A few weeks ago, we trekked around town trying to find a copy of Oboro Muramasa and completely failed. “Japanese games (that are not Mario or Link) don’t do well” was a reason one employee at a games store gave us. We ended up getting it online where there were still some in stock left.
So, the game’s good. Tutorials take you through the basic moves, but even without it seasoned gamers shouldn’t have a problem. Characters talk in Japanese and subtitles are available… except more information is being given in Japanese than in the English subtitle. The game’s still playable but you’ll be missing out on some aspects of the story. It’s not as if the subtitle was scrolling so damn fast they couldn’t fit more info in.
Talking of Japonesque games, here are the screenshots from Zombie in Wonderland available from 16th March on WiiWare (800points). Made by a small Spanish company, it features fairy tale characters like Dorothy (Wizard of Oz), Snow White and Momotaro (Japanese story) toting guns and blasting zombies left right and centre.
The game’s part of a series called World Game Parade, and they hope to introduce Japanese gamers to games made overseas that even they couldn’t fail to like. (Oh yeah, Japs are incredibly insular in some ways.)
Street Fighter IV is moving house, so to speak, to iPhone too. The link takes you to screenshots of eight available characters.
Kind of glad PlayStation didn’t do a Toyota this week. Not that they apologized in their press release properly. Just mentions the glitch was due to their clock thinking we had a 29th Feb this year.
Oh and Glico’s doing a series of wooden toys again. Only available with Glico Caramel packs.
I can now happily announce the book translation I’ve been working on the last few months have finished and is now available in biggerbookstores in Japan and Amazon.jp.
It’s called 小さなチーム、大きな仕事―37シグナルズ成功の法則 in the translated Japanese version. Roughly translates to “Small Team, Big Work: 37signals’ Formula for Success”. According to our contact at the publisher, they figured it best to put a positive spin on the title as Japanese people are wary of things that have even the slightest negative connotations. Oh, and 37signals, although a well-known company in the US and amongst programmers, is not so in Japan… and well, this new title kind of helps to introduce them. (And yes, technically speaking “37signals” should be pronounced “37シグナルス”. I translated them as such but apparently they’re known as “37シグナルズ” amongst the Ruby community in Japan… and so they’ve decided to go with the popular flow as opposed to the ‘right version’.)
Personally speaking, the hardest part of this work was the damned colloquials! I get the authors wanted to come off less stiff upper lip, more casual and friendly. But the sheer amount of it… And as some of you would undoubtedly know, the Japanese language (especially in the written version) has no slang. So translating all that ‘kick-ass’ vocab was stressful.
37signals’ first book Getting Real, was in comparison easier for me to translate, I can say with some conviction! Which by the way, is only available online.
The original English version is due out in the US on 9th March under the title Rework, while the UK release is reportedly 23rd March. No idea when all other translations will be available, as of yet.
Those of you who are Japanophiles, who are into Sumo wrestling, who live over there… you guys’d have generally heard about this now. Asashyoryu (朝青龍), former Yokozuna (the highest rank of sumo wrestling), has been told to retire forcefully after ‘hitting’ a layman.
Because my mum’s a great fan of his, and maybe because his determination at overcoming the conservative views of his sumo peers inspires me (going overseas in your mid-teens and surviving, let alone succeeding, is a hard thing to do), I cannot but have a slightly biased view of this news.
Asashyoryu’s a Mongolian by birth, who around ‘95/’96 went to a Japanese high school in Shikoku and studied being a professional sumo-tori. He’s been a Yokozuna several times and at one point was touted as the man behind the enlivening of the stagnant sumo scene. And he’s only 29. Quite an accolade.
From what I can find on YahooNews (Google’s not much use when it comes to Japanese news) and Twitter feeds, he was drunk and as he got into a cab after a night of carousing, hit a layman. This has been blown out of all proportion by the Japanese media who had a field day. Sure, he hit a non-professional. But then again, he’s a pro. At a sport that hits other people on a regular basis. What I’m saying is, that as the very best that the Japanese pro sumo scene could produce, he probably knew how to hit someone without injuring them.
Although that possibility apparently never occurred to the said media. They hounded him mercilessly, along with the Sumo society, a conservative bunch of old men. I’m not suggesting Asashyoryu was infallible. But, as the proud Mongolian people (who consider him a hero) claim, it’s hard to understand the decisions made by the Japanese.
Those of you who have spent time with my countrymen would know that they are a nation which is amazingly polite to your face, but behind your back, would be unutterably false and rude. And because of the American complex they have (remember, Japan was ruled by the US between 1945 and 1951), they also have a racist attitude to anyone who’s not white, or who can speak a white-man’s language fluently without being white (as I discovered to my horror aged ten).
So, the Mongolian feel their hero has been hard done by the Japanese. Some even say it’s racism. I can’t help but agree. The Sumo society elders were afraid to admit that a Mongolian (in other words, a foreigner) could be better than the Japanese at a sport that’s considered Japanese (although there’s a Mongolian version as well).
And talk about jumping on the bandwagon! At the moment, the Japanese media’s all about being ‘nice’ to Asashyoryu, and publicly lamenting the future lack of his contribution to the national sport. I’m saddened by Asashyoryu’s untimely ‘retirement’ and disgusted by the falseness of my countrymen.
Been translating these last few weeks. 37signals’ second book “Rework” due out spring next year. The Japanese version will be published by Hayakawa Shobo. No date is set yet for that one. Because the original is written in American colloquial English, I’m having a bit of a hard time localizing some of the phrases. (I remember “Getting Real” not having nearly as much colloquial as this one does.)
These guys are responsible for this CyberBike. Added ‘controls’ have a way of disappearing into the relative unknown. It’s better that way. Anyone remember the abomination known as Virtual Boy? So can this one actually be the one that’s not going to be scoffed at?
Metal Gear Solid Peacewalker screenshots and 2D artist-demo available here.
And a new Wii control. Actually, it’s a PS3 one. Is it some kind of trend to make things that look like other brand’s equivalent? And did they not think about the confusion they might produce? And yes, compare it to the Wii Black control.
DS DoubleSys is basically a DS on iPhone/iPodTouch. Looks fairly accurate, and aside from the copyright issues, pretty joke-worthy. But North America’s taken it down off their iTunes store, or so the article tells us. Not so the Japanese store (as DS ダブルシステム), nor the English one (we just checked). Available still for £2.99.
3DDotHeroes (press blue button to get rid of the system requirements et al) will be coming out 5th November on PS3 for approx. £48 in Japan. Basically an action RPG, it feels apparently like it’s familiar to the 2D generation (think Zelda-esque). 8 bit cafe in Shinjuku had a talk yesterday by the developers. Screenshots available here.
Coming out tomorrow for 200Wii points each: Metronome and Tuner.
Of course, it just wouldn’t be summer if there were no mention of a horror game…Game with No Name: Eye (Nanashino Game) that says if you don’t complete the game within a week, you’ll die. Strangely this one’s by Square Enix – well strangely because they usually are associated with more of the fluffy bunny RPG genre. “Eye” because depending on which eye you look through, you see different things. Oh, and the official site is too Flashy for my taste with hardly an indication of where to go for more info, so have a look at screenshots and videos on the famitsu site.
Monster Hunter 3 promotional goodies are availabe now from arcade places across Japan – the participating stores are listed (if you click on the red button)
Blood of Bahamut soundtrack is available as of today here. You get a code in the original soundtrack only that may let you meet an all new boss when entered.
Luminous Arc 3 will be out this winter in Japan. Here are the screenshots.
Atom, or AstroBoy as most of you will know him, is coming out on PSP this autumn (Oct. 8th) – this is a game that’s going to be based mainly on the Hollywood film, but Atom is reputed to have some features from the original anime series. This page has detailed information on the boy robot (the Japanese version is even more detailed).
Look at this and tell me if these aren’t cute! It’s part of the FF XI Online ‘added scenario’. Available from 6th July, for 980yen. The next scenario will be several months after this one, they say. And yes, no delayed releases for other languages – all at the same time.
Monster Hunter exclusive drinks are out 31st July in Japan. Why game companies outside Japan doesn’t do these kind of promo, I don’t know, but it must boost marketing. Sure, Japan has convenience stores at the end of every other street, but fans and geeks will go to great lengths to get their hands on official-sanctioned goodies. 200yen each.
Infinite bits wrote an article about the five worst controllers, which was picked up by a Japanese site. I found it interesting that the latter suggested a list should be compiled by Japanese gamers too – interesting because gamers wherever they are would probably have the same kind of opinion.
Also, there’s a whole list of games in which Michael Jackson made an appearance:
MJ’s Moonwalker – Sega Megadrive (1990)
MJ’s Moonwalker – Sega Arcade (1990)
Space Channel 5 – Dreamcast (1999)
Space Channel 5 Part2 – Dreamcast/PS2 (2002)
Ready 2 Rumble Boxing Round 2 – PS2 (2002)
Doubtless, there’re more which they may have left out. AVGN also reviews the Megadrive game.
The Last Guardian interview can be found here. One of the questions asked by the journalist to Ueda is ‘what is the name Trico stand for?’. Ueda answers “Torico can mean, to be charmed or taken captive, Child (ko) of Bird (tori), Bird-Cat (tori-neko). Apart from the cuteness of creatures, we also wanted to imply the wildness of the animal too in the title.”
In another interview, Kojima also mentions something interesting about the teaser site that was up for E3. He says that what looks like “5″ or “S” is 巳 – the kanji for Snake :) and because it looked like “e” too, they figured it’ll do as the E3 teaser site… and the “P” is for PSP. And it’s going to be based this time in Costa Rica. The full interview can be found here. (Metal Gear Arcade – how cool?)
Steam was advertising, but also, funny trailer. Made me sign up for a Beta.
The Kojima Productions has definitely been ‘up to’ something, as can be seen here. The link from my previous article was basically the E3 special site. And rumours proved correct, this time.
FFseries continues on with the announcement of FF XIV.
What was known pre-E3 as Trico now has an official title: The Last Guardian. According to famitsu, Fumito Ueda told their journalist that they wanted to give the fans another source of joy to their lives.
Blood of Bahamut, comes out on 6th August in Japan. The soundtrack is due out on 12th August. An exclusive in-game code is to be attached to the CD, but what that in-game item might be, there has been no word.
A fan-made game trailer of Mega Man can be found here. Kind of like Paper Mario.
Didn’t quite realise how long it really has been. I did intentionally distance myself from this blog for a while due to my needing a break – well you try house-hunting online for hours and hours (even so, my WoW hours were pretty regular, showing how addictive and good that game really is). Hopefully, now that’s over and done with, I can get back to my usual gaming/writing care-free self.
This is the newest promo vid for Monster Hunter 3, coming out on Wii (7,340yen) on 1st August.
Here’s Kojima Productions’ site… and it has this on it. Rumours are rife as to what this teaser site is for. Some fans hope it’ll be the next MGS title.
Here’s a video of 豆うつし (lit. Bean-flick). Kind of something a salaryman would do after work, drinking at a ‘nomiya’ (a pub-like establishment), getting steadily drunk and resorting to some puerile activity. I can almost see my dad doing this and getting competitive about it. Well, it’s available on the iPhone, so getting drunk with your boss isn’t a necessity.