Someone Made A Batcycle With Spare Parts And Exercise Equipment [Beijing Cream]
Japanese illustrator Momo Okada is everywhere of late. She's done collaborations with Hello Kitty—and now, her take on Pokémon is getting its own line of products called "Poké Momo" for the Pokémon Centers in Japan.
Okada's illustrations look like "yura kyara", which are the local mascots created to promote cities, towns, and rural villages in Japan. Some might find her take on Pokémon as totally cute, whole others might think it looks awful.
Pokémon Center is a retail chain in Japan that sells various Pocket Monster goods. Check out more "Poké Momo" in the link below.
ポケモン，新ブランド「ポケもも」グッズの商品ラインナップを公開 [4Gamer]
Diablo III's release was eagerly anticipated in South Korea. The country has always been a strong Blizzard bastion. But several months after its release, the game's popularity is now on the slide in South Korea. Or is it?
One of the country's most authoritative online game ranking sites, GameNote, revealed that Diablo III has plunged eight spots in the weekly rankings to 11th place. This means that Diablo III is no longer in the top ten, which is dominated by League of Legends in first place, Blade & Soul in second, and FIFA Online 2 in third.
According to The Korea Herald, the game's "plunging" popularity is related to server issues, bugs, and glitches. Writes the paper:
The latest rankings suggest that despite the belated move by Blizzard, a growing number of Korean users are deserting Diablo III, whose content remains the same. The absence of new content in the past two months since the high-profile launch seems to have left a number of players doing repetitive item hunting or going through the same courses again and again.
GameNote apparently uses home computers for its metrics—as opposed to Gametrics, which uses PC bang (net cafes) for its data. While Diablo III has fallen out of the top ten on the GameNote charts, it's number four on the Gametrics chart. The "true" ranking is probably somewhere in between.
Popularity of Diablo 3 plunges in Korea [Korea Herald]
It finally happened. For years, Japan has been waiting for the latest Dragon Quest game, and yesterday, it launched. Anxious gamers lined up in droves to purchase the title. In Shibuya, there was a special countdown event at retailer Tsutaya for the game. The first person in line appeared on stage and received his purchased copy directly from DQ creator Yuji Horii. What a wonderful way to get the game.
But what if he wasn't really first? What if this whole special event was staged? Fake? These are the questions swirling around Japanese cyberspace.
The first person in line was 33 year-old Kensuke Matayoshi. It was his face splashed all over the Japanese newspapers. It was Matayoshi who was interviewed on TV. According to the Japanese media's coverage of the event, Matayoshi, who was listed as a temp worker, waited in line for 24 hours for Dragon Quest X. It could be true that he does temp work.
What the media didn't say was that Matayoshi is also a struggling actor. He's not famous by any means, and nobody in line knew he was an actor. His identity wasn't known until Japanese forums started digging around, pulling up his talent agency resume. So he's an actor? So what? Thing is, Matayoshi apparently didn't wait 24 hours for Dragon Quest X. Some are wondering if he wasn't a plant.
Japanese site Rocket News sent one of its editors—a guy named Mr. Sato—to the DQX countdown event dressed as a Slime. Rocket News states that at around 1pm the day before, a group of women got in line at the DQX countdown event. Later, they said that they were the first people in line—that there was no sign of Matayoshi. At around 7pm, Rocket News showed up and Mr. Sato got in line. Even though they were first in line, the young women were camera shy and did not want to appear on stage. So, they apparently told Mr. Sato that he could be first in line. (You can see photos of him first in line right here.)
At 8:30pm, a staffer from Tsutaya in Shibuya appeared to determine who was first in line. Mr. Sato said he was, and the Tsutaya staffer disappeared. Thirty minutes or so passed. Then Matayoshi showed up, and the shop staff said he was first in line—not Sato. When Rocket News asked why Matayoshi was first, Tsutaya allegedly said that he had been in line at 7am, which was before the young women lined up (mind you, none of the women apparently saw Matayoshi before this).
So Kensuke Matayoshi was shuffled to the front of the line. Everyone waited for the countdown, and then Matayoshi appeared on stage with Horii for the launch event. And the countdown went off without a hitch.
In Japan, there is a long tradition of fake line standing. They're called "sakura" (偽客), which doesn't refer to "cherry blossoms" ("sakura" or 桜). Instead, the word literally means, "fake" (偽) "customer" (客). They're shills. In recent years, sakura have appeared on television or in lines. Heck, the first guy in line for Kinect in Japan listed his occupation as "sakura".
Big companies do use "sakura" in Japan, and they do fess up when they get caught. For example, in 2008, McDonald's Japan even admitted it paid one thousand people to line up for Quarter Pounder burgers after sakura accusations. So much of Japanese TV often appears staged, and sakura can make things, such as product launches, appear successful and structured. Sometimes sakura can give mass media the quotes they need for the evening news—and companies don't have to worry about people saying the wrong thing.
That doesn't mean every launch even is stocked with fake shills. Sony's PS3 launch event in Tokyo seemed to be largely sakura free—and thus, it might now serve as a case study so micro-managing companies can know what not to do. The first person in line was a foreigner who didn't speak much Japanese and didn't even seem interested in video games. Many of the people waiting in line seemed to be homeless people who were allegedly paid to line stand. That was the reality of the launch. But reality is scary. It's something you cannot control.
So sure, it's possible Matayoshi was there at Tsutaya in Shibuya at 7am. It's also highly possible that he's a huge DQ fan. But even if he did show up at 7am, isn't the point of line standing, well, line standing? It's a waiting game—you can't just have your first spot in line held for you while others wait, right?
Mr. Sato thinks Tsutaya took one look at him—decked out in that blue Slime outfit—and thought he looked creepy or strange and decided to shuffle in the professional actor. Yes, Mr. Sato was doing a stunt for his website. And yes, Mr. Sato concedes that he looked creepy and strange, but he was first in line. First comes first, except with you're dressed like a blue Slime and there's a normal-looking dude only a phone call away.
Kotaku reached out to Square Enix prior to publication and will update this story should the company comment.
渋谷・TSUTAYAで一番に並んだ男性はヤラセではないかとネットで話題に / 劇団員という事実は確認 [ロケットニュース]
Here's a short, cute clip from id boss John Carmack's keynote address at this year's QuakeCon, in which the brutality of Super Mario Bros. 3 is compared to the more pedestrian Mario games of today.
Why do I bring it up? Well, Carmack and his old colleague John Romero once took Super Mario Bros. 3 apart at the seams, building a complete and from all accounts damn impressive port of the game for the PC back in 1990. They even shopped the game to Nintendo, who sadly turned them down.
Well, it's not that sad. Nintendo's loss ended up being PC gaming's gain.
It may have been extended, but the "new" Mass Effect 3 endings still didn't give me the closure I needed. I didn't want touching moments and galactic melodrama. I wanted rainbows.
Sass Effect [Tumblr]
Proving that iOS games can steamroll their way to world domination without having any fat red birds in them, Temple Run - a game about little else but running - has crossed the 100,000,000 download mark.
For a game that I used to call "Canabalt for less awesome people", that's one hell of an achievement. You can chalk most of those downloads up to the fact the game is free (it switched from a $0.99 purchase to a free-to-play model last September).
Of course, calling it an iOS game is slightly misleading, as 32% of its downloads came from other sources, like Google Play and even Amazon.
Sandbox action game Just Cause 2 was a blast to play solo, but sadly shipped without any kind of multiplayer. No matter. Fans of the game's PC edition have whipped up a version that lets a reported 600 people play it at once. On the same island.
The results are predictably...insane. Note that this is a fan-made thing, and is still in testing, so probably has a wys to go yet before it's "done". Still. Even what's on show here looks great.
The footage above was captured during a test run for the mod held over the weekend. 10,000 players took part in all, an average of over 400 new players every hour, with a peak server load apparently topping out at 1300+ players (I'm not sure if they were all on the same map or not...I'd be surprised if they were).
You can check in on the mod at the links below.
Just Cause 2 Multiplayer Impressions 1 [YouTube, thanks Doug!, thanks Reddit!]
Just Cause 2 Multiplayer [Site]
Perhaps the strangest news of the day, if not much longer, is that cult 90's shooter Rise of the Triad is getting a remake.
Considering a whole generation of gamers has now grown up likely not having played the thing, they're probably wondering, what's all the fuss about?
Here's what all the fuss is about.
• It had dual-wielding pistols! This was 1994-95, not 2004-05, so that was pretty great.
• The game's developers called themselves "The Developers of Incredible Power".
• Believe it or not, RotT was originally planned as an expansion pack for Wolfenstein. Hence the presence of a few WW2 weapons in an otherwise contemporary game.
• For the time (actually, also for this time), it was gory. So gory that, if you could chain enough exploding enemies together, you'd get congratulated with a "Ludicrous Gibs!" message.
• RotT was one of the first ever PC shooters to feature a large and robust multiplayer mode, with around ten players supported.
• The game was designed by Tom Hall, a co-founder of id Software and a guy who would later also play a leading role on the original Deus Ex.
Old video games may have a certain charm to them when they're working, but what about when they're not? When they're crashing and bugging out all over the place, no matter how many times you shake them or blow in the cartridge slot?
Glitchee's site is a wonderful catalogue of just such episodes, mostly of NES games that have given up on the idea of ever working - or at least displaying properly - again.
Gaming [Glitchee]
