includes Lina Inverse from Slayers (above), Keroro from Sgt. Frog, Orphen from the show of the same name, Yomiko Readman from Read or Die, and Mai from My-HiME, as well as a few original characters. They're all teamed up and traveling between dimensions in order to fend off a threat that's already nearly destroyed a world in another dimension and is now threatening modern-day Earth. The game itself appears to be a standard sort of turn-based JRPG, with four-character parties using action points to attack and unleashing team-based special moves depending on the formations you define for them. |
| Posted: 03 Aug 2011 04:46 AM PDT Set in 2019 in the offshore Japanese island of Tanegashima, Robotics:Notes stars Kaito Yashio, a teenage nerd who spends most of his time playing fighting games. He's one of only two members of the school robotics club, but instead of doing much serious work on robots, he instead plays with the AR (augmented reality) functionality on his smartphone to goof around with the world around him -- a hobby that eventually leads him to uncover a dark conspiracy. (This AR stuff becomes a core gameplay feature later on, with you running your phone over objects in order to uncover any otherwise-invisible secrets they might contain.) "It's this story of young people growing up, teaming together to overcome obstacles in their way," director Chiyomaru Shikura told Famitsu. "The AR in this game serves as a sort of gateway to a dream world. You use it to hunt for treasure, as well as for silly things like putting virtual cat ears on the heroine. Running AR on incomplete robots can make them look a lot cooler, too, which is a source of motivation for the hero. In the beginning it's just something to play around with, but soon you wind up discovering classified data with it and it becomes something a fair bit more sinister." |
| Japan Review Check: Growlanser IV, Airu-mura Posted: 03 Aug 2011 04:22 AM PDT - Monhan Nikki: Pokapoka Airu-mura G (9/8/8/8, 33 points): This Animal Crossing-ish PSP title, a sort of expansion pack to the original, lets you visit a village full of the Felynes from the Monster Hunter series -- a concept Famitsu liked well enough. "The foundation is exactly the same," one editor wrote, "but at least you're able to get through the previous game's content a lot more quickly. There's enough extra stuff, too, that this is a fairly powered-up version of the game. You can pick up right where you left off if you have your old save around as well." "Between the price point and the new features," added another, "the cost performance here is great. A lot of the game does feel like you're running errands, but the comfy atmosphere makes up for it." |
| Mists of Pandaria May be the Next World of Warcraft Expansion Posted: 02 Aug 2011 05:45 PM PDT A new trademark filing discovered by MMO Champion reveals that Blizzard filed for the name on July 28 with two different goods and services descriptions: IC 041. US 100 101 107. G & S: Entertainment services, namely, providing on-line computer games; providing computer games that may be accessed via a global computer network; providing online news and information in the field of computer games; entertainment services, namely, conducting contests online and providing a website for organizing, planning and executing events between computer game players and interest groups |
| Get in the Battlefield 3 Beta Early by Pre-Ordering on Origin Posted: 02 Aug 2011 04:49 PM PDT Maybe you missed out on the recent Battlefield 3 alpha test and want to ensure you play the game as soon as possible. Maybe you didn't pick up a Limited Edition copy of Medal of Honor last year. Either way, looking past the recent alpha -- which was "a highly tech focused test period" anyway -- there is a new way to get yourself early access into the upcoming beta, giving you a chance to play it before the vast majority of people: pre-order on Origin. Origin, the name of the rebranded EA Store, has a listing for Battlefield 3 outlining the pre-order perks for buying it from there. Early access to the open beta is the first of the bunch; it says that Origin pre-orderers "will be granted early access to the Open Beta for Battlefield 3 when it goes live in September 2011." |
| Windows Users Still Cheap as Humble Bundle Tops $1 Million Posted: 02 Aug 2011 03:06 PM PDT The third Humble Indie Bundle launched just a week ago and it's already generated in excess of $1 million. That's an accomplishment that both of the previous bundles managed as well, though it makes it no less impressive that a pay-what-you-want, DRM-free bundle could generate so much money. And that money doesn't go entirely into the pockets of the developers. Customers, who are free to pay as little as one cent (though doing so brings up the image below), can choose to divide their money however this wish between the developers, the bundle organizers, Child's Play, and the Electronic Frontier Foundation. |
| Tekken X Street Fighter Doesn't Know How to Handle Fireballs Yet Posted: 02 Aug 2011 02:34 PM PDT These issues present a variety of challenges for both Capcom and Namco Bandai with their respective crossovers. In the case of Tekken X Street Fighter, Tekken director Katsuhiro Harada still isn't sure about how the issue of fireballs will be handled. "Obviously, the Street Fighter characters will have to have their fireballs," he told PlayStation Blog at the EVO fighting game tournament this past weekend. "Ryu without a fireball just wouldn't be... right. Obviously we'll need it. When you look at executing a fireball in a 2D setting, it works almost like a jab. It keeps your opponent where you want them." |
| Borderlands 2 Coming in 2012 - Report Posted: 02 Aug 2011 01:29 PM PDT Gearbox hasn't been shy in expressing how pleased it is with the first game, and this isn't the first indication that another Borderlands is on the way -- a resume showed a listing for Borderlands 2 earlier this year. "I can tell you that myself and everyone at Gearbox LOVES Borderlands and we have been absolutely thrilled at the reception it's gotten from our customers and the fact that it's sold over four million units now," Gearbox CEO Randy Pitchford told Eurogamer in April. "So you can see that we supported the game like mad with lots of great DLC and you can imagine that we're going to want to do a lot of things with Borderlands in the future." |
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