Slowly but surely, Hello Games' lovable stuntman Joe Danger keeps making his way to new platforms. After debuting on PS3 and then hitting Xbox 360 last year, the Super Dave of video games will be defying death on iPads and iPhones soon.

A Gamasutra interview with Hello Games co-founder Sean Murray offers up some details on how the dev studio decided to bring the motorcyle-riding hero to Apple's handhelds, as well as explaining how the controls will work:

I think games that people love on the iPhone have something in common, their controls are made for the device. Swiping in Temple Run, slashing fruit in Fruit Ninja or pulling back a catapult in Angry Birdsare controls that are best on a touchscreen. I hate the virtual d-Pad, it never feels right to me. It feels like something that only exists to make porting games easier.

Joe Danger is a game with a lot of depth to the controls. We want to make very much an arcade game on your mobile. You swipe the screen to make Joe wheelie, you nudge him in the air to affect his gravity, you can flick a barrier out of the way, or wrestle with the shark in the shark tank. You have such control that levels that would be impossible on console are much easier on the touchscreen.

The portable version of Joe Danger's also being built for Android devices, too, but Hello Games will only be showing the iOS build of the game at PAX East this weekend.

A 'very different' Joe Danger headed to iOS [Gamastura]

Wizards of the Coast finally realized how amazing the Magic: The Gathering Duels of the Planeswalkers series would be on the iPad, with Apple's tablet joining PC, PlayStation Network, and Xbox Live when the game's 2013 installment launches this summer.

Meet Dakota Ostrenga. You might know her by her by her online moniker, Dakota Rose. Or in Asia, she's Kotakoti.

In the last few months, she's made a name with her photos and YouTube vids. She's one of those Japan-inspired living dolls. Buzzfeed called her "The Real-Life Barbie".

Earlier this month, she made her debut on Japanese TV, which showed one of her cute YouTube vids. A Japanese talent agency even signed her, saying she's going to be a star in The Land of the Rising Sun.

Everything is breaking Dakota's way. No wonder there are apparently efforts to hide her past, which is anything but doll-like.

A series of videos are circulating on YouTube called "The Real Kotakoti" and seem to show Dakota and her sister calling each homophobic slurs. The videos are from a few years back, and they depict quite a different Dakota than the one who is currently on YouTube demonstrating Final Fantasy hairdos. She's not prim and proper. And she looks more like a rag doll than a porcelain one.

Dakota's sister, Kiki Kannibal, was featured in Rolling Stone last year. Kiki was an internet celebrity—who discovered just how scary and awful internet fame could be.

Like Kiki, Dakota was just a kid with a MySpace account. And in those days, both spent a lot of time online, shooting their mouths off—as evident by these surviving clips. They show Kiki and a very different Dakota. Not only her features look different (fueling online rumors), her demeanor is totally different.

There's lots of footage here; most of it is of Kiki. And, yes, this could be part of some sort of smear campaign. But according to YouTube user Eundunja, Dakota's mother Cathy is supposedly trying to have these clips taken down.

"They're trying extremely hard to attempt to suppress this information and keep the video from getting out because they know it's beginning to spread, and because people are beginning to realize what disgusting, vile people they are," Eundunja wrote.

Look, people change. Sometimes it's their appearance. Sometimes it's the way they act or think. And sometimes they start using YouTube instead of MySpace.

If there's one good thing that has come from Angry Birds, it's this: Korean politician Jeong Hong created an Angry Birds themed re-election video called "Hong-ry Birds". Geddit? Hong-ry? Hilarious!

Hong is a member of the rightwing incumbent party, the Saenuri Party, which is seeking re-election in the upcoming April 11 election. As website Korea Bang pointed out, in the video Hong is launched at social issues, saying, "I'm doing this all for you...If the citizenry enjoys this, it will help to break up the system!"

I don't know about the good people of South Korea, but I sure enjoyed it. Ha ha.

홍준표, 진짜 ‘새' 됐다…"제가 이렇게까지 해야 하나" [The Kyunghyang Shinmun via Korea Bang]

Kingdom Hearts is one of those series whose quality varies wildly from game to game. Sometimes they are nothing but near pointless filler while others are as solid as the numbered iterations in the series. Much like the "even-number Star Trek films curse," fans of the series believe those Kingdom Hearts titles released on Nintendo consoles are doomed to be inferior. So does the 3DS' Kingdom Hearts 3D: Dream Drop Distance prove the pattern true once again or drop it like a bad habit instead?

Good — A Whole New World

The high point of Dream Drop Distance is the welcome amount of new content. Of the game's seven worlds, only three have been visited before—and of those three, the vast majority of their maps are completely new. And while you visit each world twice (once as Sora and once as Riku), these are the largest worlds of any Kingdom Hearts game to date, with many areas accessible only by one character but not the other.

Lesser known properties like Disney's Mickey, Donald, Goofy: The Three Musketeers and Square Enix's own The World Ends With You get their own moments to shine as well—especially the latter. The characters in these worlds are fully voiced and optional cutscenes allow you to see the back story of the world and characters if you so choose. Overall, "new" is the name of the game and Dream Drop Distance is better for it.

Mixed — Dream Dropping (Like It's Hot)

Instead of playing the whole game to completion and then doing so again with a different character—as it was in Birth by Sleep—you can swap Riku and Sora at any time by "Dream Dropping." However, while it can be done manually, you will be forced to "drop" automatically every twenty minutes or so as the "drop gauge" runs out. When dropping, the game calculates a score based on the enemies you killed and allows you to temporarily buff your partner for his next turn. This buff acts as the main incentive for not immediately switching back to the character you were just playing as.

While dropping serves to break up the gameplay and keep both characters progressing through the game at an equal rate, there is one major flaw. When time is up, it's up. It doesn't even matter if you're in a boss fight, you'll be pulled out and the battle reset. This means you have to play a full cycle with the other character before you can try again—if you want the buff, that is.

Mixed — No Companions. Have Some Pokémon Instead

In past Kingdom Hearts games, you have had Donald and Goofy—or the heroes of any given Disney world—as computer-controlled party members. In Dream Drop Distance, however, your party consists of Riku or Sora and two of the game's monsters that you have previously collected. By defeating wild monsters—called Dream Eaters—in battle, you gain the materials to make your own. But while this does add a "gotta catch 'em all" aspect to the game, it sadly cuts out a score of crazy team-ups. And even though world specific characters do join your party for cutscenes, the fact that you never get to fight side-by-side with Tron Legacy's Olivia Wilde or the cast of the World Ends With You is more than a little disappointing.

Mixed — When Old and New Mechanics Collide

The big new addition in Dream Drop Distance is the "free-flow" system. Outside of battle, it allows you to practically fly through areas by jumping and dashing from wall to wall; but in battle, it's even more useful. By grinding on a rail or dashing into a large enemy, you can perform incredibly powerful physical attacks. While they look really cool and are very effective, the fact that you can do them constantly makes the magic and attack system carried over from past games completely obsolete. Moreover, the monsters are much faster and the AI is much improved so normal magic and attacks are practically useless anyway. Before long you'll be doing nothing but the same free-flow action over and over again till you win because that's simply the most efficient way to play. And sadly, that gets real old real fast.

Bad — Wasting Your Time (Like a Boss)

The bosses in Dream Drop Distance are always a battle of attrition. Most of them are not all that hard, but take forever to defeat. To start, they all have a mind-boggling amount of HP to hack through. Many simply run away from you or have hit boxes that move out of your range mid-attack, forcing you to constantly reposition to score even a single hit. While some of the bosses can conceivably kill you with an ill-timed air juggle, the question is never "Will I beat them?"; it's "Will I beat them before I dream drop?"

There is one exception: Tron. Normally I don't go into personal stories in a preview like this, but Tron is the perfect example of how not to make a boss fight. Though only the third boss in the game, he is by far the most difficult. Not only does he have a crazy amount of HP, but he's also faster than you. On top of that, every single move of his is an air juggle and he won't hesitate to snipe you with his data disc if you try to run away and heal. That alone would be a challenging boss fight—and maybe even a really good one—but then every 30 seconds, he flips the stage. Not only your screen is upside down, but your controls are inverted as well. It's hellishly maddening. Your only hope is to stand still and counter every single one of his attacks. If I had been playing the game for pleasure instead of work, I would have quit right there.

Final Thoughts

Kingdom Hearts 3D: Dream Drop Distance is the very definition of a mixed bag. There are many great additions in terms of gameplay, but for each of these, there seems to be a hidden downside. The stories in each individual world are entertaining nostalgia trips like always, though the over-arching plot and its resolution may rub longtime fans the wrong way. So while the game is full of extremes both good and bad, it zeros out to something about average.

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More On Kingdom Hearts 3D: Dream Drop Distance

One Man's Tortured History With Kingdom Hearts

Kingdom Hearts is a polarizing series to say the least. People seem to love it or hate it with few standing in between. I am no different except that I fall into both categories. More »

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Watch Kingdom Hearts 3D's New Battle Systems in Action

Kingdom Hearts 3D: Dream Drop Distance plays a lot like past titles in the series, especially Re:coded and Birth by Sleep, however there have been a few major changes. More »

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Kingdom Hearts Tries Its Hand at Augmented Reality Games, Fails Miserably

In the Kingdom Hearts series, the player character often teams up with two other party members as you explore the game's various Disney worlds. In Kingdom Hearts 3D: More »

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Watch Kingdom Hearts 3D's Intro Projected On The Side Of A Building

Earlier this month to celebrate the Kingdom Hearts 10th Anniversary, Square Enix held the Kingdom Hearts Premier Event in southern Tokyo. Yesterday, to celebrate the release of Kingdom Hearts Dream Drop Distance, they put footage of the event up on the official Kingdom Hearts 3D website.
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They really do. This 1960s era photo is from a school athletic meet, and it shows a group of sumo dressed up as cheerleaders to entertain the kids. Decades later, I know I'm entertained.

Sumo wrestlers dressed up as Cheerleaders 1960s [Japan Sugoi]

Ever wonder what it'd be like to play a massive 100-person game of Bomberman? Well Konami read your mind and released 100-Person Battle Bomberman late last month for smart phones in Japan.

While it seems like an amazing idea to have 100-man Bomberman battles, this game has one major downside: 99 of those people are computer controlled. So you'll need to get your massive multiplayer online Bomberman action somewhere else.

The app also contains normal Bomberman matches in addition to hundred man ones and claims a total of over 200 stages. Also, as you play, you level up and can increase your starting stats such as speed, amount of bombs and length of fire.

I personally found the 100-person battles (and even the normal ones) a bit hard to control on my tiny little iPhone screen. Worse yet, my poor iPhone 3GS kept crashing midway through the first 100-man battle.

So while it may not be exactly what you hoped for from the title, there's really no reason not to try it for yourself as 100-Person Battle Bomberman can be downloaded free from iTunes and Google Play (though you will need a Japanese account it seems). So what are you waiting for—try it yourself!

This might not be Neo-Tokyo, but that sure looks like Shotaro Kaneda's bike in cyberpunk anime Akira. Masashi Teshima from Fukuoka, Japan thought he'd like an Akira bike for himself and spent seven years and ¥10 million (US$121,000) to make it.

While there are other Kaneda bike projects, this one is officially recognized by Akira creator Katsuhiro Otomo. And Teshima is riding the bike across the country to raise money for children's autism. In the above gallery, you can see Teshima and his custom bike in Fukuoka, Kobe, and Osaka.

The last stop is Tokyo, where it will be displayed at an exhibition for Katsuhiro Otomo. Visitors to the exhibit can sit on the bike and have their photos taken with it. The exhibit is for a good cause, too: it's raising money for victims of last year's earthquake.

First serialized in 1982 as a manga, Akira was turned into an iconic feature film anime in 1988.

こいつはガチだぜ！ 金田のバイクで金田のジャケットを着て、ハイウェイを駆け抜ける動画 [Kotaku Japan]
Akira's Kaneda Bike Goes on Road Trip Throughout Japan [ANN]

So did Kinect Star Wars, for that matter. This totally unlicensed shirt was spotted by writer Brian Michael Bendis in Tokyo. It's glorious.

Check out Kotaku's Kinect Star Wars review here. Check out this shirt somewhere in Tokyo.

Infringe-a-licious Tokyo tee: best Star Wars shirt ever? [BoingBoing]

People live in Japan longer than they do in any other country. The number of centenarians is at record numbers. Know what all those old people mean? Higher chances of old people crime!

The Yomiuri Shimbun is reporting that a 97 year-old man was arrested earlier this week for trying to kill an 84 year-old relative by slashing her with a sword. According to local news reports, the dispute was apparently over money, and the 97 year-old man walked 100 meters with the sword to the woman's house and was quoted as saying, "I'll kill you."

This is all unfortunate and hopefully the relative is recovering. But at his age, life in prison could mean a weekend in the slammer.

97-year-old man held over sword attack [Yomiuri]