In Japan, it's been popular for the past several years to make "-tan" versions of electronics. These are cute personifications of game hardware or even computer operating systems. Most recently, Microsoft released the official Windows 8-tans; however, most of these "-tan" creations are not official. They are fan creations, like "Siri-tan".

Everyone's favorite virtual personal assistant is making her totally unofficial album debut, with enough logo tweaks to (hopefully) avoid the wrath of Apple's attorneys. One of the tracks, "Hello Siri-tan", first hit online this spring. You can hear it here. The six track album even features a rap battle with Android's voice app N2!

The personification of Siri into a cute anime girl isn't unexpected. Siri-tan's personification does vary: sometimes she's a bookish librarian type and other times she's decked out in a necktie and underwear.

So what's with the butt motif here, you may be wondering. In Japanese, "siri" is "shiri", because "si" is "shi" in Japanese. And "shiri" (しり) can mean "butt" (尻) in Japanese. So "Siri" not only evokes Apple's personal assistant in Japan, but asses as well.

世界初、「Siri」の擬人化CD「おしえて しりせんせい」リリース決定 [IT Media]

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For those worried that the Wii U doesn't work on outside, say on Japanese high speed rail, take heart. Apparently, it does. And here's the photo proof.

Kuzo from Japanese site Rocket News recently boarded the Nozomi bullet train—the N700 series Nozomi, to be exact, which is outfitted with electric sockets and WiFi. Besides being a stunt, the test's goal was to see the breadth of the Wii U's play space.

According to Kuzo, lugging the Wii U around wasn't as bad as he thought it would be, especially compared to, say, carrying the PS3 in some sort of portable contraption.

Will this become a new trend, people carrying around their Wii Us in public so they can play New Super Mario Bros. Wii U? Probably not. But if you have three hours to kill on the bullet train and you don't might the extra load, bringing your Wii U seems entirely feasible.

In case you missed them, here's Kotaku's New Super Mario Bros. Wii U review and the Wii U review.

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Wii Uは外出時も遊べる！ 新幹線に乗りながらWii Uで遊んでみた [ロケットニュース]

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Announced back in June, Figma's Skyward Sword Link action figure is now shipping to customers worldwide. Like me, when I opened up a Japanese box this morning like a six year-old at Christmas.

The latest in a long and very popular series of figures, this isn't the first time we've seen a Figma piece dedicated to a Nintendo property, but it's bound to be the most popular.

WHAT'S IN THE BOX

1x Link figure
1x Shield
1x Master Sword
1x Base
1x Sword swipe "blur" effect"
1x Sword Scabbard
2x Faces
2x Hairstyles
10x Interchangeable hands

WHAT I LIKED

Posability - It's why you buy a Figma piece, and it's no different here. These are the most amazingly poseable toys on the planet, able to recreate almost any stance or action you can think of, no matter how heroic or pedestrian (or sexy).

Finish - You can't see it in photos, but you can see it in person. A matte finish that makes him look like a video game character come to life. It's makes the colours really rich. There's also a seamless transition between hard plastic parts and softer, more poseable pieces; his tunic, for example, is a soft rubber, meaning you can move his legs just about anywhere and it won't look stupid.

Customisation - In a neat touch, while the figure ships in a default right-handed mode, you can move the pegs and straps on things like the shield around to make him left-handed. Like he should be.

WHAT I DIDN'T LIKE

Hands - Just so this section wasn't empty, it was a little disappointing to see that some of the included hands, like those designed to hold the sword, were a little "loose", meaning they couldn't sustain some of the more dramatic poses for more than a few seconds.

MY FINAL WORD

It's simple. This is the best Nintendo action figure ever made. If you're a Zelda fan and are at all into toys, you need to get one of these, regardless of how much your favourite importer or comic store is charging.

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Artist Roberto Flores continues to make dreams come true with his Game of Thrones fighting game mock-ups, this time featuring the greatest battle never seen in the books: Daenrys and her dragons up against Robert and his enormous gut.

Game of Thrones Excel! Round 3 - Dany vs Robert [DeviantArt]

I think this is something anyone who has played any Grand Theft Auto game can relate to: driving around, just for the hell of it, flicking through radio stations, laughing at Lazlow's shenanigans, listening to the well chosen songs from the game's soundtrack. This new Android thingy, allows you to do this in real life by cramming all the soundtracks from all the games into one app.

This is genius and I can't understand why it hasn't been done up until this point (probably licensing)! The app contains almost every radio station from GTA III, GTA Vice City, GTA Liberty City Stories, GTA Vice City Stories, GTA San Andreas and GTA IV. A few radio stations are missing, but apparently the team behind the app is working on that for future updates.

GTA Radio [Play Store]

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When comedian and TV host Chris Hardwick figured one day that his girlfriend, actress and TV presenter Chloe Dykstra, looked a lot like Skyrim's Aela The Huntress, there was only one thing to do.

Finish the job.

So here's Chloe in Aela's outfit, which was crafted by cosplayer Vanessa Walton (photos are by Paolo Cellammare).

Told my gf she should cosplay as Aela The Huntress because she kinda looks like her. I had no idea how right I was. [Reddit]

Aela Cosplay [Gallery]

Chloe Dykstra

[Twitter]

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If ever proof was needed of the strength of PC gaming circa 2012, and in particular the appeal of Valve's Steam service, look no further than this: over the weekend, over six million people were playing PC games on Steam.

Sure, there's a big sale on, so people are buying games like there's no tomorrow, but there's also no single MASSIVE title like there was last year (see: Skyrim). Instead, as you can see, after DOTA 2—a game that's not even technically out yet—the list is pretty unremarkable.

It was only in January that Steam hit a then-high of five million concurrent users. To hit six within the same year shows just how popular the service is getting.

UPDATE - As some have rightly pointed out, the count records how many people are logged into Steam. While you'd think many/most would have played at some point over the weekend, it's impossible to know how many were actually playing and how many were just logged in because their system preferences boot Steam on start-up. I've clarified the headline to reflect this.

Steam & Game Stats [Steam]

Mojang's annual Minecon, a gathering for fans of its Minecraft game, was held over the weekend at... Disneyland Paris. While the majority of updates coming out of the event were incremental and aimed at hardcore users, one thing should be of interest to a wider audience.

It's called Minecraft Reality, and it's an iOS augmented reality app that can display 3D Minecraft images in the real world. It costs $2 and is available now.

Announcing Minecraft Reality for iOS [Mojang]

British Elite fan Drew Wagar has fired up a Kickstarter pledge to help him... afford to back someone else's Kickstarter pledge.

Saying that he's an "an enormous fan of Elite", Wagar—a published author—wants to be able to spend £4,500 in order to support David Braben's Elite: Dangerous campaign, reaching a tier that would allow him to write an officially-licensed Elite novel.

Some may call this a smart way to get around licensing restrictions, letting him write a book in a universe that it would otherwise cost him a ton to license.

Others will point out he's asking for money so he can pay someone else asking for money, and is lubricating the deal with a promise of fan fiction.

RECLAMATION. An Elite Novel; by a fan, for the fans. [Kickstarter, via exp magazine]

Sometimes used as with pride, sometimes used with derision, the term "master race" has become a common one to describe those PC gamers who love to Lord it over the plebs, revelling in their glowing hardware and hi-res textures.

Something captured almost perfectly—right down to the Gabe Newell cameo—in this amazing image by artist Saejin Oh.

There's a larger version at the link below, while you can see a time-lapse of the image being created here.

Master Race [Art of Jin]