Monthly Archives: December 2011

JGaming – Is Steam Otaku?

Posted by Mindez on 2011年12月23日 – 15時32分
Filed under General, Professor Layton, Video Games
Tagged as , , , ,

o·ta·ku
(noun)
1. an avid collector or enthusiast, esp. one who is obsessed anime, video games, or computer and rarely leaves home.
2. (In Japan) Young people who are highly skilled in or obsessed with computer technology to the detriment of their social skills.

As a writer on this blog, sometimes I have to make judgement calls and skew my interpretations of the above definition. This site was set up as a general place for us to post about anything anime-related or video-game-related, or about Japan in general. As far as I know there’s no clear ‘line’ as to what does and doesn’t belong on here. So as a gamer, I’m always wondering if something belongs on here. Pokémon? Definitely otaku. Layton? Yep. Steam sales? Well it’s certainly video-game related, but it’s nothing to do with Japan at all. So I’d guess probably not, right? But then someone makes a post about Minecraft and I’m all confused again.

So you know what? I’m a gamer, and as long as I’m still alive, Steam sales belong on this website dammit! This is my section, I can do what I want with it! Hmph.

December 19th marked the beginning of this year’s winter Steam sales! Almost every game on Steam has a massive chunk taken out of the price, and every day until January 1st, 12 games get their price reduced even more. A bunch of games have added achievements to go for, and there’s even a chance to win the prize of EVERY SINGLE STEAM GAME for participating. Now that’s a prize I want to win. (If only for that Railworks 3 DLC worth $1545.96).

To commemorate this occasion, throughout the sales I’ll be making a video on my youtube channel highlighting the deals, talking about the games and generally handing out my recommendations like candy. Steam sales are traditionally times that all gamers unite to give Valve all of their money. Because Steam deals are just *TOO GOOD*. I’m not going to be posting any more about this on CollectiveOtaku, the purpose of this post is just to drive people towards them and let them know they exist! So here’s the link to today’s entry, day 5 of the Steam sales! Future editions (and past editions) can be found on my Youtube channel here!

 

Incidentally, you may wonder why I’m calling this section ‘JGaming’ for this update. “But oh great and powerful Mindez!” I hear you cry, “This has nothing to do with Japanese Gaming! Surely you should call it WGaming or something!” To which I respond “Oh, there’s a reason, Billy. There’s definitely a reason.”

And there is, for the second reason I made this update today was because today I discovered that I will be getting a Japanese 3DS and an import of the Japanese 3DS Professor Layton game, レイトン教授と奇跡の仮面 (Professor Layton and the Mask of Miracle), for Christmas this year. So I feel justified in calling this section the ‘JGaming’ section. (Actually, I’m calling it JGaming because I can call it whatever I want! It’s not like this blog has editors or anything.)

This will probably be my last update before Christmas, so have a happy Christmas. And think of me playing my new Layton game as you sip your eggnog and watch domestic disputes break out in houses up and down the country this Christmas day. …All families have those at Christmas, right?

The Mindez Review – Hayate no Gotoku: Heaven is a Place on Earth

Posted by Mindez on 2011年12月18日 – 18時53分
Filed under Anime, General, Japan

On Friday, almost 4 months after the 58-minute-long Hayate no Gotoku movie, Heaven is a Place on Earth, was released in Japan, it was finally released on DVD. Within hours of it coming out, fansub group Commie were the first to get it subbed. Despite being a slightly cut down version (With the extended Blu-Ray release slated for February 2012), it’s finally out for the western world to see. Potential movie spoilers ahead in this post!

Hayate no Gotoku: Heaven is a Place on Earth

The Hayate series has always been a bit of a mess of timelines and characters, with season 1 taking liberties with seemingly random manga selection and season 2 attempting to fill in the gaps where manga has been skipped over. It’s good to see that the movie carries on this tradition, with random new characters such as Tsurugino Kayura, Nagi’s friend and devoted cosplayer (Which helps them immensely when it comes to filling in their ‘random references to other anime’ quota) and Suirenji Ruka, a dance idol from the manga who appears purely to sing the opening theme. And to make the timelines more confusing, this was actually Kayura’s first appearance. In recent chapters of the manga, she is introduced as a new character for the first time. So to summarise, the second half of the first season ran alongside the second season, but before the current manga and after the first half of the first season, and the current manga is running before the movie but after the two anime seasons. Everyone follow that? Me either.

The movie is, as you may expect from Hayate no Gotoku, pretty formulaic. The entire cast of main characters is persuaded to go travel into the countryside for a few days, Nagi gets bored, the characters get lost and find themselves in trouble. The particular brand of trouble this time being a carnival that Nagi, Kayura and the Hakuou Three Amiga manage to get trapped in as everybody outside the carnival forgets about their existence. Cue Hayate desperately trying to remember about Nagi and Nagi desperately trying to find a way out. And of course, this being Hayate no Gotoku, we can’t avoid lots of blatant misunderstandings between Hinagiku/Maria and Hayate. And of course, this being Hayate no Gotoku, they couldn’t resist putting some Hinagiku fanservice in. However, unlike the OVA, the fanservice was very sparse and not at all distracting.

In its favour, the ending payoff is definitely worth the build up, something that is incredibly important. I definitely feel that it was worth watching as a viewer of the series, for some teasers into Hayate’s past and some awesome and well made scenes towards the end. There are some great scenes throughout, mostly with Hinagiku (Despite not being a big Hina fan myself). But conversely, it didn’t feel like this needed to be a movie. This would have been a fantastic two-parter in a season, but it didn’t hold up spectacularly well on its own (Something that I think the producers realised as it was released in theatres as a double bill with Mahou Sensei Negima!: Anime Final). Bottom line is that if you enjoy the series, watch it. But if you haven’t seen Hayate, this is probably not the best place to start.

For that reason, I rate this movie 8/10. On par with the second season, no better nor worse, it can just be thought of as a quick mid-season two-parter episode. Roll on season 3!

JGaming – Pokémon plus Samurai? Sign Me Up!

Posted by Mindez on 2011年12月18日 – 04時22分
Filed under General, Japan, Pokémon, Video Games

Back in November, Nintendo made the announcement that a new Pokémon game would be announced before the end of the year. Yesterday, they followed through with that and now we know what the next DS Pokémon title is going to be. Is it Pokémon Gray, like everybody thought? No, in fact they have very clearly stated that there will not be a Pokémon Grey. In fact, it’s not even a new game in the Pokémon Mystery Dungeon series, or the Pokémon Ranger series, or a sequel to any of the standalone Pokémon games.

I can just imagine the pitch meeting. Everyone sitting around thinking of ideas. One guy suddenly snaps his finger and goes “Got it! Pokémon in FEUDAL JAPAN!” to which Tsunekaz Ishihara jumps up and shouts “Yes! This man is a genius!” and then there would be some brofists and high fives and they’d order pizza or something. I have a pretty good grasp of how these kind of meetings go, I think.

So without further ado, the trailer for Pokémon + Nobunaga’s Ambition on the Nintendo DS.

The game is slated for release some time in Spring 2012 in Japan. No immediate plans for a US/EU release. The game is a crossover between the Pokémon franchise and the Nobunaga’s Ambition franchise. Both have a significant number of games in their respective series’, and both are fairly popular in Japan. I can’t really say much for the popularity of Nobunaga’s Ambition outside of Japan, being from the UK we’ve actually never had a Nobunaga’s Ambition game, so I’d only heard of the series when this was announced. But it seems like an incredibly weird and incredibly unexpected crossover.

So, Nobunaga’s Ambition is a turn based strategy game where you have to conquer land, build armies and use them to battle your enemies. Pokémon is a game where you roam the world collecting cute monsters and use them to battle your enemies. So I guess there’s a FEW similarities – They’re both bloodthirsty battling simulators. Yeah, that pretty much sums up Pokémon.

From the looks of things, the gameplay seems very closely modelled off of the Pokémon Mystery Dungeon series, and in my opinion it probably will turn out to be simply Pokémon Mystery Dungeon with an overarching storyline set in feudal Japan. Which I don’t think is by any means a bad thing, I’m a fan of the Pokémon Mystery Dungeon games and I do think that it’s the story that lets those games down, so this definitely has the potential to take a good idea and making it better. And I think this game definitely has potential. I’ll certainly be importing it since it’ll probably take numerous years to see a European release.

And who knows, maybe next year we’ll see Pokémon + Professor Layton or Pokémon + Phoenix Wright. I could definitely see Layton and Phoenix Wright being awesome Pokémon trainers.