Archive for December, 2006
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As 2007 comes dangerously close to my timezone its time for the last post of the year! Let it be an otaku music bit! This time closing the year with a very special band from Japan. Its called 5strings and it would be your typical jpop band except all of the members cosplay while they play and the 3 female singers cosplay as OS-tans! See if you can spot a -tan we’ve covered in a previous week.
Enjoy partying the year away, I’ll see you next year!
Being a formulaic and never ending series has its challenges, you have to stay fresh, keep up with the times. Thats why on the latest incarnation of the Power Rangers, Power Rangers Operation Overdrive, the red ranger is an otaku.
No, we’re not kidding, I wish we were though. The official site of the series lists “collecting anime” as one of the red ranger’s hobbies as well as building models. I bet he’s going to be all “hurr gundam!” when he jumps on his first giant robot.
By: Ivan 'Nahu' Lozano - On Sunday 31 December 2006 @ 12:14 am
The end of the year is just hours away and that means while still on time to follow suit with one of the most honorable traditions of the blogosphere, a list of the best posts of 2006. True, we’re less than a year but this should bring memories to some of our erliest readers and given the recent peak in new readers it should help showcase some of the best we’ve had. So without further ado, here are the top handpicked (and aided with stats) Dark Diamond posts of 2006!
- Meet the Egglink! - Who can forget one of our earliest popular posts showcasing the fruit of a girl’s geekness (who happens to be my girlfriend): the egglink! Eggs can hardly get any geekier.
- Clash of the Geekus: The pink Wii - Our first and one of our only colums ever writen where Velcor and I discuss wether Nintendo should release a pink colored Wii.
- The Maid Wars - ‘Otaku for otaku’ Patrick Macias gives us a glimpse of the Maid cafe scene in Japan on his debut appearance on NHK’s Tokyo Eye.
- Velcor’s report from the San Diego ComiCon 2006 - Read about Velcor’s trip to ComiCon, who he met, what he saw and what you didnt see because he forgot to take a digital camera.
- Ulala’s Dance - This is perhaps my favorite semi-off topic, gratuitous fan service post. A very nice looking lass does a little dance for the crowd.
- The world of Fujoshi: The female Otaku - Two subbed videos from japanese TV exposing the world of female otakus in japan and the places they frequent.
- Velcor’s Quest for the Wii - Read about Velcor’s failed attempt to score a Wii and how he ended almost empty handed, almost because he did end up with a hamburger.
- Trend Study: The console wars - A small trend study we did some days before the PS3 and the Wii launched using Google Trends.
- Fanboy Moment: When Velcor met the voice of Mario - Read about Velcor’s encounter with Charles Martinett, the voice of Mario.
- GunDAMN: Sweet mother of all Gundams - And of course our most popular post so far, our translation of the giant Gundam replica found in rural Japan.
That about sums it up for 2006, think we missed a post you really enjoyed? Any comments at all? Let us know in the comments.
PS: Oh yeah I had no idea what image to use on this post so you get an image of a man fighting a bear for no particular reason.
By: Abraham 'Velcor' Duarte - On Saturday 30 December 2006 @ 3:02 pm
DRAGON QUEST SWORDS: The Masked Queen and the Tower of Mirrors is the name of one of the titles Nintendo will be getting for the Wii from Square-enix. Now with the new DQ adventure being announced for the DS, it’s a great idea to expand the franchise to Nintendo consoles
Words from Executive Producer, Yuu Miyake:
We believe (Dragon Quest’s) appeal lies in simplicity that anyone can enjoy, and the excitement of becoming a hero in an epic adventure. With the Nintendo Wii, we believe that these aspects of the DRAGON QUEST experience can be taken to a whole new level of fun and interaction
I hope this one gets even more interactive swordfighting than Red Steel!
[Kotaku]
By: Abraham 'Velcor' Duarte - On Friday 29 December 2006 @ 9:11 pm
I never thought I’d be seeing costume censorship in a japanese anime character. . .in mere Japan, the volcano of otaku lust and loli innuendo!
Rena from the PS2 game “Higurasahi no Naku Koro ni Matsuri” was featured in a white apron and some white stockings. she showed more than a leg and a small nipple bulge showed. . .definitely a very bad thing for the censoring people! They took that bulge off and made the apron less revealing. And all I think is. . . I feel betrayed.
This is the original pic:
Notice the. . . :
And here’s the edited version (click to see the details and compare):
Eww.
[Kotaku]
Good news for those following the Goldeneye Source mod. Just like last year’s Christmas the team has released a new version of the game, now in its beta phase. This release still has its fair share of bugs and the team admits its not as stable as they would have wanted it to be. But if you are craving for some good ol’ Goldeneye action this will be a sweet holiday season.
By: Abraham 'Velcor' Duarte - On Thursday 28 December 2006 @ 8:01 pm
A new game that got a bit shown on this year’s TGS and made by the same guys that did Kingdom Hearts will be hitting Japan Next 2007. It’s called “It’s a Wonderful World” [or Subarashiki kono Sekai in Japanese] and its story revolves around a kid [Neku] that gets strange E-mails with objectives, and a dancer [Shiki]. The cool thing is the battle system, it seems that shiki fights on the top screen and you control her with the D-pad, and Neku fights on the bottom screen with the stylus.
]
I hope they bring the crazy games to America, only Japan gets the cool stuff. . .
[Kotaku]
I know I missed last week, blame it on my girlfriend, but this week I’ve got a bunch of guilty gear for you, so cheer up!
There’s a new trailer for the upcoming anime based MMO game Bastard!! is up online on the game’s official website. For those who never saw the 6 episode OVA series, Bastard! tells the tale of a once evil wizard’s quest to stop his old partners from destroying the world. The trailer looks awesome and captures the epic feeling of the series but I wonder if the game will be able to capture that same scale as an MMO.
[Bastard!]
We’ve said it before, perhaps too many times, yet we’d never refuse an opportunity to see it in action once more. I’m talking, of course, of the first rule of Japanese marketing: Cosplay sells. Even when its animated cosplay like in this milk ad. It might be real, it might be fake but one thing is for sure, your next glass of milk wont be the same.
I was about to eat some apple pie with a glass of milk, now I’m not so sure. Maybe I will just have the milk.
By: Ivan 'Nahu' Lozano - On Wednesday 27 December 2006 @ 7:27 pm
DigitalBattle has news that a sequel to the movie adaptation of Silent Hill is in the works. No surprise there, its been one of the best game to movie adaptations I’ve in recent years, plus the ending did hint at a sequel. But not all is perfect in this plan, director Christophe Gans is currently at work adapting Onimusha for film. So while he has every intention to direct this sequel and ‘correct mistakes made in the first’, another director might have to step up for this.
Me? I’m just hoping for more Pyramid Head.
Remember some months ago when we had that video of a korean Starcraft tournament? The one with the guy doing an SCV rush? Well he’s a world renowned champion that goes by the nickname of BoxeR, the man is a god when it comes to RTS games. Here’s a video of him playing, watch his lightning fast hands execute an almost obscene ammount of actions per minute.
And yet I only use my mouse when playing RTS…
By: Ivan 'Nahu' Lozano - On Wednesday 27 December 2006 @ 3:27 pm
Its official now, no otaku in Japan needs to ever leave the sanctity of its room ever again. Why? Well Akihabara used to be one of the few reasons to get out of the house. Whether for supplies or a visit to a maid cafe it exerted enough force to pull them out of their chairs but now that Amazon Japan has opened up their own Otaku superstore we may never see an otaku in the wild ever again.
The store features more figures than you can fit in a japanese apartment, endless DVDs of anime or idol videos, video games and enough manga to deplete a small forest. May the gods have mercy on us.
[Amazon JP / Via Japan Probe]
Old time geeks heed my call! The folks at Armchair Arcade have just published the first of a three part series article on the history of computer RPGs. This first installment is very through in its coverage, from the first games ever built for gigantic mainframes to the first game in the Ultima series.
Meanwhile, a student at Claremont Graduate University in California, had designed a game called Dungeon, which ran on the university’s PDP-10 mainframes. Like dnd, Dungeon featured a level-up system. However, one key innovation was the ability to create and operate a whole party of adventurers rather than just a single character. To this day, there is debate about whether it’s more fun to control a single character or a whole party of them. Dungeon also featured a graphical map system with “line of sight” vision, which meant that players could only see in the direction their characters were facing–and took lightness and darkness into account (elves and other creatures with infravision could see in the dark).
This is the stuff that made the genre! If you’ve ever been a fan of MUDs this should bring some memories back.
Welcome to the second edition of tuesday-tans where we feature a different -tan character each week. Last week we had a look at console tans by featuring Wii-tan. This week we will enter the world of OS-tans, the characters that started it all and as you have probably deducted by the picture, this week’s character is none other than XP-tan.
Actually there are three XP-tans based on different editions of Windows XP. There’s XP Pro-tan wich is the standard and the one featured here XP Home Edition and also Media Center Edition. XP-tan, being quite the bloated OS and a memory hog by excellence, is very well endowed. Actually breast size often represents the memory usage of the OS. She’s often wearing a blue schoolgirl uniform, but quite frankly, I much prefer this ‘little black dress’ edition up there. Now on to some pictures, including a special Xmas outfit!
Come back next week for another dose of Tuesday-Tans. Have something to say? Want a special character featured? Let us know in the comments!
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