A Japanese gamer has scanned the Famitsu cross reviews of the original Dragon Quest IV for Famicom and the Playstation and DS ports. The DS version has been released yesterday and seems that Akiba went crazy for it!

Beppe Grillo, Italian most famous blogger, is learning Japanaese and started a Nihongo page... Yabaii!!!

Few days ago we posted a Miku (Vocaloid 2) mugen video. And finally the Miku character data for Mugen has been released!! (Wiki) Mugen is a freeware 2D PC fighting game engine designed by Elecbyte, written in C with the Allegro library. The engine was originally released in July 17 1999 and allows anyone to create characters, background stages and other game objects through interpreted text files, graphics, and sound compilations. It supports various types of audio formats and allows for most of the same type of functionality found in most any commercial 2D fighting games, up to and including close recreation of those games' characters and gameplay.

You can download Miku chan data here (created by "ゆ〜とはる").

There is also a custom Mugen stage called MikkuMiku. Download here (created by "Ju").

Insted if you are more into Lucky Star you can download a full character set here  (via ForosDz).


This is the Nendoroid figure version as seen on Amazon Japan.

Today watching this Miku Chan video (control Vocaloid 2 trough the Miku Theremin seems great!) I discovered Keromin:  an eclectic electronic musical instrument in the shape of a frog puppet. Kero in its name is an onomatopoeia for song of a frog in Japanese (like in the anime Keroro Gunsho). Min is after "Theremin" by which Ithe japanese creator pays homage to the world's first electronic instrument created by Russian inventor Léon Theremin in 1919.
In playing the Keromin, the pitch is controlled with the angle between the thumb and other fingers which manipulate the puppet's mouth. The sounds programmed are those of instruments for orchestra and real frog songs as well as sampled human voice saying "kero-kero."


Like a Theremin, the pitch changes according to continuous movements--the opening of the puppet's mouth. It is, however, easier to play than a Theremin because the movements are converted into sounds in accordance with musical scales automatically.

And if the Miku Theremin and Keromin are not enough there is always Matryomin: the Matrioska Theremin invented by Masami Takeuchi in 1999 (via Gizmodo/Trend in Japan) and produced by Mandarin Electron (video here)....