The Tetsuwan Dash is a long running Japanese series that features boy band (and former Xbox 360 spokesmen) Tokio. On the show, the group tries to pull off a variety of feats, like building a foam house or seeing who can last longest on the least amount of money—stuff like that.

This weekend's show had the group do balloon art, using enormous, handmade balloons. They were supposed to make a turtle balloon. Obviously this is a work in progress, but what they've got sure doesn't look like a turtle.

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The shape wasn't lost on those making the balloon art, as evident by the above quote above (これの方がいいかも知れない), which means, "This might look better."

作り出されるバルーンアート [NTV
『ザ！鉄腕！DASH！！』で放送された巨大バルーンアート [オレ的]
ザ！鉄腕！DASH！！ [NTV]

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To help launch the all new A-Class in Japan, Mercedes Benz is releasing an animated short in which the car chases after a noodle truck.

One of the country's biggest studios, Production I. G, carries out the animation duties, while Yoshiyuki Sadamoto of Neon Genesis Evangelion fame does the character designs. Miyuki Sawashiro lends her vocal talents to the project.

The vast majority of Mercedes Benz ads in Japan aren't anime like this and certainly don't seem to be region specific. Instead, they appear to be fairly conservative, recycled commercials from either the U.S. or Europe, but with Japanese voiceovers and text.

However, Mercedes Benz seems to think it can aim the small, fairly reasonably priced A-Class at younger Japanese; hence, a splashier ad campaign. Check out the car's Japanese site. It's an assault on the senses.

The visuals and voice acting are top notch; however, the guitar music is truly awful.

スタッフに貞本義行、Production I.G！ メルセデス・ベンツのアニメーションプロジェクト『N­EXT A-Class』が攻殻感ぱない [Kotaku Japan]

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This weekend, when folks settled into dark theaters across Japan to watch the new Evangelion anime, they were, as with most movies, bombarded with previews. Sandwiched betweem the ten or so trailers, was a short, 15-second clip that probably made the audience's collective mouth drop. Most people probably didn't know what the hell they were watching. Those that did wondered if Japanese manga's pervert superhero really getting his own movie.

Hentai Kamen, "the abnormal super hero", is a gag, totally tongue in cheek manga that ran in the early 1990s in Weekly Shonen Jump and followed the adventures of a crime-fighting high schooler who wears a mankini. Wearing panties on his head gives him superpowers.

The 15 second trailer shown before the latest Evangelion depicted a "suiting up" montage that's so common in superhero movies. In this montage, however, you could see a guy's ripped muscles as he put on the mankini spaghetti straps. It showed a rooftop at night, and the character's obscured outline could be made out in the moonlight. The letters "HK", in a metallic Harley Davidson style font, flashed on the screen.

The short trailer looked to be both CG and live action. There was no info about who is starring in the movie or when it's coming out. It didn't even explain what "HK" referred to.

Website IT Media followed up with Hentai Kamen's publisher, who said that it didn't have anything to announce at the present time. Then who was that masked panty-headed man?

「変態仮面」映画化か!?　謎の映画「HK」予告が話題に [IT Media]

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Some gamers are very good at video games. Some are just awful. And that's okay! Still, there must be common traits of crummy gamers, and that's what a recent thread of Japan's largest bulletin board, 2ch, tried to pin down.

The name of the thread was "Common Traits of Zero Gaming Aptitude", and the forum users compiled a list of what exactly those traits were. Here are some:

• They're not serious enough
• They don't read the instructions
• In fighting games, they keep jump kicking for the heck of it
• They break the PSP analog stick
• When they turn the wheel, their whole body turns
• They mash buttons
• They get killed by the first Goomba in Mario
• They play while looking at a walkthrough
• They look at the controller when pressing buttons
• Their finger movement has no sense of rhythm
• They think games are toys
• When they're about to lose, they reset
• They think all there is to Pokémon is Attack

I agree with some of these—and some of these I think most people are guilty of (hello, walkthroughs). And before you think, damn, 2ch users are way too strict, after some of the above comments, the commenter added a "like me" or "like I do".

Are there any traits that are missing? Anything that you are guilty of?

ゲームセンスがない奴にありがちなこと [ゲーハー黙示録]

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In Japan, Morinaga Milk Caramel has delighted sweet tooths for over a hundred years. Dragon Quest has delighted gamers for decades. And now, both come together in this yummy fan creation.

Twitter user Cencho recreated DQ enemy Golem using the soft candy. Below is an image after the Golem has been defeated—and devoured.

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Since Golem is made from brown clay bricks, the block shaped caramel-colored candy made a perfect building material—and a tasty one, too.

森永ミルクキャラメルでゴーレム作ってみた [dqx_xpb]
ゴーレムを倒した後は美味しくいただきました [dqx_xpb]

Now that the world has moved on from making giant sharks float around by the magic of fancy air, we can move onto more interesting things like Portal personality cores.

Thinkgeek are selling two variants of the item you see above, Wheatley or Space, for $20 each. Sadly, they're not remote-controlled. They're basically glorified balloons. But they're glorified Portal balloons.

Portal 2 Inflatable Personality Core [Thinkgeek, via Copiously Geeky]

GLUED is a short film released earlier this year by a team of students at Bezalel Academy of the Arts. It's all about the problems a mother faces trying to deal with her young son, who is so addicted to video games it's insane.

The film, which took ten months to create, was the first thing the four stduents had ever done in CG. Which is pretty damn impressive.

You can see how the short was made at its site, below.

GLUED [Official Site, via Laughing Squid]

Seventy hours. Two hundred pieces of glass. 250 feet of copper. An estimated one million colours. That's the work that went into this Halo stained-glass window, and it was totally worth it.

Not sure if the medium was intentional given the religious overtones of the series' theme song, but that's exactly why this works.

70 hours and 10,000 colors later... Halo 4 Master Chief in Stained Glass [Reddit]

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Seeing as many of the third-party launch games on Wii U are already out on the PS3 and/or 360, those games are going to have to do one of two things. Or maybe even both of them.

Those games are going to need to make real good use of the Wii U controller, and they're going to need to look better than the 360 and PS3 versions of games.

The jury is still out on the gamepad, but Batman: Arkham City at least looks... a bit better... in some places? Honestly, even in HD and at fullscreen, you're hard pressed finding many differences outside of some shinier character models.

Batman: Arkham City Armored Edition [GameTrailers]

I'm playing Assassin's Creed: Revelations on PC right now, actually (as a refresher), and even a year on I'm shocked by how much better it looks than the console versions. Even though I shouldn't be.

The cleaner models are nice, sure, but it's the draw distance that really sets the PC version apart. So I've been curious to see how the PC edition of Assassin's Creed III, due out this week, looked.

Well, if this video and screens are anything to go by, it looks great.

WARNING: The video and screens show portions of the game not seen in pre-release coverage, so some may consider them spoilers.

Reddit user Taos has bought an early copy of the game, and to help the rest of us out has posted some screenshots and videos of the game in action. For reference, the images you'll see here are on the game's "high" settings, while Taos' rig is apparently:

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 570 HD
Intel Core i7 920
6 GB DDR3 RAM

Found PC version of Assassin's Creed 3 out early and was able to play immediately. Ubisoft really backed down on the DRM. [Reddit]

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