Japan Gaming Guide

The magnificent piece of psychedelic genius that is Space Giraffe has just been released for PC. There are a few gameplay enhancements plus the option to use toned down visuals for those weak minded fools who found the original too difficult. There’s now a gameplay guide on the Llamasoft website to help you out if things get too tough. This is a very difficult game but it is full of charisma and one of the most original games on the marketplace – heartily recommended for those of you with the skillz to handle it.

The original Space Giraffe is still available on Xbox 360 for a meagre 400 points.

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There are MMOs for everything these days, including Hello Kitty. This looks every bit as bright and fluffy as you’d expect. There are mini-games, farming and the option to visit various world capitals. It also has the usual RPG questing stuff, although we’re guessing that killing and bloodshed aren’t going to be playing a major role in the game.

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Koei’s MMORPG, Sangokushi Online, is getting a bit bigger on September 25th. Level caps will be removed for characters and raised for weapons and equipment, plus there will be new areas to explore with more things to slice into pieces.

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Bomberman Online Japan is about to go into beta. The game is the sequel to Online Bomberman, rather than the Dreamcast’s Bomberman Online.

The graphics look absolutely gorgeous, but retain the personality that certain other updates failed to capture. We’re not sure of the payment structure yet but if it’s free it might just tempt us away from the Xbox live arcade version of the game.

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From September 25th the Phantasy Star Universe client software will be freely available to download on PC. Users will have to purchase a ‘game key’ for Y1000 to activate the online mode and then pay the usual charges after a 10 day trial period.

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Monster Hunter Frontier players are currently able to sign up for the Hunter Festival. You can register until August 20th, so get a move on if you want the chance to win the many prizes, which include special weapons and trophies.

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Square Enix’s online virtual world is launching in a few weeks. The flash based Nicotta Town will let you customize your own virtual home, and interact with friends in a range of ways including a card room.

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Another fantastic looking online game in Beta right now is Magical Smash. It’s a tennis game with huge helpings of anime madness. Weird and wonderful characters compete in bizarre competitions on surreal courts. Click through to see a few more pics, including a guy with the ultimate tennis accessories: handguns.

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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.

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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 here.

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