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Boy this was quite a year, wasn’t it? Remember when that news happened and we told you about it? Or how about when we reviewed that game and you played it? Oh there was also that time when we talked about that anime, yeah that one. Man what a year! Let once again thank you for reading us and discussing with us, we do it all for you!

As far as 2009 go, here’s the goal and promise for 2009: On penalty of performing a very silly dance in video I hereby vow that Dark Diamond will have a new post every day for all of 2009! We hope you all have a great 2009 and that you share it with us. Happy new year!

Riz-Zoawd has hit shelves in Japan, and being interested in the soundtrack as well as the theme of the game I wasted no time in playing a bit of the new DS RPG.

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Looking for a beverage with a penetrating flavor? A violent experience that takes hold of you and simple wont let go? Look no further! Tentacle Grape is here! From the people that brought you the Anime After Dark Festival comes this fantastical beverage inspired by that timeless classic in the hentai genre, tentacles.

When this popped up in our mailbox it took us quite a while to decide if it was a joke or not, but it’s real! Hell if  there are so many gamer inspired beverages why not an anime one? Six-packs are available for preorder and the beverage is set to ship mid January. Hey if you preorder before January 5th 2009 you’ll get complimentary Tentacle Grape branded condoms or bumper stickers.

Beverage side effects are undisclosed but you might just need those complementary condoms, and maybe a few hundred extra ones.

[Tentacle Grape]

For reasons unknown to me and I’m sure many other Street Fighter fans out there: Capcom chose to include Rose in the home versions of Street Fighter IV. Rose had to be one of the most boring, useless un-memorable, un-inspired and crap characters in the Street Fighter Alpha series. She was absolute shite. Her only quirk was that she could reflect fireballs, she had more masculine legs than Chun-Li, gravity defying hair (which I’m sure Capcom would say was floating as a result of psycho powers) and a foot that looked like it bulging out of her high heel.

Rose was a really odd choice. There are many other, more worthy characters in the Alpha series that could’ve been placed in the game instead of Rose. I would’ve greatly welcomed Guy, Rainbow Mika, Sodom or Birdie.

Street Fighter IV is still gonna rock and at least we got Sakura and Cammy back. But honestly…Rose!?

I had many idea’s in my head of what Osaka would be like. This backwards place, with nothing to do, void of fun, boring as hell, with unfriendly folk and a horizon smogged in a mysterious blue hue. Within minutes of being in the place, every one of my horrendously negative notions (based on God knows what) were shattered instantly.

To be rather blunt: Osaka is the absolute shit. I officially stan for Osaka. After the initial first night of “Oh my God! I’m in Japan!” and “Holy f**k, that flight was f**king awful and I think my leg is going to drop off, ’cause I had zero leg room!” I was able to really take in Osaka and soak up every moment I was there. You soon begin to drift into normality and become an honorary dweller of Osaka whilst you’re there. It’s hard not to. It’s just that kind of place. Despite the stares from locals as you and your gaijin posse stroll through the streets, you do feel like you’re at home.

There are many little things about Osaka that make it so loveable, but when asked the question “What makes Osaka so great?” it’s hard to pinpoint exactly why. It just is. There’s always something to do and see in Osaka. Never a dull moment. There’s something in the air in Osaka that made my friends and I fall in love with the place and the entire time we were there we were dreading the day we’d have to leave.

I’d go back to Osaka in a heartbeat and would urge anybody who visits Japan, to visit Osaka.

Chun-Li’s theme has been remixed and re-arranged so many times, that it’s often hard to even take notice. But Tatsunoko VS Capcom has me sprung so badly, that I’ve been indulging in everything related to the game except playing it. (Curse Capcom for developing a great looking game, just to have Tastunoko licensing screw it’s chance of getting a western release!)

After a bunch of Street Fighter related games which featured not so much as a hint of classic theme’s and a bunch of ever-so-forgetful new ones; Tatsunoko VS Capcom see’s Capcom giving characters kick arse remixes of their classic themes! Yay!!!

Chun-Li’s Tatsunoko VS Capcom theme is for the lack of a better term, downright funky. It’s a cool take on her theme - staying true to its essence, but giving it a cool new twist. I especially love the bass and the guitars. This is probably one of my arrangements of Chun-Li’s theme. It’s great to hear a non CPS-2 mixed take of Chun-Li’s theme.

Listen: Chun-Li’s theme

Tatsunoko VS Capcom OST
© 2008 Capcom

For the mp3 players: Tatsunoko VS Capcom - Chun Li’s theme

Figma, the popular figure company, is selling a special collection of figures this month. For a limited time all figmas and nendoroids that come with the Merry Christmas golden seal (seen above) will include a cool santa hat and mantle.  A nice seasonal touch that I hope we’ll see more of in the future. Sure to bring some holiday cheer to your figure collection, merry Figmas!

Ok I’ll stop with the Figma puns.

[Figma]

Those two erhm… girls are dumbfounded not because of that woman’s awful fashion sense, not at all. Its because we just got our comments engine upgraded! Now you can reply to other comments in a threaded fashion, much like a forum, comments are now paged so some of our most commented posts wont take as much time to load and the layout for the comments also got a nice little facelift. In addition to that we’re bringing back open posts every week.

This is your first one guys, try out the threaded system, discuss your weekend, christmas, presents, ask for anime or game recommendations. Everything goes, its all up to you!  See you in the comments!

[tags]Open Post, Christmas[tags]

To celebrate the release of Fate / Unlimited Code, Capcom has teamed up with the Cure Maid Cafe in Akihabara to turn it into a Fate/Stay Night themed cafe. The event will feature themed dishes based on the game’s characters. Two main dishes, 7 drinks and 2 desserts as well as a special drink and a secret… something.

The event will also host an art show, figure preview, auctions and most likely maids cosplaying as Fate characters… cosplaying as maids.

[Akiba Keizai][tags]Anime, Video Games, FSN, Akihabara, Maids, Japan[tags]

Having been around when flash games first started popping up, I’ve been privy to some very… eccentric games, to say the least. However, very few, in fact none, have the truly insane vibe that I Made This You Play This We Are Enemies. That is insane as in clinically insane.

The ‘game’, a very crude plataformer, borders the line between demented ramblings and a conceptual masterpiece. There is really no point in trying to explain it, you just have to experience it for yourself, and as the game’s instructions clearly state, stop trying to ‘get it’.

Bonus: Beat the game for some videos that give a glimpse into the author’s mind.

[IMTYPTWAE]

With all consoles now having released their avatar systems, it was inevitable that a new futile comparison for superiority took place, luckily this one was funny. Games Radar has a feature where they compare all three systems in creating famous avatars. The results are pretty astounding. Take the Mario example above, both the Wii and the 360 do a pretty good job at it, while the last one looks exactly like my cousin Jose when my uncle threw him out of their house.

All in all the PS3 comes out as the worst system, as it tries to be too realistic and ends up being a creepy doll show forever stuck in the uncanny valley.

[Games Radar]

Every other member of staff that got credited in this trailer worked on a Kingdom Hearts game. Not news to us, as Tetsuya ‘most of my characters all look the damn same’ Nomura revealed that the KH team was working on this game long before there was a trailer. Which means there’s a high likely hood that Versus XIII will play just like a Kingdom Hearts game; except with out big footed teenagers and Disney. Organization XIII could well make an appearance though. There were enough floating blades, long corridors and black cloaks shown in the trailer. Square have become the masters of unoriginality and re-hash, so expect to see some strong Kingdom Hearts elements in this game.

Versus XIII is looking great though. Because this trailer not only showed enough for us to spin our own webs as to what the story may center around and who the characters may be, but it causes intrigue. From this trailer I gathered that…

• The main guy is rich.
• The main guy and his friends are big fans of KAT-TUN and The Backstreet boys.
• The girl squaring off against our blue haired hero is probably a good girl - possibly a princess who fights our hero due to a misunderstanding.
• The guys all sat in the conference room are possibly some form of powerful counselors, who will end up double crossing one another and hatching plans for personal gain and power which will ultimately corrupt them.
• The game centers around a crystal, because Square Enix said so.
• The game will probably feature a secret trailer to Kingdom Hearts III.

There! It may all be bullshit, but it’s something. Versus XIII’s trailer showed us enough we can formulate some ideas, unlike XIII’s - which just showed sections of gameplay which annoyingly gave absolutely nothing away and frankly, caused me not to care or even get remotely excited.

Versus XIII was always the game I was more drawn to out of the Final Fantasy: Fabula nova crystallis dealio. I just hope it doesn’t end up playing like some slap-dash version of Kingdom Hearts set in a new universe. It’d be such a shame if it did. Unless of course it caused the game to seriously rock as a result. If the main hero can do all the shit he did in the trailer, in-game; it would be pretty nifty and cool. Although I doubt he’ll be able to. And even if he is, you’d probably have to level him up to do it all.

I’m just waiting for Square Enix to announce this for Xbox 360 and PC.

Shots of this trailer were released yonks ago. God knows why it took so long for Square Enix to release it officially. Did this trailer do anything for you? Because it didn’t do a thing for me. This trailer doesn’t reveal anything more about the game than the E3 2008 trailer did. From this trailer it’s pretty much certain that the gunblade wielding hottie, the dude in the beanie hat and the red haired girl are allies, but we gathered this from before - it’s old news now. We knew we were going to get summons, we knew there’d be lots of robots, we knew there’d be lots of FMV. So what exactly new stuff did this trailer show? Nothing. What more do we know about the plot? Nothing. The game looks stunning graphically, but what’s new? It’s a given that any game Square Enix produce is going to look the business and they’ve got a lot of processing power to mess around with this generation.

Final Fantasy has fallen off big time. I say the series started to fall off from VII onwards, and some would say VI. Square Enix need to start putting more effort into the game play and the story of their Final Fantasy games. Good graphics can only have a gamer sprung for so long; and once this ‘wow’ factor wears off there needs to be solid gameplay and a tight story to keep gamers enthralled until the end. No 20 minute summoning sequence which features every particle effect under the sun and high action FMV sequence will be able to compensate for the fundamental short comings. I thought Final Fantasy XII was bloody awful. The graphics were brilliant, way more than I expected the PS2 to deliver; but it was boring to play and the story was crap, and the graphics meant jack shit once I came to these realizations.

I hope Final Fantasy XIII turns out to be a good game. It honestly doesn’t have to be, because it will break sales records regardless. But for all of the FF fans, the PS3 and Xbox 360 owning RPG lovers: I hope the game is solid and a return to form. Square do need to step their game up though, because there are several decent RPG’s releasing across all formats over the course of next year. PS3 owners already have an RPG masterpiece in the form of Valkyria chronicles, a game which got me excited in a way XIII didn’t and hasn’t as of yet.

Alright guys, after much deliberation we finally picked a winner from among the PILES (really not that many) of submissions we got to the Persona 4 giveaway. We judged originality, skill and entertainment value, it was a close call but in the end one emerged victorious.

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I actually got a chance to play this game back in October at an expo in the UK. But having gone to Japan last month, I got several chances to get hands on with Street Fighter IV and kick some challengers arses in the process, which was largely gratifying.

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