Japan Gaming Guide

Bedroom coders got a shot in the arm recently when Microsoft announced plans to sell homebrew XNA games over Xbox live. XNA game studio has been freely available for some time now - users can create and distribute Xbox 360 games to other fledgling developers. The new service will see games listed for 200-800 Microsoft points, with the designer getting up to 70% of the revenue.

Hopefully we’ll see a lot of innovation on the service - at just 200 MS points we can see a simple fun title doing really well.

The service will launch next autumn in North America and will be rolled out globally in 2009.

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Sony Computer Entertainment Japan is sending giant cats into Tokyo to try and woo the public into buying lots of cat related stuff on the Playstation store. On Sunday the cats danced and let the braver kids have their picture taken alongside them. If you missed them they’ll be back again on August 16th.

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The Japanese version of chess has a great deal to offer players of the Western variant. A number of the pieces share similar moves, although the character of the game is markedly different. All the pieces can be powered up when they get in the opponents half of the board which means sudden attacks can be decisive, and as long as you have a few pieces left on the board you still have a chance of getting in a quick finish and coming out victorious.

A version of the game is about to launch on Wiiware, and will let you play online against other people in Japan, for 1000 points.

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The new DS game Legend of Starfish came out a couple of weeks ago. We haven’t tried this but you might want to take a look at the official site. Looks like a cute and cuddly action game.

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While most of the world’s eyes have been on E3, the China Digital Entertainment Expo quietly went ahead in Shanghai. The annual event features a lot of the online titles popular in these parts. Booth babes are still very much in evidence here - no surprise then that one of the most popular games on display was Dead or Alive Online.

FIFA Online was also on display, this has been on release for a while, but only in South Korea.

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There’s a new Harvest Moon game coming to Wii this year. Famitsu published a whole bunch of screenshots. There are all sorts of animals to populate your farm with this time around. There are cows, sheep, horses, ducks, goats and of course your faithful pet dog. According to the text the farmyard animals will be joined by more exotic fare such as lions, elephants and ostriches. As if that’s not enough, there will also be a nature Goddess to keep happy if you want to ensure a fruitful harvest who will no doubt be handing you a few quests to break up the farming.

If previous games in the series are anything to go by, you’ll also be able to stride into town to get yourself what every good farmer needs: a wife. Impress her with vegetables, or by riding your goat.

The Harvest Moon series is always top quality and a nice break from all the shooting and maiming we get up to in most of our gaming hours. Can’t wait to try this out.

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The latest Wario game comes to Wii later this month, Wario Land: Shake is coming out July 24th. Unsurprisingly, the game will involve shaking the Wiimote. A lot. You’ll shake to attack, grab items and shake enemies so that they drop those o so lovely coins.

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Schoolkids in a Tokyo school got hit with the lucky stick recently. The Nintendo DS is being used to teach them English in classes. The whole thing is part of a trial by Nintendo - participating schools get 40 free DS consoles and English training software.

English teaching is a bit patchy in Japanese schools, it’s not uncommon to have teachers with little practical experience of using the language backed up by the occasional foreign kid on a gap year. Anything that gives them a little variety is bound to be an improvement.

The kids say they love it, but teachers have understandably mixed feelings. We think it’s great, there’s loads of potential for using games in schools, and if English teachers can be consigned to the wicked dustbin of history then hurrah!

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Rainy season is in full swing - so why walk to the shops when you can download these:

Famicom (500 points)

Chack ‘n Pop
Donkey Kong 3

Super Famicom (900 points)

Fire Emblem: Thracia 776

Master System (500 points)

Space Harrier

Mega Drive (700 points)

Shining Force 2: The Ancient Seal

PC Engine (600 points)

Kiki Kaikai
Darius Plus
Blood Gear

Neo Geo (900 points)

Shin Samurai Spirits
Big Tournament Golf

MSX

Relics (800 points)
Eggy (700 points)

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A Tales of Vesperia demo hit the Japanese marketplace a few days ago. I took it for a whirl, and it’s pretty good. The graphics are absolutely phenomenal. The animation looks like 2d animation done in 3d if that makes any sense.

It didn’t seem hugely innovative as far as the gameplay went. Click through dialogue was followed by a wander round a forest maze looking for chests and fighting generic creatures. The real time battles were pretty good, a tutorial might have helped - I mostly just ran around chopping things but suspect that cunning use of the shoulder buttons might have unleashed some more of the very cool special effects that my button mashing scratched the surface of.

Always hard to judge these things on a quick play, but the verdict so far is that this will be a pretty decent RPG that will appeal to genre fans, but probably won’t warrant 60 hours playtime from anyone else.

Click through for more screenshots.

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