Japan Gaming Guide

Here’s our pick of this months releases. Not a bad line up for June is it?

PS3
3rd – Grid, Kung Fu Panda, Lego Indiana Jones
12th – Metal Gear Solid 4
23rd – Battlefield: Bad Company

Wii
3rd – Kung Fu Panda, Lego Indiana Jones
24th – Alone in the Dark

Xbox 360
3rd – Grid, Kung Fu Panda, Lego Indiana Jones, Ninja Gaiden II
23rd – Command & Conquer 3, Battlefield: Bad Company
24th – Alone in the Dark

PSP
3rd – Lego Indiana Jones

DS
3rd – Grid, Kung Fu Panda, Lego Indiana Jones

Those of you looking to play some Japanese indie games might want to check out EngRish games. It’s a new site aiming to highlight games that English speakers might miss. There a few games listed on the site already, including plenty of shooters, and some RPGs.

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Thanks to the magic of the Wii Download Channel I was able to check out a demo of Winning Eleven: Goal x Goal. The demo lets you play a full match as Barcelona vs Real Madrid.

Apologies for the blurry video – it was pretty tricky playing the game with a camera between my head and the screen.

The graphics are functional – not beautiful, but quite impressive considering the limitations of the platform. It’s possible to recognize the more distinctive players, and the game is smooth and glitch free, unlike the earlier DS version of the game. The bottom screen is predictably used for map duty, again functional, but the way it’s positioned makes it much easier to take in what’s going on than in some other versions of the game. It really makes a difference to your play if you pay attention to the whole pitch and lets you make some defence splitting long passes. When you get a free kick the game switches to passable 3d, a nice touch – in fact all the basic gameplay features of the home versions seem to have been crammed in here. You can also use the touchscreen to change your tactics on the fly – and check which half of the pitch you’re supposed to be attacking – always good to know. There are only two shoulder buttons of course – I don’t know if the special moves made it into this version.The demo was pretty easy. I wasn’t able to tweak any settings, so I don’t know what difficulty options will be available in the full version, but I was able to score on my first game, and put 5 goals past Real Madrid on my third. Here’s hoping the final game will offer a decent challenge to series veterans.Aside from the difficulty, the gameplay seemed pretty much spot on. All the basic moves from the home versions seemed to work on this one. The game feels really fun to play and just right for the DS. It certainly doesn’t offer anything new, but it’s a really good translation of the game, and if that’s what you’re looking for, this should be a worth purchase. Read the rest of this entry »

The PS3 is to get a video on demand service. Starting from next year, players will be able to download motor racing videos for around 200 yen. The first videos are part of the Gran Turismo 5 hype machine, but we expect more to follow later.

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Wii Fit has launched in Japan, and had people queuing outside shops to buy it. The chance to play games and work out at the same time was a big part of Wii Sports’ appeal, and Nintendo will hope this is going to prove as popular, if not more so.

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We got the new Download channel working yesterday, and recorded a bit of what we saw.

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The guys at Siliconera spotted this on Japanese TV:

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The Virtual Console is all well and good, but if there’s one thing that could be improved about it, it’s the controller. The classic controller is decent enough, but doesn’t quite have that authentic, mid 90’s feel that reminds us of our misspent youth. Now club Nintendo are giving Club Nintendo members a chance to order this fantastic replica SNES pad. It looks like just the thing for revisiting those great games of yesteryear.

It comes out next April in Japan, and will be available to those with enough Club Nintendo points.

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The latest Japanese sales figures just came out. There’s no surprise about the biggest selling game of the week – it’s the fantastic Super Mario Galaxy. In second place, amazingly, it’s an Xbox 360 game! Ace Combat 6 flew off the shelves this week, selling over 70,000 units.

Riding the success of Ace Combat 6, the Xbox 360 actually managed to outsell the PS3! Pretty good news for Microsoft, Sony will draw a little consolation from the current popularity of the PSP.

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Famitsu, the Japanese game magazine leviathan has published a list of its readers all time top 100 games. The list is dominated by epic RPGs as you can imagine. Non-Japanese games barely get a look in with GTA: Vice City scraping in at number 76, and Japanese conversions of Wizardry, Sim City and Tetris hovering around the bottom.

Head past the break for the full list.

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