When the cover art to Japanese Action-RPG Pandora's Tower was first shown off, more than a few Japanese netizens noticed an odd coincidence. The facial proportions of main characters Ceres and Ende matched those of Final Fantasy XIII's Lightning and Versus XIII's Noctis. But the question remains: Is it just a subliminal coincidence, or is it a conscious attempt to cash in on the two well known character designs? .
It's easy to forget now, but the PlayStation Network going down was actually just the last in a series of troubles buzzing around the big black monolith. This comic, Chinese in origin, shows the entire ordeal through the eyes of one man--based on PS3 jailbreaker George "GeoHot" Hotz--who is just trying to get linux to once again run on his PS3... which is, of course, re-imagined as a prepubescent moe android.
First, he's interrupted by Sony as he hacks PS3-chan. Then he is pressured by Sony to confess while Microsoft pitches him a Windows 7 phone and Anonymous demands to also be able to "fool around" with PS3-chan. Then suddenly personal information comes "gushing out" of PS3-chan as GeoHot runs away laughing and Anonymous feigns ignorance of the whole thing.
Final Fantasy VII is without a doubt the game most responsible for popularizing the JRPG genre in the west. Yet, even a game played by millions across a decade still has its secrets. Sweedish youtube user Shademp, using an emulator and diving into the game's code, has found several hidden conversations and even an alternate version of an FMV cutscene buried there. Recently, he even found an entirely new scene, present only in the code of the original Japanese printing of Final Fantasy VII.
It involves Palmer, head of the Shin-Ra Company's space program, visiting the Honey Bee Inn. The scene is clearly unfinished, as many of the kanji used are incorrect, but what is legible has Palmer claiming he's only there for market research, moments before a Honey Bee greets him by name and says how happy she is that he's come to see her. But what's even more interesting is that the music accompanying this scene is present nowhere else in the game, making it an extra special treat for fans of Nobuo Uematsu.
While not well known in Japan outside of otaku culture, LovePlus' reputation across the net is infamous to say the least. As the latest and currently most popular dating simulation series, it boasts to eliminate the need for a real girlfriend by encapsulating an entire relationship within a single DS cartridge. Hardcore LovePlus players are known to go on dates, travel, and even (in at least one case) marry their virtual girlfriends.
And now, with two arcade games and a 3DS title on the horizon, Konami has begun a surprising new marketing campaign. Not only is it an odd cross-promotional campaign with Halls cough drops, but even more strangely, the ads are being run in Shinjuku Station, the busiest train station in the world. While similar ads are often found in otaku-Mecca Akihabara, many of the nearly 3.4 million people who travel through Shinjuku Station are now being exposed to LovePlus for the first time. If nothing else it is a bold step for both Konami and LovePlus.
Recently, the female oriented Japanese blog, Youpouch.com, asked its readers to fill-in the blank in the following sentence: ?I can?t stand men who are the kind of people that _____.? While answers ranged from ?patronize sex clubs? to ?play with dolls,? most women responded that they don?t think it is good when a man does nothing but play videogames. Of those, most said that they wouldn?t date a man who always played videogames on his days off, even if he was physically attractive.
By being not interested in normal cultural things (i.e. music and movies), many felt conversations with a gamer would be difficult and thus, it would be impossible to carry on a long term relationship with them. In planning for the future, women also expressed concern that gaming would adversely affect child rearing. It seems that even among net-savvy Japanese women, gaming still carries a strong negative stigma.
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