Japan Gaming Guide

Here’s a word cloud for the blog, generated using this tool:

We’ve had a good start for the year. Japan Gaming Guide has been nominated for a Golden Retrevo Award!

You can give us a chance of winning by voting for us:

Click to vote for us!

Whether we win or not, here’s to a great 2010!

A Merry Christmas and happy new year to all our readers. I hope your 2009 was awesome, and your 2010 will be even better!

Cheers.

Three Headed Monkey

Although the game has been a bit hit in Japan since last April, the rest of the world wasn’t privy to the release of MagnaCarta II until a week ago. Earlier this October, the Softmax-developed and Banpresto-published masterwork finally made its way to North America to be released exclusively on Xbox 360.

This is tremendous news for Banpresto and fans of the MagnaCarta role-playing franchise. The game got its start with Magna Carta: The Phantom of Avalanche, released only on Windows. Then the small waves started to create a big splash once Magna Carta: Crimson Stigmata was released on PS2. And now, the game has made its first appearance on a seventh generation console, and it has been very well received.

Banpresto did an incredible job with this game. The Japanese gaming conglomerate, in business since 1977, is best known for their contribution to Sega: Pengo. However, in recent years, Banpresto has been moving toward seventh generating gaming, and the publishing of MagnaCarta II has proven to be a wise move.

MagnaCarta II is a story set on the embattled Lanzheim Continent, following the main male character Juto. Juto cannot remember his past, struck by amnesia, and after the war starts, his days of a simple farmer are over as he sets out to reclaim his identity and protect the people he cares for. Some of the best bonuses of this game have to do with the other characters, however. You’ll find wind and lightning wizards and other warriors and plenty of creatures with spellbinding powers along the journey.

All in all, it’s easy to see why this game has been creating such a buzz. The recent North American release will only help to solidify MagnaCarta and strengthen the line. Be on the lookout for MagnaCarta III in the near future.

The video game release schedules are always geared towards the Christmas period, with the majority of top quality titles coming out at the end of the year. This time around it seems to be a lot busier than usual with a whole load of must-have games either just out or around the corner. We’ve had Bioshock, Halo 3, the Orange Box and Super Mario Galaxy to warm us up, now we have to find the time for Mass Effect, Assassin’s Creed, Guitar Hero III, Rock Band and plenty of others. It’s great to have all these games come out, but they take time to play. Keeping up with them is a job and a half, so Gaming Today have posted a helpful guide to some of the lesser known releases, the ones you may miss in-between the avalanche of hype that’s descending on us between now and Santa’s big chimney trip.

There are a lot of good games mentioned here, good luck fitting them all in.

[Read]

Capcom just announced that a new CG movie will be coming out based on the zombie filled Biohazard games. Biohazard: Degeneration will get a “terrifying” release in 2008. Details are thin on the ground, but we’re promised a “new storyline”. Whether that will mean new characters remains to be seen, but expect there to be lots and lots of gut-chewing zombies and lots of lead flying around.

The other, live action, Biohazard movies have been pretty successful. The first two grossed over $100 million dollars each. The third one is due out this Saturday in Japan. One to watch then. The question we want to know is whether they’re going to try and stretch the ‘so bad its funny’ feel of the game’s cutscenes across the full length of a movie, or whether they’re going to try and make it all, y’know serious and stuff.

The golden joystick awards were handed out on Friday in London. Gears of War did very well, picking up two game of year awards. The awards cover the last fiscal year, so no Halo 3 and no Bioshock, which we’ll be looking out for in 2008.

Head past the break for the full list.

Read the rest of this entry »

The possiblity of Elite IV being released in the not too distant future has been dangled tantalisingly in front of us. David Braben, creator of the legendary space simulator gave a slide show at a game trade show this week. One of the slides listed Elite IV as one of his current projects. It’s not a great deal to go on, but hey, it’s Elite IV!

Elite was one of the best games ever. Elite II was a flawed gem. Elite III? Bring on IV!

[Read]

October 15th is Blog Action Day. Its time for us to take a step back from the non stop diet of videogame news and consider the wider effects of what we’re doing. The topic for this year’s Action Day is the environment. We’re going to consider the impact of our hobby on the world around us. You might not think that your gaming habits have much of an impact on global warming, but remember that this is a global problem caused by billions of people doing the same things wrong, and all those billions of things add up. Your actions are as important as anybody else’s, and the only person that can really change what you are doing is you. So what impact can gaming have on the environment?

First of all there’s energy consumption. All those hours in front of your console use electricity, and that energy has to be produced, using oil gas or whatever. You can help here by doing things as simple as switching off when your done, or turning your screen off while you chat on the phone to your friend for half an hour. Batteries are another one. Recharge-ables save whales and your bank balance. Its a win win situation!

There are lots of services around now like Steam, Xbox Live and Playstation Network that let you download games instead of going out to buy them. This is great news for the planet! No packaging, no trip to the store and no shipping disks around the world means there’s a little less stress on our planet then there would be otherwise.

Last of all, remember to recycle! Game and console packaging can be reused, and why not sell your old gaming equipment at a second hand shop instead of letting it gather dust? The more we reuse what we have, the less new stuff we have to buy, and again that’s good news for Earth.

Thanks for reading, and remember what’s good for the Earth is good for you too!

All aboard! This is aimed at the kids, but we really like the look of this Shinkansen simulator from Tomy. The standalone game connects straight to the TV and lets you play at driving Japan’s high speed bullet trains in your own living room. The unit features a driving mode and a selection of minigames.

[Read]