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Sightseeing Recommendations, Hit Me
Posted by Brian Ashcraft at 11:40 PM on May 20, 2008
To: Crecente
From: Ashcraft
A friend of mine from high school landed in the country yesterday. (Hi, David!) He's in Kyoto now, and my schedule, being as insane as it is, I won't get to see him until Sunday. SOME FRIEND I AM.
Okay, quick! I live in Osaka, yeah, but I don't get out of the house much. Heh. I have a rough idea of places to go, but I wanted to check: any recommendations for must-see places in Kansai? Any places that any of you readers dug?
What you missed last night
Racism in Tokyo
Sony taking action against The Drake's airgun
Game consoles have dangerous things inside them
Nintendo complaining about six-year old fine
New DS colours for Europe?
More Metal Gear
MGS4 bundle ordering clusterfuck
E3 floorplan
The Wii's been out since 2006. It has, since then, moved a ton of units in its native Japan. But what about the games? Which titles have rocked the Wii's world more than other titles which may have rocked it less, if at all? These six have, and according to Media Create they're the top-selling games on the system (in Japan). All have sold over a million, all are developed by Nintendo, none of them are Super Mario Galaxy.
Time to wheel out mainstream media's default boogieman: VIOLENT VIDEO GAMES. In this today's thrilling episode, Arizona's KTVK-TV warns parents of "meat shields." Citing Yahoo!Games, KTVK 3TV writes:
See anything familiar, British readers? I bet you do. Because if you looked at 
Not technically a Hot Flash since you need to download it, but it's only 2MB, so it's close enough. The name of the game's Execution, it was made by Jesse Venbrux, and it's worth the 3.5 minutes of your life both downloading and playing it will cost you. Know that while it's a tiny, short game, there's also a charmingly simple punch to it all. Be sure to play it twice to get the full experience.
Yeah, that 
Oh, don't look so surprised. You just had to know this news was coming. Konami have confirmed with GameSpot that while the vanilla MGS4 bundle will be making its way to Europe, not a single gunmetal PS3 will be offered for sale in the UK. And if it's not going on sale in the UK, well, the chances of an exclusive Belgian or Danish launch seems remote, so that probably goes for the rest of Europe as well.
According to the most recent Xbox World 360 magazine, Ubisoft has taken Splinter Cell Conviction "back to the drawing board." While Ubisoft has yet to comment, this could mean that the game won't be ready until 2010. The future! Conviction has been in development hell for a while now and its crowd stealth mechanic could have been rendered outdated by another Ubisoft title, Assassin's Creed. Stay tuned for next week's UbiDays where Ubisoft will or won't announce something about the game.
Koppa's Farwell Foods are onto a novel idea. Sell groceries, but sell them in style, with not only an "
Nintendo used to be bad for the environment. Now? Just sorta bad! Last year, Greenpeace singled the Kyoto-based game maker by giving it 
In case you missed it, the "new" N-Gage service is out. The one that makes the games available over a variety of Nokia handsets, instead of a single, dedicated unit. If you didn't know that, it's OK, it wasn't that interesting. This might be. Konami have signed onto the service, and will be releasing a ton of their mobile games onto Nokia's fledgling platform, including a version of 
Excited about Dragon Quest V: Hand of the Heavenly Bride? Well, mister, take that excitement elsewhere. According to Japanese retailer Tsutaya, the DS remake will be in short supply when it goes on sale on July 17th. A Tsutaya notice reads:
To refresh: in 2002, Nintendo were hit with one of the biggest fines in the history of the European Union, when they were found guilty of colluding with their distributors to artificially raise the prices of their games and consoles between 1991-1998. It cost them €149.1 million. So, yeah, not small change. Anyway, Nintendo popped into the European Court of First Instance in Luxembourg on Monday, and argued that they shouldn't have to pay that much, because - according to Nintendo's lawyers - "the penalty was unfair, illegal, even shocking". Unfair! Shocking! I'm sure a few million Nintendo fans in Europe could be counted on to testify they've experienced similar treatment... from Nintendo.
Square Enix honcho Yoichi Wada (above, left) is worried. Western game companies are doing really well! Meaning that competition is getting harder. Yet, Wada hopes to capitalise on the Western market, aiming to increase the ratio of overseas sales from its current 50 percent to 80 percent in the next three years. According to the exec:
Bill Gates visited South Korea earlier this month, and as is the custom when rich people visit powerful people, he had some gifts made up for everyone he stopped in to say hi to. No lapel pins or expensive wine here, though. No, when Bill went around for tea and buscuits with the President of South Korea, Lee Myung-bak, he gave the man an Xbox 360. And a very nice one at that! Designed by Korean company Gookbo, the custom 360 is decorated with "mother-of-pearl ume flowers and butterflies", and is called "Peace". Oh, and it's meant to symbolise, of all things, "patience and perseverance".
You think cheap, piece of shit games for Nintendo consoles, and which company do you think of first? Yeah. Ubisoft. Well, Ubisoft would like you to know that while most (Rabbids excepted) of their Wii & DS games look cheap, and play cheap, they're not cheap. OK, maybe they're cheap to make, but marketing those games to the "casual" set? That costs a lot of money! Ubisoft's Laurent Detoc:
Data time! The PS3 gets the highest rating in online community Habbo's Global Youth Survey. Almost 60,000 young people worldwide between the ages of 11 and 18 rated the three game consoles. Which one got the best marks? 69 percent said the PS3 was either "great" or "good", while 64 percent said the same about the Wii and 58 percent about the Xbox 360. What's more, the PS3 was ahead in every age group save for the 11 to 12 year-olds, where the Wii reigned suprieme. Points out marketing guru Emmi Kuusikko:
Sure, why not. Two new DS colour schemes have been spotted on a couple of 
Boring Tuesdays aren't like boring Fridays. With the latter you're only looking to waste a few hours. As for the former... well, there's still three days to occupy.
Just like we thought! And once again confirming what we had hear before!! There will be more Metal Gear Solid — though, not necessarily more SPOILER. According to Kojima Productions' Ryan Payton, who says (possible SPOILER):
The Penny Arcade team, having had 
Burnie Burns, one of the lead people behind the Halo 
The official E3 Media & Business Summit has laid out its plans for this year's show, which returns to the Los Angeles Convention Centre and is now confirmed to be completely devoid of off-topic spectacle. E3's past used to fill South, West, Petree, Concourse and Kentia Halls, but E3 2008 will occupy just the Concourse Hall, a massive scaling back of space. E3 exhibitors will still occupy meeting rooms in other halls, but to say that E3 is but a mere shadow of its previous incarnations wouldn't be inaccurate, as the bigger booths shown above occupy a 20' by 20' area.
Nintendo has today announced the launch of WiiWare in Australia. It follows closely behind the 
Remember when Room 101 griefers issued a flying penis attack on Second Life "real estate" "mogul" "Anshe Chung" during a virtual interview? How could you not? It's just about the only interesting thing to ever happen in Second Life. Now, it has happened in the real world, only on a much smaller, much briefer scale.
Apparently, $US 1.23 billion in U.S. sales is a disappointment, from a Wall Street perspective, as Reuters reports that April's reported take sent video game stocks downward. Software sales only seeing 68% growth from the previous year? Unacceptable! Merely $US 654.7 million in software? Sell, sell, sell!
At the US PlayStation Blog, director of development Matt Wilson of Sony Online Entertainment's Seattle studio, currently at work on development of The Agency, introduced himself with some quick updates from a recent open house alongside the recent ION Game Conference, which included an Agency-themed event.
If you somehow missed the 
Radical Entertainment senior producer Tim Bennison recently talked to Gamasutra all about Prototype, elaborating a bit on its New York City-based "open world thriller" and promising ongoing evolution throughout the game that goes beyond what's been done in open-world titles like GTA in the past:
Lionhead's Peter Molyneux is well known for adding a bit of flair to descriptions of his in-development titles, but he's been exercising a bit more restraint when chatting about Fable 2. Fortunately for fans of Molyneux-style hyperbole, the man is back with wide-eyed, reins-off enthusiasm of his own future work. Wired sat down with the Officer of the Order of the British Empire and video game developer and learned that Pete's next game isn't Fable 3.
According to a recent Slate piece, it's... Solitaire? The article says that the various versions of Windows Solitaire are the most-used programs among Windows, and charts in particular the American workplace's ongoing love affair with the time-waster. 
