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!

.

This is how DJ HERO would have looked like if produced by Nintendo during the Game & Watch days! I Imagine the name would have been something like: DJ HERO The house party or DJ HERO 4 beats! And yes, I would buy it even today!!!

Thanks to Tumblr

The homebrew developer Peir Solar is going to release a new Mega Drive game. There will be two versions of this homebrew (both with MD cartridge and a Sega CD disc). The deluxe edition is called so because you get your name in the credits screen and printed inside the manual.

On December 30 Cave hold the second annual year-end Cave Festival at my favourite Japanese game center : Akihabara's HEY arcade. I visited the event before going to Comiket (the second day of Comic Market is always Yaoii oriented so there is no need to rush) and at 10.10am the place was already full with a waiting line of 6 hours. I picked a DoDonPachi Dai Ou Jou T-shirt and a (not so popular among japanese players) Muchi Muchi Pork! soundtrack (with a bonus DVD).


Inoue (DeathSmiles) during the authgraph session.


At the  Cave Festival there were just 3 games to be played: all the action was at the second floor of  HEY were are present near ALL Cave shooting games.


At the second floor of HEY the most popular game was DeathSmiles. If you love shooting games this  Game Center is a must visit during your next Akiba pilgrimage.  All the arcade cabinets are set at high volume so the sound generated by dozens of games together is something unique that reminds me the sonic waves of  gabber/speed core raves!  Ruuush!!!



Before leaving for Comiket I took the Cave's anquette (feedback form)  handed out in front of Hey.

by Mario San.

(Yomiuri via Zepy ) Game Center CX will be aired live on TV as a Christmas Eve special on the 24th of December. The show will air on starting from 8pm and will feature Arino trying to beat Kai no bouken, which he has failed to finish in previous episodes.
The special is scheduled to run for 3 hours but can be extended for up to 9 hours if Arino is unable to complete the game.

After the Kodomo no jikan Rin 1/1 scale figure spotted by Danny Choo this is the first card game dedicated to this super moe anime that is generating a lot of controversy.

Blip Festival 2007 http://www.blipfestival.org/

The doujin circle Yoshiba Works ( from Miku Blaster fame) has just released a new game dedicated to Vocaloid 2 Miku chan. It runs on PC but got a 100% retro famicom style. Even the sountrack sounds pure 8 bit and I'm sure the (retro)game music fans will like it. I love the package designe parody of the original Vocaloid 2 box.
You can download the game here, here or on these mirros: Mirror 1,  Mirror ２, Mirror 3.





MIKU RASHER ( ミク☆ラッシャー) Credits:

Sound track: SAT
Grahic design: Nochi
Programmer: Ayacy
Package design: Noeru

(via Gilcrows) Today Mikku Man X, a platform doujin mashup of Rockman and Miku chan, has been released.  This doujin game is pretty fun (among the enemies there is even Morrigan!) with a solid gamplay and great soundtrack (no Vocaloid 2 songs but a great arrangement of the original Rockman theme).
You can download the file here (but be patient since the server is overloaded with requests and it's not easy to download the zip).

Updated: I just found the file mirrored here (the link appears as an on-screen comment at 7:08 in the NicoNico video) .

(NSFW) After Game Center CX what's better than a porno movie set in a Japanese Game Center with two lesbian malking love on arcade machines? We just found this porno masterpiece (starred by Sakurada Sakura) that has been released last year by HOT Entertainment. Actually this video company this year created the Hot Entertainment AV Visual Arts Accademy: the very first school to learn how to get a job (behind the camera) in the porno industry!



Sample images from "Geisen de Hard Lesbian" DVD on DMM.

Today Bandai Namco has released Game Center CX for Nintendo DS. The game is based on the omonimus japanese cult TV show.


Akiba OS posted a series of photos of the package  and  manual: I love the retro design that resembles the old Famicom and PCEngine user manuals!
This month's Wired magazine has a feature on Game Center CX (tv show) written by Brian Ashcraft from Kotaku fame. Instead Wired game guru Chris Kohler has just posted his first impressions on the game (with a very usefull walktrough if you can't read Japanese at all).


from Crunk Games:

"Japan has given us a few television gems over the years. A lot of memorable anime series, sure, but a fair share of live action programming as well (what, you want me to make a list?). But for the country that redefined "game culture," not a lot of interesting game-related programming has come through. Can we blame them? Just like the rest of the world, most of the video game stuff that’s been produced are kids shows, a TV news story every so often or, these days, nerdy Famitsu DVD segments — nothing really, truly memorable.

Game Center CX is different. It’s comedic, dramatic, even a bit mental, but altogether it’s an unforgettable show about what sounds like a forgettable concept: a guy trying to beat old Nintendo games. I was late to the party when I saw it, but once I did, I had to see all of it. After that, I decided I had to share it the best way I could, and this episode guide is the result. You could call it "spoiling," also "insane," but I’ll gladly wear those badges if anyone else finds the show and loves it as I have." –Ray Barnholt

Don't miss Crunk Games Game Center CX Episode Guide: simply the best and most complete guide out there!

There are many You Tube videos here.

TV NIHON is hosting a fansubbed episode (torrent).

Dead Frog is hosting some torrents of the latest shows (RAW) 
 

Soldnder X is an horizontal shooting game produced by the famous online import game shop Play Asia. Seems that  the game quality is pretty high. Actually at the beginning I feared that this game would have been just a doujin game translated in english and professionally packaged. Instead the project turned out to be the first "must have" game for shooting lovers since the last Dreamcast shooters released last year...

Main features of this game:

• 720p at 60 fps
  
• 2-Player Co-Op Play (simultaneously)
• Classic design, yet state-of-the-art shooter technology
• Unique upgrade weapon system with five standard weapon types
• Never before seen tactical elements such as chaining, effectiveness system, 'berserker' mode and much more
• More than 20 extras (with both positive and negative effects!)
• Addictive collection quests
• Over-the-top boss fights
• Features a superb soundtrack and sound effects
• Bi-lingual story mode (English/Japanese)
• Online high score ranking
• Constant frame rate (60fps)

This is a You Tube video preview  ( this is the original NicoNico version).

Last saturday Komatsu Ya has released Miku Blaster: the very first doujin game dedicated to Miku (and created with Vocaloid 2). This game is the very first meme shooting game that looks like a mix of REZ with the onscreen comment visualization of Nico Nico Video. It features meme like Nice Boat taking the doujin videogame scene to a brand new level...


Watch the YouTube demo video or dowroad the taikenban/demo here.

 

Yesterday, several videogame hacking forums users reported that (thanks to Hellcat's Pandora Maker kernel 3.xx) they succesfully converted the PSP Slim batteries into the Pandora Battery (the definitive PSP downgrade and unbrick solution created by the collective Noobz:  a team of coders lead by the legendary Fanjita). Seems that the PSP Slim will be even more popular in the holiday season...

Last sunday in Tokyo

I love this new Japanese "sentai style" flash game made to promote AXE in Japan that I just found on mixi (even tought I confess that I don't like Axe smell).

Another new arcade game from Taito (owned by Square Enix since 2005) is Eternal Wheel (or "The wheel of Eternity"): a satellite card game developed by Square Enix. Satellite arcade games with touch sesitive panels are really popular in japanese game arcades (one example is Derby Owners Club) but the size and the cost of these machines limited the distribution to Japan (and sometimes Asian game centers). One of the most famous Satellite platform is Sega Chihiro. Eternal Wheel has been programmed on NESYS: a new PC-based Taito Type-X Arcade Board  which is a network-connected arcade machine that features a touch-sensitive panel. I think this release will stop the rumors about Square Enix working on a new hardware console that started spreading last year.
Akihiko Yoshida and  Amano Yoshitaka took care of illustrations and character design so the card will be really succesfull also among trading card fans.
Seems that Square Enix has been pretty busy with the release of  Crysis Core for PSP since Eternal Wheel has not even been listed on their homepage.

L'italianissimo Madrigal alcuni anni fa ha inventato i simulatori che potremmo definire gli emualtori dei vecchi Game & Watch anni 80 (anche se in reltà non si tratta di emulatori visto che non esistono rom emulate ma codice scritto dal programmatore per simualre i vecchi giochi LCD e LSI). Questo è un esempio giocabile realizzato in flash.

A Japanese  SEO company Web Rider produced a song called “Koi no SEO” dedicated to the art of “Search Engine Optimization”. They also 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...

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!

.