You go to Japan. You gotta do some karaoke. It’s an unwritten law. After all, Japan is the home of it (depending on who you speak to) and nowhere else in the world quite revels in it like Japan. Whilst the full on karaoke experience in the Western word is rather expensive and only of real value if you go with lots of people – in Japan it’s affordable and won’t burn holes in your pockets. Well…if you ease up on the food and drinks it won’t anyway. Everybody from school kids, to salary men, to part timers can just wander  into a Big echo to drop some karaoke un-planned and scrape together some Yen to belt their Nihongo classics, the Oricon’s chart toppers and the Eigo hits.

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 Lawrence Lessig is right, we truly live in the age of remix, sweet and utterly awesome remixes. Like this rendition of Corridors of Time, the theme song for Zeal Kingdom in Chrono Trigger, which is beautifully arranged and sung by Gacktpoid. Gackpoid is by itself a remix of the voice of Gackt. There’s so much remixing here that its not even funny, just awesome.

So again, enjoy some of Yasunori Mitsuda ‘s work, on an electronic arrangement, with vocals added by anonymous, sung by the disembodied voice of a J-rock idol. Is that convoluted enough for you?

DTM, makers of Vocaloid will be releasing a new version of its software that features the voice of J-Rock legend Gackt. This, supposedly, to finally bring a male voice to the vocaloid platform and to cash in on Gackt’s fame. This however is probably the first in a new trend of bringing famous voices to the Vocaloid platform. You can listen to a sample track of GACKPOID above.

If this goes well it’s easy to foresee periodic releases with the top voices of J-pop, J-rock and even voice actresses. Fanboys and fangirls would probably pay ridiculous prices for them and the Internet would in turn be filled with yet more Vocaloid videos. I think I’m much more scared than excited, what about you?

[IT Media]

Today Square Enix opened the doors of its North American merchandise online store, it features items that have been common in Japan for some years now and that you could only get by import in this side of the ocean. However, a quick browse around the store and you’ll see these are not the cheap knock-off stuff you are used to see on eBay. This is the real deal, expensive, bling your heart out silver jewelry! There is also a lot of figures, plushies (chocobo!) and even a SHINRA Employee ID Card Case, for any official SHINRA business.

Visit with a wide open mind and an even wider wallet, and hurry because the stuff is selling out fast!

[Square Enix Official Online Store]

In a recent interview John Yamamoto, Square-Enix top dog, said that the company is paying lots of attention to the western gaming markets, specially Europe, which have been anecdotically forsaken from many games from the company. Yamamoto also said that they are planning on developing more western-styled games and are already looking into buying a couple of studios.

Ok now, bear with me as I go about doing some basic logic.

• Square Enix = Final Fantasy
• FF lead males are often based on androgynous Japanese musicians, like the above
• Square Enix wants to make western games

Therefore I conclude the next Final Fantasy game will look a little something like this:

You heard it here first.

[Quick Journal / Kotaku]