If you like manga and came to Tokyo to celebrate the New Year's Eve you can't miss the otaku midnight countdown held by Toranoana in Akiba (the shop will be open till 2 am!)
^_^

Mushihimesama Gaiden BUG PANIC for iPhone has been announced during the Cave Festival 2009. The Japanese 2D shooters maker will release several iPhone games in the european/american market. They choosed mobile since it's difficult for them to find a distributor for console game as it seems 2D shooters are a really small niche market outside Japan.

.

 

Curtis Silver on Geek Dad super blog posted 12 Geeky New Years Resolutions and I contributed with the "Learn and use Arduino to make something cool" resolution for 2010!

...

Learn and use Arduino to make something cool. With lots of LED lights and wires and perhaps an actual function, like a binary clock or something. I dunno. The range of interactions and controls that can be created using an Arduino board are nearly limitless. Up to this point, I haven’t gotten into coding and electronics much but with it’s open source environment and damn cheap price, how can I not? (h/t @frankiebit)

Continue Reading 12 Geeky New Years Resolutions

.

Countdown to the 30th anniversary of the yellow eater and his ghosts friends: Inky, Blinky, Pinky and Clyde... Wow!! Seems like yesterday that I insert my first coin in a Pac Man arcade machine...
.

Yesterday I went to the Cave Festival 2009: this is year it was less crowded than the last edition but the HEY game center in Akihabara was still full of shooting game maniacs! As always at 4pm IKD started his shoot'em up conference and more around 150 gamers waited for his speech. Cave plans to release several mobile games in Europe and USA during 2010.

Click here to download the catalog with all the gadgets on sale duting the Cave matsuri.
.

Yesterday I met the Japanese super blogger Jin who will release his doujinshi during Comiket 77. This book features also Brian Ashcraft from Kotaku so if you are attending fuyocomi you can miss this limited edition blogger's doujinshi!!

Preview of SenoDS - a music sequencer for Nintendo DS (NDS)

Download: http://senods.blogspot.com/

Follow on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/SenoDS

A preview of the music sequencer Seno DS for the Nintendo DS.

Tomorrow (27 december) @Hey game center in Akiba will be held the CAVE FESTA 2009. Among the other gadgets there will be this uber cool Garage Kit edition of the TYPE-BFH-X4 (2P Color Version) from the cult 2D shoot'em up Ketsui!
.

If you click here  you can download the PDF version of the COMIKET 77 Winter catalog introduction (that complete files counts a total of 1400 pages of doujin circles)!
.

With 3000 yen (ca 30$) you can buy these super MOE gloves from Thanko. The perfect present for cosplayers and otakus that already got everything!
^_^

The Japanese modeller BD has created a custom Radio Controlled version of the Tachikoma (from Ghost in the Shell). He used mechanical parts from the 1/32 model cars Mini 4WD, some standard RC hobby electronics and even added rechargeable batteries to the model. The performance of this RC "robot" are really impressive  (che the videos on Modellismo Hobby Media).

.

 

The Italian provider DADA has probably been hacked few days ago (it uses old/not patched versions of PHP and Apache) since webistes as aurorasas.com, futureplanet.sm, italysfinest.com, boxewringweb.net and many others have been flagged by Google as Malware infected.

These websites admins could not do anything since the problem was on the "hosting side" but the company support staff kept telling people that register.it was OK and that the problem came from the PCs of the websites owners that have been infected… probably the support staff should go back to school since they didn't even suggest to check the Database used by the websites (you know? we are in the year 2009 not in 1999)...

 

Now everything is back to normal on register.it I hope that they solved their hosting vulnerabilities but I'm impressed by the feedback of the biggest Italian hosting provide that seems not willing to tell to customers what really happened.

Register.it usually provides a really good service (pretty good bang for the buck) but I'm worried that this will happen again at crackers will without any credible support from the company staff… 

^_^'

Last week, at Square Europe press tour, I played the English version of FF13 and this morning I went to Akiba to check the shops opening at 7am for the release day of the Japanese edition... Yodobashi had over 300 gamers lined up from 6 am instead the Sofmap shops had around 70-80 people waiting...  I didn't go to Shibuya event since it wouldn't be interesting to understand how the game is popular among hardcore gamers (and because Square was late with my accreditation)...

The Japanese company Runat has just released a digital Piggy Bank shaped like the head on Eva 01. It features a small ATM like system that counts how much is stored. It accepts both coins and paper money and it even feature a security PIN! To make things even more "fun" the numbers are printed on the keyboard as kanji and there is also a NERV button that I suppose will magically double our otaku savings!!!  The Evangelion Piggiy bank  costs 5000 Yen.

Dodonpachi Daifukkatsu Black Label (new Cave's shooting game) Location test from 12/11 to 12/17 at HEY: the legendary videogame center in Akiba. Yes!

^_^

 

Video Manipulation Box in a TI-99 case

.

Wow! I'm just come back from December edition of Danny Choo's Tokyo CGM Night. This edition was a blast: the best ever!! And yes: I stripped Danny's doll: "dannychoo . @FrankieBitがうちのなのはのおっぱいにいたずらしやがって。許さん！"  ^_^'
.