12.21.05
Crusade against the bad guys
Glad it’s a slow news day. My wireless connection was intermittent at best, and it’s only this late in the afternoon I manage to properly check the news without being thrown offline. As with everything driving me up the wall the last week, I blame the builders across the road (as usual, making such a racket as to wake the dead).
So to business… Welcome news for PSP owners: it has a new hard transparent cover (looks like this) to prevent unnecessary scratches, and of course, to keep the screen pristine. On sale in Japan from 24th Dec., costs around £9.50. Meanwhile… All the sites are yelling about the fifth anniversary of Phantasy Star Online – sorry, don’t know enough or care enough to comment much. And another game for the Xbox360 in development called Cry On…yes, how depressing. A girl -3D anime style- and her Giant companion, by the name of Boggle (who can incidentally shrink, only enlarging for fighting purposes), have a tear-jerking adventure.. or so they’re saying. Yes, another RPG, hoping to capture the minds of the Japanese youth, I’d imagine.
Last but not least, Jack Thompson-esque announcement from the ruling party (for the last 50 odd years with a year’s break), LDP… something about tightening laws on child porn and extreme violence in media (for those of you who can read Japanese, feel free to check out the statement). Apparently they’ve come to the conclusion that not only are the mental health of the youth at risk, but also the adults who partake in certain violent games. To my knowledge though, child porn was made illegal quite a while back… and the nerve of those politicians to cite porn in the same sentence as games… tut tut.
I realise I did say I’d translate the Shin Onimusha site, but please spare me the effort of reading through all that – suffice to say it’s one detailed website! Categories, from left: Story, Summary, Character, Movie, News, Radio, Extras and Promotion. The game’s set in 1598, around the time of Hideyoshi Toyotomi’s fragile reign (he was an ‘apprentice’ to Nobunaga Oda before him)… so it’s historically pretty accurate. If you’re interested but can’t decipher the jist of the site, feel free to contact me. Otherwise, enjoy a nice history lesson via Wikipedia :)