Last weekend I piloted this robot in Tokyo!!

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Thank you Disney Japan!

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This is why I only flight with ANA...

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Epic!

2D shoote'em up forever!!!

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My new OTAKU NEWS blog is finally online on Wired (it)

TOKYO - Last weekend I visited “Pac-Man 80s to 10s Games&Culture”: an an exhbition to celabrate the 30th anniversary  of PAC-MAN held in Arts Chiyoda 3331 (an school reconverted in a space dedicated to art exhibitions, artist studios and community spaces). In one of the rooms I discovered an installation called Microscopic PACMAN.

It has been developed by the Japanese artist/interactive designer Kotaro "Dotimpact" Tanaka and let the users play pac-man through a real microscope.

For this project Tanaka used a small video projector to get the video from an original PAC-MAN arcade board (the same hardware of the pacman arcade cabinet) projected on a small mirror to be seen through a microscope.

What is really interesting is the ability of the artist to reacreate the sensation that, trought the microscope, we are really looking pac-man alive in the maze as it was a bacteria or a virus observed in a lab!

Here you can find a photo gallery of the “Pac-Man 80s to 10s Games&Culture” exhibition.

The Shruthi-1 hardware design bares little resemblance to its predecessor. The main MCU has been upgraded to an ATMega644p with better I/O capabilities, allowing us to get rid of most of the components on the control panel board and make room for the LCD display. All the digital section is on a single board, with no pesky cables. Parts have been carefully chosen, to reduce the number of suppliers and allow us to be more productive when preparing kits. Finally, the CEM3379 has been replaced by a classic OTA-based VCF/VCA design which employs only modern, cheap and widely available components.

The greatest addition to the Shruthi-1 is not in the synthesis features, though: it is the integrated sequencer. The tracker-like view makes programming patterns easy… But the real fun is in using the new play modes: use your pattern as a rhythmic template for the arpeggiator, trigger and transpose it from the keyboard, or let it play and override steps by playing extra notes on the keyboard.

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Best iPod nano customization ever!!  Click here to check Goteking website and learn how to recreate this mod for the Dreamcast Visual Memory!

Wow! These days there are so many news about the lovely and sexy Japanese idol Amano Ai!! Her new DVD called Nudie Limit will be released on 25th september and it looks like a bomb!!! Super sexy!!!
Of course I already pre-ordered a copy!

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My favourite Japanese photographer Julie Watai is going to release HARDWARE GIRLS: her new photobook this october. The promotional flyer has been spotted in the wild by the twitter user Chyosuke (apparently it has been taken in the Arcade game shop MAK Japan in Akiba). During the TGS Julie will held a secret party to promote this book so let me know if you are in Tokyo in that period!


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My old friend Davide Pasca, a super coder who worked for SquareEnix and Arika, has just released Final Freeway, a really cool Out Run clone for iPhone. He is a mutual friend of the Japanese sexy idol Amano Ai (Julie Watai) and she appears in the game as Race Queen!! I love this collaboration!!

Click here to check the game!

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Web Rider, a Japanese  SEO agency, produced a Flash game called SEO Taisakuonbu 2:  “SEO Task Force Dr. Blackhat’s amibition: a classic shoot'em up game with bonus and Power-UPs named as sitemaps, SEO Tools and organic links. They also produced a song called “Koi no SEO” dedicated to the art of “Search Engine Optimization”.
First example of Linkbaiting and videgame mashup?!

Last month, while walinking in Harajuku for a toys shopping spree I spotted VOLUME: an hair salon with a scifi/steampunk theme.
It's located in the pedestrain near one of my favourite shops in Tokyo: Reveletaions/ a fashion store that mix Otaku culture and high level street fashion in a really fashinating way thanks to the Takayuki Inada's geek+fashion sense (last year tghey released the NewBalance sneakers dedicated to the Tamiya Mini4WD!).
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I just finished giving the last touches to the code of a new social bookmarking service I just created for Italian RC and model kit fans.
In a couple of weeks the international version should be up and running!!
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I love these LEGO sets... Just started to collect them as I've done few years ago with Game & Watches and 8bit consoles! .

These dancing Aliens from Toy Story 3 are going to be released in Japan in July for 5000 Yen (ca $50).  Me want!!

“Politics of Popular Culture” at Temple University will focus on developments in videogames, digital media and youth subcultures and explore how these are being employed for political means and driving social trends in Japanese popular culture.

This two-part conference, hosted by the Institute of Contemporary Asian Studies at Temple University’s Japan Campus, will be held on June 5 and June 26, and will include a diverse array of academic panels comprised of leading scholars of Japanese popular culture.

The opening session on June 5 will examine how popular culture is informing emerging alternative cultures and practices, and shaping notions of Japanese national identity and foreign policy, as the “soft power” appeal of the popular becomes politicized. The keynote speaker will be Frederik Schodt, author of “Manga! Manga! The World of Japanese Comics,” and “Dreamland Japan: Writing on Modern Manga.”

I will definitely follow the "Gaming Reality: The Politics of Digital Appropriation" panel with John G. Russell, Peter Mantello and Rebecca Suter and "Politicalizing Otaku" panel with my favourite Otaku writer  Patrick Galbraith!!

More info: www.tuj.ac.jp/events

Digital Satin Productions (NDS Uncensored) released a port of the classic PC eroge Fatal Relations (produced by Himeya Soft in 1994 and translated in english by C's ware).

File size: 54.1MB

Click here to download the game for your DS (over 18 registration without email confirm needed).

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Thanks to Karen and Nick last Saturday I've been interviewed by Aljazeera TV (a global channel like CNN). It was fun and I promise I will brush up on my english!

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My friends at Sansai Books are working on a new TV show called after their uber cool Wonder Japan magazine. The show will be broadcasted from June.

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Last weekend I while visiting the Shizuoka Hobby Show 2010 I spotted this wonderful model kit replica of the Gunkanjima: Battleship Island produced by Aoshima. The island has been made famous in 2003 by the Japanese photographer Saiga Yuji  book "Gunkanjima: Awakening of a Dead Island" and has been featured in videogames like Killer 7, Siren 2 and movies like Battle Royal 2.

The reproduction is really detailed and the abandoned concrete buildings and the sea wall can be observed trough a magnifying lens.

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Today I visited Bandai headquarters in Tokyo for the Tamashii Nation press event where the new Super Robot Chogokin series has been revelead! The new chogokin are smaller than the traditional ones but way cheaper and, even more interesting, more posable.
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Till sunday I'm in Shizuoka for the Hobby Show 2010 to find the most interesting new models that will hit the (Japanese) stores shelves in the next few month. In this video (yes I know: I'm not a great cameraman) you will see all the new gunpla and plamodels presented by BANDAI.

 

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In june Lego will release the Shuttle Adventure 10213 created for AFOL (Adult Fans Of Lego). It features realistic engines, retractable landing gear, opening cockpit with seats for 2 astronauts and even a ground maintenance vehicle!

Nintendo's Satoru Iwata hates Apple... What we should expect? Flash on Wii?! Direct export of DS games from Adobe CS5? If only the Big N followed "us"  and produced a Gameboy Phone 10-15 years ago (when we asked for it) probably the situation would be way different now...

Photo: Pixiv

TOKYO - From May 27 the T-Shirts 8Bit Memorial exhibition (orgranized by The King of Games) will be held in Shibuya Parco.

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Otaku  breakdance in Akiba in 2006. The  suzumiya haruhi moves are simply great!!
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If you are hanging out in Shibuya you should go to the new Famicom City game bar (located new Tokyu Hands). If you miss the last train with 3480 yen you can even spend the night playing famicom games while waiting for the first densha in the monring...

Juda from oneworldoneband.com turned a Dreamcast arcade joystick into a midi Controller using an usb adapter and a software called Multicontrol (needs max runtime to work: www.cycling74.com). It's possibile to do the same with any other old videogame controller. If you are not into electronic music I suggest another cool mod: Dreamcast Joystick to USB with a Nokia LCD display in place of the VMU.

Revenge of the Cherry Tomatoes is a new game for the Meggy Jr RGB: the open source 64-pixel video game kit. It is a sequel to Attack of the Cherry Tomatoes, the built-in game on Meggy Jr. It was written from scratch by Chris Brookfield. Click here: to watch the video.

I'm in the latest issue of Make Magazine dedicated to Remote Control Everything. What makes me even more happy is that I've been featured with Wired editor-in-chief  Chris Anderson (who is a big fan on UAV drones) and I-Wei "Crabfu"  creator of Steampunk radio controlled masterpieces!

Thank you Gareth!
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Super Mario Bros running on NES emulator on Amazon's Kindle emulator developed by the Japanese company Klab. They even developed a Tetris clone...

http://code.google.com/p/kdk-emulator <- You can't do this on iPad ^_^

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Japanese modeller Dorobou Hige from Studio ACCESS (he has been featured by magazines like Model Graphix) posted several great guides (in PDF format) to build impressive dioramas (with LED illumination) of Star Wars model kits!

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Mai Nishida...  Life is good!!

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