02.26.07
Posted in Japanese, News at 3:38 pm by yuka
Luminous Arc has a soundtrack coming out on 21st March, for approx. £17. 2 bonus tracks, total 41 tracks on 2 CDs. If you go to their site above, you’ll find 6 background music selections available.
Kingdom Hearts II Final Mix + will come out 29th next month for £40 (PS2). As was announced months back, they have added new events (the ice lolly pic), new moves (the other pic shows Goofy being used as a battering ram), and English voices have been added. Due to the cut scenes being ‘made 3D’, expressions on characters reflect them more.
Most of you wouldn’t know why some people of our generation would be excited over such news, but it’s been announced as of 23rd March, a DVD Box-set of all the episodes of Record of Lodoss War will be out for a limited period of a year. Priced at nearly £160, it is pricey, but it does come with all 27 televised episodes plus a bonus mini episode ‘Welcome to Lodoss’. After all, it is nostalgic, though I was more familiar with the comic/book versions back then. As it happens, someone’s posted the intro on YouTube :)
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02.23.07
Posted in Japanese, News, UK at 2:50 pm by yuka
My mother often reminds me, it is admirable that people think about learning other languages, and I ought to be more understanding of such struggles. I am, to a certain extent. It was no easy task for me to learn the basics of Latin and Ancient Greek, and I do have to constantly go back to the basic grammars, seeing that those two languages are definitely ‘dead’ in daily life (of course, unless one runs into the law in one way or another, even the term habeas corpus won’t mean much). But as for the methods involved in the learning of languages… well, I have opinions, as you may have noticed. So another software like もっとえいご漬け (this one for the DS), teaching the player to learn better English usually gets me annoyed, to say the least. Being ‘more soaked in English’ (as the above Japanese blurb translates to) might be the better way, but as it’s not literal, it’s a moot point. I’m sure my views will change a bit if I knew Japanese people would go and talk to foreigners lost in Tokyo and help them out with whatever skill they have, but as that doesn’t happen (many a time I went up to stranded foreigners to help them out, usually to locate the Sony building), I really don’t think all this training is working at all. And anyhoo, if these softwares are so helpful, why can’t they make one for English speakers to learn Japanese? Afterall, the machines can work both ways.
It’s been announced that for the Wii Virtual Console, 4 more companies has agreed to put their games up. And NeoGeo has also agreed from this summer, though their titles are yet to be confirmed. This should make some fans happy. For now, such titles as Yoshi’s Egg (Famicon), Goemon (Super Famicon), Zelda: Ocarina of Time (N64) are coming out around March.
A new RPG for Xbox360 is coming out in Japan, and boasts ‘a new feel’ to it (14th June, approx. £37). Titled Trustybell: Chopin’s Dream, it’s exactly the kind of thing you’d expect to come out of Japan – an anime version of the last dreams of a famous romanticised composer. There’s a little boy who does a Robin Hood to feed the poor, and a girl whose fate is sent awry by a gem called Trusty. I did read the 3-page article, but failed to grasp what it boasted about. Still, the screenshots should at least get some attention from the fans of gothic lolita…
19th April on Wii for approx. £29 is the long awaited Paper Mario. The story goes that an even more of a baddy than that Bowser comes along and swallows all but Mario into a vortex. When Peach comes to, she finds herself in the middle of a wedding between her and Bowser – the wedding organized by this stranger. Mind, Bowser’s kid in Super Mario Sunshine called Peach his ‘mommy’, so what’s going on here?
FF XII finally came out here today, so my other half went trundling off to Oxford Street to get it. He says the queues were huge, and there were even some embarassing cosplay type people too. Well, we’ve got it now, so more games to split my time between :)
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02.19.07
Posted in Japanese, News at 6:00 pm by yuka
From the following screenshot of a game that teaches you womanly manners (in the Japanese fashion), which one is correct if you’re pouring beer for a man? 
Let me get this straight… I’m no OTT feminist bitch, but this just sucks. There’s a game designed by a woman, might I add, that teaches other women ‘manners’ – that is, subservient attitudes towards men and older people. Damn Confucius and his ‘men are superior to women’ ideas that still persist in the Far East. Taito made this utter garbage, so I’ll blame them if that triggers a rise in imbecilic females in Japan (as if we didn’t have enough of those already!). Coming out for approx. £20 for the DS on 5th April, it’s official title is 私のハッピーマナーブック (roughly translates to My Happy Manner Book – ewww!). The thing is, I’m sure it originally had good intentions, like literally letting people in on the secrets of certain Japanese customs that’s hard to grasp without understanding why it came to be. But judging from the mini-try-out thing on their site, it’s ended up by becoming something that tells you what you must do in certain situations ‘because we say so’, never mind the reasoning behind it. And yes, this game is solely for the women, so unless you’re really interested in some sociological research, there’s no point getting it – oh, and it does not have nude anime women, so you geeks can forget about this too.
The 10th Pokemon film’s set to be released soon, if some of the articles are to be believed. And they’re opening up voting for the best Pokemon ever (out of 11), from their previous 9 films. So fans, go here, click on the middle flashing bit (screen1, not 2) and vote which one you want in. Results will be announced 15th March. As with anything to do with merchandise, it’d help if you lived over there, and got yourself your favourite Pokemon ticket to receive the winning monster on your Diamond or Pearl game chip…
This hard-to-read article was interesting enough – based in the States, the writer comments on how different marketing techniques are compared to Japan. Most Japanese channels aren’t cable, so everyone gets pretty much everything, and there really aren’t that many channels to choose from unless you went and got satellite. So it’s fairly easy for companies to go round spamming every channel with their marketable product, with the result that everyone will eventually recognise the product as ‘the one that’s on ads’. That obviously doesn’t work in the States where there are literally hundreds of channels, some localised, some categorised, etc., so you need targeted marketing. And that got me thinking. We’ve got cable, and we do watch some channels when we’re not gaming outright, so naturally we notice the ads too. We like watching CSI, so we channel-hop between the ones that show the series. So why the hell is it that we come across lots and lots of nappy ads? Surely CSI doesn’t conjure up images of nappies, do they?
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02.13.07
Posted in Japanese, News at 1:38 pm by yuka
As usual, Famitsu is in rave mode, and Revenant Wings is getting the treatment. At least that gives us some screenshots: 
Sonic is back on Wii pretty soon. Due out for 15th March in Japan, costing approx. £36.64, titled Sonic and the Mystery Ring or some such. Basically, get a few rings and it’ll change what moves you can do. And the game makers at Sega say that it’ll be great as the Wii controls are used effectively, and shouldn’t be too hard to master. 
Another of those puzzle games that gamers are so fond of will be making its debut, also on 15th March, for £14.70 for the DS. Titled くるポト (kuru-poto: kuru=turn, poto=drop), the reviewer makes a point of saying that it’s simple yet very very addictive. In that sickeningly cute way, the little stars tell you how to play the game in two modes: Story mode, and then as you clear that, the Puzzle mode. Oh, and it’ll have 300 stages, and they’ll even get introductions from TV on friday nights on TVTokyo channel.
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02.07.07
Posted in Japanese, News at 2:20 pm by yuka
Here are some DQ Swords screenshots to drool at: 
I guess I really shouldn’t have boggled, but there we are. My predictable countrymen have come up with new designs for a hardcase for the DSLites (alminium). It’s really quite pretty in a ‘traditional’ way, but it’s not something I’d go out of my way to buy. According to the article, it’s available from Vis-a-Vis – well they’re on pre-order status right now, costing approx. £25. As long as we’re on this ‘case’, I might as well introduce you all to the new ‘Card Sabre’ that’s coming out too. Written in katakana, I was thinking, perhaps it was meant to be translated to ‘Card Saver’ but the pun’s still there in what it’s supposed to do. It holds 3 DS game cards and 1 GBA cartridge, comes in the shape of a sabre, so “whip it out like a real sword – Wow!” goes the blurb in Famitsu.com. Really something to get that excited about?
On the subject of the weirdness of the Japanese, they’ve also come up with something else to help ‘tone’ your mind. Yep, it’s out on the DS and titled DS Therapy (£25.20). With training, it’s supposed to make you more ‘pure’ (their word, not mine). So think Brain Training for the weak-willed girly (”I’m cute, look at me” type) incompetents, and you’ve got it about right. I mean the screenshots on that article’s splattered with no-brainer comments about what to do in certain dating situations! Jeez… get a life!
I think I’ve got a bad taste in my mouth. Must be the last paragraph.
Square Enix has announced the release date for the PSP FF game: 19th April, £20. The follow up FF II is being pushed for a May release too. Revenant Wings DS meanwhile has settled on 26th April release date, costing approx. £24.
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