Ai chan has been interviewed by the weekly super magazine FAMITSU (just scroll down to check the scan of the page), and now here a  video too..

Il paese piu' bello del mondo: O sole Mio...

(Minami Itariajin shooting game daisuki!!)

On april issue of the Japanese cult videogame magazine GameLabo you can find my new monthly column about underground videogaming in Europe. I write for several magazines (beside the ones I directly publish) but writing for GameLabo is something really special for me since I'm a big fan of this videogame hacking publication since the mid nineties (yes I know, back then it was more deep and hardware hacking oriented but that's another thread...). 

Today I bought the latest issue of Famitsu and found the interview to my old friend Amano Ai!! Congratulations!! She is a really cool photographer and gravure idol!!
^_^

Brian @ Kotaku posted about the Cave's revolutionary new revenue sharing marketing for upcoming Arcade PCBs. Basically CAVE will provide free games to game centers willing to share the revenues coming from the games. It's a really interesting approach and I'm really curious how JAMMA association fits in since this Japanese association, with its high license costs (yes you need to pay em to distribute ana arcade game in Japan), is partly responsible for the decline of the arcade market in Japan... I suppose that the license cost is based on a % of the PCB price so CAVE probably is trying to bypass the JAMMA license fees...  The first revenue sharing game wil be DEATHSMILES 2.  I'm also curios if this announcement is in some way connected by the suddenly choise of the cult game center in Shinjuku MIKADO to remove EVERY Cave game... hmm... but probably this is just a shooting gamer paranoia...

Next year there will be another (and probably more revolutionary) announcement that will influence a lot, and possibily revive, the Japanese arcade business but since I'm under NDA I can't reveal anything...
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As a preview for the upcoming Shizuoka Hobby Show 2009 HPI RACING just revealed a new ITASHA RC CAR dedicated to “Shakugan no Shana” (spotted by modellismo Hobby Media).

This “Shakugan no Shana” car is based on the  HPI E10 chassis. The E10 is a four-wheel drive, factory-assembled, fully prepared 1/10th scale RC car from the same world-renowned HPI design team that is famous for user friendliness, racer appeal and usability.
In each box there will be two decals sets dedicated to the manga version and to the anime version.
If you are interested by real itasha you shouldn't miss the new  Itasha Club mook!

 

 

 

Last thursday I went to the legendary TOKYO CGM NIGHT (Consumer Generated Media) organized by Danny Choo  and Andrew. It has been a really great "tech aperitivo" and, while sipping a decent Jin Tonic, I had a long chat with cool new friends like Ken Lee, Jhonny Li, Yang Yang (Appliya), Daniel Fath, Rob from "POKEN", Hironoshin (digicraft), Shingo from Kotobukya and many others interesting tokyotes... Danny coorganized a perfect techy night, my only suggestion for the next Episode is to have an after event and be able to dance to some electro and techno to digest all the informations and develop freindship trough trance...   but that's just me being an ex techno musician and still full time weekender...

(photo by Ken Lee)