culture

Famitsu recently ran an article about a recent Sega event for the release of Yakuza 3. For those who don’t know about the series it’s basically a gang land fighter, set in Japan, with RPG elements. In the West it received limited commercial success, but critics enjoyed them and their faithful reconstructions of the Tokyo environments.

While the first Western release enjoyed a loving vocal translation, due to its poor reception meant the sequel ‘only’ received subtitles. This was no bad thing as Sega pulled out all the stops in their recruiting of top tier Japanese vocal talent.

Yakuza 3 is no exception. Though my knowledge of their names is limited all but three of the twelve cast members at the Sega event were immediately familiar. Disturbingly the three unfamiliar member of the cast were the hostess’s voices who even in the article were described merely as ‘talent’ (at least in the sections of the article I was able to read).

The names of those present would mean little too many. Voice actor Takaya Kuroda and veteran actor Tetsuya Watari both reprise their earlier roles in the series (Kazuma Kiryu and Shintaro Fuma respectively). Tatsuya Fujiwara would perhaps be the most recognisable present at the event to a western audience. He is a young actor, who stared in both the Battle Royal and Death Note movies.

The other surprise to see in the crowd was Ayana Tsubaki, who appears as a masseuse. Ayana is famous for being beautiful, and a transsexual. Her proliferation of TV talk shows would be enough exposure to be picked up by any pop-culture product by the fad prone Japanese media. If this game is successful enough to convince Sega to try for a western release her presence may prove controversial. Alternate lifestyles in Japan are usually greeted more with curiosity than bigotry. In the current immature gaming environment my worry is that people react negatively to her past.

The game looks fantastic. Hopefully the game will be successful enough for Sega to consider a western release, ideally a subtitled one.

It hasn’t escaped anyone’s attention that over the last five weeks in Japan the 360 has been outselling PS3. After failure to penetrate Japan since the Xbox launched in 2002 suddenly they are gaining momentum.

Three factors are allowing Microsoft to continue to ride this perfect storm. First the Xbox is now half the price of PS3. Add to this the recent Square-Enix releases and we see a machine that allows Japanese gamers to enjoy the games they want at a bargain price.

The final factor has enabled Xbox to hold on to this lead, Japanese gamers are waiting. On the 30th of October a new PS3 bundle will be released here. This will package the new 80 GB PS3 a game and an extra controller for roughly the same price as a current 40 GB.

So come the 30th Xbox’s moment in the sun will be at an end.

Coz-play has become synonymous with Japanese gaming culture. At TGS this was represented by what I lovingly nick-named ‘coz-play avenue’. The effort coz-players put into their outfits was incredible. They even arrived out of costume and then changed at the show, paying five hundred yen each for the privilege of changing-rooms.

Actually coz-play is something I understand. I get the desire to dress-up to pay homage to a game or manga. What I think is a little less wholesome is scores of photographers. They wait in line for a coz-player to pose for them with doe eyed innocence and proceed take twenty or so photos.

TGS’s demographic skewed some where between twenty and forty, the photographers however tended to skew towards their forties and fifties. This made what seemed like a bit of fun into something more perverse. Well that’s what it think so maybe I am the sordid one.

The chances are you won’t have listened to the third podcast. In it I suggested that Space Invaders in the right context could be art.

Artist Douglas Stanley seemed to agree. At Leipzig he unveiled the ‘Invaders’ piece. A 9/11 based game with two towers inserted into Space Invaders. The message is a damning comment on the Iraq war. You can’t win, the war continues forever.

Look at my last post.

I’ll wait.

See the last sentence. People don’t. Cries of insensitivity abound. For those touched by 9/11 it is still fresh. Censorship of serious social comment is extreme though. Movies have used the tragedy as a back drop for years, and for profit.

It’s hard to shake the feeling Stanley’s mistake was venue. Art is context. Debuting at a game show lacks the gravitas of a gallery which could have shielded the piece from claims of insensitivity and immaturity.