Category Archives: Japan

Grasshopper Manufacture boss Goichi Suda has discussed his next action game in a new interview. It follows the studio’s recent batch of teaser art, which smells a lot like a No More Heroes spin-off starring Shinobu.

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Play Arts comes out with some rather superb gaming action figures, and these renditions of Ken and Sakura from Street Fighter 4 are no exception.

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Conception 2 is the next game from Virtue’s Last Reward developer Chunsoft, and it appears as if the company has its eye on a fan-supported Western release of some kind, based on a press release sent to various outlets.

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Square Enix is in the middle of a shake-up – what with a new CEO and lay-offs in Los Angeles, and now comes word that Dragon Quest X on Wii U didn’t fare to well during its debut week.

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Soul Sacrifice designer Keiji Inafune has expressed concern over the state of the Japanese games industry, and has called on studios in the country to break through their stagnation and achieve greatness once more.

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Luigi’s Mansion was still the number one title on the Media Create charts for the week, moving 111,000 units extra. Fate/Extra CCC debuted in second place for PSP, moving 73,000 units. On the hardware side of things, Wii and Wii U were the only offerings to show an increase over the prior week with 1,858 and 22,829 units moved, respectively. All other hardware units saw a decline in sales.

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Toukiden developer Omega Force has hurled some rather stylish character art at Famitsu this week, making for some rather lovely page spreads in the magazine. There’s absolutely no PS Vita gameplay images however, but do click through if you like fancy art.

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No, you’ve probably never heard of it, but in Japan Million Arthur is a big deal. Siliconera reports Square Enix is sensibly porting this phenomenally successful card battler from smartphones to Vita, and bringing it to Korea, too. It will join a number of free-to-play Vita games available for Asian markets. Let’s hope it helps Square Enix climb out of its financial hole; it’s attracted over 1 million users since launching in April last year.

Keiji Inafune has a theory on why Xbox 360 hasn’t been much of a hit in Japan.

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Capcom has announced a cross-media project for 3DS called Gaist Crusher. The “custom armor action” focuses on player trading and transformations, and will also feature licenses such as anime, manga, music and toys with a focus on elementary age children. The manga series will appear in Shueisha’s V Jump and Saikyou Jump magazines, and the anime will be produced by Pierrot Co., Ltd. Gaist Crusher is slated for a winter 2013 release in Japan. Announcement trailer is below. Thanks, Siliconera.

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Grasshopper Manufacture founder Goichi Suda has confirmed that the studio’s recent acquisition by GungHo Entertainment will not restrict the developer’s creative freedom at all, in fact he now has complete creative freedom.

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Sony has dissolved Sony Computer Entertainment Japan, Asia and Pan-Asia into a single entity, dubbed Sony Computer Entertainment Japan Asia.

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“Super Battle Opera” Tougeki, a global arcade game tournament based in Japan, has announced it is taking a break. An announcement on the decade-old tournament’s website, says only that “extenuating circumstances” caused the suspension of this year’s planned events. However, there’s some hope for a return, with organisers planning to continue hosting other events and working towards a relaunch.

Thanks, Shoryuken.

Luigi’s Mansion: Dark Moon is the new Japanese number one this week, leaving One Piece: Pirate Warriors 2 trailing by only a few thousand units.

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Square-Enix president Yoichi Wada has resigned from his post following the company’s revised financial forecast, published earlier today. Representative director Yosuke Matsuda is expected to be elected into the role following the company’s next meeting in June this year.

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Square-Enix has revised its financial forecast for the year-ended March 31st, and now expects to suffer an ‘extraordinary loss’.

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Earthbound – known as Mother 2 in Japan – is the next game to hit Wii U Virtual Console in Japan, as part of Nintendo’s campaign, which sees classic games hitting the eShop at ¥30 each.

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Namco Bandai has launched a teaser site for a new fighting game called Project Versus J, and it appears to star a number of Shonen Jump regulars. The site includes art of Dragon Ball’s Goku, and Monkey D from One Piece.

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Mind Zero was announced by The Last Guy developer Acquire earlier this week. It’s a PS Vita dungeon crawler that sees school kids and detectives summoning spirits to help them fight. The studio has now opened a teaser site for the game.

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Sony has released a new firmware update for all territories that lets the console communicate with the company’s RC-S380 NFC-powered reader device.

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