The grassroots initiative to generate a sequel to old-school CRPG Wasteland wrapped up last night by getting more than triple the amount that InXile Entertainment was asking for. In addition to the $2,933,147 raised on Kickstarter, $108,803 has donated through PayPal.

Passing $3,000,000 means that a mod kit will be made available for the in-development RPG, meaning that players of the post-apocalyptic game will be able to graft their own inventions onto the release. So, money's coming in and development is surely happening. All that's left is the waiting, right?

Wasteland 2 [Kickstarter]

I haven't played Mass Effect 3 yet. As a big fan of the franchise, I've been meaning to. But I had a very important task at hand before tackling the last game in the trilogy. I needed to replay Mass Effect 2.

(Mass Effect 2 spoilers ahead.)

In my first playthrough of the sequel, I felt a bit rushed. I was on a tight review schedule and didn't analyze every facet of the game as meticulously as I would've liked. So, forgoing some very important ship upgrades, I fell victim to a sloppy mistake and lost some of my teammates. And I lost someone very important to me.

If you aren't a stranger to BioWare's Mass Effect franchise—or, heck, just BioWare games in general—you'll know that the companions you gather along your adventures can become your friends, and these friendships can even develop into romantic relationships.

My female Shepard initially took to Garrus, a blue, Turian alien who had battled with me through the treacheries of the first installment in the action/RPG franchise. We had memories together. We fought together. We helped each other through our desperate situations by cracking jokes and complimenting each other's skills with weapons. Basically, we bonded.

But not all meaningful relationships have to become romantic. I realized that Garrus wasn't meant for one of those relationships with me when I started to pursue a romance with him in Mass Effect 2. He was nervous. He fumbled with his words and immediately started contemplating the science of interspecies intercourse. He turned what I wanted to be sweet and playful flirtation into what felt like cold analysis. At best he would say these things to me in a cooing voice. Don't get me wrong, I still loved Garrus. But I realized that while he was a trustworthy friend, someone I could rely on, he wouldn't be able to give me the relationship I wanted.

And I had no hesitation about that thought once I met Thane. Being an assassin, Thane is cool and collected. He's thoughtful and pensive. He typically keeps to himself, but he's easy to talk to once you sit down with him. He has an interesting background and even more interesting perspectives on life and his career. I don't agree with his spiritual beliefs, but I respect his dedication to them. I wanted to hear every story he had to tell me. About how he met his first wife, and about his feelings towards his son. He called me "Siha" and explained that it meant a warrior angel. I like the sound of the term of endearment he chose for me, and I like its definition even more. Thane is a romantic. He is also a poet, and a philosopher. Plus, he dresses pretty well.

But this would be a complicated relationship. Thane, like all Drell, is susceptible to Kepral's Syndrome, which is something of a respiratory disease. He knows he is going to die some time in the foreseeable future. He's told me as much. But Shepard can't help but fall in love with him regardless.

To my great dismay, Thane didn't survive the trip through Omega 4 Relay. I didn't realize how critical the ship upgrades would be. Worse still was that I had to watch as he and a few others died during a cinematic cut scene, completely out of my control. I'd spent hours with these people, helping them with their respective missions, lending both my rifle and my shoulder for support. After all that, it only took a few seconds and a few lucky hits of a laser to wipe them from my universe's existence.

I knew that I'd be replaying Mass Effect 2 before the final game came out. There was no way I was going to go through Mass Effect 3 without Thane. Jack was a loss. Legion I could live without. But Thane? Thane was worth another 40 hours of my gaming time.

I took the opportunity to complete every side mission, every dialogue option, and every single upgrade. It didn't matter if it was for a shotgun I'd never use. I spent hours mining resources from planets for it anyway. I wasn't going to leave one stone unturned. Not this time.

I wanted to hear more of his sweet nothings. I wanted to see how our relationship would continue to evolve. I wanted to either watch the world burn, or watch it come to a victory with Thane at my side in Mass Effect 3.

Here's the kicker: Thane survived, but I didn't even get to romance him. I screwed up some other decisions while trying to keep him alive. You should have seen my frustration while I was about to embark on the Omega 4 Relay mission for a second time, knowing that it wouldn't end in Thane sex. I looked through my save files and figured out that I'd have to backtrack about 13 hours to rectify this offense. Thane was worth the extra 40 hours. Another 13, though? Nah. 80 was enough.

What kind of World of Warcraft does Blizzard expect us to live in when the red male Pandaren doesn't have a long floofy tail? It just doesn't make sense.

I was cautiously optimistic that the Mists of Pandaria expansion would feature enough new content to keep the game interesting for another couple of years. Now that blue posters on the WoW forums have confirmed that red Pandaren males will not be getting the same bouncy tail as the female Pandaren, I'm pretty sure Blizzard will be out of business within months. Activision will sell them off, Diablo III be damned. They'll offload them to Perfect World Entertainment or maybe Nexon; anything to escape the taint of the stumpy-tailed red panda.

Hee. I said taint.

Perhaps I am overreacting just a little. After all, Blizzard did add in red skins for the Pandaren males, previous limited to the black-and-white color scheme of traditional pandas. That the males got red options at all is a triumph for red panda fans everywhere. Why not give males the floofy tails as well? According to blue poster Wryxian, Blizzard prefers the distinction.

Earlier this morning in the World of Warcraft Europe forums, Wryxian put the matter to bed once and for all.

We consider the pandaren models pretty much done: i.e. the distinctive longer tails for female red-coloured pandaren, that we like, are there to stay.

Let's say it like this: we don't want to repeat the female worgen on this one. We don't want to second-guess the design.

I'm going to read that as "Blizzard fears male red panda tails." It's okay. They are pretty intimidating.

Feedback: Red Panda Male Tail [World of Warcraft EU Forums]
Image: Red Panda Network

Girl's RPG: Cinderellife is the newest game by Level-5. Far from the puzzle solving of Professor Layton or the giant armored suits of White Knight Chronicles, this title is directed toward the female gamer demographic—just as the name suggests. But what exactly is a "Girls RPG," I wondered. Is it about a strong female protagonist, trying to make it in a man's world? Or is it a more stereotypical girl's tale about princesses, unicorns, and evil witches? Despite having one too many Y-chromosomes (or one too few X-chromosomes as the case may be), I decided I had to find out. But nothing could have possibly prepared me for what Girl's RPG: Cinderellife really is: a game romanticizing the life of a Japanese hostess. So please, join me in this insanity as I share with you my notes of the first hour of gameplay.

00:00 The title screen—made entirely out of varying shades of pink—starts with the theme song asking questions like "How can she be so beautiful?" and "Isn't everyone else jealous?" and stating that "her beauty will bring happiness to the world." Remember, girls: outward beauty is the most important thing.

00:30 The warning message (and all other text in the game, actually) shows the phonetic reading for all the Kanji (Chinese characters), proving this is indeed a game aimed at young children. Not teens or adults—but impressionable young girls.

02:00 Oh goodie, time for character creation. Let's see, my possible choices of body type are: 1) Anorexic and flat 2) anorexic and busty, 3) thin and flat, and 4) thin and busty. Remember, girls: No fatties allowed.

03:00 Apparently this guy on the jumbotron went from being a normal high school student to a billionaire CEO in just one year. Now his greatest goal is searching for the beautiful legendary "butterfly of happiness." Young, hot, and rich? I smell a love interest!

05:00 Oh but how can a plain girl like me ever compare to these beautiful hostesses? I mean, I have pig tales and straight black hair! Truly so very ugly. No make-over could ever make ::gasp-sob:: me beautiful!

06:00 Alright. So far in this game, I've been "propositioned" to work for a hostess club and now live and work in a flower shop.

15:00 Oh no you guys, my character's cell phone totally has Twitter. If it has Tumblr too, I may never progress in this game.

18:00 My character has just discovered the hostesses she met earlier were in fact hostesses and not professional models like she had assumed. Also, men frequenting the hostess club seem to be the majority of my flower shop's customer base. Poor deluded saps... Welp, off to the club to deliver some roses!

21:00 On the main street, I just passed an Irish pub called "Bar Never Knows."

25:00 In the club—named "Castle" just in case we needed to make the modern-day Cinderella cliché clearer—my character has come across an old high school friend. She is now telling my character all about the romantic life of working in a hostess club—which, as far as I always understood it, is pretending to be interested in a guy while getting him drunk on very expensive sake. I don't think my definition matches hers….

26:00 …And now "just for fun" they've hoed me up like a hostess. How nice of them. M-Maybe I can actually ::gasp:: be beautiful!?

27:00 So I've been left all alone in these expensive clothes and now have to enter the ballroom. But isn't that where all the male customers are? I can sense a misunderstanding coming.

28:00 The "Princess" of the "Castle" just entered the main ballroom. Apparently, men orgasm at the mere sight of her. Women, on the other hand, turn lesbian and THEN orgasm at the sight of her.

30:00 A rich foreign (read: white) guy, recently come to Japan, has decided to be my escort for the evening. My first actual choice in the game is A) complementing his Japanese, B) offering to show him around, or C) asking him what he's seen so far. I chose the Japanese stereotypical reaction and complemented his Japanese... it was the right answer.

31:00 The more of these conversations I do, the more I see that I should just agree with whatever he says. Remember, girls: don't be yourself, present yourself as whatever men want you to be.

36:00 WTF! The Princess just cockblocked me! (or whatever the female equivalent may be). Here I am, in the middle of a conversation mini game, and she sends a butler over to interrupt and demand to speak with my date. It is SO on!

36:15 Um, wow. The Princess has both a crown and little roses literally blooming off of her at all times. I… I don't know how to compete with that.

40:00 Welp, I did so well pretending to be a hostess that the club is offering me a gift: The chance to do it again, of course!

41:00 So, at this point, they are offering me the choice of becoming a hostess or not. I wonder if picking "no" at this point is really an option. Only one way to find out.

41:30 Selecting "I don't want to be" starts a conversation loop where everyone peer-pressures me into joining. Remember girls: if ever you feel hesitant about making yourself into a sex object for men, just be sure to let your friends force you into it. Surely they know better than you. *Note: if you say no a second or third time, it just keeps looping.

47:00 Wow! Now that's a sudden change. I'm currently watching a pair of scientists examining a giant glowing crystal and containers full of butterflies in their search for the "butterfly of happiness."

55:00 I like how in the game hostesses aren't called hostesses; they're called "Neogennu"—a made-up word that means nothing but sounds foreign. It's like calling a prostitute a "Iminashi" and expecting that to quash any moral implications.

58:00 My high school friend just came by and gave me a $500 signing bonus so I can go buy a new dress. Let's get our shopping on!

1:00:00 But do I really have the hips for this? I just don't know…

Girl's RPG: Cinderellife was released in Japan on March 8, 2012 for the Nintendo 3DS. There is currently no word on an international release.

Girl's RPG: Cinderellife is the newest game by Level-5. Far from the puzzle solving of Professor Layton or the giant armored suits of White Knight Chronicles, this title is directed toward the female gamer demographic—just as the name suggests. But what exactly is a "Girls RPG," I wondered. Is it about a strong female protagonist, trying to make it in a man's world? Or is it a more stereotypical girl's tale about princesses, unicorns, and evil witches? Despite having one too many Y-chromosomes (or one too few X-chromosomes as the case may be), I decided I had to find out. But nothing could have possibly prepared me for what Girl's RPG: Cinderellife really is: a game romanticizing the life of a Japanese hostess. So please, join me in this insanity as I share with you my notes of the first hour of gameplay.

00:00 The title screen—made entirely out of varying shades of pink—starts with the theme song asking questions like "How can she be so beautiful?" and "Isn't everyone else jealous?" and stating that "her beauty will bring happiness to the world." Remember, girls: outward beauty is the most important thing.

00:30 The warning message (and all other text in the game, actually) shows the phonetic reading for all the Kanji (Chinese characters), proving this is indeed a game aimed at young children. Not teens or adults—but impressionable young girls.

02:00 Oh goodie, time for character creation. Let's see, my possible choices of body type are: 1) Anorexic and flat 2) anorexic and busty, 3) thin and flat, and 4) thin and busty. Remember, girls: No fatties allowed.

03:00 Apparently this guy on the jumbotron went from being a normal high school student to a billionaire CEO in just one year. Now his greatest goal is searching for the beautiful legendary "butterfly of happiness." Young, hot, and rich? I smell a love interest!

05:00 Oh but how can a plain girl like me ever compare to these beautiful hostesses? I mean, I have pig tails and straight black hair! Truly so very ugly. No make-over could ever make ::gasp-sob:: me beautiful!

06:00 Alright. So far in this game, I've been "propositioned" to work for a hostess club and now live and work in a flower shop.

15:00 Oh no you guys, my character's cell phone totally has Twitter. If it has Tumblr too, I may never progress in this game.

18:00 My character has just discovered the hostesses she met earlier were in fact hostesses and not professional models like she had assumed. Also, men frequenting the hostess club seem to be the majority of my flower shop's customer base. Poor deluded saps... Welp, off to the club to deliver some roses!

21:00 On the main street, I just passed an Irish pub called "Bar Never Knows."

25:00 In the club—named "Castle" just in case we needed to make the modern-day Cinderella cliché clearer—my character has come across an old high school friend. She is now telling my character all about the romantic life of working in a hostess club—which, as far as I always understood it, is pretending to be interested in a guy while getting him drunk on very expensive sake. I don't think my definition matches hers….

26:00 …And now "just for fun" they've hoed me up like a hostess. How nice of them. M-Maybe I can actually ::gasp:: be beautiful!?

27:00 So I've been left all alone in these expensive clothes and now have to enter the ballroom. But isn't that where all the male customers are? I can sense a misunderstanding coming.

28:00 The "Princess" of the "Castle" just entered the main ballroom. Apparently, men orgasm at the mere sight of her. Women, on the other hand, turn lesbian and THEN orgasm at the sight of her.

30:00 A rich foreign (read: white) guy, recently come to Japan, has decided to be my escort for the evening. My first actual choice in the game is A) complementing his Japanese, B) offering to show him around, or C) asking him what he's seen so far. I chose the Japanese stereotypical reaction and complemented his Japanese... it was the right answer.

31:00 The more of these conversations I do, the more I see that I should just agree with whatever he says. Remember, girls: don't be yourself, present yourself as whatever men want you to be.

36:00 WTF! The Princess just cockblocked me! (or whatever the female equivalent may be). Here I am, in the middle of a conversation mini game, and she sends a butler over to interrupt and demand to speak with my date. It is SO on!

36:15 Um, wow. The Princess has both a crown and little roses literally blooming off of her at all times. I… I don't know how to compete with that.

40:00 Welp, I did so well pretending to be a hostess that the club is offering me a gift: The chance to do it again, of course!

41:00 So, at this point, they are offering me the choice of becoming a hostess or not. I wonder if picking "no" at this point is really an option. Only one way to find out.

41:30 Selecting "I don't want to be" starts a conversation loop where everyone peer-pressures me into joining. Remember girls: if ever you feel hesitant about making yourself into a sex object for men, just be sure to let your friends force you into it. Surely they know better than you. *Note: if you say no a second or third time, it just keeps looping.

47:00 Wow! Now that's a sudden change. I'm currently watching a pair of scientists examining a giant glowing crystal and containers full of butterflies in their search for the "butterfly of happiness."

55:00 I like how in the game hostesses aren't called hostesses; they're called "Neogennu"—a made-up word that means nothing but sounds foreign. It's like calling a prostitute a "Iminashi" and expecting that to quash any moral implications.

58:00 My high school friend just came by and gave me a $500 signing bonus so I can go buy a new dress. Let's get our shopping on!

1:00:00 But do I really have the hips for this? I just don't know…

Girl's RPG: Cinderellife was released in Japan on March 8, 2012 for the Nintendo 3DS. There is currently no word on an international release.

A perfect pour in Japan has just the amount of right amount of head. This beer tap (beer fountain?) tilts the glass, just so. At after the beer is poured, foam jets out, and a creamy head is poured.

I'm not sure if this exists outside of Japan. Perhaps it does.

When I first came to Japan, I would always have my beer sans foam—I thought it was a waste of perfectly good beer glass real estate! Since then, a frothy foam was grown on me.

This photo was snapped this past weekend at a hotel buffet, where my family celebrated my father-in-law's, my brother-in-law's, and my niece's birthdays. And we did that with an beer-pouring machine.

On April 16th, a 34 year-old male stole a total of 2,500 Bikkuriman stickers in Hokkaido, Japan. First going on sale during the 1980s, the Bikkuriman stickers are packaged with chocolate snacks.

Being around for so long means that certain Bikkuriman stickers are worth well over $1,000—just as some of the stolen stickers were. With no job and out of money, the suspect stole the stickers from his sticker collecting buddy.

Police are now investigating whether the charges of theft will, for lack of a better word, stick.

「ビックリマン」シールなど２５００枚盗んだ疑い [Asahi]

If something exists, then, yes, there is a dirty movie of it. Video games and anime exist, so, yes, there are dirty movies of them. Japan just seems to have more of them.

Sure, the West has its own video game porn parodies. Blue movie versions of World of Warcraft, Left 4 Dead, and Tomb Raider come to mind. There are even phony porn parodies, like these images created by artist Porrskada. Japan, however, is working on unleashing enough video game and anime inspired porn to last the humanity until the end of time.

Japanese adult video maker TMA specializes in otaku inspired blue movies. Since 2001, TMA has released cosplay themed adult flicks aimed at Japanese geeks; starting around 2005, however, the company really started pumping them out, resulting in movies featuring actress dressed in array of game and anime outfits.

While TMA is perhaps the most well known in Japan, it is not alone, and there are other companies that release these sorts of productions. Erotic cosplayers also release their own adult photos and flicks.

The above gallery features a smattering of box covers from over the years, including the Brain Age parody, which isn't actually from TMA, but rather, another company. The images *should* be safe-for-work; however, the titles might not be.

Dick Disciplining Adults' Stimulation Dirty Talk Training is a Brain Age parody. More info here.
Viewer's Selection Magical Young Girl Cosplay Magical Magica Return is a parody of Puella Magi Madoka Magica
Disgracful Heroine Sailor Sentai is a parody of Sailor Moon.
Perofella is a parody of Persona. More info here.
Only a Ponytailed Diva Doesn't Want to Watch! 4 Hours is four hours of Hatsune Miku cosplay. And other things.
Cos-Play Magical Girls features various magical girls and this English tagline: "Fuck Magical Girls!" Ahem.
In Layers Cute Hard: Yuuna, cosplayer (or "layer" in Japanese slang) Yuuna dresses as Morrigan from Darkstalkers.
Boy's Love Cosplay: Atsuto Okada features Tiger & Bunny cosplay and dudes having sex. More info here.
Adult actress Miho Imamura parodies K-On! in this flick.
Cosplayer Yua Kisaki does a hardcore Macross Frontier send-up.
Only Fighting Girls Don't Want to Watch! 4 Hours is four fours of fighting girls doing way more than fighting.
Cosplay Hyper Best is a best-of flick.
The Meloncholy of Hahiru Suzumiya is a parody of anime The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya.
Once Again, The Melancholy and Disappearance of Hahiru Suzumiya is, once again, a parody of Haruhi Suzumiya.
Keionbu! is a parody of K-On!
Yuricosu! Cosplay bills itself as a "Lesbian's Laybryinth".
Cosplay Festival features outfits from bullet hell shooter Touhou Project. Like Touhou Project, this flick has a variety of projectiles.
Cosplayer Frontier is a Macross cosplay parody.
DIGITAL REMOSAIC Cosplay International features "international" porn stars dressed as Ulala from Space Channel 5 and Morrigan from Darkstalkers.
DIGITAL REMOSAIC Cosplay Kyoko Ayana features Kyoko Ayana as Chun-Li—complete with new mosaics!
Code Eros: The Tyranny of Cosplayers is a Code Geass parody. Boy, "Geass" lends itself to all sorts of porno titles.
Porn star Tsubomi does her best K-On!.
Cosplay: Nao Oikawa features these English taglines: "Is it true that if you play with yourself, it's good for your skin?" and "Shove to the hilt!"
Cosplay Musou is a parody of Tecmo's Musou slash-and-hack games.
Kira Suta (Twinkle Star) is a parody of anime Lucky Star.
Faith stay Knight is a parody of PC game Fate/stay night.
READY TO RUMBLE (not my caps, theirs) is a parody of Konami fighting game Rumble Roses.
Cosplay Rin Nohara features pornstar Rin Nohara dressed as Yuna from Final Fantasy X.
The Complete Words of Tsubomi's Costume Play features a variety of cosplay, including the inevitable cosplay of Konami's love simulator Love Plus.

Last year at the Tokyo Game Show, Level-5 announced they were making an RPG on the 3DS specifically targeted toward girls. I was interested by the idea. What exactly is a "girl's RPG." Would it present girls with a strong female role model or would it just be a traditional princessy love story? But whatever I expected from Level-5, I never would have guessed that it would be set in a Japanese hostess club. I couldn't believe it.

Before my third year of college, I had never even heard the word "hostess club." Then I met a girl who had worked for an especially skeevy one during her study abroad in order to make ends meet. At the same time, a member of my major was writing a thesis on the hostess culture. So by the end of my junior year, I had acquired a rather large amount of knowledge on hostess clubs, especially given that my first step onto Japanese soil was still a few months away.

However, you don't need a college education or time in Japan to see a hostess club. They are appearing in Japanese games more and more. But "what exactly is a hostess club" you may ask.

A hostess club is a bar or lounge where you choose a charming and beautiful girl to entertain you for the night. They will sit with you, talk with you, and drink with you for as long as you stay. I want to be clear from the start, hostess clubs are not a prostitution racket nor a strip club. Rather than stimulate clients sexually, they do so emotionally. Hostesses hang on your every word, laugh at every joke, and generally act as if they are head-over-heels in love with you. You receive most of the ego-boosting trappings of a loving relationship without needing to spend the time or effort to maintain one in the real world. In other words, it's like having a pretend girlfriend.

So what is it about hostess clubs that has them appearing in more and more games?

The Yakuza series has had a hostess club mini-game since the first game came out in 2005. In most games, you are even the owner of the club. In the last few titles, it has spread out into a near minigame collection of its own ranging from dressing them up in sexy outfits to playing ping-pong with them. But why hostess clubs in the Yakuza series at all?

The setting of Yakuza, Kinchicho, is almost as well known for its hostess clubs as it is for its ties to organized crime. These days, the game's producers go so far as to use real hostesses as capture models, and then show off the real hostesses at various tradeshows in order to promote the game. The girls have become one of the series' greatest selling points.

The Dream Club games don't just have the hostess club as a minigame. Instead they revolve completely around the experience of visiting a hostess club. You drink and converse with the girls, hoping to make one really fall in love with you. The rest of your game time is spent doing odd jobs to make enough money to pay for your time in the hostess club.

And while the last two examples—especially Dream Club—are geared to a male audience, there are more than a few games geared toward male-populated "host" clubs instead. None of these is more popular than Ouran High School Host Club, the story of a girl forced to join her school's own host club—while dressed as a male of course. This story has been made into manga, anime, live-action dramas and even a movie. While ostensibly a comedy, the DS game (updated port of the PS2 title) is a dating sim in which you try to hook up with your other host club members as you follow the manga's general story.

In each for these, the hostess club in an integral part of the game. Yakuza has hostess clubs for the crime setting and sex appeal. Dream Club has them to pander to lonely, moé-loving otaku. Ouran Hight School Host Club uses the host club setting as a backdrop for a romantic comedy. Yet all these games are aimed at adults while Cinderellife uses a hostess club as the setting of a modern-day fairy tale—a fairy tale targeting impressionable young girls.

But is Girl's RPG: Cinderellife really as questionable as it seems on the surface? Stay tuned throughout the rest of the week for further coverage of Girl's RPG: Cinderellife.

Japanese idol group AKB48 hold meet-and-greet events in which its young idols shake hands with their rabid fans. It's a chance for their adoring public to rub elbows with their favorite singers.

Some of AKB48's fans are older. Some are young. Some are cool. And some are not. I know the difference, you know the difference, and you can bet pop stars like Yuki Kashiwagi (above) know the difference.

アイドルの握手会、イケメンとおっさんではイケメンに対しての目の輝きが違うことが判明 [2ch]