Thursday, January 3, 2008
PS3 Japanese Maid Service Taxi Outta Gas
11:30PM Brian Ashcraft | The greatest taxi in Japan is no more. Back in September, we brought word that the cleverly named “Maid Taxi” was offering a, well, $US 50 an hour maid taxi service that let passengers ride around town in a PS3-equipped cab and play Hot Shots Golf 5 with a maid. Since the taxi was licensed as a social-welfare taxi and could only transport handicapped or injured people, apparently a flood of phonies faked injuries to take a ride. The taxi service was risking breaking the law by carrying fakers and didn’t have a definite way to discern if the passenger was lying or not. So, the company decided to ditch the service altogether! Social-welfare taxi? Perhaps they should’ve licensed their taxi company as a regular taxi company… Maid Taxi No More [Yomiuri via Canned Dogs] More »
Feb OXM Has 3 Exclusive Rock Band Tracks
11:00PM Luke Plunkett | A lot is made of the decline of print magazines. How, we hear you pondering over morning corn flakes and the funny pages, are they going to stay relevant in the face of free, immediate and online content? Easy. With stuff like this. The February 2008 issue of the Official Xbox Magazine will come bundled with three exclusive Rock Band tracks: Freezepop’s “Sprøde”, “Shake” by Count Zero and Bang Camaro’s “Rock Rebellion”. Great news for OXM subscribers, but for the rest of us? Would really help if they were bands we’d actually heard of. Three Exclusive Rock Band Tracks – Only in OXM! [OXM] More »
Naughty Dog Still Talking Uncharted 2
10:00PM Luke Plunkett | Naughty Dog’s Christophe Balestra has given further hints as to the direction his company is taking for a sequel to Kotaku NQGOTY Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune. While we already know a second game is an inevitability given the success of the first, Balestra offers a little more info on the sequel’s direction, telling French site LCI: Il faut pour cela prendre un peu de recul et porter un regard neuf sur le jeu pour voir dans quelle direction on va le pousser. Mais l’univers est là, il est riche… Il y a donc le potentiel pour un nouveau titre passionnant. Encore meilleur. [We're] taking a step back and taking a fresh look at the game to see what direction we are going to push [Drake]. But the universe is there, it’s rich…so there’s the potential for an exciting new game. An even better game. An even better game? You have our blessing. “Notre jeu est un Indiana Jones des temps modernes” [LCI] More »
Mrs. Bashcraft Is “Sexy Japanese Gamer”
9:30PM Brian Ashcraft | Yes, that’s Mrs. Bashcraft. Well, Mrs. Bashcraft like three years ago. There was a giant DS Phat display at Yodobashi Camera in Umeda. Think I posted this pic on Kotaku eons ago. And like most things on the internets, this hasn’t died It popped up on a shameful website with an adult bent in a post titled “Sexy Japanese Gamers.” The post reads: Beauties and the geeks – all in one body. Hot body. M’kay. Here’s the kicker: She’s like one of two that aren’t in bikinis or bare-assed naked. Kooky! Sexy Japanese Gamers [Bizarre Japan NSFW] More »
Prepare For A Yakuza 3 Demo
9:00PM Luke Plunkett | German tipsters Gamefront are reporting that a Yakuza 3 demo is in the pipeline for the PS3, and could be available as early as the middle of this month. Best pony up those Japanese PSN accounts, kids, because thanks to Sega’s reluctance to promptly localise these things (Yakuza 2 is still MIA) you may not get another chance to play a new Yakuza game for donkey’s ages. Which is a real long time. Offenbar Demo zu Yakuza 3 Mitte des Monats [Gamefront] More »
Atari Joystick As A Technical Drawing Project
8:00PM Luke Plunkett | FACT: I did a lot of technical drawing/drafting in high school. I really, really wanted to be an architect! Or an industrial designer. Either/or. In all my time drawing, however, I never thought to draw something…close to my heart. So stupid. Instead of buildings, groups of buildings and stadiums, I should have done what this guy did and turn a “simple” Atari joystick into an industrial design project. Wonderful. Oh, and if you’re wondering why an Atari and why it’s done by hand and not in AutoCAD or something, it was penned all the way back in 1983. high school drafting made fun [Technabob] More »
Prof. Layton Learns English, Gets US Release
7:30PM Brian Ashcraft | It’s not that text heavy games are hard on the eyes. Tiny text games are hard on the eyes. Just check out these screens of the English localisation of Professor Layton (yay!). Sure, they’re not to exact size so they obviously are smaller. But don’t they look, I dunno, kinda smushed? Still! Choosers cannot be beggars, and it’s nice to see Layton get its long overdue English language release — tiny text and all. Game’s out in the States February 11th. Everyone knows what day that is, right? Yup, it’s three days before Valentine’s. (That, and the same day Super Smash Bros. Brawl supposedly comes out.) Layton In English [Siliconera] More »
The Gerudo Valley Live Show
7:00PM Luke Plunkett | If you polled our offices and asked us the one way to improve the Gerudo Valley theme from Ocarina of Time, you’d get a unanimous response: have two nerds perform it in-person, and have it sound like tense pre-shootout music from a Sergio Leone western. Which is exactly what this is. And is precisely why we love it so damn much. [thanks Andrew!] More »
