Author: Anne Lee

Beat the Backlog Club: Introducing February’s Pick + First Impressions

So, we’re nearly two weeks into February and I’m only just now getting around to announcing what game from my backlog I’ll be tackling over the course of the month… My efforts for the Beat the Backlog Club are off to a great start, eh? In fact, I’m still hard at work on my January pick, The Legendary Starfy! (more on that in a future post… I’m determined to finish it!)

But the show must go on, and it’s my hope that as the months go by I’ll eventually start adhering to some semblance of a schedule and complete my target of 12 games by January 1, 2014. So, what lucky game will be the focus of my attention this month? It’s actually a relatively recent addition to my backlog… Harvest Moon: A New Beginning!

I was very much looking for a low-key game for the month, as I’ve also been tasked with reviewing Ni no Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch, so I did an informal poll on Twitter to see what people would like to see more: Harvest Moon: A New Beginning or Fishing Resort. I honestly wasn’t very surprised to see Harvest Moon smash Fishing Resort out of the water, so I happily picked it up and began farming away on my pink x white 3DS XL (by the way, I’ll still be doing Fishing Resort later this year, so the three of you who voted for it have something to look forward to).

In all honesty, I haven’t gotten much farther than creating my character and going through the initial tutorials, but I do have a few initial impressions to share:

✄ It’s very satisfying to finally be able to make your own customized character! This is the first time players have been able to choose what their character looks like in a Harvest Moon game, and I have to say I’ll be disappointed if the option doesn’t return in future titles.

✄ I know this is a very individual thing, but I’m not very fond of the game’s art style. Not only do I not really like any of the character designs (okay, some of them, especially the animals, are pretty cute), but the 3D models of both the characters and the scenery look very blah, in my opinion. Perhaps it’s because I’ve been playing too much Animal Crossing: New Leaf, but the color scheme doesn’t gel with me very well, and I keep wishing the whole thing just, well, looked nicer.

✄ Gameplay-wise, it’s very standard Harvest Moon fare, so I know I will enjoy that aspect. I can’t wait to be able to customize my character’s clothing and house and get an adorable llama!

The llama’s the one with the pompador! 

For the curious, I’m playing as a girl named Appi with a very trendy cropped pink haircut who owns Yumyum Farm. As for my bachelor of choice (because we all know marriage is the most important thing in Harvest Moon), I might go for Amir or Soseki… Depending on how I go I might even swing for that jerk Allen, just because the things he says are so hilariously awful!

Stay tuned for another update in approximately a week’s time, and let me know what game you’re playing from your backlog in the comments!

Animal Crossing: New Leaf QR Code Extravaganza

I mentioned in my last Memos from Mamemura post that I’d rekindled my love for Animal Crossing: New Leaf after a bit of a slump over the holidays, and let me tell you, I am 100% back down the rabbit hole. What could be responsible? Well, for one, I’ve discovered the realm of “My Design” blogs!

An old-school Dragon Quest-themed town!?
They even have tiles for towns and castles! (source)

My Design, of course, refers to the ability to make custom patterns for everything from shirts to sign posts in Animal Crossing: New Leaf and share them via QR codes. There are literally hundreds of talented people all over the internet creating all manner of amazing and adorable things! It’s hard not to be impressed by the sheer talent these people possess. Here are a few of my favorites so far:

Adorable, and very pink! (source)
Look at the detail they’ve put into the scarf and camera! (source)
This is just perfect for Valentine’s Day (source)
So many gorgeous dress designs! (source)
The creator of this one did both the lace pattern and dress! (source)
These Ghibli-inspired designs go wonderfully with the mushroom furniture (source)

There really are so many amazing blogs and sites; it would be impossible to list all of them here. But, for the curious, I highly advise going to this page that catalogs the highest-ranked Animal Crossing: New Leaf My Design blogs and check out some of the top hits! Alternatively, this site is chock-full of links to anime/game-related My Designs.

Unfortunately, it’s hard to say whether or not these  will be compatible with the English release of Animal Crossing: New Leaf. The Gay Gamer tells me Denpa Men QR codes made in Japan were not compatible with other regions, which is a little disheartening, but hopefully Nintendo realizes the importance of players being able to share their creations and doesn’t restrict QR code recognition to copies of the game from the same region. But, even if they aren’t compatible, I have no doubt an ample English QR community will arise with just as much talent as the Japanese one! We’ll just have to wait and see…


Note: I have not posted any QR codes here because most Japanese bloggers specifically request that their QR codes not be shared on other sites. If you’re interested in getting the QR codes for use in your copy of Animal Crossing: New Leaf, please go to the source links under the images! 

No, Thank You!!!: A BL game with bears?!

While I was doing some research for my thesis (yes, really), I stumbled onto a rather interesting upcoming boys love game called No, Thank you!!!. Why is it so interesting, you ask? Behold:

Whoa, there! Who got chest hair and massive pecks in my BL game?! 

Now, please feel free to correct me if I’m wrong, but the above photo is probably the closest I’ve ever seen any from of BL media come to depicting a bear. And the man in the above image isn’t the only bear-like character in No, Thank You!!!:

These burly manly men are far from what you normally see in BL media, which generally feature lanky, often effeminate “pretty boys,” so who exactly is this game being marketed towards? Well, the official website explicitly states that it is a “boys love adventure game,” and it has been featured in a number of magazines aimed at BL game fans, so we can rule out the possibility of it being an advent-guarde bara game (bara being a term used for media with homosexual characters that is aimed at a male homosexual audience). The men above certainly look like they could’ve been pulled straight out of a bara magazine, though!

Of course, not all of the characters are bears –– the two pictured above are pretty standard BL fare, in my opinion (main protagonist is the one with the black hair), but the game’s’ premise is that all of the characters are actually semes (tops), which are generally considered to be the masculine/dominant men in a BL romantic pairing. This leaves me to wonder if the creators decided to inject a little bara into their BL game, as there are a small number of BL/yaoi fans that like bara, as well. Or, you could argue that perhaps they’re trying to hook in the regular bara-loving crowd. Either way, I love to see different types of characters portrayed in these kind of games!

A funny result of the addition of muscly men into a BL setting is that some more “traditional” fans will likely balk at the sight of body hair. No, Thank You!!! has covered its bases, offering a special “body hair on/off” button that allows players to change the on-screen hair levels instantaneously! How cool (and totally weird) is that? I guess everyone wins… except for some of the men:

source

You can probably tell what’s going on in the above mini-manga (aka 4-koma) without a translation, but in case you’re interested:
Panel one: CUT! “Okay, good job guys!”
Panel two: “Next we’ll do the without-body hair version!” “Okay!”
Panel four: “It––” “It––” “It––” “…was just a dream!”
Bottom: The body hair is up to you.

I’d be really interested hear from both bear/bara fans and BL fans about what they think abou this game! It’s scheduled for a Japanese PC release sometime this spring. If you’re interested in seeing more images/learning more about the game, head to the official site here (be warned, some content on the site is NSFW!).

Note: It’s come to my attention that my first example might be more appropriately be described as a “muscle bear.” I hope no one is offended by how I’ve used the term – I just wanted to point out that these are the most bear-like characters I’ve ever seen in a BL game, whereas bara media depicts characters that could easily be labeled as “bears” all the time.

Memos from Mamemura: Week 10

Things may have ended on a sad note last week with my favorite villager Frill moving out, but this week saw some new excitement in the form of a new villager and some multiplayer antics with a friend! And so, my Animal Crossing: New Leaf saga continues…

Whoever this new guy is, he sure has a lot of nerve to build his house so close to the station…

I’m always happy to get different species of animals in my village, so Bunjirou (aka Lobo) came as a pleasant surprise! It’s nice to see a familiar Animal Crossing villager face, too, and a cranky one at that! There’s something charming about the cranky personality. 
I finally saved up enough money to open up the dream center/massage parlor! Let’s take a look inside… 
Yumemi (which is actually the Japanese word for “to dream” or “dreaming”) the aardvark has the ability to take you to visit other people’s towns or have others come to your town through your dreams. I didn’t get around to setting up the new feature yet (lazy, I know), but look forward to next week when I’ll report back on my findings after visiting a couple of villages! The difference between this and normal online play is that you can visit anyone’s town, even if you’re not friends, as long as you have the code for their village. People are sharing codes for spiffy towns all over the internet, so I should be able to find a couple of good ones! Maybe I’ll even go to the official Nintendo town! 
Did you know that if a villager invites you over to their house and you talk to them enough times, they’ll ask if you want to buy any of their items? Well, Arthur wanted to pawn off his Chinese table on me… The very one I gave him as a present! And for 1,920 bells? That’s highway robbery!

 Low and behold, I go to the recycle shop the next day and find Arthur’s put his Chinese table up for sale! Talk about rude!

Moving on from that drama, I met up with my friend Nel and visited her town over local wireless! It was a lot of fun, and I definitely got tons of inspiration for my own town (it’s quite evident that she plays much more than I do…). The above image is one of her, er, most disconcerting rooms, as its covered in her favorite character Manbe-kun‘s likeness.

She’s got the full mermaid series… 

And the full snowman series! How adorable!

She also has a number of themed rooms, such as this Japanese one… 

 And this creepy basement room! Eek!

Sumi lives in both our towns, so I wondered what it would be like to have a conversation with another town’s Sumi… She just acted like she didn’t know me! 
Nel’s even unlocked the cafe! Here I am drinking the Penguin (her town’s name) original blend. 

I didn’t even know there was bamboo in Animal Crossing: New Leaf! Clearly I need to read more up on this game, or I’m going to miss out. I love how she fashioned this area into a little hot spring getaway. Too bad you can’t jump in the water!
Finally, we sat and watched the “end credits” together by her town’s tree… For some reason it lost all its leaves! I don’t even think I’ve played enough to see the credits in my game… It’s fun to see all the names of the villagers who’ve lived there scroll by. The music that plays is quite soothing, as well!
I must say, visiting Nel’s town has really rekindled my interest in the game… There very well may be another reason for that, but I’m going to save that for an upcoming post! Thanks for reading, and remember that you can ask any questions you may have in the comments! 

Beat the Backlog Club: The Legendary Starfy Diary 1

As I mentioned in my Beat the Backlog Club announcement post, I’m cheating a little this month since I didn’t get the ball rolling for the BBC project until mid-January. As such, I’m plaything through The Legendary Starfy, a quirky platformer for the Nintendo DS that, admittedly, I started in December. Given that I only played a level or two in 2012, I figured it would serve as a good title to ease me into the idea of playing a game a month.

The Legendary Starfy is a relatively basic platformer, albiet a little easier than the likes of Mario or Rayman, as apparently it’s intended for a slightly younger audince. In addition, much of the gameplay takes place under water, which is generally a source of much frustration in other platformers. Gameplay is relatively straightforward, however, with Starfy using his star powers to glide effortlessly through the water and companion Bunston occassionally lending costumes that serve as power-ups.

While Starfy‘s cuteness hooked me from the start, the rest of the game has been a bit of a mixed bag. I don’t play many platformers and as such don’t think I can really articulate what I think makes some better over others, but something about Starfy‘s level design leaves much to be desired. Simply playing through them becomes a bit of a chore, especially since it’s all quite easy and the game makes it extremely clear where it wants you to go and how you should go about getting there. The kind of fun and excitement I had playing through Rayman Origins is, unfortunately, not to be found here.

Almost everything can be forgiven in a game this adorable.

In addition, the music is mind-numbingly awful. You can tell the developers wanted to go the “super-cute” route here, too, but it just comes off as being too sugary-sweet and overdone. As a result, I’ve been playing the game on mute virtually the whole time.

That’s not to say Starfy is horrible and that it shouldn’t be experienced, but I don’t think its charm lies in what traditionally makes platformers fun to play. So far, my favorite aspects of Starfy have actually been in the game’s characters and dialogue! We’ll see if that’s what gets me through the game, or if the gameplay actually gets better later on…

Are you playing a game from your backlog this month? Feel free to share what title you picked and chat about your progress in the comments!

Memos from Mamemura: Weeks 5-9

If you thought I’d given up on my Animal Crossing: New Leaf town Mamemura, well, you thought wrong! I decided to take a little break from the internet over the holidays (for the most part, anyway), but that doesn’t mean I stopped playing Animal Crossing: New Leaf. Weeks 5-9 certainly saw me playing less than previous weeks, but I made sure to stop by for my birthday, Christmas, New Years, village upkeep, and occasional villager schmoozing. But some drama certainly went down while I was “away” –– in fact, I’ve had not one, but two villagers move out over the past month. I think that’s a cue that I need to play more often!

Since this post is going to be quite image-heavy, I’m going to try to keep the descriptions relatively short for the sake of brevity. And don’t worry, I’ll be going back to a weekly posting schedule starting next week! 

The first snow of the year!

One of my favorite things about Animal Crossing is watching the seasons change and enjoying all of the seasonal events. Since I can’t enjoy winter in Australia, it’s nice to be able to get a taste of it in the game!

The northern lights look surprisingly nice behind my Mermaid house!

My first snow woman of the year. I couldn’t resist getting another shot of the northern lights! The night sky always looks amazing in 3D, but it looks even better with all the colors shimmering in the sky. 
The salon (Shampoodle) finally opened! Of course, I couldn’t resist the chance to dye my character’s hair pink.

December 13th was my birthday, so I got to celebrate with my friends in Animal Crossing. Would you believe everyone who showed up at my party were villagers new to New Leaf? Chuuko the mouse held the party at her house, and Author the lion and Frill the sheep tagged along to sing and throw confetti. The above image was right before I blew out the candles, when the lights were still dimmed (yes, you have to blow into the mic to blow out the candles).

I love the feature that allows you to zoom/rotate when inside houses. I got a great shot of Chuuko there on the right! 
Playing bingo with a snowman. Look how dapper he is!

Winter Solstice festivities! As you can see, it’s only 12:44 pm, but it’s already dark. That photo would’ve been so much nicer if I had invited three people over to take it with me…

Soon…

Of course my December birthday was soon overshadowed by pre-Christmas festivities. Here I am sitting on the DLC stump Nintendo sent out for the occasion, along with various Christmas furniture (these are bought from Nook’s this time around) … and a Virtual Boy. It’s a Virtual Boy Christmas!

In Animal Crossing: New Leaf you can dress up in a Santa outfit and trick everyone into thinking you’re Santa himself, including Jingle the reindeer, come Christmas Eve. Talk to him and he’ll ask you to hand out presents to the villagers! The catch is that during the month of December the townspeople have been dropping hints as to what they want for Christmas… and you have to fulfill their wishes. I even took notes as to what everyone wanted, but I obviously wasn’t careful enough, as I delivered more than one present that was less-than-enthusiastically received. I can’t say I didn’t feel a little bummed when Doremi looked at the shirt I handed her and replied “Uh, this is okay, I guess…”
“Santa, you may have a beard, but you sure look like someone I know…”
Once you’re finished delivering the presents, you can return to Jingle to receive a Christmas wreath. Apparently he’ll mail you his photograph if you hand out the presents correctly, but, as I said, I screwed up big time with more than one of my deliveries! 
Not all’s sunshine and roses in Mamemura! Sumi (left) and Chuuko (right) got in some kind of row.
The New Year was preceded by a sad occasion… That’s right, my first villager moved out! I’ll remember you fondly, Chomoran. 
Well, not like I’m going to waste my tears on him! Time to count down to 2013! There was quite the assortment of different colored glow sticks and hats to collect. My favorite combo was the blue glow stick and the yellow hat, pictured above. 
Happy New Year!
What fun! Would you believe this was my first time ringing in the New Year with Animal Crossing? I did so as I was watching the ball drop on TV with my family, so I got my fair share of weird comments from them. 
Not long into 2013, Author invited himself over to check out my digs. He stood in this corner a good minute… Maybe he caught on to the surveillance camera I had installed?
I love how the camp site turns into an igloo when it’s snowy! I wonder who’s inside…? 
A chicken and a pot of soup! Unfortunately she (he?) didn’t decide to move to Mamemura to fill the hole that Chomoran left. 
Let’s play “Where’s Chuuko?”
To round off my month in Mamemura, I have some more sad news… 
Frill, my absolute favorite villager, is moving away! I’m shocked! I guess that’s what I get for not playing every day. I’ll miss her purple striped horns and fluffy black fur… And now I’m down two villagers! I need to step up my game in order to restore Mamemura to its former glory!
If you got this far, congratulations! Thanks for reading and I hope you’ll come back for more next week now that I’m back to my regular posting. Remember, if you have any questions about the game, feel free to shoot them my way in the comments!

Japan Envy: Funghi (Nameko) x Hello Kitty

Anyone remember the Touch Detective series for the Nintendo DS? No? Well, if you don’t, don’t feel bad, as they pretty much went unnoticed by most of the gaming populace. Funnily enough, however, the cute mushroom “mascot” of the game, Funghi, or Nameko in Japanese, has recently taken the nation by storm, and I highly doubt most of the people consuming the plethora of character merchandise actually know where it came from.

Funghi’s gotten so popular, in fact, that he’s spawned a strangely calming little mushroom cultivation app for mobile devices, as well as a match-three-esque puzzle game that you can play a sample of online here. Very soon, fans will even get to play the puzzle game on their 3DS’s! So, while Touch Detective drifts into the unknown, Funghi’s superstar status continues to propel him forward. It’s funny how some things take off unexpectedly, isn’t it?

Funny how a game based solely on the popularity of a minor
character is celebrating developer Success’ 35th anniversary

Of course, any cute character that’s anyone gets a Hello Kitty crossover at some point or another, and Funghi is no exception. Spurred on by my recent acquisition of a copy of the December 2012 issue of the Japanese version of Seventeen magazine, I thought I’d share some of the weirdly adorable Hello Kitty designs featured in its pages. I think it’s pretty obvious by the two page spread and the fact that the free pouch that came with the issue is plastered with Hello Kitty x Funghi that the collaboration has proben to be quite popular with the young female crowd!

Even the bag the freebie comes in is cute! I wonder what the significance of apples is, though… (you’ll see more of them later)

Side A of freebie pouch

I always found it a little creepy that the sound Funghi makes is “nnf nnf”…

Side B of freebie pouch

Closeup of the decal on the front. Apparently this marks the first time Hello Kitty has appeared without any clothes on. And what on earth is that thing in the middle?

Two page spread featuring Funghi x Hello Kitty merchandise. Be sure to click on the image to see a larger version!

My favorite thing about the Funghi phenomenon is all the different Funghi varieties there are! I especially like the fuzzy purple Funghi-wearing Hello Kitty shown above.

I should probably actually read the descriptions surrounding all of these illustrations, because I have absolutely no idea what apples and pharaohs have to do with Funghi. Either way, it’s pretty cute!

Finally, here’s but a small sample of the Funghi x Hello Kitty merchandise available in Japan.

Food for thought/Additional information: 

  • Success, the developers of Touch Detective and Touch Detective 2 1/2, did Zoo Keeper and Izuna: Legend of the Unemployed Ninja for the DS! 
  • Not only can you buy Touch Detective and Touch Detective 2 1/2 in English on iOS devices, but Mushroom Garden/Funghi Gardening Kit and Mushroom Garden: European Winter are available for both iOS and Android devices for free! Go check them out! They’ve taken Japan by storm, and I, too, have been sucked in by the charm of Mushroom Garden: European Winter (I think it has something to do with the snow)
  • The Funghi mobile games are done by a company called Beeworks Games, who also happen to have a Facebook page where they post far too many cute Funghi pictures
  • Alternatively, you could go to the main Funghi website (Japanese only) if you wish to truly understand the reach this weird little mushroom character has