Let me start this post off by saying: sometimes when you’re pals with Anne, she will ask you to be a surrogate plant parent to a vegetable ikemen boyfriend. She will ask you what your vegetable boyfriend type will be. Don’t resist. Give her your address. Receive the above box in the mail. This is my duty as official Tokyo correspondent to Chic Pixel, and I will take up any and all responsibilities, be it sampling various themed cafés or tenderly growing an anime boyfriend.
Pasela Resorts is teaming up with Arc System Works once again, this time to offer a BlazBlue-themed café in Akihabara in honor of Blazblue: Chrono Phantasma Extend! I didn’t get the chance to cover their previous Guilty Gear collaboration, but this time I’m not going to miss out on a chance to drool over some cool video game-inspired food and drink.
In a surprising turn of events, Splatoon, Nintendo’s brand new IP for the Wii U, is one of my most anticipated games of 2015. Why? I’d be lying if it wasn’t largely in part of the game’s amazing aesthetic, but the idea of a shooter based around paint guns instead of real guns is really appealing to this cute, peace-loving blogger. Though I was pretty much committed to picking up Splatoon day one, when Nintendo announced they’d be hosting a Global Testfire, I was more than happy to jump in on so I could give Splatoon‘s online multiplayer a spin.
The Testfire was available for three one hour periods this past weekend, allowing players from around the world to play in online matches with a selection of four different weapons and two different maps. While Nintendo gave very little notice before the Testfire commenced, I was able to play during the first session, which started at 1 pm Saturday Australia time. I’m pretty helpless when it comes to shooting games, both first and third person… but even though I only won the very last game I played, I still managed to have a blast!
Japanese companies have transformed everything from ramen to beauty products into anthropomorphized boyfriends, but the Tabegoro Kareshi Ikusei Setto marks the first time I’ve ever seen everyday vegetable seeds marketed as cute anime boys. Aimed at encouraging women to start their own home gardens, there are six different seeds available, each with their own male mascot. So, who’s your type?
Hello again. Sarah here! At long last, it’s time for my write up on the Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn Eorzea Café in Akihabara! Sorry to keep ya’ll waiting. I’m going to do my best to write up a detailed explanation of how to get the most out of the experience.
Unlike the Pokémon Café Roy and I went to, you could reserve tickets for the Eorzea Café online. Tickets only open for one month in advance, so you’ll want to keep an eye out on the site if there is a certain window of time you’re aiming for. [Anne’s note: If you don’t know Japanese, Voyagin offers a service to buy tickets on your behalf! It’s super easy!]
For the sake of brevity, I’m going to assume you know how to get the tickets and am going to skip to the part where you arrive at the café. (If you want step-by-step instructions on how to order the tickets and redeem them at Lawson’s, let me know! If there is enough demand I will do a write up with step-by-step instructions, including screencaps.)
You’ll want to arrive at the café around 15 minutes before your reservation, and you’ll notice that you’ll be with a group of other people that will be dining at the same time. When you give your tickets to the person at the counter (there’s only one counter that’s situated between both the Eorzea and Otomate cafés), they’ll hand you a menu and an order sheet for food and drinks. This is so that you can decide what to order while you wait to be seated.
They will also ask if you have a point card, which we didn’t. Since the reservation is under one name, the points would only apply for that one person even though two people are dining (this is important to note only for diners who have their own point cards and want to save them separately).
Once you are seated, the host will explain how the ordering system works. Basically you have a span of 2 hours (!) to leisurely eat, drink, and play the game itself. I highly recommend spacing out your orders as best you can, otherwise you may find yourself actually bored at times. So get drinks first, then a food item, maybe another round, some more food…That’s what we ended up doing. If you are seated at a two-person table there won’t be room for much food anyway.
A new month means a new Community Game-Along theme, and this year, May is all about visual novels! We’ve had a ton of great otome game visual novel announcements recently, and while romance definitely is a central theme to many visual novels, for the month of May, any and all visual novels are game!
If you’re new to the visual novel genre, now’s as good a time as any to start! While visual novels generally forgo traditional gameplay to focus on text-based narration, voiced dialogue, and the occasional decision to change the course of the story, many other genres also incorporate visual novel elements. In the interest of getting as many people involved as possible, any games with significant visual novel portions, such as Danganronpa and Zero Escape, are going to be included in the “visual novel” umbrella.
Since we didn’t get a lot of buzz for last month’s theme (poor Yuji Naka!), I’d like to remind everyone to utilize the hashtag #VNMay on social media. All you need to do is pick a game that fits the theme and talk about your experiences to participate in the Game-Along. Don’t forget to share any lengthier thoughts you may have in blog posts, podcasts, or your favorite medium of choice! If you’re stumped as to what to play, here are a few games to get you started.
It’s raining otome games! First, Idea Factory International announced plans to release Amnesia: Memories for PS Vita and Steam this August, and now Aksys Games is following up with another Otomate title, Code: Realize! According to the announcement on the Official PlayStation Blog, the game will be released both on PSN and physically for the PS Vita sometime this fall.
I recently lamented the fact that Idea Factory International still hadn’t announced an otome game localization (this was before Amnesia: Memories), but the article could really have been directed at any publisher, so I’m extremely happy to see Aksys Games following suit. The fact that Code: Realize is the third otome game IP Aksys has localized says a lot for how well the genre is doing for the publisher, which is extremely exciting.
Last year, I even wrote that Code: Realize was one otome game I wanted to play before the end of the year, as its steampunk aesthetic and use of famous literary characters as romance options (Arsène Lupin! Victor Frankenstein!) looked like a lot of fun. The use of recognizeable characters may help the game appeal to a broader English-speaking audience than, say, Amnesia: Memories, so it will be really interesting to see how the two fare.
Aksys Games will be launching the official Code: Realize site shortly (update: the English site is now live), but in the meantime, you can head to the Japanese website for some promotional videos, wallpapers, Twitter icons, and all kinds of fun materials.