Canned Dogs

I haven’t been paying much attention to the fast growing market of online gaming on cellphones, but I just noticed World ICE lansista for DOCOMO is starting open beta and it looks like it has all the elements of a real online rpg with a free world and live chat.

The game concept is about making a children’s storybook and the player decides what will be happening in each part of the game by selecting from a list of choices, and other players can join in your story to help out. And the most interesting part about this is that when the story is completed, the company can make your story into a real storybook and send it to you.

Links: Official site

Moonphase reports that a Hatsune Miku manga called Hatsune Mix! will start serialization in Comic RUSH starting from the 2008 January issue. The author is going to be none other than KEI, the artist who did the original character design for Hatsune Miku.

I don’t know, KEI has primarily been an illustrator and hasn’t done any professional manga work before. I have a bad feeling about this…

The latest issue of Famitsu has revealed that THE iDOLM@STER Live for you! is in the works for the xbox 360. As the title suggests, the game will be about holding live concerts and will have remixed songs. The game will also come with a special OVA DVD. The game is currently 60% done.

The game looks… very much like the same game. And is it just me!? Haruka’s character portrait looks completely like she’s in kakka mode already. It’ll be great if she officially becomes kakka!?

Scans from Famitsu: 1, 2, 3, 4

Doujin circle Hishou System has released a video trailer for their 3D magical girl battle game, Magical Battle Arena. I haven’t been giving the game much attention because it looked too ambitious, but it seems to be turning out fine, though it looks like it might possibly have problems with the gameplay.

They plan to have a playable demo out for winter Comiket and the full version ready for 2008 summer Comiket.

Koio Minato, most widely known as the character designer for the Star Ocean 2 game, has written on his website that the first book of his latest manga ALTO has a really low print run, but advices his fans that they don’t have to buy it anyway.

In his BBS, he says that he wants to quit working with Shounen Sirius. He explains that after he submitted the art early and having corrected the colours 4 times over for print, they had a miscommunication in the Kodansha offices which created very big printing miss when printing the cover for his manga, causing the colours to become bland and make the design look weird.

He feels betrayed because his manga was one of the bottom ranking in popularity for Shounen Sirius, and he had tried his best in correcting the art for the tankoubon release, but he gets shot in the back by his allies in the end.

He says that it is very hard to work with Shounen Sirius which his manga is currently serialized in. The magazine has not had an editor in chief around since it started in 2005, and they don’t even have a clear target market, which makes it really hard for him to draw as he doesn’t know what kind of readers he should be drawing for.

Here’s a screenshot of the post, as it has been deleted since.

Shounen Sirius is a monthly mag and it has a really low print run. There aren’t many people that read it, though it has managed to have a few semi-successful titles. Speaking of which, the title says Shounen but if you look in the magazine, the majority of the contents look more like stuff for 15~24 with manga like Yozakura Quartet and XBLADE.

Not related, but Koio Minato had released a Star Ocean 2 adult doujinshi, which was said to be the reason why he was removed from the team.

The 3 minute game contest is a contest for game makers to make a game that lasts for approximately 3 minutes. The 15th iteration has ended and the results are released on the front page, with the action game Usagi to Kame Avenged coming in first place.

The page introducing the games aren’t lining the games up in order of ranking, in case anyone gets confused.

Shinryaku! Ikamusume is a manga by Anbe Masahiro about a squid girl called Ikamusume who has come from the sea to invade mankind. The manga currently runs in Weekly Shounen Champion.

(more…)

Goo rankings has put up a new anime ranking for the top female seiyuu that people want to receive a morning call from. So… here’s the top ten from the list.

1) Takayama Minami
2) Hidaka Noriko
3) Hayashibara Megumi
4) Ooyama Nobuyo
5) Nozawa Masako
6) Shimamoto Sumi
7) Tanaka Mayumi
8) Mitsuishi Kotono
9) TARAKO
10) Yajima Akiko

Well… These are all the big veterans that have been around for a long time. The more current seiyuu like Noto Mamiko, Kawasumi Ayako, Horie Yui, Inoue Kikuko, Tamura Yukari and Kuwashima Houko take the backseat being ranked between 20 to 30.

The majority of the people that did the survey were in their 30s or 40s apparently. I wonder how the rankings would be like if the majority were in their 20s.

After destroying our old gaming memories by licensing Valis and Arcus to become eroge, Telenet Japan has not decided it was enough yet, as Waffle has announced that they are making an eroge version of the classic MegaCD game, Mahou no Shoujo Silky Lip.

The eroge version will be made up of two parts, one will be a remake of the original MegaCD game when the characters were still young, and the second part will be where the characters have grown up, and… have lots of grown up stuff happen.

iin-cho. is a manga by Akikaze Shirakumo that is currently running in Comic Gum magazine. And as the title suggests, the manga is all about female iincho(class representative) characters.
(more…)