There is a cultural phenomenom in Japan known as visual novels. They are a genre of video game which is largely text based and tells a story with imagery along-side words. A very popular sub-genre of visual novels is romance. That is where Hatoful Boyfriend (or Heartful Boyfriend) comes in.
Hatoful Boyfriend is a romance visual novel, setting a precedent in visual novel wierdness. You play as a girl looking for love after transferring to a new school. What’s that? You want to know what school you transfer to? Oh, well it’s none other than The St. PidgeoNation’s Institute!
In case you didn’t realise from the images, this is indeed a game in which you must romance pidgeons. As crazy as it sounds, yes pidgeons are now potential love interests, for humans. Well at least in the crazy world of Hatoful Boyfriend.
The game allows you to play through an in depth story featuring many alternate endings (each featuring a different eventual pidgeon partner). Unfortunately as of posting, only a japanese version of the game exists. So unless you can read Japanese, you’re going to have a hard time seducing your favourite pidgeon (I personally like Shu, who is pictured above).
For those who are interested in checking Hatoful Boyfriend out, it is available for free download on it’s official website here.
Leave a comment below letting us know what you think of this beautiful story of love between a girl and her pidgeons.
You may have seen replica lancers well… everywhere. But these real to life looking models have nothing compared to this recently discovered fan made creation. If you are willing to enter a bidding war, you can have your very own, automatic Nerf Lancer. Not only does this Nerf Lancer shoot out actual Nerf darts but it also has a working chainsaw.
A Gizmodo reader created this replica and has posted up a video which you can see below that shows the gun in action. I’m sure after watching that video MasterAbbott is digging through the Capsule Computers vaults trying to scrounge money for whatever this replica will cost. But if he really wants it, he’s going to have to enter a bit of a bidding war because this replica is for sale on eBay and can be bidded on here.
Dance in the Vampire Bund: The Complete Series Studio: Shaft Publisher: MADMAN / FUNimation Languages: English Dub, Japanese Dub with English subs Release Date: 17-08-2011 Price: $59.95 Blu-ray/DVD – Buy Now! Overview:
There are many different types of anime that can be considered a bit controversial in their time. Usually it is due to the content that is shown. For example, the anime Strike Witches involved girls flying around in either swimsuits or with no pants on at all, and some could call it controversial because of that. On the other hand we have the recently released Dance in the Vampire Bund.
Dance in the Vampire Bund originally started as a manga series created by Nozomu Tamaki back in 2006. The series is still going on in Japan today and last year they created an anime adaptation. Now FUNimation has localized the series for release in North America, though there is something a bit different about Dance in the Vampire Bund, the main character is a sexualized female vampire that has the body of a young girl. With FUNimation’s release being uncensored, how does the show stand up to the light of day?
Story:
What would you do if there were real life vampires living among you right now? Of course that is a question that most of us don’t even have to think about. Though in the world of Dance in the Vampire Bund, supposed vampire attacks have been on the rise and a Japanese television show has brought together a number of people to pose the question about the vampire’s existence.
The members being asked are a comedian, a manga creator who writes stories about vampires, an intelligent professor, a pretty looking but air-headed model and a handsome actor who acts in the live action adaptation of the manga creator’s works. During the show, a special guest appears and says she herself is a vampire and also has the arm of the vampire causing the various attacks with her. The entire show itself is a set-up for the rogue vampire and is also the stage where the Princess of all the vampires in the world reveals their existence.
Her name is Mina Tepes, a young looking girl with blond hair from Romania. She may appear innocent at first, but she is a direct descendant of Vlad the Impaler, the original vampire. By revealing their existence on live television, Mina lets the world know that vampires do indeed exist and she explains that she has a plan to create a special country only for vampires out of an abandoned bund (piece of land). Though things aren’t going to be quite that simple for the newly revealed vampire princess, not only are there political forces against her, but even those of her own kind lurking in the darkness.
Although she has not only just revealed that their long hidden race exists, but has also declared she will create a Vampire Bund for them, Mina has her own thoughts. Of course what else could it be but a high school boy? The high School boy in question is named Akira; though Akira has a unique problem of his own, the fact that he is suffering amnesia and barely remembers anything about himself, let alone the vampire princess.
Through a number of circumstances, Akira works to protect Mina and put together his shattered memories. Who exactly is Akira and why does Mina work so hard to get him to remember a “promise” they made so many years ago.
Dance in the Vampire Bund’s story is rather enjoyable. At first the show appears to follow the “monster of the week” routine but quickly sheds that limitation as the intricacies of the vampire world slowly unravel and reveal themselves. Vampire Bund’s storyline can be boiled down to a romance story and misunderstandings between Mina and Akira, political maneuverings and blackmailing, as well as a small tinge of a school drama thrown in.
That isn’t to say that there aren’t plenty of bloody fights to expect and each fight sequence has a nice build up that explains what is going on and provides a decent amount of storyline. Akira’s amnesia, combined with Mina and her two-sided personality should help keep the viewer interested and eager to watch the next episode, especially when things start to heat up on the second disc when it is revealed that not even some of the vampires agree with Mina’s bund idea. Artwork:
Any anime follower who sees that the show was created by Shaft Studio should know roughly what to expect here. The animation they use is rather effective at times and provides enough darkness and shadow to create a gothic-styled atmosphere. The color palette is extremely varied and vivid, with the environment sometimes being full of darkness and other times being quite colorful, especially with the vibrant looking Mina taking center stage quite often.
Shaft’s style of extreme zoom-ins return as the show often zooms into a character’s eye or a specific body part. There is also a number of times that the screen will flash to pure red or yellow which is a bit odd to say the least, and almost appears like the show has had an extreme censor color in the entire screen. There are also plenty of moments when the characters are talking to each other. There is very little actual body animation during conversation which makes the whole experience feel superficial at times.
That being said, the character designs themselves, barring Mina though she will be addressed shortly, are rather plain. Akira has your generic main male character look and the other characters in the show are designed rather simply and don’t break many molds as far as looks are concerned. Now earlier I mentioned that Dance in the Vampire Bund could be a bit controversial, and the reason is Mina herself.
Mina may be many centuries old, but nearly all the time throughout the show she appears to be no older than twelve years old. This means that her body is exactly that developed and she has acts as though there is nothing wrong with that at all. Early on in the series, Akira has to cover Mina in a special lotion that protects vampires from turning to dust in the sun called Shade Gel. Mina then strips out of her clothes leaving only her panties on. Akira then has to rub the lotion all over her body and, being as FUNimation released the series uncensored, she is entirely nude. There are a number of other scenes where Mina is either fully nude or extremely close to it.
Now I’ve seen plenty of anime and the nudity on display in Dance in the Vampire Bund isn’t really there for fan service portions, but more to show that Mina cares little about how she is perceived and even does it to make Akira uncomfortable. While this may not bother me, some viewers may be a little uncomfortable at the number of times they will see twelve year old looking bared breasts on a centuries old vampire. Audio:
FUNimation’s Dance in the Vampire Bund release provides both the original Japanese dub as well as the English dub for those who prefer not to read about what is happening at any given time. The original Japanese voice work is well suited enough, but the true test is with the English cast. Unfortunately not a lot of the English voice workers really stand out from the crowd. As she did in the graphical department however, Mina is given a great voice by veteran Monica Rial.
As for the actual music, there really isn’t a lot to mention because most of the background music doesn’t do a great job standing out, except for occasionally during a battle. The opening theme “Friends” by Aiko Nakano is an enjoyable piece, though something you may begin to fast forward through the third time through. The ending song is “Tsumeato” by Hibiku and is actually used twice throughout the show to different ending videos. The piece actually is much more impressive when listened to during the second ending sequence, simply because the first one is only a still image that is unimpressive and lacking.
Characters:
Dance in the Vampire Bund has a rather large quantity of characters, which helps reinforce the large scale of the vampire world they are trying to express. This creates a small problem however, as the anime tends to only focus on the two main characters and a little bit on one of the side characters with little actual character development outside of these three.
Our hero is a high school boy named Akira. Akira lost all of the memories of his past and only makes it through his high school days through the support of others, especially his close female friend Yuki. His life as a relatively normal high schooler ends when Mina names him her servant and head protector. Once Mina enters his school he begins to recover some of his memories, and finds that he is much more than human, especially with that weakness to silver…
Mina Tepes is the main heroine of Dance in the Vampire Bund and is also the Princess of the vampire race. She has the appearance of a twelve year old child but actually has lived for centuries longer. Her childish and cute demeanor may be how she acts openly, but beneath that is a cunning and brutal ruler who will stoop to anything to fulfill her wishes. Even if this means kidnapping a small child and threatening his life only to get what she wants. She has a deep affection for Akira and can become very agitated whenever her connection with him is threatened.
Finally out of the main characters, we have Akira’s best friend Yuki. Despite his loss of memory Yuki has always cared for Akira and helped him despite his previous inability to help himself. She feels initially feels threatened by Mina due to her closeness with Akira, but after the Student Council President Nanami goes missing and believed dead, she realizes Mina is much more than just a threat to her crush. Surprisingly Yuki undergoes some of the most character development throughout the series as she often provides narratives at the end of an episode and comes to accept the changes in the world around her and adapt to them.
Extras:
There are a few extras to be had on the discs, though a number of it is promotional material. This includes the original commercials for the show when it was advertised in Japan as well as the promotional video that was shown. We are also given the standard clean opening and closing video and a number of trailers for either recently released anime from FUNimation or upcoming releases.
Besides this promotional material, the Intermission 1-12 is quite enjoyable. This intermission offers twelve different scenes that take pages from Nozomu Tamaki’s manga and are given narration by the original Japanese voice cast. These intermissions help fill in gaps of the story and provide additional story information on some of the characters.
Overall:
In a world where vampires and werewolves have been corrupted by a certain novel series which shall go unsaid, it is refreshing to see a new outlook on these two monster races. The focus is heavy on the vampires and Mina herself is quite obviously the highlight of the show. Some people may have a small issue with the nudity in the show but it is not something that viewers should be concerned about, as it is not something flaunted heavily nor even focused on when it is occurring.
There are a number of strange decisions with the animation and the plot, although full of twists and occasional action, may be a bit slow for some as political maneuverings, no matter how vicious, are not everyone’s cup of tea. Despite this Dance in the Vampire Bund provides an enjoyable watch that should make vampire story lovers happy as well as provide a bit of romance to sweeten the deal.
I give Dance in the Vampire Bund: The Complete Series
When all seemed quiet on the Sony front, and PSN was back up and awake
Something still weighed on the minds of the execs, that annoying PSJailbreak
So off to the lawyers they ran once again, “guys quickly draw us up a new brief,
Anything semi-legal that allows us to round up those hackers, modders and thieves”
Meanwhile back in the suburbs sits Dave at his desk, consoles piled up on the floor,
The kids are in bed and fast asleep when he hears a loud rapping knock on the door
“How are you Sir”, says the man in black, could you escort us to your garage please,
“Wow, why does one man need 100 consoles, Sir what are you doing with these.
You’re coming with us, to a cold dark place then we’re throwing away the key,
All for trying to sell something everyone knows you can get on the net for free.
In a world first and jokes aside, South African police have reported the arrest of a foreign national in raids relating to Playstation 3 jailbreaking and modding in a Johannesburg residential property. Finance and Special operations director Jacques Botha confirmed the arrest, saying the suspect will remain in custody until he faces the Specialised Commercial crims court. Police acted after receiving multiple complaints from South African Federation against copyright theft.
With assistance from the SARS Computer Forensic labs, officers were able to obtain PS3 consoles and harddrives worth about $14000 as well as original and pirated software and jailbreak devices. Governments and law enforcement groups involved in the worldwide raids ensure they are serious about copyright and circumvention and will continue with raids and arrests. Despite the annoyance and financial loss attributed to the PSN outage Sony still believe they have learnt from the ordeal. In production already is a new PS3 complete with new anti-piracy measures built into the drive itself. Let’s also hope there is no retaliation from other groups who have attacked Sony in the past due to their alleged unfair treatment of infamous hacker Geohot amongst others.
Let me think, a new PS3 or Xbox360 with Kinect, pay the rent, eat for a month or spend $500 on a virtual gun that essentially removes any challenging element from online play. I know which option I wouldn’t be choosing but for those control freaks out there with more money than sense who just like to obliterate other players, check out Glu Mobiles new addition to the arsenal inventory in their popular freemium game Gun Bros. For the small amount of 3499 war bucks, players can own the Kraken, a weapon capable of vaporising everything unfortunate to be within a mile of its beam.
Why on Earth someone would choose to purchase an add-on such as this is beyond me but similar tactics employed in the past by other companies have paid off. Remembering that these weapons don’t actually have to be sourced or manufactured the profit margin is potentially staggering. Freemium games such as Gun Bros rely heavily on large purchases from small groups of players, making a tactic like this seem slightly less crazy, although maybe $200 would be more enticing. Studies done by Flurry Analytics show that half the revenue generated by freemium games comes from only 13% of its users, who more often than not spend large amounts within the in-app stores.
Whatever Glu Mobiles marketing tactics they are clearly paying off as the company has announced the acquisition of two new games studios, doubling its internal development team in the process. Acquiring Griptonite and Blammo games, renowned for licensed franchises Ben 10 and Zombie Cafe respectively have greatly added to the companies own creative arsenal. Financially, “they represent an important step in scaling our business and executing our social mobile strategy”.
Glu Mobile reported its second quarter finances, with sales increasing from 16 million to 17.7 million, and a decrease in losses of just under a million. Not too shabby if you ask me, seems we are all on the wrong career paths.
Do you love to go to arcades as much as I do? Then you MUST know and go to this wonderful not so little arcade which is just bursting full of games and prizes, Galaxy World on George Street.
Here is some helpful information: What:Galaxy World
Where: George Street
Gamess that was rememberable:
• Mario Kart 2
• Air Hockey
• Claw machines
o Plushies
o Watches
o Slippers
• DDR machines
• Barber Cut Game
o Xbox
o Ipad
o Camera
o Phone
o Wii
• Fantastic Fever 3
• Car games
• And much more
The Good:
Mario Kart 2 still has cards to get! Personally I have always wanted to get a Mario kart card so to finally have one brought a giant smile to my face.
Close to the Pizza Hut buffet and cinemas. I visit the cinemas and pizza hut alll the time. It is 2 other great nerdy niches to visit, and to visit all 3 in one night really makes going out fun.
The Bad:
I feel as if there is a smaller selection. Well at least smaller selection to games that I like to play.
The claw machines seem impossible. I should know, I’m normally really good at them!!!
I don’t get this whole token coin games. It seems like a waste of time and money to me.
My silly own opinion:
I feel like a lot of the games downstairs are just a way to get your money. I mean sure games such as the claw machine defienetely make you feel like they are a way to get your money but at least most of the time you have a chance of winning. The games downstairs are claw machines, which seem impossible, along with these weird coin token games which seem to be impossible to get a large number of coin tokens. On top of this the coin tokens cost a lot to get so … it all seems quite useless. Yet all these children and adults are sitting there addictively playing like it’s a casino. It does worry me a bit….
In the end I guess I go there because there are a few games such as Mario kart and air hockey that I do love to play and it makes a visit to the cinemas or pizza hut better. So it might not be a place to visit on its own for me but that’s just my opinion.
Well anyway, it’s a great place to visit and I advise you all to check it out 😀
Junior Brain Trainer 2
Developer: Sanuk Games
Publisher: Avanquest Software
Genre: Brain training/ puzzle/ kids
Platform: Nintendo DS
Released: Out Now
After Dr. Kawashima’s Brain Training proved to be hit with the new audience opened up by the Nintendo DS’s accessibility, it gave birth to a new genre of games that stimulate the mind. Who knew that people would find solving simple maths problems and working out logic puzzles fun and deeply fulfilling, but they did and according to research, improved their brain power at the same time. Junior Brain Trainer is a game that attempted to realise this potential market and tailor the experience to a younger audience. Junior Brain Trainer 2 tries to improve on the original with new puzzles and activities, while retaining their target audience of those ages 6-11.
Starting up, you are greeted by three save slots for you to fill your name and age in, and select your gender, meaning you and two others can have separate save files recording your progress. You also have a choice of two difficulties: progressive, where the questions get harder as you work through the game; or pot luck, where the level of challenge is constantly changing and the activities are a random selection of difficulties.
Similarly to Dr. Kawashima’s Brain Training, play consists of a daily challenge for you to complete made up of 5 different activities. The activities aim to train and practice the skills learnt at school. Reading and writing activities have you constructing sentences from a set of options to describe a scene, finding the missing letters to form words, and adding missing words to form sentences. Addition and subtraction calculations briefly cover the numerical side of things, encouraging the use of the primary school ‘borrowing’ method – forcefully thrust upon you so that even if you can get the right answer, you still need to fill out the ‘borrowing’ answers before it lets you move on. Then finally, a few activities offer more general practice with certain skills, like geometrical puzzles involving shapes and adjusting a clock face to the necessary time.
Each time you meet your daily schedule requirements and complete these 5 activities, you are rewarded with one of the 26 unlockable ‘bonus activities’. These are unlocked in a specific order, from thereon playable as much as you like, and come under the different categories of ‘Hangman’, ‘Quiz’ and ‘Games’. With 26 activities to unlock, technically speaking, the game lasts a minimum of 26 days, although this does mean that from the start, everything is locked away, resulting in the game feeling very closed off and barren as all the menus are filled with disabled game modes. By having nothing on offer from the start, it promotes short play sessions because, aside from the daily challenge, there will be little else to spend your time on.
Unfortunately, for those who want to speed up the opening of new things to play, the date and time settings are locked in from the start, meaning manipulating the DS’s clock and calendar won’t allow you to receive bonus activities any faster. Also, I found it to be very unclear what time basis the game was operating on, because despite it being said to be a daily challenge, on occasion when hopping on the next day to undergo the challenge and unlock another activity I was met by a message saying I had already done my challenge for the day – that I could replay to revise if I liked, but wouldn’t be rewarded with another bonus activity. Even leaving it 24 hours didn’t always work, leading me to question whether one daily cycle was done by change of date or an elapsed time period. When combined with sometimes unclear tasks set involving moving panels, this makes the game overly finickity and far too confusing for the young target audience.
On the other hand, the rest of the user interface has been shaped with children in mind. For a start, the bright colour scheme and clear layout of the rest of the game aside from a few problem areas makes it easy to navigate through the different screens. A small woodland critter wanders by every so often, acting as your guide by contributing any advice he has to share, but the result of the whole kid-friendly feel the developers have tried to create seems mismatched to the task at hand. This is particularly apparent in the irritating music on a loop, which is completely unsuited to completing calculations and doing thought based puzzles. As such, even the most tolerable of children will have muted it from the main menu or turned the sound slider to zero after a few short minutes.
In trying to cater specifically for a younger audience, Junior Brain Trainer 2 has had a number of both hits and misses. The overall design, level of difficulty and type of challenges is well matched to the younger end of the scale to build on and practice the basics they’ve been studying at school. The problems come due to the fact that, from the start, the entire game is closed off and has to be gradually unlocked. While this does encourage short 5-10 minute play sessions, it also means that initially there’s barely any playing material, and considering the fiddly way in which the bonus activities unlock (or for that matter, often don’t) many may just give up. It’s adequate for patient youngsters, although those two words don’t always go hand – plus the upper end of the suggested age spectrum would do well to pick up Dr Kawashima’s Brain Training instead, as it will prove to be a more challenging, longer-lasting brain training tool.
GIVEAWAY:
To be in with a chance of winning a copy of the game, leave a comment below. One comment entry per person. Open to residents of the UK only – apologies to our readers from elsewhere around the world!
Name: Ninja fishing
Developer: Gamenauts
Publisher: Gamenauts
Genre: Fishing
Platform: iPhone/iPad
Release: 4 August 2011
Price: $0.99 – Buy Now
Overview
As a huge fan of Fruit Ninja, I came into this game with high hopes. After all, if I gained so much enjoyment from swiping across my screen to cut some fruit I figured fish could only be more fun – especially since they smile at you with their fishy smiles.
Gameplay
It was a pleasant surprise to discover that the game delivers a lot more than what you’d expect from the title. Instead of just being a Fruit Ninja knockoff with fish instead of fruit, it has a whole other aspect to it as well. In this game not only do you need to cut up the fish but you also need to get them your damn self, you lazy sod.
The game starts off with your ninja casting his line into the deep blue and the aim is to get as far down as you can. This involves using a tilt-control to avoid snagging fish for as long as possible, because as soon as you snag your first one the ninja gets excited and starts reeling the line back up. If you get into a sticky situation with hordes of fish surrounding you, you have the failsafe of a turning your hook into a drill (with your ninja powers?) for a small period of time and cutting through them. Once you’ve achieved that first nibble and the ninja starts maniacally reeling in you get more fish attached to your hook by swinging it around at fish as you go past them hoping that they decide to grab on as well. However, some of them are either too smart or simply understand the basics of fishing because even if you position it right over them they won’t attach to the hook.
After your fishing line makes it to the surface the fish are thrown up into the air and then comes the slicing. The fish are thrown up in rounds, each round is accompanied by a stick of dynamite that – if you hit – ends the game. This can be a real pain in the ass if you end the game in the first or second round and you know that you had some real doozies coming up to be sliced.
There’s more of a hectic swiping around than in Fruit Ninja because to cut a fish you have to get it at exactly the right angle otherwise they just bounce around uselessly. Apparently this special ninja blade is made of one thin slice of super sharp steel and the rest is bouncy rubber. This gets especially frustrating if you’re trying to juggle a few at a time while avoiding the dynamite sticks.
This game really makes you work for your money, a lot of the time most of your earnings will come from the million common ones you get instead of the one or two rare ones you might manage. You also don’t get a bonus for slicing a few in one go, which dismayed me when I sliced three in a row and was expecting a virtual pat on the head but received none.
The game progresses depending on money that you earn by catching and slicing up fish. When you first start off you’re limited to going 25m down and can only catch 25 fish on the one hook. You can increase this over time, until you end up in the pitch-black depths where the fish don’t smile as much. The ‘shop’ in which you buy upgrades has an almost Farmville feel to it, that desperate hunt for the equipment that will make an already simple game even simpler. After numerous upgrades you can almost abandon the ‘tilt to get further down’ concept entirely and rely on the upgrades.
However, apart from being able to go further down and snag a wider variety of fish there is no real progression in the game. After a while the tap, tilt, slice of it all gets very repetitive.
Audio
The soundtrack to this game seems to grab the ninja concept and run with it. It sounds like something Mr Miyagi would listen to while practicing his crane kick. I found it fantastic for focusing my concentration on wrangling some wrigglers (I don’t know fishing terms, forgive me). It’s all very Zen, including the nature sound effects they include of tweeting birds and underwater bubbles.
Visual
The graphics are done in the usual cartoony and cute style that is the basis of many games on the iOS. They inject some attempts at humour at the beginning of each game in the form of ninja dialogue and this can range from a Rebecca Black reference to game hints.
Conclusion
I have to agree with the publishers, Gamenauts, that for a fishing game it is freaking awesome. I thoroughly enjoyed it, even though after playing it for a while you tend to go a bit Gollum-crazy, muttering about accidental catching of fish, fish that just won’t bite, and that gorramn dynamite. It sucks you in and kicks your tolerance around for a bit until you either snap and decide to slice your phone for real or think that maybe you should take a break. But isn’t that the reaction to all good games?
It has come to my attention along with the others that even if we (the capsule computer guys and maybe yourselves) are quite weird, we don’t do mentionable weird stuff each week.Therefore the Geek Freak of the Week is changing to the Geek Freak of the Four Week… aka month. Ok yes I tried to make it still ryhme and kind of failed.
Anyway please do send your Geek Freak of the 4 Week statements to [email protected], or post your entry in the forum link below. It should be about 100 words with a non adult picture as evidence. The last date it should be due is the 27th and of course there will be great pizes coming out of our goodie bag.
So please enter your wonderful entry as soon as that weird thing happens this month 😉
Konami have released a new set of screenshots for their upcoming title, Pro Evo Soccer 2012. These latest screenshots provide a sneak peek at some of the new elements which will be incorporated when the title is released in just under two months time.
The new screenshots demonstrate the zonal marking system that will be introduced in the active AI, and also the Teammate Control system which allows users to control two players at once. The others just show a bit more of the graphics involved in the game – the more we see of these screenshots, the more evident it is that Konami is really showing the stronger rendering when it comes to light sources, as well as improving overall player and pitch appearance.
Zonal marking
Teammate Control system
With that being said, we won’t know exactly how these new improvements in AI and gameplay will shape up until we actually get our hands on the game. All that is evident for now, though, is that PES 2012 looks like a great game visually, and there is most certainly going to be a noticeable difference in the way users have to play.
PES 2012 will be released on Playstation 3, Xbox 360 and Windows PC on September 27 in the US, and October 14 in Europe and Oceania. Release dates for Wii, PS2, and PSP are yet to be confirmed.
