games

Stop Motion Street Fighter

Taiwanese YouTuber John Huang has created this awesome stop motion tribute to Street Fighter:

Check out his YouTube channel for other anime and video game themed stop motion videos, such as the Dragon Ball Gundam Battle and Mega Man vs. Transformers.

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99-Year-Old Woman Plays Nintendo Every Day

“Nanikore” travels to Sendai and meets Umeji Narisawa, a 99-year-old woman who plays video games every day:

Narisawa’s game of choice is Bomberman for the original NES. She started playing it 26 years ago, after noticing how much fun her grandchildren were having when they played it. Playing Bomberman for a couple hours a day soon became part of her daily routine.

Her years of bombering have made her an expert at the game; she’s cleared all 50 levels of the game countless times. Some days she beats the game twice.

Playing Bomberman every day helps keep her mind sharp. Pressing all those buttons has also kept her fingers nimble (and capable of threading a needle).

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Sega Urinal Video Game: Rank Your Pee!

Sega has created what is sure to be one of the strangest video games ever invented. It is – quite literally – a pissing contest:

“First, an infrared sensor detects when a person approaches, and changes the screen to the game ready display. Next, microwaves hit the stream of urine when the person urinates, and it reads the reflected microwaves to detect the speed of the urine stream. The volume is then calculated by the speed and duration of the urination.”

Since the volume of urine is calculated from the speed, the average amount can also be calculated. In this demonstration the volume is measured for a game to display individual rankings, and Sega are now developing a game for players to compete against people who have used the toilet before.

“We are looking to drinking and eating establishments to install this game first. The advertising screen in it can be refreshed if it is JPEG data, for example, if the bar is being used for a party after a wedding it could show the faces of the bride and groom. That would be pretty funny if the faces of the bride and groom appeared in the toilet. Customers are coming up with quite a few interesting ways to use it.”

Hopefully, within a year, half the bars in Tokyo will be equipped with this amazing device.

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Billy Blanks’ Wii Game Commercial

It has been a couple years since the end of Japan’s Billy’s Bootcamp craze. Nevertheless, it seems that somebody’s made a Bootcamp game for the Wii, and Billy Blanks is now starring in commercials for it:

Billy’s voice has been dubbed over in Japanese. It looks like they are marketing it as an exercise game for children.

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American Fans Make Their Own Phoenix Wright Musical

Some American fans of the Phoenix Wright series of lawyer video games are creating a stage musical:

With a great amount of work done by the fan “Pleading Eyes”, the four main acts of the game will be conveyed through 30 original songs. There is no word whether the fifth act will be adapted.

Before you ask when the cease and desist requests will be rolling in, you should know that they have received Capcom’s blessing on this project and are speaking with the company on licensing the final product.
While it has been in development since 2007 (before Japan’s version hit the stage, in fact), there is currently a demo reel on their official site, as well as a panel scheduled for April 2011 at I-Con 30, where they will show off an animation for one of their songs.

They got the idea from Japan, where the Takarazuka Revue put on a Phoenix Wright:Ace Attorney musical back in 2008.

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100 Yen: A Documentary About Japanese Arcades

This project began in Summer 2010, I (Brad Crawford) flew out to Japan and spent the entire month of July chasing leads and filming all over the country. I went from Tokyo to Osaka, all the way to Fukuoka on my own dime. However, I was unable to complete all the necessary interviews and capture the entire story. This trip allowed me to make certain contacts and discover the overall arc that this film will follow.

What I want to do is go back with a small crew and proper equipment to round-out the documentary with interviews from key subjects such as Daigo Umehara, Satoshi Numata and communicate with the Japanese public about gaming and arcades in general. EVO 2011, the worlds biggest fighting game tournament, is taking place for the first time in Japan in the spring of 2011. Our goal is to attend and film this event as part of the documentary.

We are also looking forward to interviewing more corporate figures including spokes-people from major game companies such as Capcom, Konami and Taito etc…

This coming November 13th, 2010 we will be attending the Canada Cup, Canada’s Newest and most exciting fighting game tournament. Attendees include Justin Wong, Mike Ross, Ryan “Gootecks” Guitierrez and Daigo Umehara making his fist Canadian appearance. Covering this event will create a great compare/contrast point on gaming and its culture differs from one country to the next. We hope to see some additional Japanese players attend this event to get their perspective on the gaming scene in North America.

The filmmakers are independently creating this documentary using financial contributions from internet users. As of the time of this post, they had raised about $2,000 of their $9,000 goal.

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