Seven Seas Entertainment recently announced what manga series they are planning to release in January 2014 and of these releases, a couple of them include some of their recent acquisitions. Interestingly enough, at the moment each of these manga are set to be released on January 7th, but that date will likely change to spread out throughout the month considering the company has six different manga volumes being released in January, including the second volumes for the aforementioned recent pick-ups, Monster Musume and Love in Hell.
The full list of titles coming out in January can be found below:
Love in Hell Volume 2
Dictatorial Grimoire 2: Snow White
My Boyfriend is a Vampire Volumes 11-12
Haganai: I Don’t Have Many Friends Volume 5
Monster Musume Volume 2
Alice in the Country of Hearts: Mad Hatter’s Late Night Tea Party Volume 2
Yesterday Sentai Filmworks announced who will be handling the key roles in their upcoming English release of Medaka Box. The main characters will be voiced by the below people:
Shelley Calene-Black as Medaka Kurokami
Andrew Love as Zenkichi Hitoyoshi
Hilary Haag as Hansode Shiranui
Tyler Galindo as Kouki Akune
Maggie Flecknoe as Mogane Kikajima
The ADR Director for the series is Steven Foster while additional voices will be done by Brittney Karbowski, Monica Rial, Ross Bautsch, Luci Christian, Rozie Curtis, Joshua Sheltz, David Wald, Meg McDonald, Greg Ayres, Rachel Logue, Laurel Schroeder, Ben Warner, Dylan Godwin, Robert L. Meek, Parke Fech, Mike Yager, Elizabeth Bunch, David Matranga, and Anthony Hunter.
Currently Medaka Box is set to be released in North America on August 27th on Blu-ray and DVD and for those who don’t know, the story takes place in Hakoniwa Academy, a school with many secrets. After the newly elected Student Council President Medaka Kurokami creates a suggestion box where people can submit their problems, Zenkichi finds himself becoming a member of the Student Council. However the secrets of the academy are many and the powerful Medaka will soon come to understand just what this school is like.
Back when Dead Rising 3 was announced to the public, many past fans were concerned about the fact that what was once a colorful, often wacky, game had become something gritty and serious and completely devoid of the charm that the Dead Rising series had.
Well, since that reveal Capcom has been trying to show that Dead Rising 3 is indeed still the same game everyone knows and loves and the latest batch of screenshots of the game continue to prove this point. As you can see below, players can do everything from wear dresses while wearing a Servbot head and placing traffic cones on zombies’ heads, fighting zombies with a beam sword in a suit of armor and even boxing while wearing a bull mascot.
TownCraft Developer:Flat Earth Games Publisher: Flat Earth Games Platforms: iPad Release Date: 24th July 2013 Price: $5.49 – Available Here
Overview Welcome to TownCraft. A quaint and casual game for you to relax to. So here you are, smack bang in the middle of two kingdoms with nothing to your name. Gather resources from the world around you and build yourself a town for others to envy. Let the construction begin!
I hear Eden Valley is nice. Mind the apples though…
Story TownCraft doesn’t really have a story, not surprising considering the type of game it is, though it does have some vague details. You are back in the days of olde, making your way in the medieval wilderness. You desire to build a kingdom of your own and elevate it to a status of great revere. To the west lies King Oligarchy, a narcissistic king, and to the east is Queen Omnibus, a warrior who ‘tames’ surrounding kingdoms with her sword. You sit in the middle. Each of the three available maps also contains story elements of their own. Eden’s Valley takes place before the King’s Feast, for which you must help prepare, whilst Lake Placid and Rock and Pool have you fending off impending threats. These scenarios alter the dialogue of the travellers you happen by and change the quests that they present you.
Does this seem like a fire hazard to anyone else?
Gameplay TownCraft has a fairly simple playstyle, especially to those familiar with sim builders. Search the land for material, meet the requirements for building and then…build. To begin with, the game features a tutorial mode that provides a step by step walkthrough for the basic principles of the game. Starting from crafting your very first hatchet, the tutorial progresses into more complex elements, such as gathering the materials for a house. The tutorial is not compulsory, so you can skip straight into the game if you so desire.
Once you feel confident enough in your TownCraft knowledge, you can progress to the game proper and begin your own adventure. Stranded once again in a wilderness, it its up to you to forage and craft without a guide. However, unlike tutorial mode, all building options and menus are available from the outset. As you progress, you gather handy recipes, detailing what components are needed to build an object, in case you ever forget. As your town upgrades, NPCs can be found wandering the main street. These characters engage in general conversation and may pass quests for you to complete, such as gathering twenty pieces of wheat. These characters may also join your young community, setting up shop in…well, your shop. You are then able to purchase their wares in your ever going quest of civilisation.
Following its own style as a true casual game, TownCraft also possesses a cheat option, a fairly rare option in games nowadays. In the pause screen, simply hitting cheat will endow you with a plethora of items, saving you a lot of time and work. If you’d rather build your palace from the get go, one click is all you need. Also included in the pasue menu is the option to spawn the various NPC classes. With these option combined, you can go from a stick to a hustling, bustling city in a manner of minutes.
It means timidness. He’s a jerk…and his name is Iceberg.
Visuals and Audio TownCraft has a very simplistic art style to it. The player character is a chibi, giving the game a cartoonish and casual air. The world itself also gives off a very clean vibe. As the world is divided into square tiles, it appears very organised and, once again, simple. The clean blues and greens create a visually soft world, with even the reds and oranges scattered throughout the map being subdued. The game allows you to truly appreciate the visual, via the menu option that allows you to turn off the menu interface. You are also able to view the area far beyond where you’re character is currently standing, allowing you to simply watch.
The game has a very pleasant and slow paced soundtrack behind it. As you journey through the wilderness, mellow tunes play behind you. Piano, acoustic guitar and flutes are used to create a calm atmosphere. Most notably, the music activates during certain events, such as the flute beginning when day breaks. More often than not though there will be no background music whatsoever.
Totally legit. No cheating. Just crafted 411 hatchets by hand…
Overall TownCraft is casual gaming to the truest extent. No advertisements, no micro-transactions, no “rate this game” pop-ups. Nothing but the game. There is no sense of urgency involved at all, allowing you to play at your own pace. The mechanics are simple and there is a fairly wide variety of objects to gather, mine and build. All in all, TownCraft is a game that lets you sit back, relax and enjoy.
Capsule Computers review guidelines can be found here.
Myths and legends are always romanticised and there are plenty of series’ that like to center around that idea of demons and ghosts existing, sometimes they just can’t get it right but sometimes that just get it spot on! Let me introduce you to Hakaba Kitaro, this series definitely did it right. It looks old but isn’t, it tells ancient stories but doesn’t feel ancient itself, it just does it right and although the series has been going on for many many years and there has been a whole bunch of reiterations I still feel it stands its ground and is good enough to still be relevant in this day and age.
Story
The story of Hakabe Kitaro is one that I really like. Basically it follows the life of a small child named Kitaro who happens to be the last one left in the “Ghost Tribe” which were a race of demon/ghost people who used to live on land but were oppressed by us humans once we had a good enough grasp on science and weaponry. Kitaro’s parents are found by a man who was investigating a strange appearance of a ghost in a hospital, they were eventually found dead and were buried by the man, that’s when Kitaro was born. He crawled out of his mothers grave and the man who had found his parents had a little freak out and, more or less, ditched poor baby Kitaro. Eventually this man raises Kitaro and tries to integrate him into human life but it really doesn’t go to well because the two are not fans of each other but that’s just the way it goes I guess. I found the story to be really good because it was written in such a perfect way. There’s the story that we’re all given, the one about this small ghost-child living in normal society, but it’s all the little stories that make up the big stories that I found made this series great. Another note, before I move on, is that they somehow shift between comedy and just dark situations in a way that you barely realise and even when you do it’s as if it doesn’t matter because they’ve done it so well.
Every couple of episodes Kitaro will come across another obstacle to deal with or another person/mythical being to help and it goes on like that for the entirety of the small series (well until the last few episodes, but I don’t want to wreck it for you) yet it doesn’t get old and it doesn’t get boring, instead you’re excited to see the next mythical being that will cause some sort of trouble for Kitaro. The other thing that is great about this series is the very metaphorical look on things, every situation is dealt with in different ways and it makes you really think about which way is the right one. Do we go about things the greedy, human way or do use are bare instincts (like the ghosts/demons) to determine what it is we should do? It’s interesting to see the divide between ways of life. There was an episode where Kitaro wanted more things, material items I’m talking about, yet he had no idea about jobs or money or why humans even want it but throughout the episode, after countless mistakes, he realises that money controls the human and really it’s the only way to survive. The fact that the story forces you to think without exactly telling you what to think is what made this series fantastic.
Visuals
When it comes to art style, Hakabe Kitaro really takes the cake. The entire series is dark, both story-wise and aesthetically, I found myself watching the first few episodes entirely in the dark just so I could see the screen clearer. The entire series has this filter over it to make it look like it’s an old film and as if it was shot on some crappy, B-Grade camera and it just outright works to the series’ advantage. It actually felt like the Anime wasn’t an Anime but a Manga that was brought to life, what I’m trying to say is that it was like watching a Manga instead of just watching another Anime. The characters, the scenery, everything just seemed like a “Manga brought to life”. They also managed to put a great deal of colour into seemingly dark scenes, I’m talking light greens and hot pinks in places where those colours should absolutely not be BUT it works, don’t ask me exactly how I just know that I wasn’t annoyed or upset by the contradiction in colour and in my books that’s a good sign. The one thing I didn’t like was the use of CGI in the series, it wasn’t super bad, it just felt out of place in some scenes and I though that it really wasn’t necessary.
Audio
I’m going to start on a big note here, this was something they DIDN’T do but I’m really happy about: it was entirely in its original Japanese dub, there was no English dub and I think that was on purpose because there’s no way such an old-school, Japanese style of Anime could’ve been enjoyed in English, not only that but the Japanese voice actors were spot-on with their tones and the voices. The music was extremely traditional and, considering it is set in the 1950s, it fit like a glove. You had the mixing of the traditional Japanese music and a bit of the Western style which is, obviously, symbolic of the change in times. Some of the sounds in the series were fairly haunting, they got the semi-horror vibe done really well, it definitely had me glued to the screen.
ExtrasÂ
There are actually a couple great extras on the discs. You’ve got your regular Clean Opening, story board clips, trailers for other series’, and so on but the one really cool extra is the “Interview with Shigeru Mizuki” who created the series and has worked on it for many, many years. It’s just nice to see that little bit more, I know it’s not a great deal but the fact that it IS an interview with the series creator is fairly special and it should be brought to the forefront.
Overall
Hakaba Kitaro is a great little series, you can watch it in a few hours, because it’s only eleven episodes, and not get bored of it. It’s one of those series’ that has you thinking about it when you’re not watching it, it has you craving it when you can’t possibly watch it. There aren’t a lot of shows that can do that. To enjoy this though I feel that you have to be a fan of the semi-horror, yokai-style, demon, ghost, supernatural types of series’ and it really doesn’t hurt to know a little bit about Japanese mythology, it adds to the series, it really does. But really, at the end of the day, the series only really had one or two things wrong with it and they were fairly small. If you’re into the ancient, supernatural stuff don’t pass this one up.
Capsule Computers review guidelines can be found here.
This year at the Penny Arcade Expo in Australia, or PAXAus, us here at Capsule Computers had an opportunity to have a chat with the team members over at Jigxor about their upcoming game, Dungeon Dashers. At the Penny Arcade Expo, we had a chat with both Andy and Nathan from Jigxor. During our chat, we talk about the way the game plays, the inspirations behind the game and even discussing the amazing soundtrack behind the Dungeon Dashers game.
Dungeon Dashers is a turn-based fast-paced tactical strategy game with a dungeon crawling gameplay posit. It’s exceedingly fun. Be sure to check out the official websiteand our interview below for more info.
Over the weekend at the Australian Penny Arcade Expo, PAXAus, we had a look at the upcoming indie game from developer ManFightDragon (Or Lance McDonald) called Black Annex. Black Annex is an isometric tactical game with a similar look and feel to games of an early generation, like Syndicate and X-Com.
At the expo, we took the opportunity to take a seat with Lance and talk about Black Annex. During our chat, we speak briefly about the game and its influences. Be sure to check out the interview in the box below.
Be sure to check out the official Black Annexwebsite for more info.
A few days ago we saw a new trailer for Disgaea D2: A Brighter Darkness which gave Sicily, Laharl’s supposed sister, her English debut and today NIS America has released a handful of English screenshots for the game, including one that has Sicily in it.
The screenshots can be found below and feature each of the classic three characters talking with one another as well as some screenshots of the battle system, item world and more. I wonder how long it’ll be until we see a blue version of a certain character as well as a bustier version of another…
Today some new details for Pikmin 3 came out from Nintendo as well as a handful of new screenshots and the Australian version of the game’s box art. For those who don’t know, Pikmin 3 is currently set to be released in Australia and New Zealand on July 27th and August 4th in North America and while a few details have been revealed already, new information has been revealed today.
Pikmin 3 will feature the Rock Pikmin that can take the most damage and smash through glass and enemy exoskeletons as well as a pink Winged Pikmin that carries things through the air and lifts blockades to unlock new paths. In the game itself players will be able to access three new characters in the form of Alph, Brittany and Charlie who must save their home planet Koppai from starvation.
As such, the three have traveled to PNF-404 in search of food and they must make use of the helpful Pikmin to survive against the hostile inhabitants of the planet. Outside of the story mode players will also be able to access a Bingo Battle multiplayer mode as well as a Mission Mode. It’s interesting to note that anyone who picks up Pikmin 3 from the eShop between July 27th to September 21st will also be able to pick up The Wonderful 101 for 30% off from the eShop whenever that is released.
Those familiar with the Elder Scrolls series probably noticed the lack of a certain daedra in Skyrim, one with a habit of casting fireball spells and being more annoying than dangerous. I am speaking of course about the Scamps, but with Bethesda‘s first MMO, Elder Scrolls Online, in the works, the company is bringing back the little guys as enemies.
You can check out the Scamps in action below and it seems they still feature their favorite fireball spells and have received a facelift from what we saw back in Oblivion. Also shown off in the trailer is a quick glimpse at the game‘s first person combat system.
Seven Seas Entertainment recently announced what manga series they are planning to release in January 2014 and of these releases, a couple of them include some of their recent acquisitions. Interestingly enough, at the moment each of these manga are set to be released on January 7th, but that date will likely change to spread out throughout the month considering the company has six different manga volumes being released in January, including the second volumes for the aforementioned recent pick-ups, Monster Musume and Love in Hell.
Yesterday 
