Dark Diamond Studios

Greetings g1's and welcome to my new series "Japan Now!". This is my debut episode and will have weekly updates regarding the latest news from Japan.

Today I've got some really great news regarding the future of the Xbox 360 in Japan which may in turn trickle down to other countries. Square-Enix has released a promotion for 3 new RPGS coming to the 360 in the next year or so.

The 3 games are:

Star Ocean 4: The Last Hope in 2009. The game is supposed to take place centuries before the original game and will feature at least 5 different planets that you can journey to.

The Last Remnant on 11/20/2008. This game is actually going to be released for the PS3 and PC after its initial launch on the Xbox 360 and will not be a Xbox exclusive. It is supposed to have a battle system similar to Kingdom Hearts 2 and it has been stated that there will not be any turn based combat.

Infinite Undiscovery on 09/11/2008. This Xbox 360 exclusive title boasts that it will evolve the way rpgs are created. You will be able to "discover" battles and events which will make or break the world in the game.

Those are the release dates for Japan and it is being said that all 3 titles will be Xbox 360 exclusive titles.

I apologize for the quality of the footage. It was taken with my cell phone while holding my daughter in one arm and I did not originally plan to use it for a blog. I'll be sure to use a better camera and use both hands in the future.

While browsing through a few game stores, I came across some recent titles.

Survival Kids for the Wii which came out August 7th. The series, yea the series of Survival Kids started on the Gameboy back in 1999. The game was really a lot of fun and was a decent challange at the same time. Combine items to make tools, sleep, eat, drink and I am fairly certain the objective was to not um... die.

Mario Super Sluggers which has been out in Japan since June 19th but recently hit America August 25th. Yet another Mario title involving sports. No offense to the lovers of this game but that plumber really needs to have that bat shoved some place nice and deep.

Bimoji DS which is a game to help people to write "pretty kanji". It's been out since March 11th.



Also while out and about, I found much larger Xbox 360 sections in a few stores with titles like Soul Calibur 4, Too Human and Tales of Vesperia. All in all, the Xbox 360 is poised to take on the market in Japan and it would seem that a few developers realize that.

I did quite a bit of shopping today in search of props for my upcoming video game review series. I won't elaborate too much on the series but it should be a breath of fresh air from the game reviews of late. Don't expect anything to serious but don't expect an Asian version of the Angry Video Game Nerd either.

You CAN expect silliness to its maximum potential with some games you may or may not have seen written in some crazy language they call the "devil's tongue" or as it is modernly known "Japanese".

I went to a really awesome shop today in search of old Famicon games (the Japanese original NES) as I found my wife's old system and thought I should play a few classics. I ended up buying these:

Operation Wolf which was released on so many consoles and is also now available on the virtual console.

Super Star Wars... but I am thinking it has nothing to do with our Star Wars nor the SNES series.

Valkyrie no Bōken: Toki no Kagi Densetsu which was released in Japan only. It is also available on my Japanese Wii virtual console. My wife tells me it was quite popular. Score!

King's Knight which was released by our good friends at Square in both Japan and the US. As of March 24th, you can get it in both countries on the virtual console as well.


After this article had been posted, Kain_kusanagi had some game requests for me and for the first time since I had married my wife, I decided to joruney through some of her closets. What did I find?

The PC Engine Duo-R by NEC

The Duo-R with a CD that is likely to have hentai girls and or Japanese pop idols, god knows.

A NeoGeo controller.

Ah the Japanese Super Nintendo

The Japanese Sega Saturn.

A Sonic the Hedgehog game for the Sega Saturn called Sonic Jam.

That's about it for my shopping day in Japan but this series will increase in detail as time goes on with more videos, photos and interviews. Expect coverage from gaming conventions like the Tokyo Game Show as they happen. If you have questions or requests, feel free to send me a private message.

There are larger sites out there like Kotaku that have a professional team pumping out information on a daily basis but if you are looking for something a little more personal, look no further.