Archive for October, 2007
By: Ivan 'Nahu' Lozano - On Wednesday 31 October 2007 @ 8:36 pm
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For those still recovering from the disappointment that was the latest Resident Evil flick and those of you simply craving as much Resident Evil as Capcom can shove down your throat, we’ve got great news.
Two days ago Capcom and Sony Pictures Entertainment Japan announced the production of Biohazard: Degeneration, a CG anime film based on the Biohazard (Resident Evil) universe set for release on 2008. No more details are available besides this very info and the image above. Hoever the possibilities of it actually being based on the Resident Evil game timeline and canon are much higher than with the live action films, and seriously, it simply cannot be worse than RE: Apocalypse.
While drawing manga has long been a scholarly subject in Japan, one you can actually go and learn at a university, anime has been overlooked in the field of academia. This wont be so anymore as already a couple of Japanese universities including the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music (Tokyo Geijutsu Daigaku) have announced their plans to open graduate and undergraduate courses in animation and all that surrounds it. Seems like it wont be long until fellow Otaku in Japan like the one above, albeit (very) lonesome, will be respected scholars. And I bet nothing woos hugpillows like a university title!
By: Ivan 'Nahu' Lozano - On Monday 29 October 2007 @ 8:24 pm
Soul Calibur Legends, the much discussed Soul Calibur spinoff headed for the Wii just announced the inclusion of a new character from the Namco universe. Yes, your eyes do not deceive you, that is indeed Lloyd from Tales of Symphonia.
Apparently Lloyd learned about the legendary soul calibur sword and is now looking to acquire it, whoop dee doo! Original excuse! Information and pictures of a couple of new bosses were also released, but given that this title is still very much in a hype vacuum only Lloyds appearance seems of interest right now.
Expect to hear “Demon Fang” enough time to drive you nuts come December 03… in Japan.
[Game Watch Impress / Via The Tanooki]
Swiss underwear company Sloggi held a competition in Japan find Nihon’s best booty. Check out the video to see highlights from the show and an interview with the winner Kaho Watanabe, in which she talks about how she was apprehensive about entering the contest and didn’t think she’d win because she’d burnt her arse sitting on a curling iron. Silly girl obviously forgot to plug it out before she sat on it. Roll video.
Would somebody please pass me a flashlight, because I’m looking for those girls’ arses. I’ve seen more booty on ironing boards! The judges must’ve had a hard time deciding on a winner because all of those girl have arses as flat as pancakes. There is a misconception and stereotype that all Japanese girls have zero junk in the trunk and Sloggi’s ‘Japan’s best ass’ competition didn’t do much to counter that. Though in the winners defence, she has a nice rack. What she wasn’t graced with in the back, she compensates with in the front. So congrats to Kaho and her ‘best ass’ win.
There’s a game in the works for Wii which looks exactly like Devil may cry, instead it features a lead character who looks like a female stripper instead of a white haired male one. I honestly couldn’t stand Devil may cry. I found the first game in the series to be so boring and monotonous that it put me off of games number 2 and 3 and has me not caring in the slightest about the forthcoming Devil may cry 4, 5, 6, 7, DS and 8 EX+ alpha. So the prospect of playing a similar game albeit with Wii remote controls doesn’t do much for me. But I could see why others would be interested in this game. It certainly looks better than Soul Calibur legends.
Screenshots don’t do this game much justice because it really does look just like Devil may cry. I have a feeling once we see some gameplay footage of this game it’ll also run like Devil may cry with developers quick to say “No, no, no! It’s all about the controls!” But we’ll see. It’s just good to see a game on Wii that doesn’t involve chibified characters running around and ghetto ports of Xbox 360 and PS3 games. A zombie slasher game starring a slutty looking character who looks like an extra from Christina Aguilera’s “Dirrty” video will definitely help shift the Wii’s kiddy image.
I should probably mention that Super samurai woman: Zombie hunter R is not the official name of the game. I just made it up. Famitsu’s page is entirely in Japanese and I can’t read Japanese. So I’m not sure what the title of the game is. So if a DD reader who can read the good language can scour the Famitsu page and enlighten us with the name of the game - that’d be super! Until then, it’s Super samurai woman: Zombie hunter R.
[Famitsu]
**UPDATE: October 29, 2007** DD readers have dropped comments and identified the name of the game and it is called Onee chanbara R. It’s actually a series and has seen games released on the PS2, Xbox 360 and even on cellphones. So that’s that!! A shame though, because I quite warmed to the title Super samurai woman: Zombie hunter R.
Despite showing nothing new on Final Fantasy Crystal chronicles: The crystal bearers, Square Enix have already unveiled yet another Crystal chronicles game. It is titled The little king and the promised country and will be a Wii ware title.
I thought WiiWare titles would be shitty little 2D flash style games, so I was shocked when Square Enix showed this off and announced it’d be a WiiWare title. There’s no word how big the game will be, but graphically it looks snazzy and is in complete 3D - so you can bet it’ll eat up every single megabyte of the Wii’s 512 flash memory. You’ll probably have to delete every Virtual console game, every channel and connect your Wii to your PC via a USB cable and sellotape it to the Wii to make enough space.
The game will cost 1500 Wii points and will be released in Japan in March of 2008. The price should be an indication that this will not be a full blown Final Fantasy game. Square Enix would never give gamers a full on Final Fantasy experience that cheap. It will instead have you playing as the little king fella and his gangsta leaning crown, building towns and shit - or something like that. I’m not sure as to whether I’ll buy this myself. I haven’t seen enough of it to get excited about it. But I think it’s cool that this early on Wii ware games are looking like this and that Square Enix have jumped on the bandwagon so early. It’ll hopefully pave the way for other third party developers to hop on board and finally push digital distribution further on the Wii.
By: Jonathan_Leo - On Thursday 25 October 2007 @ 8:49 am
” With an orange-painted-with-swirls LesPaul in hand, Sir Swissgar The Stallion, the dude with the blonde hair and spiked leather jacket, struts out with covers of ‘You’ve Got Another Thing Coming’, ‘Killing In The Name’, and ‘Surrender’, followed up with an encore of ‘War Pigs’, sung by the notorious Black Sabbath. He misses a few notes, but it matters not. He was in the zone, and the crowd just went balls-busting nuts.”
Sounds like something you come up with your imagination while punching in numbers at that job in the local bank. In truth, this was one of the examples of a play session of Guitar Hero 2, the sequel to the acclaimed rhythm game series created by Harmonix. All of the intensity of performing live, less than 10 minutes to perform.
Continue Reading »
Guitar Hero: One Axe To Rule Them All
Resident evil fans will probably know a fair bit about Resident evil 1.5. The game that almost was Resident evil 2. The game was 80% complete and had a release date and everything, until Capcom decided to scrap it all and start from scratch - resulting in a year long delay. Some original ideas were kept, but most of 1.5 went through some drastic changes: The overall setting and many of the locations were kept the same but went through cosmetic changes, the main playable character of Elza Walker was ditched entirely in favour of Claire Redfield, the character models had their detail lessened to allow for more zombies on screen and a couple of the boss battles were removed. Check out this video of the game in its scrapped glory.
The lack of door opening animations should’ve rolled over into the final game! Why’d Capcom leave those in?! Resident evil 1.5 looks pretty crap to me. The graphics in this version were supposedly superior to Resident evil 2, but I can’t see it myself. I think Resident evil 2 was a much better looking game. The rendered environments were much more detailed. Everything in 1.5 looks too blue, too clean and untouched.
I think Capcom made the right decision to scrap the game and start from scratch. The end result was a fantastic game and a stand out in the series. Resident evil 2 is my personal favourite Resident evil game and I rank it as the best of the bunch. As brilliant as Resident evil 4 is, there’s something about game number 2. It featured the best intro and ending, was essentially 2 (or even 4) games in one and it was the most plot driven of them all. I still live in the vain hope that Capcom re-make it as they did the original for the GameCube. I even would’ve settled for a Resident evil 2 scenario in Umbrella chronicles, but Capcom dashed those hopes and dreams of mine without a second thought.
It’s a shame that so much went into 1.5 for it to just be scrapped. Capcom could probably release it via Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo’s online stores and milk it. I personally wouldn’t pay to download and play it, but I’m sure an army of Resi fans would. These same gamers went about bought Gun survivor and Outbreak. I’m sure they’d snap up a bit of gaming nostalgia and a collectors item.
[PlayStation museum via Kotaku]
Nintendo really are going all out for Super Mario Galaxy. As if the next gen graphics, kick arse platforming action, new play mechanics, tight controls and all round awesomeness wasn’t enough - the game will also feature an orchestrated soundtrack! Not every piece in the game will be orchestrated, but a bunch of songs will be. This marks the first time a Mario adventure will feature as such. The last Nintendo game to be graced with a fully orchestrated soundtrack was StarFox: Assault. The music in StarFox: Assault was awesome. It’s just a shame it was wasted on such a rubbish game.
Check out this video of a recording session of an orchestra playing a piece from Super Mario Galaxy. It sounds fantastic. Without a doubt the most grand and epic sounding piece to ever feature in a Mario game. Koji Kondo (Composer of the soundtrack) and Shigeru Miyamoto (Producer of the game ) don’t look too impressed though. They just sit there like patients waiting to be seen in a hospital.
Dark Diamond readers may or may not know this, but resident editor and contributor tskiller is an accomplished bassoon player. He is actually part of the woodwind section in the video above, but you can’t see him. They flew him in to Tokyo especially. He’s THAT good.
…
Okay, so I’m lying. But tskiller is a bassoon player and he could’ve been a part of the Super Mario Galaxy orchestra if he wanted to. He just chose not to.
It’s great to hear an original piece of Super Mario music that sounds so grand and doesn’t work in that SAME old theme we’ve had drummed into our brains over the past two decades. Though a Super Mario game wouldn’t be complete without said theme and I can confirm it does feature in Super Mario galaxy in remixed form. I’m just glad Koji Kondo did away with that French caf? bullshit that played throughout Super rubbish Sunshine. The music in that game was bad enough to make me wish I was deaf.
By: Ivan 'Nahu' Lozano - On Tuesday 23 October 2007 @ 8:21 am
The latest edition of Wired magazine includes an article titled How Manga Conquered the U.S., a Graphic Guide to Japan’s Coolest Export which explores the story of manga in the U.S., from its humble beginnings to the behemoth it is today. Oh and said article is in Manga form, with illustrations by Atsuhisa Okura. Its nifty and informative if you are rather new to the whole manga scene. The article is available on PDF as well.
[Wired]
By: Ivan 'Nahu' Lozano - On Monday 22 October 2007 @ 9:30 pm
The week in review is a feature here on Dark Diamond where we writers and readers share what we did this past week, what anime did you see, what game did you play and even what fictional character did you fantasize about at night.
Velcor’s week in review:
Well, this week has been quite typical. Anime-wise I finished watching Seto No Hanayome and I really liked it. Saw some Hayate no Gotoku and finished some weird low-budget anime called Pugyuru! It has some funny moments and it’s short, give it a watch!
Gaming-wise I followed advice and for the first time I bought a game from the Wii shop channel, Sin and Punishment, and it’s pretty sweet!
Jon’s week in review:
Thanks to my buddies, I managed to snag a demo of Guitar Hero 3, and I definitely like what I see, well, hear, anyway. There were 5 tracks, with Scorpion’s “Rock You Like A Hurricane” and Pearl Jam’s “Evenflow” being my personal standouts. Not a fan of the new interface, but I guess Neversoft felt that it needed a change or so. October 28th, can’t wait.
Also planning to start Soul Nomad soon, since I’ve finished Wild Arms V; that copy of mine hasn’t been touched yet. Wonder if it’ll have the insane leveling up system like the last few games Nippon Ichi made? “Bah, I laugh at your level 99, factory-churned, spiky-haired blondie of Square-Enix,” says level 500 Laharl. Peace out, and may save points and random encounters be abolished by next year.
tskiller’s week in review:
It’s depressing how much school takes over ones life once it begins. But, I still managed to find time to dive into a few new games. Every Extend Extra Extreme, a new addicting Xbox live arcade game based on Every Extend Extra for the PSP, which was in turn based on Every Extend, a free game, came out this week and took over a good portion of my gaming time. Basically you blow yourself up to create as big of a chain reaction as you can. Its addicting as hell.
As for anime, I managed to catch an episode of Moyashimon, a wonderful anime about a kid who can talk to microbes. It’s much more interesting than it sounds, trust me. I also got some quality time in with Beautiful Katamari. Its really more of the same, but who can get enough rolling? Not me, that’s for sure.
Nahu’s week in review:
First of all let me apologize for there being no week in review this last week, mainly due to no one sending in their part. Now on to the good stuff, you guessed it right, I’m still playing lots of Pangya and almost finished with Gurren Lagann, same old, right? Well no, this week I managed to watch some old Magic Knight Rayearth OVAs and play some DDR. While its nothing new, its still a nice departure from routine! I also worked my ass off all weekend preparing something that’s been a long time coming. It’s looking good.
So tell us, how was your week? We’d love to hear, no, seriously it help us procrastinate! See you in the comments!
Some of you may remember a video that became super Internet famous by the name of Haloid. A mash up of Metroid and Halo which featured Samus and a female Spartan soldier beating the shit out of one another, then fighting together, embarking on a lesbian relationship and dancing to some Korean hip hop. Well the creator of said video Monty Oum is back with Dead Fantasy I. This dude has some SKILLS. If you’ve yet to witness this kick arse video, be sure to catch it after the jump.
Whatever magazine this was a cover for, I bet it it was a best seller and did wonders for this models’ career. I bet every man in Tokyo wished they’d been asked to pose in front of a car in silver platforms, pink bunny ears, a training bra and a thong hiding away within the dark depths of arse crack. That model is very serious and believes in the power of his image. Look at that face. That pose. He’s working it for that camera. Tyra Banks and Kyoko Fukada ain’t got shit on this dude.
[dlisted]
The official Japanese TV spot for Super Mario Galaxy has been released and it looks all kinds of awesome. Japanese TV spots for video games look and work better than the shitty TV spots the Western world gets. They really do sell the game to you and the Japanese announcer sounds as though he whole heartedly believes in the game and that you should go out and buy three copies of it. Check it out. This game looks like heaven. If heaven were overweight, wore a cap, dungarees and had a moustache.
I’ve just ordered 2 of Super Mario Galaxy copies on amazon. I’ll also be buying my Grandfather a copy of this game. He doesn’t own a Wii. Shoot, he isn’t even alive! But I’m buying him a copy anyway because Super Mario Galaxy looks THAT good. After watching the video I refuse to believe the Wii is a GameCube 1.5. That shit looked like it was running on an Xbox 360!
If Nintendo are on a mission to make out like the dismal Super Mario Sunshine never happened, then they’re doing a grand old job. I may actually trade that piece of shit in to buy this game.
By: Ivan 'Nahu' Lozano - On Friday 19 October 2007 @ 8:59 am
We all know the guy, you know, that guy who’s reading manga in japanese all day, complaining about how official or scanlated versions are so hideously translated and how they missed on this or that obscure cultural reference that is oh so important to get the joke on the first panel of page 347. Maybe you even are that guy, and if so, I’m so very sorry!
But not all is bad, on this day and age your talents and near obsessive dedication to manga can earn you some money each month, with services like Manganovel, which lets you buy, read and translate manga, you’ll earn a small commission from everyone who buys your translation and while you wont be the next Simona Pini, you’ll subside your manga spending.
Then again, I know from a good source that the scanlators who missed the obscure reference on the first panel of page 347 make a lot more money on website advertisement than anyone will on Manganovel. Rage on.
[Manganovel / Via Japan Probe][tags]Manga, Money, Translation, Otaku[tags]
com.JPG "Only the finnest in flash animation for your entertainment")
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