Japan Gaming Guide

We’ve all been there. Halfway through a particularly impressive tripple jump Mario stops in midair, the Wii beeps, and up pops a little picture of an empty battery. Gaaah! Since wireless controllers became all the rage a few years ago we’ve started going through batteries like chimps go through bananas and it has to be […]

The Wii shopping channel now has a ‘redeem software’ area. As far as we know the feature isn’t in use yet, but it seems gamers will be able to enter codes they get with games and use them to get free Wii points or virtual console titles. This is an added bonus for Japanese Nintendo […]

Here’s an image from the forthcoming online RPG Bright Shadow.  The full game features a range of pets to choose from, including the, er, thing pictured above. If you don’t like the look of this toothy bird-lizard you could try a tiger or mushroom instead. [Read]

Soul Calibur 4 is finally out in Japan today. Game Watch have got an absolute ton of screens as well as a few  manga scans. [Read]

On August 7th a remake of the original Fire Emblem is coming out in Japan for the DS. As well as enhanced graphics and use of the dual screens, the game will feature online multiplayer for two players. Details are being drip fed onto the game’s official site along with images of the game’s characters […]

Summer treats for Wii owners: Famicom (500 points) Twinbee Rockman 2: The Legend of Dr Wily (Mega Man 2) Mysterious Murasame Castle Super Famicom (800 points) Gakou de ata kowai hanashi (Scary school stories) Master System (500 points) Sonic the Hedgehog Megadrive (700 points) Lord Monarch: Tokoton Sentou Densetsu PC Engine (600 points) Chase HQ […]

Here’s a big list of onomatopoeia used in anime and videogames. Very useful – especially as some of this stuff won’t be found in a regular dictionary. This site isn’t safe for work (unless you work in a maid cafe). [Read]

Another new Japanese online game just went into beta. Poki poki is calling itself the “cute casual community”. The website looks very promising with great anime style graphics including a lot of crazy creatures and characters ranging from giant cats to people with paper bags over their heads. Developer Hanbit could be onto a winner […]

There’s a thriving indie game scene here in Japan. There are also a lot of people making games using tools like RPG school to quickly turn their sparks of imagination into full blown epic adventures. Plenty of these games are available for free and have surprisingly high production values. Today’s offering is Parhelion, a SNES […]

Bedroom coders got a shot in the arm recently when Microsoft announced plans to sell homebrew XNA games over Xbox live. XNA game studio has been freely available for some time now – users can create and distribute Xbox 360 games to other fledgling developers. The new service will see games listed for 200-800 Microsoft […]