01.30.06
Posted in Japanese, Links, News, Reviews at 3:11 pm by yuka
The Okami site has been upgraded – go to the last tab that has 戦闘 written on it, and the third and fourth pages will have clickable movies for the character’s moves.
Baten Kaitos II has a new site up. From left: Story, Characters, Battle, Movie. It’ll be out 23rd Feb. for approx. £34 for the GC. It’ll need 6 memory blocks, and is playable by one only.
Lost Magic translation then. From left: Summary, World View, Story, How to play, Battle, Character, Creatures… second row, from left: Novel, and Gallery.
Story: A world where the Creator has already died. The Creator passed away but left 6 ‘magic’s and 7 staves. The staves were long held by the wise men of the world and was passed from master to apprentice and so on. Over a thousand years had passed since the death when this story begins. All that had gone wrong over the years, the boy (main character) will have to set right, by using the magics and the stave left him.
Character: 3 main characters on the right, 7 characters they meet on the way at bottom.
This game has been out since 19th Jan. on the DS for approx. £25 (Action RPG/1-2 player) and seems to be quite popular. It is well noted that the DS touch screen usage is much in evidence in game-play (draw a ‘rune’ or two to perform magic), and it can be played over the Wi-fi connection, albeit, up to two players. You never know… it might make it outside Japan. From what can be divulged from the interview (from Nintendo Inside), the world and characters are done with the help of Yoshiharu Sato (art director) who has helped make many of the Ghibli films successful. One to watch out for, perhaps?
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01.29.06
Posted in Japanese, News, UK at 2:29 am by yuka
Good news! Though as of yet the exact date is unconfirmed, DS Lite is set for a spring release outside Japan too. So speculation is rife as to whether the release date will also be 2nd March.
For fans of Legend of Mana series, the Rabi cushions are making a come-back. Get them from Square Enix Online Boutique or Square Enix Character Goods Shop – Showcase -. Also if anyone’s around Nagoya on 29th, have a look around the 23rd World Hobby Fair – as luck will have it, the first few present will be given an exclusive Rabi handtowel.
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01.26.06
Posted in Japanese, News at 5:21 pm by yuka
As of 2nd March, costing approx. £84, DS Lite is set to debut. “Lite”, not because it reminds you of a less-nicotine cig, but because it’s more lightweight and the screen’s brighter (it can be darkened to suit your needs) than the previous model, or so Nintendo says in their statement. The original model measured 148.7 x 84.7 x 28.9 mm, while this new model measures 133 x 73.9 x 21.5 mm; the weight has decreased from 275g to 218g. Us Japanese may have had this obsession to make things ever smaller, but hey, it works :) Unfortunately for people outside Japan, it is yet unknown when it will be on sale.
Nintendo has also made 7.500 possible locations within the UK as Wi-fi Connection points. Not that I’ve seen any yet (despite my frequenting game shops and some of the shops mentioned), they’re supposed to be in certain McDonalds outlets, Coffee Republics et al. And news has just come through that Ireland will have some 270 spots soon enough – all of them, of course, free of charge. Nintendo is looking to have such spots available within such stores as HMV and Game too, soon, or so they say.
FF XI The Secret Treasure of Ahturhgan is out on all three platforms (PC, PS2, Xbox360) on 20th April. Dragon Quest – Boy Yangus – is also out on the same day, for approx. £36.
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01.21.06
Posted in Japanese, News at 2:42 pm by yuka
A rundown of releases coming up within the next month. PS2: 26th Jan. – Dirge of Cerberus, Shin Onimusha Dawn of Dreams, Shin Onimusha 8MB memory card. NGC: 19th Jan. – Super Mario Strikers. GBA/micro: 19th Jan. – Hudson Best Collection Vol. 5, Vol. 6; 26th Jan. – Double Pack (3 varieties, as detailed elsewhere in this blog); 2nd Feb. – Nintendo Value Selection (reduced prices on top sellers – as detailed elsewhere again). NDS: 19th Jan. – Lost Magic.
Meanwhile, guess who’s been transferred to iMode? As of yesterday, you can obtain a game featuring Ultraman from Bandai Collection. Costs approx. £1.60… how nostalgic.
According to Nintendo Inside, the UK sales of NDS has reached a million in just under ten months. They reckon it’s because of Nintendogs. By the way, it’s about 3.5 million sales in Europe alone, America at 4 million, and Japan at more than 5 million. Back in 2002, there were news that Microsoft was all up for buying Nintendo out for a substantial sum, but apparently the staff reaction was anger or disbelief (most thought it was some kind of joke), rather than one of interest. Good thing too.
Oh, and if anyone’s interested in seeing photos from 23rd Next Generation World Hobby Fair Tokyo, it’s quite interesting. Excuse me if I don’t take time to translate that.
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01.20.06
Posted in Japanese, News at 2:49 pm by yuka
Much has been said of those FF XII potions online and elsewhere, whether by gamers (eg. that potions within FF has always been used to pour over a character rather than drink it) or no. Suntory, the company collaborating with Square Enix for the distribution of these drinks has made an announcement: that it’ll be out from 7th March (the game itself is due out on 16th March), and that there will be two varieties. Click on the link, and it’ll show you two pics: 1) FF XII Potion and 2) FF XII Potion Premium Box. Amongst the ingredients, there are herbs (ten, apparently) such as elder, camomile and melissa to create ‘a refreshing taste that is all its own’ or so they claim. Within the Premium Box, each bottle will come with an ‘Art Museum Card’ (1 each out of 27 available). They will be available for a limited time only, and the Premium Box will have a limit of 3million. For a 120ml bottle, it’ll cost you approx. £0.95. For the Premium Box ones, each bottle will hold 100ml (pittance, if you ask me), and within the box, there will be a collectable bottle top (6 varieties in total) and the art card, costing approx. £3.
Kingdom Hearts II site, within Twilight Town, has added an unlockable screensaver. It’s quite nice :) but again, to unlock, you will need to understand Japanese and have played the game (or depend upon guess work and good memory).
Dragon Quest – Boy Yangus – site has opened to reveal the much-anticipated game’s characters etc. It is in development however, so I will endeavour a translation once there’s more info.
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01.18.06
Posted in Japanese, News at 10:30 pm by yuka
Remember I mentioned a language help tool for the PSP? Well, Nintendo has done a similar thing. Surprise, surprise. 旅の指差し会話帳DS (’Point and Talk Journey Notebook’, roughly translated) is what it’s called. Apparently, you get to choose amongst the most common situations Japanese tourists find themselves in, and point to it to a foreign stranger… and hey presto, they’ll understand you. The first languages to feature are American English, South Korean, Thai, Chinese (doesn’t specify Mandarin or Cantonese), and German. According to the source, you’ll only need this to go to these places, never mind a travel book!
Optimistic or naive, I don’t know which. So I suppose potential crime types are going to have a nice time. It’s like the famous iPod white headphones situation. But worse, in a way. See, for years there have been notices from Japanese embassies around the world for citizens to take care who they trust. I don’t know how common it is for random disappearances to happen, but people have been known to – all because in their naivety, the said Japanese citizens had trusted a complete stranger in a strange country without grasping the language.
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01.13.06
Posted in Japanese, News at 1:10 pm by yuka
Square Enix has announced 3 titles from GBA games has been brought together to form Ultimate Hits GBA, which will go on sale 9th March, for approx. £16.50. The first of these will include the following titles: Final Fantasy Tactics Advance, Slime Mori-mori Dragon Quest and Kingdom Hearts – Chain of Memories. (For screenshots, go here.) And Dirge of Cerberus site has been upgraded with TV ad and some wallpapers.
A new controller from Logicool for the PS series is out on 16th March – designed specifically for the upcoming FF XII – for approx. £25. Cordless and works for up to 9m, but otherwise the same features as the previous controllers.
Meanwhile, the Xbox360 Lounge in Tokyo has revealed that it will remain open longer, until 15th Feb, because of its alleged ’successes’. Really?
Mario&Luigi RPG2 site added the final info: Attack. It’s self explanatory, again, with clips of the moves you can do with the characters. And they’ve also added an interview with the people behind the game. I will translate bits of it (in full, for Japanese-understanding people: interview).
Q: The previous game had a simple A and B button manoeuver, but by the increase in the buttons on the DS, surely the complications of the game arose?
A: We made sure that first time players can use the simpler A and B buttons, whereas the more experienced players can use all four buttons.
Q: Did you not use any mic or touch screen within the game?
A: We didn’t use the mic, but somewhere inside the game, you will find you can use touch screen. No, we’re not going to tell you where – you’ll just have to play it to find out.
Q: When you were in development, you didn’t exactly have an actual DS to experiment on…
A: That’s true. So one of our colleagues came up with sticking two GBAs together and wiring a Super Famicon controller to it. We even nicknamed it the ‘Alpha Dream DS’ amongst ourselves.
Q: Will you be selling the game abroad too?
A: Yes, definitely. November release in America, December in Japan and January in Europe. We’ve even included a character for our fans, and made an effort to make the game understandable by everyone, not just Japanese, though we admittedly put one little joke in that can only be understood by them. We also made the characters playable even by adults.
Q: What about the piggyback situation?
A: It came about naturally. It’s better for the grown-ups to be carrying the babies in terms of movement. Oh, and when it looks as if the older characters are throwing them off, that’s when the babies themselves are clambering off.
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01.12.06
Posted in Japanese, News at 2:05 pm by yuka
Found this interview of Peter Moore by an online Japanese news site, ITmedia+D, so I’ll translate a part of it. (The actual page can be found at: Moore interview.)
Q: We hear that in America and Europe, the Xbox360 did quite well?
A: Yes, that’s true, because of the high anticipation amongst gamers. Even past game consoles cannot compete with the success we’ve had, to the point that we cannot make them fast enough for the consumers. Because of this, there has been incidents where people have been mugged in car parks outside stores. It’s a bit like targeting wearers of white headphones to mug for iPods. Of course, so that these crimes no longer happen, we’re doing our utmost to ship as many Xbox360 as possible.
Q: As opposed to the Japanese market…
A: I think that was due to a cutback in available titles to be sold with the console. We only managed six, instead of twelve that we were hoping to unveil. Dead or Alive 4 being delayed can be said as a definite setback. However, we do have many powerful titles awaiting releases later in the year – completely different to the approach made with our previous console – so we are looking forward to it.
Q: In the Japanese market, because of the cutbacks in title, was there no option to delay the release of the console?
A: In marketing in general, it is important to meet the ‘end of year’ deadline. Not only that, Japan is a very important market for us, so no, we didn’t…. In Japan, we’re looking for a long term success rather than a short one.
Q: But surely it is important for the first launch due to first impressions?
A: In America, PS1 struggled to get a foothold for the first year. It was only because of successful titles like the Final Fantasy series and Madden Football that they started to grow. Therefore, we don’t think that first impressions count for much. In Japan, there are Konami, Sega, Capcom, Bandai, Namco etc. – all amazing publishers – and in the household electrical goods sector, you lead us all. So we are in awe of Japan. We do realise that it won’t be easy for us. However, because of our sufficient hardware and constantly evolving software, we do not think we’ll make the same mistake.
Q: Some of those Xbox360 users have voiced the opinion that they would like to play some American games, and not have to select something specific for Japan.
A: We have sold ‘World Collections’ in the past, but taking a look at how well we’ve done, the top sellers are mainly Japanese-made games. Gamers in Japan and gamers abroad have very different expectations, and although resistance to foreign games may be lessening, Xbox360 in Japan will continue to produce those games much suited to the gamers here.
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Posted in Japanese, Links, News at 1:22 pm by yuka
Children of Mana DS is going to be coming out 2nd March instead of 23rd Feb due to a major quality upgrade, or so the official site tells us. They apologize for the delay and ask the gamers to be patient, in typical Japanese style.
On the PSP front, there’s going to be a new version of Talkman (European Version) featuring six languages this time round: British English, Italian, Spanish, German, French and Japanese. The previous version did have English, but they claim it was American English, and therefore this version’s English will have proper English vocab and pronunciations. Famitsu site recommends taking it on holiday with you, so expect a horde of Japanese tourists touting PSPs and attempting to speak in an ‘authentic’ accent near you.
Finally managed to get into the Kingdom Hearts 2 site’s Storyline area. As the page tends to scroll with no way of stopping it, I can only give you the jist of the story… where Sora lost his best friend Riku (kind of poetic really, if you think sora means sky and riku means land) and Donald and Goofy lost their King, to save the worlds, they embark on another adventure. On the one road that they’re on, a cloaked man appears and foretells that they will find something important when they reach the end of the road, but in return, they will also lose something precious, and then he disappears. As they trudge wearily on, they come to a castle. Upon entering it and wandering around, they slowly lose their memories. They do meet a strange girl called Namine inside though, who apparently has something to do with their memories. As fate would have it, the King and Riku are also visiting the castle at the same time. One year on, the story begins anew in Twilight Town.
The other updates on the site includes info that the theme song is sung by Hikaru Utada (which, to my knowledge didn’t incite a mass furore, as opposed to the Shin Onimusha theme song, so it’s probably OK), and that Twilight Town is now open. Now the latter, I’ve tried… you need to be able to understand Japanese and also have played the game enough to unlock parts of. So far, I’ve managed to find four wallpapers that you won’t find in the Downloads section. These depict Sora in: Wisdom from, Brave form, Final Form and Master Form.
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01.10.06
Posted in Japanese, Links, News at 10:58 am by yuka
FF XII is on pre-order status now in Japan. Once pre-ordered, you will exclusively obtain a ‘FF XII/iTunes Custom Card’ which will enable you to download five tunes from the anticipated series free (though quite obviously the download fee is up to each customer). There is only a limited number of these available, so get yours fast.
New content has been revealed for Okami as seen here. The top two screenshots show the main character Amaterasu (in wolf shape). Being a wolf, she cannot swim for too long or she will drown. To aid her over long distances over water, you can perform a bit of magic – draw a circle and out pops a lily pad onto which she can step on. Nice.
So, translation time then. After the intro, you’ll get to a page full of ‘weird’ (for you guys anyway) Japanese scrawls on little tablets. Game Intro (red), Blog (green), Movies (orange), Mini-games (pink), Village Life (blue). The middle bit is all about when it’s out; the other two (from left) clickables are for postcard (nenga-jyo download) and a survey (you will need to be able to understand Japanese and have IE5.0 or above for this).
Game Intro then…
Summary: Amaterasu (Shinto sun goddess, really) has a job to restore nature. She socialises with people and grants their wishes, socialises also with the wildlife. But battles the evil brought on by yokai (妖怪:think sprites and imps). After Amaterasu has done a good job, the area will once again be full of vitality. Using the washi (和紙: Japanese paper) and fude (筆: calligraphy type pen) effects would hopefully emulate a unique adventure experience.
Story: “Long, long ago in a little settlement (the village), the people believed in Okami (大神) who was the mighty god who brought peace and prosperity wherever she went. One day however, a great catastrophe befell them in the form of a yokai – Yamatano-orochi, who had been magically sealed up until then. This evil spirit swallowed every living thing, every joyous thing that was around, including the sun, and shrouded everything in darkness and misery. To this, Amaterasu was prayed for and she arrives to battle the demons and bring back the peace.”
Great Mother Nature: with the use of her basic magical powers, Amaterasu overcomes each area and gains more power for the use of good (villagers and wildlife). This is known as Okami-oroshi (大神降し).
Fude: you can scroll through and click on a circle to activate a screen view (click on the screen to start) of some of the moves Amaterasu can do, using the fude. This is known as fude-shirabe (筆しらべ).
Action: click on the numbers and then click on screen to start the movie.
Character: (from left) first row – Amaterasu, Issun (ickle fairy), Sakuya-hime (tree fairy), Chief Mikan, Mrs. Mikan, Susano-o (sword-fighter); second row – Kushinada (bar owner), Mushikai (little boy), Mushikai’s mum, Merchant, Sazanka and Tsubaki (two sisters visiting the village), Komuso (Buddhist monk); third row – Ushiwaka (prophet of sorts), Shita-kiri (tongue-cutting) hag and old man, Team Suzume (sparrows), Take-tori man (an old man who cuts bamboo), Fuse-hime, Momo-taro (born from a giant peach); fourth row – Otohime (underwater demi-goddess). *Third row onwards are characters from Japanese fairy tales that most people will be familiar with.
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