Board games are big business now! I've been screaming this for so long that my lungs resemble two teabags flapping in a breeze. Excitingly, this means every week I get a tweet, email or text from someone who's started their board game collection.

I'm hoping that includes you, my favourite reader (I have other readers but you're the most beautiful, just fyi). But whether you've already bought enough board games to begin pointlessly re-arranging them, or your finger's hovering portentously over the Checkout button of your very first purchase, I want to share something.

When video gamers start buying board games, it's always the same. A big license with lots of plastic. I'm talking about the lacquered playing pieces of the Game of Thrones board game, maybe the interstellar douchebaggery of Battlestar Galactica, or possibly tactical misery simulator Chaos in the Old World, which offers the (potentially) breathtaking set-up of letting all of its players be the four Chaos gods of the Warhammer Fantasy universe. Failing that, it'll be something with sodding zombies.

It's as if our adult purchasing power was following some decades-late spasm of childhood. Intrinsically, there's nothing wrong with this. But picture me, the board game sage, whispering darkly from beneath my angular cardboard cloak: "No good will come of this."

The above are all great games, and they play an important role. If you're new to the hobby, if you lift a shrink-wrapped board game to your ear you'll hear your parents discussing what they did wrong. I know this. You need something really tempting for that purchase, and so you buy a license you love with glossy components.

These games, by the way, are what the board game community calls "Ameritrash." But don't worry about that! It's a term of endearment. Nothing wrong with this at all.

It's simply that Ameritrash also focuses on an immediacy of entertainment, from unboxing the thing, to screwing over your friends, to rolling chunky handfuls of dice.

But where does it lead you?

Nine months from now, you wake up on the floor of your living room. You have a breathtaking hangover from the bottle of Jack you had to drink to make Tannhauser exciting. The stereo is playing the Star Wars soundtrack, even though your friends–-who are still here-–moved on to playing Star Trek: Fleet Captains hours ago.

You look over at them, and see your friend pushing around a perfect scale model of a Nebula Class science vessel, just like you guys did last week and the week before. With every round the novelty wears off a little more. You see your friends now, moving their fleets like dissatisfied toddlers pushing their food around. They've seen all the cards. They know all the exploits. One of them is crying. You try and stand up. You think you have a token up your bum.

"There has to be more to board gaming than this," you say aloud, Doritos and poignancy on your breath.

So you pick up a stool and chase your friends out with it. You go onto Board Game Geek or the Internet's greatest board game review site™ and look at what the other recommended games are. Not Ameritrash, but the other kind. The ones without cards with pictures of shotguns on them. The Eurogames.

So it is that your education begins. A week later, your copy of The Castles of Burgundy arrives, an acclaimed German-style game. 2-4 players racing to develop estates in high medieval France.

It has a lot of hexes. It looks like a cross between a math textbook and motel room art. You hold it in your hands, uncertain whether to immediately insert it into the bin. But you don't. You invite your friends over, and... it's exhausting.

This makes no sense. You've flown spaceships and commanded armies. Why are little sheep tiles bringing you out in a cold sweat? Look at you all now—heads down, threading together fragile economies, loosing unthinkable trade combos, narrowly avoiding mistakes that would halt your progress like a bicycle going into a concrete wall. Being tested—really tested—for the first time in your gory board game careers.

And you'll see the truth. Eurogames aren't boring, despite their themes ("developing a postal service," "trading with 15th century Latin America," "who can farm the best beans"). They're simply free. Free from the need to immediately appeal, to lurch out from the shelves like Nyquil hallucinations, and to keep everybody entertained in an unstable tornado of cards and dice. Eurogame designers are free to make nothing more, or less, than a great game, a rich game, that'll get better every time you play it.

For all of Ameritrash's bravado, here are the games that'll f**k you if you don't pay attention, and the games where the smartest player is free to wield their grasp of the game like a knife.

The very next week you pick up El Grande, an intimidatingly blunt game of area control that makes dropping wooden cubes onto a board feel like stags cracking their antlers against one another. El Grande was a classic when it came out in 1994, and you'll thrill at the fact that it's still a classic because board games age so well.

Maybe down the line you'll branch out again, going yet heavier. You'll pick up A Few Acres of Snow, a beautiful entry-level wargame, and find out just how intensely personal the hobby can be. Or maybe you'll go lighter than ever, getting into party games—The Resistance: Avalon filling your living room with syrupy mistrust, Jungle Speed letting you forget the overblown rules explanations, for once, and just laugh together.

Finally, you'll be enjoying everything the hobby has to offer, and you will be at peace. Because a board gamer cannot survive on theme alone.

You'll still remember your Ameritrash days fondly. Maybe one day you'll be vacuuming behind the sofa and you'll find a loose portal token from Arkham Horror. You'll thumb it in your hand, like a totem from Inception, and you'll smile.

Then you'll remember the exact evening you must have lost it. Five hours at the table, battling the unthinkable horrors with your friends, before the wrong card from the Mythos deck ended the game at the wrong time, just as you were getting into it.

And aloud, head of the vaccuum still in hand, you'll speak the same words you did all those months ago: "That was bullshit."

Quintin Smith is a games columnist able to identify different board game manufacturers by the smell of the glue they use. He is not proud of this. You'll find his analog ramblings at Shut Up & Sit Down, his board game site, and @quinns108 on Twitter.

The 5 (Or So) Board Games To Get Excited About In 2013

Right. For my first ever board game column for Kotaku, the editor-in-chief here suggested I cover the top games coming in 2013.
This created an anime-sized bead of sweat on my forehead. More »

Last week it was Infinity Blade, this week it's Plants Vs. Zombies. It's really not fair to the real free games when you temporarily give away wildly popular paid iPad games you guys.

Poor Temple Run 2. It was on top of the free iPad app world at one point. Now it's got Monsters, Inc. Run, Infinity Blade and Plants Vs. Zombies ahead of it, three premium games free for a limited time. It's just not fair. I just want to give poor Hidden Blade HD a hug.

Meanwhile, the paid charts got an infusion of fresh talent today in the wonderful Year Run and Wheel of Fortune, the home version of the long-running game show. Feast your eyes on this showroom, filled with fabulous prizes.

You see it on Japanese forums. Strings of "w's". I often quote individuals as writing "lol", "LOL", or even, "lulz". But let's get something straight. People in Japan do not laugh out loud. Oh, no. They wwww.

Using "w" is not new. Online in Japan, people have been using them for over a decade, which in internet time is since the Stone Age.

The base for "w" is from "warau" (笑う) or "warai" (笑い), the Japanese word for laugh or smile.

The use of "w" has become prevalent online. On Japanese keyboards, it's easy to knock out the letter "w" and you can show the degree of your amusement in online games or on internet forums by writing, for example, "wwwwwwww" or a more enthusiastic "wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww." What also makes the "w" appealing is also how the letter looks somewhat like an upturned face—a motif echoed in the country's internet meme characters, like "Yaruo" (やる夫, above).

Earlier this month, a columnist in Japan remarked how using "(笑)" instead of "w" might make others happier. The point of the piece was that you can soften jokes in your online communication by using that kanji character.

It was a rather odd thing to write, seeing how more recently, (笑) is used to sneer at those who aren't funny or amusing—an internet slow clap. In a way, it can be similar to the schadenfreude that "lulz" expresses for English speaking net users. Though, "lulz" isn't always ironic.

Japan isn't the only country to have its own version of "lol." Korea has kkk, China 233, and
Thailand has 555—among others (feel free to add in the comments section). See, everybody's laughing, just not LOL-ing.

In May 2012, a Japanese illustrator named Mao Sugiyama oversaw an event during which his post-op genitals were served up for dinner. Five people paid money to eat them! And that they did.

The event gained international attention. Japanese police began investigating the event, hoping to pin Sugiyama and the event's organizers for breaking food hygiene laws—that, or obscenity laws. Cannibalism, it seems, is not illegal in Japan.

This week, News24 reports that the case against the four individuals accused of wrongdoing was not strong enough, and it was subsequently dropped.

Ryou Tanaka, the politician overseeing the area in Tokyo were the event was held, was obviously not pleased and said that Japan needs to change the laws so nothing this bizarre ever happens again.

By bizarre, I'm assuming he means people eating penis for dinner.

性器食べるイベント主催、男性ら４人不起訴 [News 24 via Sankaku Complex NSFW]

Monster Hunter: it has sold millions of copies in Japan. I have personally seen it played in parks, on trains, and in countless fast food restaurants in the Tokyo area by everyone from kids to adults. Simply put, it is one of the most prevalent and popular gaming franchises in Japan. The same cannot be said for its popularity in the West, however.

Back when Monster Hunter was just hitting its stride, I picked up Monster Hunter Freedom 2 on the PlayStation Portable to see what all the fuss was about. To put it mildly, I was not impressed. And so, after about ten hours of play, I gave up on it (and the series as a whole), deciding it just wasn't for me.

Among the several issues I had with Freedom 2, the most egregious was the game's camera controls. Because the PSP has no second thumbstick for camera control, the camera is instead linked to the d-pad, with movement relegated to the thumbstick. This means that to both move and control your camera at the same time, you have to force your left hand into what I lovingly call, "an unnatural withered claw"—i.e., with your thumb in charge of movement, your index finger on the camera, and your middle finger on the left trigger. It is a control setup unlike any game I have played before or since. Worse yet, it is far from comfortable or easy to get used to. And with no auto-lock to help me out, I found myself more often fighting the game's controls than the monsters inside the game.

My second major issue with Freedom 2 was the lack of story. Obviously this is based upon personal preference, but good, interactive stories are the main reason I play games in the first place. The simple, open-ended plot of hunting-monsters-for-fun-and-profit was nowhere near what I require to become invested in a world and its characters. So without a story, Freedom 2 felt to me like a grind for the sake of grinding—something I have zero interest in.

In lieu of a story, however, Freedom 2 is built around making an immersive co-op experience. Now, don't get me wrong, I love co-op games. And sometimes, the co-op nature of a game can replace my need for a plot (though having both is ideal). But sadly, practical real-world limitations kept me from getting the most out of the co-op mode. I only had one other friend willing to buy the game and play with me. Unfortunately, two people just isn't enough—you really need four people playing together to best experience the game. And as this was nearly a year before the release of Ad-Hoc Party, we were SOL in the online co-op department.

Moreover, I found the game slow and boring when playing alone. He found it less so, and in between our first co-op session and second, his character entered a-whole-nother weight class full of monsters I couldn't even touch. And, try as I might to catch up, I was never able to.

So, after all that, what could make me give Monster Hunter a second chance? Nothing much. Just a new Monster Hunter game that looked to fix the vast majority of the problems I had with the game. Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate on the Wii U reads like a checklist called: "How to Make a Monster Hunter Game for Richard Eisenbeis."

To start, camera control has been radically improved. Not only can you control it via the Wii U's second thumbstick—leaving the "claw" totally optional—but also there is a lock-on feature that allows you to re-center your camera on the boss monsters at any time. While not quite the permanent lock-on I had hoped for, it's undoubtedly a great start.

And although Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate still lacks anything but the most barebones excuse for a story, the co-op is so engrossing I hardly noticed. Almost immediately I was able to head online, find a group at my level, and get to boss hunting. There was no need to have three friends at my beck and call to get the best experience; I just logged on and played.

Rather than boring, as I found Freedom 2, 3 Ultimate was exciting and more than a little addictive. I spent hours doing boss fight after boss fight and never really grew tired of it. So if you were turned off to Monster Hunter for the same reasons I was, I encourage you to give it another shot with Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate on the Wii U. It may well change your mind.

Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate was released on December 10, 2012, in Japan for the Wii U and Nintendo 3DS and is region locked. It will be released on both systems in the United States on March 19, 2013.

Every spring in Japan, families with sons display miniature samurai armor. The armor, called yoroi (鎧), or samurai helmet, called "kabuto" (兜), are for Children's Day. Families want their sons to grow up strong and healthy. It's a Japanese tradition.

Starting March 1, Disney, never one to shy from merchandising, is offering a "Disney Pure Silver Kabuto" for a mere ¥250,000 (US$2,680), putting it on the pricey end of the miniature samurai armor scale.

As Japanese site IT Media notes, Mickey Mouse's silhoutte appears throughout the helmet's design.

Nothing says Japanese tradition quite like Mickey Mouse.

隠れミッキーがワイルド＆キュート　端午の節句は「ディズニー 純銀兜」でキメろ [IT Media]

Last night at their press event in San Francisco, NIS America announced they would be releasing three new Japanese titles this year.

The first of these, Disgaea Dimension 2: A Brighter Darkness, is the newest PS3 title in the long-running strategy RPG series, Disgaea. It is a direct sequel to the first game in the series, Disgaea: Hour of Darkness and picks up the story ten years later. It is set to release in the fall of this year.

The second game is The Guided Fate Paradox, a plot-driven dungeon crawler about a normal boy who has recently become a god. It will be coming out sometime this fall on the PS3 as well.

The final title NIS America will be bringing over is Time and Eternity (also known by its Japanese title, Tokitowa). We've talked about this time-travel, multiple personality "HD animation RPG" quite a bit here at Kotaku East. And with its unique battle system, I personally found it a joy to play. It will be released on the PS3 sometime this summer.

Check out the trailers below to see these games in action.

The Pocket Monsters anime originally used Japanese writing for on-screen text and signs. A pain in the ass if you need to localize the cartoon into other languages. So the Pokémon folks came up with a solution: a made-up language. A Pokélingo, if you will.

Starting with anime series Pocket Monster Best Wishes!, the anime series began using a made up language that actually means something. So this sign from Best Wishes! episode #49:

Actually isn't just gibberish! It reads "Pokémon". Can't you see it? This is the language used in the Pokémon region of Unova, making it Unovan. Website PocketMonsters.net has an extremely helpful dictionary for deciphering the symbols, which directly correlate to English letters:

This is the main language used in the Pokémon anime; however, there's also a second and a third language. You can see their deciphered symbols on PocketMonsters.net.

PocketMonsters.net updated its dictionary early last January. Deciphering work began in 2011, with those involved on the project posting on the Serebii forums.

This week, another group—students from University of Kyoto's "Pokémon Club"—are saying how they've independently cracked the anime lingo, posting examples of how they've translated the Pokéspeak.

While this notebook is written in Unovan, the sentences are in English. The University of Kyoto students note that there are some mistakes. In one instance, "you" is written as "u", and "wha" is written instead of "what".

What's interesting about the deciphering done by the University of Kyoto students is how sometimes Unovan can be deciphered to reveal not just English words. For example, in this image, each Pocket Monster has its original Japanese name listed, with short descriptions in rough Latin script, like what's used to write Japanese (romaji).

So next to Deino (née Monozu in Japanese), it reads, "Mitame ha tyotto kimoi ne", which would be 見た目はちょっとキモいね in Japanese and means "Its appearance is somewhat creepy".

Pokémon people have created a language that people can decipher and read. Since the anime is then dubbed for different regions, that would mean Unovan isn't necessarily English, and it's not necessarily Japanese—which is proved by the written language having both in it. This means that spoken Unovan could then have its own pronunciation. So somebody create a pronunciation guide so people can congregate in public and speak Pokélingo. Cuter than speaking Klingon!

イッシュ文字がほぼ解読された件 [京都大学ポケモンサークル]
Anime Language [PocketMonsters.net]

To start with, a fair bit of warning: I am not what you would call a Monster Hunter fan. The first (and last) game of the series I played was Monster Hunter Freedom 2 and that experience left me feeling that Monster Hunter just wasn't the series for me. But then I saw Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate for the Wii U which appeared to have addressed the problems that I had with the series. So I decided to give the series a second shot. I am glad I did.

Good — Epic Battles

I'll say this for Monster Hunter: It certainly lives up to its title. The boss monsters are huge, imposing, and radiate danger. Dragons, t-rexes, and sea serpents are little more than the opening volley of this game—with the creatures getting bigger and scarier as you progress. And just when you think you've got a handle on one type of boss monster, they throw two at you at once, raising the stakes yet again.

Moreover, each battle is far from a brief encounter. In my time with the game, I didn't encounter a single boss fight that was under seven minutes long and many broke the fifteen minute mark—and this is with four players constantly attacking the boss.

Good — The Wii U Gamepad

The Wii U's controller is a god-send in 3 Ultimate. It basically serves as your go-to place for the majority of the game's menus; and, if you so choose, you can completely remove the interface from your TV screen and put everything from life bar to item selection on the controller's screen.

But by far my favorite thing about playing it with the Wii U controller was being able to quickly type out text chat using the gamepad's touch screen. In a game where communication is important, it was great to not be forced to select letters one by one with crawling slowness.

[*Note: During the time I was playing Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate, voice chat and USB keyboard support had yet to be implemented. They were patched into the game this past Tuesday and will be included in the Western release.]

Mixed — The Controls Are Getting Better But Aren't Quite There Yet

3 Ultimate makes some great strides in making the game easier to play. The most profound tweak is the ability to lock on to the biggest monster in the area. Once locked on, the camera still does not center on your target automatically; rather you have the ability to re-center the camera on the monster whenever you'd like. As I tend to play the thrusting classes when using melee, I can tell you, it made the whole game much easier to get the hang of.

The ranged classes, which I was far more comfortable with from my time with third-person shooters, still need a bit of streamlining, however, as the controls come off as a bit archaic. To aim and fire an arrow from the bow, for example, I had to press and hold one button to draw, press and hold another to enter aiming mode, and switch over my left thumb to the very sensitive d-pad to line up my shot—since the left thumbstick continued to control movement even in aiming mode. While not impossible to use by any means—after you spend some time getting used to it, anyway—I couldn't help but notice that I was using a controller that has two thumbsticks and four shoulder buttons. In other words, there is no need to stick with the limitations of a PSP-designed control scheme (at least in the Wii U version of the game) when a more common and user-friendly control setup could be used instead.

Bad — Die and Die Again

Monster Hunter is a game all about the grind. You kill monsters, find new materials, make money, and create new armor all so you can restart the cycle with stronger monsters. It is the nature of the game. That, however, doesn't make it any less frustrating when you are one-hit killed by monster after monster as you try to gather what is necessary to make the gear you need.

The most frustrating deaths came after the monster ran away into an adjacent area. Then immediately after I loaded into the new area, I found myself dead from the monster camping the spawn waiting for me. On second thought, "frustrating" doesn't really begin to cover it.

But even worse than that comes from when other people die. For each death in your party, everyone loses a chunk of the monetary reward you would get for completing the hunt. When your monetary reward hits zero—i.e., after three deaths total spread between you and your allies—you fail the hunt, lose the contract fee you paid to start the hunt, and have to try again. And as each battle takes ten to fifteen minutes, you gain nothing and are left feeling like you wasted your time… which, let's be frank, you did. And in my opinion, there is no greater sin a game can commit than to make you feel like you are wasting your time.

Final Thoughts

Despite the game being more than a little frustrating at points, I generally enjoyed my time with Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate. It was easy to hop online, find a group, pop in, and get to Monster Hunting. The battles were tense, exciting, and highly addictive. Moreover, they never felt like a slog—well, unless you and your party failed right near the end of the fight anyway. And thanks to the Wii U's game pad, I feel I got a far better online experience out of the game than I would on any other system. If you're a fan of the series, you will no doubt be happy with this game. And if you have a Wii U and have given up on or ignored Monster Hunter in the past, this version of the game may well change your mind. I know it did for me.

Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate was released on December 10, 2012, in Japan for the Wii U and Nintendo 3DS and is region locked. It will be released on both systems in the United States on March 19, 2013.

Naruto might be the namesake of manga and anime juggernaut Naruto, but the star of this mesmerizing animated GIF is a dancing Itachi Uchiha and his co-star Kisame Hoshigaki.

This image originally appeared on a Japanese internet thread called "I also made my own animated GIF lol."

Look at how he snaps off that shirt and coat! Of course, the GIF was soon edited for further internet hijinks. If you watch these two GIFs together long enough, you'll see them both making out at the same time.

俺もgifアニメつくったったｗｗｗｗｗ [いたしん！]