Japan Gaming Guide

Want to know what toys Japanese kinds are going to be playing with this year? Then the World Hobby Fair is your place to go. Put on by toy and game businesses, the show gives kids the chance to play with all the newest stuff and gives the companies lots of feedback about what’s hot or not.

This year was dominated by Pokemon, Gundam, and Inazuma Eleven, with all three licenses being spread over a wide variety of merchandise and crossovers. Nintendo and Sony both had a substantial presence, setting up large booths and lots of demos and tournaments. Battling toys were getting a lot of attention, it seems kids want anything that lets them pit one toy against another in a brawl. Professional Yo-yo…ers?..ists? were drawing crowds teaching tricks and hosting shows. Girl-focused games like Pretty Rhythm, Tamagotchi, and Cooking Mama were bringing in lots of players too.

Our picks for the best of the show? The Taiko no Tatsujin game being demoed inside a giant snow globe, the very unusual pairing of feudal Japanese warlord Oda Nobunaga with Pokemon, and the Sony shrine featuring Playstation characters and selling good-luck charms.

Here are the pictures, scroll over for a description.

Capcom’s Monster Hunter website will be live streaming the grand finale of the Monster Hunter Festa on Sunday, October 2nd, from 1pm. The event will feature gameplay from Monster Hunter Portable 3rd (including the HD PS3 version) and coverage of the show taking place simultaneously in Tokyo.
The stream can be found here, and will begin at midnight Saturday night, October 1st, US Eastern Time.

Shin Sangoku Musou Multi Raid, or Dynasty Warriors: Strikeforce has been out for a few weeks in Japan, but will debut in the US later this month. It’s based on Dynasty Warriors 6, and looks rather good.

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Inside Games has published a few screenshots that it claims are from Tales of VS, the new PSP game, but one of the shots is clearly the logo from Tales of Graces, the forthcoming Wii game. Whatever their origin, they should be of interest to tales fans.

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The life of the humble shepherd must have got a lot better with the advent of handheld gaming. Those lonely days on the mountains would go a lot quicker with the help of a DS or PSP. We reckon the superior battery life of the DS would make it the shepherd’s system of choice – but it looks like Sony is trying to redress the balance with the release of Hitsuji Mura Portable (Sheep Town Portable) for the PSP.

The animal-crossing alike game casts you as a duck who, so far as we can tell, has something of a penchant for the bottle.

Have a look at the game’s official site, and see if you can work out what exactly is going on.

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A couple of pics from the forthcoming Playstation Portable title Patapon 2. Looks pretty good, and it has 4-way multiplayer.

The game is released on November 27th. It will also be available in a new PSP-3000 hardware bundle.

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Shuhei Yoshida is not happy about the state of third party PSP games. Yoshida, the president of Sony Worldwide Studios, told IGN that third party support was ‘disappointing’ and that he’d ‘like to see more’. We can’t argue with that really. The PSP is a lovely piece of kit but still lacks a selection of truly outstanding games.

Yoshida also spoke about the success of Monster Hunter in Japan and claimed ‘it’s hard to find a train or a bar where you don’t see some people playing a PSP’. Well, there are plenty of PSP players on the trains these days, but he must be going to different bars to us, or maybe he’s just drinking stronger stuff. Finding a bar with no one playing a PSP is about as hard as finding a bar.

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An all new redesigned PSP is coming out in October. The PSP 3000 features an enhanced screen and a built in microphone.

The screen has better contrast, faster response time and anti-reflective technology making it easier to use outside. The microphone will enable the PSP to be used as a communication device.

The cost of these improvements is a reduced battery life. The price however remains the same at 19,800 yen for the basic device, or 24,800 yen with a memory stick and accessories.

UPDATE: Sony have now claimed the new PSP will offer equivalent battery life to the old model.

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Sony have now sold 10 million Playstation Portables in Japan. The DS has sold 24 million, but the PSP has been catching up in recent months.

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PSP owners will soon be able to connect to the internet for free, courtesy of a deal between Sony and FON. FON are a Spanish based wireless network provider with over 44,000 access points in Japan.

Users of the new service will be able to download game demos, videos and wallpapers along with custom themes for the imminent Dissidia: Final Fantasy.

This is pretty exciting news – let’s hope it all goes smoothly – the critical thing for us will be how easy it is to find an access point and get connected. We don’t know when they’re going live with this, but will keep you posted.

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