Today come to you two stories of real world insanity over virtual world crimes, its like a pulp fiction novel, only completely absurd. First up: romance, betrayal and revenge.

A 43 year old woman in Japan has been arrested for virtual murder of her online boyfriend’s Maple Story avatar. In-game the two characters were married and when one morning the woman found her character had been divorced overnight she log on to his account and deleted his character, effectively committing online murder. She faces 5 years in prison or a fine of up to $5000.

Next up, two teenagers in Amsterdam where sentenced to do community serviced after coercing a 13 year old boy into giving up a mask and an amulet in RuneScape. One boy got 200 hours, the other 160 hours of community service. At least no virtual lives were lost in this case.

[Yahoo News / News 24]

We are less than a few weeks away from the premier of the MapleStory anime, the character designs recently got released and frankly, we’re scared. These look like anything but MapleStory characters! With these kind of characters, HoboStory would be a much more fitting name.

This is really shocking because the game’s strongest point was its chibi, cute, cliche’d anime-ish designs, actually it wasn’t its biggest point, it was its only point. Now don’t get me wrong, a series about a bunch of hobos caught in a grindfest world, killing pigs in armor and jumping around sounds awesome, but not like this!

News that MapleStory, the side-scrolling MMORPG, was getting the anime treatment have been known for some time now. But just recently did we learn what spot would it occupy on TV Tokyo’s schedule. The series will begin airing on Sunday, October 7 at 8:30 am (so expect subs somewhere around Tuesday), taking the place of epic shonen, Tengen Toppa Gurren-Lagann.

But as many Gurren-Lagann fans say, Gurren-Lagann is too epic to end. Ever.

[ANN]

That’s right, folks! a whole new Harvest Moon is on the works for the Nintendo Wii. Where else would you find farming, milking, harvesting crops and selling your food to be so much fun?

the graphics are obvioulsy made simple and with lesser detail than other Wii games, but it’s that simple and cute feeling which makes us want to play non-stop, like Animal Crossing or Maple Story.

Expect this title pretty soon on your Wii. Where sowing the crops will be a million times funnier.

[Kotaku]

At the opening party of Nintendo of Korea, they showed a trailer for Maple Story DS. While it doesn’t show actual gameplay footage, we get a Maple game for not-PC for the 1st time.

Madhouse is working on an anime adaptation of Maple Story, the famous MMORPG. For those not in-the-know, Maplestory is a 2D side-scrolling game from Korean company Nexon. Since it release in 2003 the game has been played by over 50 million users. So far there is no more information, no indication if it will be a 3 episode OVA or a full fledged series.

[ANS]