I interviewed Masato Maegawa, president of Treasure finally - I could've done a better job, really, I wasn't too prepared - but I had a secret special guest there asking questions too, which helped. Lots of stuff was off-limits, as well. Read it here. Next time I'll push further!

BRAINPIPE is a new game from 2006 Independent Games Festival winners for Innovation in Audio, Digital Eel. An extremely simple game with the surprisingly compatible goals of classic arcadey action and the creation of deep feelings of unease, BRAINPIPE actually came out late last year, but I didn't notice until today, when one of the people who worked on it came over to my desk and made me download the demo. The demo is free, and the full game is $14.95. At the very least you should check this out, and make sure you have the sound turned up. Remember, these people are AWARD WINNERS.

As some of you may have heard, ownership of the rather important Japanese messageboard 2ch has been transferred from independent owner Hiroyuki Nishimura to a holding company called Packet Monster, but no further information was given. According to Zepy's entry, Packet Monsters Inc Pte Ltd is actually located in Singapore. I decided personally verify if Packet Monster Inc Pte Ltd exists as a company at the location found using whois 2ch.net domain look up. I have posted the results over here.

It seems that the mystery is solved with a combination of the photos I took and sakakucomplex.com entry here (thanks to Narcissist in the Canned Dogs thread). It seems that Nishimura enlisted the help of a Singapore company called Rikvin (A company that specializes in Singapore-based offshore company formations) in setting Packet Monster Inc Pte Ltd which is merely a holding company. The photos simply serve to show that the building address itself does not lead to a physical location representing Packet Monster. Any legal implications are still up in the air for now, but at least it can be confirmed that, for the time being, the company is merely a shell, not an independent office.

Yeah, the Gundam arcade game with the wonderful panoramic cockpit is getting a PSP port. I've done some digging on this though and whilst the official site doesn't mention anything, a slew of Japanese blogs are reporting a release date of the 26th of March (which was subsequently picked up elsewhere). Whether this turns out to be true I would be personally inclined to utter "what the fuck?!?" at this state of affairs. Surely, the team behind the really good Gundam game on the Wii would be ideally suited to this, as that was already first person and afforded a similar control setup to the arcade game. You could even do all the networked multiplayer stuff on the Wii and the system's specs are a closer fit to the arcade board than, let's say, a PSP.

I can only assume with the various Gundam games out on the PSP at the moment, all of which work very well admittedly, that Bamco Namdai has followed the numbers to reach the conclusion that more people want a PSP version, despite the functional fallout.

I meant to cover this earlier but I've been somewhat distracted with lots of toy and games shopping since I came back to Japan.

Now when I say "1/144" scale "model kit", I'm not really describing that properly. This Daizengar is almost 40cm tall and is, to all intents and purposes, a kit based toy. Once assembled you can actually wield its sword as a viable melee weapon. It also comes with a selection of LED's and sound FX kit, so it's also pretty gimmick ridden. I've seen this puppy in the flesh and it's rather awe inspiring, having completed Super Robot Wars Alpha 3 and seeing something this large actually given the proper plamo treatment is just plain lovely.

Unfortunately, it's far from cheap. It retails at around 31,000 yen in most places but you can nab it for around 29,800 yen online. The shipping will also be rather fantastic, as the box is so big it requires its own handle. For those that don't what to build something this large (and expensive!) a Soul of Chogokin toy is also on the way. The latter will mark the first time an OG mecha has been given the Tamashii treatment.

Noted wallower in otaku culture, sometimes Famitsu contributor and all the time professional wrestler Kikutaro (livedoor / myspace) has a group called Akiba Pro Wrestling that recently promoted a show at Tokyo's Differ Ariake with support from a bunch of comic and game publishers, including Capcom and Konami. So that means wrestling matches featuring Street Fighter IV and Metal Gear Solid 4 characters. Ryu, Balrog and El Fuerte fought some guys, while vaguely militaristic Metal Gear types pulled airsoft rifles and talked on communications screens in the main event. You can click those links for lengthy blow-by-blow reports. I was really excited when I saw that Balrog would be appearing, until I remembered in Japan he's not the gigaton punch guy.

Gamasutra has just posted an interview I did at TGS with Yuji Naka - it begins with an introduction, because I feel people have misunderstood him lately, and in my (admittedly limited) interactions with him I feel he didn't get a fair shake. The big regret here is that I didn't ask anything about the Let's Tap song. That's the one question I went in wanting to ask, and I completely blanked on it. Thanks to Kevin Gifford for the post-interview translation help.

NFG has posted about 40 ringtones based on videogame themes, in MP3 form. They all loop properly and everything! A number of them, like the intros or stage finishes, are more appropriate for texts or notifications. If I used ringtones ever, I would certainly use these, but unfortunately I find any ringtone of any kind to be utterly obnoxious, and have my phone set to vibrate. Still, I'd rather hear Yuri's Art of Fighting stage than Snap and Roll. Although I have to admit I kind of like Snap and Roll.

Update: NFG and Deusjester, among others, have put up some game-related phone wallpapers as well. Check the forums for that. Be warned that NFG's links are not necessarily work-safe!

I've been holding on to this one for some time - Gackt's newest game collaboration, Bounty Killer. It's been released on PS3, which is how it got my attention initially. I looked at Yamasa's official site for the release, and thought that handsome avatar looked a bit familiar. And indeed, it's the man himself. Sure, he may have gotten a little less awesome musically of late, but his commitment to being a super-hot super-nerd has not relented. This is his fourth videogame appearance by my count, after Bujingai (which I liked), Dirge of Cerberus, and Crisis Core: FFVII. He also lent his voice to a Hatsune Miku-style Vocaloid called Gackpoid. See an example here, and be sure to watch in high quality, because it's pretty awesome (and here's another).

But back to the game at hand, Bounty Killer. This one is unique in that for the first time, he's not just lending his likeness - he's also the sound producer. According to his comment page, he contributed one song, called "Justified" - and maybe "supervised" the rest. And whoever composed the rest of the music seems to have been inspired by Gackt's old legacy, as the song on the original game's page is clearly an homage to his Malice Mizer days, and could easily be an intro to one of their songs. Unfortunately, all this excitement is just for a pachislot game. Quite distressing, in the end. They're really milking this though - there are even wrist bands and key rings you can buy. As an aside, the pachinko parlor just two blocks from tim's house actually has one of these advertised out front - but I didn't venture inside to try it. I do regret it.

I've been meaning to post about this game for some time, but Insert ¥en on the forums reminded me. Tokyo Twilight Busters was a PC98 game, from the legendary Wolfteam, and is being brought to the DS by Starfish in February 2009 for the very full price of 5,040 yen (tax included). The official (and empty) site is here, but Famitsu has proper screens of the DS version. The graphics have clearly been redone, though nothing has been mentioned about extra scenarios or other additions. The game has a point-and-click style interface rather than the usual visual novel AVG style, so is worth keeping an eye out for. The image left is from the original, incidentally.

Sega has done roughly one krillion commercials for the Joypolis amusement center. You can see them here. It's maybe the worst song ever created, and will absolutely get stuck in your head and make you feel terrible. Please enjoy. This is probably the most entertaining one. Thanks to Persona for the link.

Update: Thanks also to bashcraft for noting that the singer is Nezumi Senpei, which I neglected to mention.

Gamasutra has an interview up with the fan translator of Mother 3. It got over 100,000 official downloads, not counting all the inevitable sharing and pre-patched roms that must be floating around. Interesting to read about a guy doing this both for a living and for himself. Translating and naturalization is actually his day job, but he still works on projects like these just so people can play them. Pretty impressive.

Counter Force was released on the Wii by Conspiracy some time ago, and is a port of the Naomi arcade rail shooter Ex Zeus by French company Hyper Devbox Japan. This fellow talked about it a fair bit, and then went on to do some research - which you can find in the forums. There, we discover that the for some reason the European PS2 port of the game was supervised by Treasure, as seen in this interview. So there you go - all you ever wanted to know. The image is from the PS2 port, incidentally.

In random browsing, I discovered that someone has done a combo exhibition for the PSone fighter Shaman King: Spirit of Shamans, which you can view here. The visual quality is low, and I can take or leave Do as Infinity at this point, but not many have played this game, so it's still neat to watch. The creator of this video has several other combo videos of lower-tier or licensed fighting games from the early 3D days if you're keen to browse. Most are hosted on Niconico.

Self-explanatory. Mostly important because of the bit I cropped, as well as all the female characters that are holding milk. It makes tons of sense! Thanks to Eric-Jon for pointing to it.

As an aside, you must know that the KOF XII full roster has been revealed, boss characters aside. One thing I noticed is that with a grand total of two female characters (Athena and Leona) this is the full-stop KOF with the fewest females ever, unless I'm missing something. Are girls not ready for the HD life?

Pentavision is the maker of DJMax and also the Easy DJ series of arcade games (well, it's the same developers under their previous name anyway). Konami Korea has announced it (this is probably the only significant thing they've done, in fact) and Bemanistyle reports it in English. What's interesting to me is the comments in that thread - Bemanistyle is obviously a site for Beatmania players, but the response has generally been "lighten up, Konami," given that DJMax has actually had a very solid reception in that community. We'll see what happens, but Guitar Hero and Rock Band sill exist, so! Thanks to Ouendan for the news.

There's a new free app in the iTune's store, going by the brilliant name of Space Deadbeef. It's a 2D horizontal shooter where you touch the screen to move your ship and lock-on to targets and launch a suitably Ichiro Itano inspired volley of missiles. There's a video of the game in action here.

I'm mentioning this as the man who made this is Yuji Yasuhara. To those that don't know, he was also the design and code lead on the frankly fucking stunning Omega Boost, which has Itano Circus missile barrages up the wazoo. He also worked on Panzer Dragoon Zwei, so if anything this guy knows how to get a homing missile shooter working.

Personally, I'm glad that he's doing shmups again and hope that his current employers take notice of his renewed shooting prowess.

Ho ho ho! Moerry Christmas everyone! Anyway, that aside, Kotobukiya are following their just released 1/100 scale Raiden kit with a similarly scaled Temjin model next year. Unlike the Raiden kit, this Temjin is from the original Virtual On (rather than from Oratorio Tangram). The Temjin kit will be released in March of next year and will retail at the cheaper price of 5,040 yen (most probably down to the kit's smaller girth and reduced complexity).

I can also report, as I'm currently holidaying in Japan, that the Raiden kit is actually very impressive. It's pretty damn large and very chunky, not to mention that even unpainted it looks very good indeed. The official site covers the release quite nicely too.

428, that Famitsu 40-out-of-40 receiving spiritual sequel to Chunsoft's revered machi, hasn't been selling too well (only 3 shy of a pitiable 34k in its first week), but it's still set to get the anime treatment in the form of CANAAN. The website, which opened up last week with a splash screen and some production information, now has video promoting the disc set they'll be pushing at Comiket 75.

Jonathan "Persona" Kim has done something so wonderfully brilliant, I feel compelled to share it. He's managed to seamlessly link Valkyria Chronicles and Virtual On with a rendition of Fei-Yen (from Force, specifically the Cinderella Heart). The bio is also rather brilliant...

TF-14G Fei-Yen with Gallian Heart, Squad 7 scout.
Once a pop singer in a big city, she was banned from performing when she accidentally crushed an audience member during an important concert. She enlisted in the militia to win fame as a war hero. Her dream is to become a space diva and stop alien invasions.

This is about what arcades amount to nowadays. A topless man glitching out on Galaga, possibly whilst on some sort of drug. And nobody else around. Thanks to Comic-Kaze for pointing this out.

The Dark Spire, AKA Genmu no Tou to Tsurugi no Okite has finally been announced for a U.S. release by Atlus. Play Asia says it's coming in March fpr $35. I'm hopeful that this will be as fun to play as it is to look at. Click that first link if you want to know more about the game, as I described it in detail last March.

Update: Official site is here.

Super Fighter Team, the guys behind the Super Fighter revival, and the Beggar Prince Genesis localization have got another Genesis/Mega Drive project for sale now - it's been available for some time, but it was during my non-posting period, so I'll highlight it now. It's called Legend of Wukong, and is another RPG from Gametec, which Super Fighter Team says will "play perfectly on any and all PAL and NTSC Sega Genesis and Megadrive systems, including the Nomad, 32X, X'Eye, Laseractive, etc., as well as on all compatible systems." It comes with a clamshell case, game cart, and color booklet, and costs $40 plus shipping. Looks pretty cute!

Just so everybody knows, a few places have reported that SEGA have re-secured their trademark for Virtual On Oratorio Tangram. However, they've also gone on to fallaciously assume that this means a new port of the game is on the way.

The trademark is actually to do with the new line of model kits by Kotobukiya (which we've previously covered). Up and till this point, Hasegawa have been making kits from Virtual On Force and Marz, so the Oratan trademark wouldn't have been necessary.

So a new game is most likely not on the way and for those deranged enough to want a Wii and/or an XBLA/PSN version let me clarify the following; the Wii doesn't afford the precision to do successive jump or guard cancels, which would make any port of Oratan horribly broken, and an XBLA/PSN version would just suck on a pad (it did for Marz).

I Fell in Love with the Majesty of Colors was developed by Greg Weir, and free to play on Kongregate. It is, once again, a little pretentious and a little silly, but it's a very nice experiment, and one worth trying a few times. He describes it as "a pixel-horror game that puts the player behind the tentacles of a titanic, writhing sea creature. It’s a tale of love, loss, and balloons with five different endings. Will you befriend the humans or fight them? The choice is up to you."

It's kind of that, but there's no horror, and not much love or loss, but it is neat. So you just try it out. Thanks to all the folk that sent it my way. Greg is a gamesetwatch columnist as well, incidentally.

Naxat was one of the prime names in PC Engine software back in the day, or at least prominent. In the 2000s though, the brand really fell off, and has been completely gone for the last few years. Now, Kaga Create, the owner of the Naxat brand, has released a new game under that venerable imprint. Unfortunately it's just a pachinko game, but it's still something. The game is called Naxat Soft Reach Mania Vol 1 CR Galaxy Angels, and it was released on November 27 for 6,090 yen. See more screens here if you want. Here's hoping for a few more Naxat releases, like a Spriggan update, or another entry in the Crush series. If any of the original developers are left.

This interview went up a couple weeks back, when I wasn't posting still, but is worth a look if you didn't get to it. It's a rather extensive talk with the producer and director of Valkyria Chronicles, one of the most Sega-y games since the golden age. The interview is pretty in depth considering I hadn't yet played the game. A lot of my questions were prompted by Vince, who had already played it, so thanks Vince!

The reason this is worth reading is not just because the game is excellent, but also because the creators really thought hard about everything that went into making this game. I don't actually agree with all their conclusions, but I am very supportive of the fact that this game was made with purpose and dedication to an ideal. Now to wait for it to come to 360...

This may have been common knowledge to everyone, but I just discovered that Dhalsim is on the cover of the SNES Street Fighter II Turbo box. It pretty much blew my mind. He's hiding behind E. Honda's hands. Click the image to make it bigger - hold on to your childhoood! Thanks to Apples on the SNGP forum for pointing it out.

Just in case you've been out of the Flight-Plan loop, the company has a new SRPG coming to the PS2 by the name of Sacred Blaze. It's a cutesy 3D grid-style affair, with decent art, and you can see more screens at Game Watch. There's a blog for the game, which seems to have become the Japanese standard for any mid-level release, and it's mostly populated by wallpapers, so give that a look if you like the illustration style. Release date is 2/19, and the price is 7,140 yen, or $70 preordered at play asia.

I made this, you play this, we are enemies is a self-professed "art-game" (the self here being the creator, not the game itself) that goes way out of its way to be wacky and seem important. It takes well-known websites, scribbles drawings over them, adds in some pixels and ms paint drawings, and uses really nice noise music as a background (and interesting sound effects, such as Seoul metro stop indicators). I warn you that it really is quite pompous, and you could imagine it's the sort of thing a scarf-wearing scooter hipster (whose name is Jason Nelson) would expect his dad to "totally not get." That said, it looks very nice, and is incredibly simple to play. It's beatable in about 5 minutes or less, and presents no challenge whatsoever, so I actually went through it and finished. I recommend. Thanks to Dwayne for pointing it out, and he apparently found it through the wonderland blog.

Dwayne sent me this back when it had 10,000 views, but I was off the face of the earth then. Watch it now if you haven't, Mega Man 9 done in paper, with other household objects. It was done by a fellow named Nicolas Menard for a stop motion class. It's quite well done, but had no sound effects, so someone remixed it to add some. Also check out this special stage, while you're at it.

This video is stupid in a lot of ways, but it's well constructed, and actually shows you a lot of ways you could play Super Mario Bros. 3 on a handheld, with some special info about the Friendship band. If you like watching videos by affable nerds with chinstrap beards, this is the video for you. Thanks Dwayne!

Tactics Layer from D3 sounds like it'd be a tactics H-game, really, but the layer is short for cosplayer, in actuality. Tactics with a central cosplay theme. Curious. It's developed by Ninja Studio, which also does Izuna, and was playable at TGS, though I didn't actually touch it at the time. Check out some screens through famitsu. It's supposed to be coming out this winter, but there's not much of that left - and there's still just the splash page up on D3's homepage.

Rhythm Cooking is exactly what it sounds like - a cooking rhythm game. They essentially are that to begin with, so it only stands to reason that someone would do it in time to music. Unfortunately the rhythm and cooking parts seem totally separate - or more to the point, you're just playing a rhythm game while the character cooks, and then you get to arrange things afterward. While it does seem like a missed opportunity in some ways, the company did license some decent songs, such as the meme-tastic Ievan Polkka (original). Curious game nonetheless - click the link on the top left to see some movies of the game in action, and just below that to see the song list. The game came out on the DS on November 13, for 5,040 yen with tax.

Mrwhitefolks of the MMC forums (and other places) has started doing more with his youtube channel recently. We've mentioned him before for fighting game combo videos, but here you'll see pedestrian smacking and odd tricks in skate, Glitches and the like in Saints Row 2, and a Queen/Dead Rising music video. He's promised more is coming (including hopefully some combo vids once the new games release).

There has been some discussion on Select Button and the IC forums, hinting that "bro games" are the new areas for critique and indeed fun - but that you have to break and subjugate the games in order to make it so. This is indeed a conclusion that I came to some time ago, and these sorts of videos, whether they do anything for you or not, do lend credence to the theory. Indeed, the "old style" of insert credit-oriented game is no longer, but there are enough of them out there that I don't really mind.

Here we have a medley of all the songs from Mega Man 9, redone with rock guitars by a man with an emo haircut (FreddeGredde aka Fredrik Larsson) who looks mopingly at the camera too often. He did a good job, and it's got gameplay in it as well, so you might enjoy viewing. Thanks to Persona (maybe?) for sending it to me. You can also download the MP3 here. Fredrik is from Sweden, which as we know is where all music comes from.

For some wonderful reason, the people over at Animeremix.org have taken it upon themeselves to chiptune renditions of Gundam and other mecha anime theme tunes (Gurren Lagann is there too!). Entitled Operation British, after the rather climactic colony drop in the original Gundam series and movies. Naturally, this is one of those things that especially appeals to me so I only thought it fit for sharing. I just wish I could use the tunes on the new Gundam vs Gundam PSP port...

You can download the whole collection here and they're all pretty fantastic if you ask me.

Update: Found out a bit more about this and the man behind the compositional mastery is a chap called M-H (aka: Justin Quesenberry) he has this to say about the album: "Operation British is my first chiptune album. It covers a large range of Gundam themes songs, from the original series to some more recent. For the most part it sticks to the Universal Century shows, with a few alternate universe tunes thrown in. There's a few extra songs to round it out (basically get it over 30 minutes) from other series I enjoyed. It was actually started just after Magfest 5 and slowly worked on in between other projects/life. It's a combination of NES and SNES sounds and has far too many channels to replicate any particular system but eh..I know I'm not Spamtron, Disasterpeace, or any of the other amazing chip artists out there, but I had fun doing this. Enjoy?"

Sunsoft basically dropped off the radar after the SNES days, hardly releasing anything of note in the last two hardware cycles. But Sunsoft is back in the game now, largely on the back of virtual console titles for Wii. Now the company is releasing original-ish games on the Wii as well, such as Minna de Taisen Puzzle. Granted there's nothing really interesting happening yet, but it's nice to see that familiar logo resurface a bit. One can only hope for a Jaleco-style revival, though we'll see how long that lasts.

Cyberfront is taking Civilization Revolution to Japan, as part of Cyberfront's gradual transition from a dating sim publisher to a localization publisher. It's pretty interesting to see Cyberfront basically going the Atlus America route, but in reverse. A few internally-funded titles (by the parent company, granted) , but by and large, the main business is localized content from overseas. Another thing that strikes me is that Japanese companies used to think that overly-Japanese titles would have trouble in the U.S. This is true in some cases, but redoing the art is an unnecessary step, now that anime and the Japanese art aesthetic has become so commonplace in the West. A title like Sengoku Basara turning into Devil Kings seems pointless. But looking at the Civ Revo art on that page, it just looks so patently American. In that case, I could see a cosmetic overhaul being more appropriate when moving from the West to Japanese markets. But of course, American games are a niche in Japan themselves, so the people to play these games may be used to it themselves! Something to think about, anyway.

Very confusing company 5pb (publisher? Music label? Distro? Marketing?) is releasing a dating sim on the 360 called Chaos; Head Noah. The PC original was simply Chaos; Head, and was developed by Nitro+. The first thing you'll notice is that it's got a nice bit of text on the top page. "If you are god, and the delusion becomes reality. About what kind of the noids you get?" Good question. paranoids maybe. The game is a standard visual novel, but allows players to choose "stable" or "unstable" delusions that influence results - sometimes in the way you see to the left. Read more about the game here.

More interesting than the game itself is the fact that game references popular websites, but changes up the names, as often happens with products in anime and whatnot. So you've got @chan instead of 2chan, Taboo! instead of Yahoo!, and instead of Wikipedia, you've got We-Key Pedophilia. It's amazing what can be gotten away with when your mainstream media is so different from Western media. If an American company even mentioned pedophilia as a joke in some marketing push, it'd be all over for them. The lesson: Try not to write official things that will end up in the public eye in languages you don't understand.

Chumon Shiyouze! Oretachi no Sekai (Let's Make a Choice! Our World) is a very mediocre-looking SRPG from Global A. Normally I wouldn't give it a second look, but check out the system page. Search for the funny. It's in there. Realize they were trying to spell "battle," perhaps one of the most common English words used in Japanese games aside from "fight" or "start," and it becomes even more humorous. Lest they change it, I've taken a screencap for you. If only I still had an image of SNKP's Metal Slug Art "Garrely."

As a bonus, here are some fun things to say with the new word.
"That was a tough buttole."
"I thought that buttole would be my last!"
"This buttole is for freedom!"
"He died in the heat of the buttole." And on and on into forever.

Just today, Eastasiasoft's horizontally scrolling shooter Söldner-X hit the PS3, and for only $10. Not too bad. So if you were suckered into buying a PS3 by MGS4 or Senjou no Valkyria, now you can play a third game as well. If you're curious, the available PS3 trophies can be found here.

Kamen no Maid Guy: Boyoyon no Battle Royale (Masquerade Maid Guy: Bouncing Battle Royale) is a sort of horribly voice acted minigame-fest with Smash Bros. elements for PSP (gameplay video here, more videos here). It looks rather uninteresting, aside from the rather dynamic if typical music. But what's curious about it is here, on the System page. The maker, AC Gateway and Gadgetsoft, is touting what it calls the Super Tayunizm Engine. This is basically an "engine" for making boobs bounce. They have a 2D version here, and a slightly more disturbing SD 3D one here with bonus disturbing panty shot. The basic premise is that even in 2D, as motion gets more extreme, so too does the bouncing, and dynamically so. The videos are even annotated. So there you go.

Just a note about the very curious, very late release of Drawn to Life in Japan by Agatsuma Entertainment. The new subtitle is Kamisama no Marionette, or god's marionette. Curious choice, as it certainly does imply that you the player are god.

If anyone's still lurking around, the front page problem has finally been fixed (thanks vince!) and my deluge of work and travel is, well, in a brief lull. Further, the insert credit wiki is functional again. So, hopefully things will be back to normal for a bit.

While millions of people in the US had a long Thanksgiving weekend of tryptophan mania (tryptomania!) and Black Friday deals, the folks at insani ran the al|together 2008 festival which heralded the release of a new English translated freeware visual novel with each passing day. Six visual novels are interesting enough, but equally interesting are the analysis and peer review that accompany each one. Even if you have no intention of downloading any of these games, I encourage you to go through the site to see a combination of eloquence and passion (and R-type references!) that isn't often seen in the world of Japanese to English fansubbing.

Also, if the only thing keeping you from trying anything out is time, get Crimsoness. It's 3 minutes long. It's amazingly ridiculous. And it's the best novel game: "EVAR."

Not that long ago I used to do a fair bit of freelance work for the gaming press. I've dealt with a wide spectrum of editors, some were lucid and educated but most weren't. It can be mightily disheartening to research a piece in meticulous detail only to have it linguistically raped by an idiotic sub-editor, then blithely printed without informing the writer of the changes. This kind of nonsense is pretty widespread too. You then also have the unholy marriage of dumb editors mixed with moronic writers.

The following link is a pretty damning snapshot in regards to the quality of modern day games journalism. My only gripe is that it's not all that extensive but it's at least a start.

The lesser known Square mecha RPG from the mid-80's Cruise Chaser Blassty has been given the Gears Online treatment. It's worth clarifying here that the mecha designer changed between the game and the images you're about to see, as Mika Akitaka was responsible for the titular SPEX-07 Blassty in the pages of Hobby Japan (where the story was subsequently serialised). There is some really wonderful artwork here, diligently scanned from the pages of old magazines.

According to this press release from BethSoft Japan, tells us that apparently, Japanese people are still kind of sensitive about that whole atomic bomb thing. As a result, a quest where the player can choose to destroy an entire town is being cut from the Japanese version of the game. Additionally, the Fat Man weapon will be renamed, and some of the gorier kill animations for humans and certain ghouls will be cut. It's currently unknown if this will affect the Asian release as well.

The lesser known Studio Zan are helming a Wiiware versus game containing customisable steampunk mecha. The last game that tried something similar was the rather unfortunate Dreamcast game Frame Gride by the arguably more experienced From Software. The game is called Overturn and will feature 2 player local versus as well as 2 to 4 player online multiplayer. The game is slated for a November release (in Japan) and no price point has been specified as yet. Studio Zan could pull this off, as Yuke's nailed a VOTOMS game last year and they weren't exactly a mecha game developer, and the Wii does need more mecha games as it is.

We're aware that the front page has been wiped, but aren't really sure how it happened, or how to fix it. However, it is still possible to make new posts, which I am very hopeful I'll have time to resume presently! Thanks for your patience.

The latest entry to the Super Robot Wars canon was released on the 25th September and in less than three days sold 366,493 units, placing it at the top of the Japanese charts. This is doubly impressive as Z costs a fair whack by Japanese standards, a suitably whopping 8,379 yen (a good 1000 yen more than almost all the PS3 and 360 games available). It's worth highlighting the fact that Z has damn impressive 2D animation (to the extent that it makes Alpha 3 look antiquated, despite it being on the same hardware), which is probably where the price tag originates from and why the series hasn't made the leap to HD (no, XO doesn't count as that was a Gamecube port and scaling up 2D graphics isn't something that can be done in hardware as it would look suitably arse). In addition, Z offers a whole new layer of tactics over the previous games. As it allows the player to setup formations of units that can be deployed in three modes, each of which feed into what formation the enemy is already using. On top of the unit and pilot intricacy, this new extra layer makes the whole game far more involving.

And "yes" I'm back, piercing the heavens for the fucking win I should add.