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Kratos Pissing on Own Face: An American Gamer in Japan 2

By Heath | April 6, 2010 at 10:32 pm

The food, the lifestyle, and most importantly, the games: here comes volume 2 of An American Gamer in Japan
On one of my first days in Japan, I saw a big van with a tail fin and Kingdom Hearts paint job. Now, perhaps comprable to the Oscar Meyer Weinermobile, there’s an Etrian Odyssey III minibus rolling around.
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Box Arts
In other DS RPG news, three box arts were recently revealed. From left to right, we see Dragon Quest Monsters Joker 2, followed by Inazuma Eleven 3: Spark, and Inazuma Eleven 3: Bomber.
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3DS Announcement Causing a Stir
Last Week’s Famitsu pages showed clear excitement for the Nintendo 3DS, which is similar to the buzz happening all around the world.  Reggie has his game face on.
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Other Famitsu bits…
The “Lovely Lady Lab” features “Paz” from Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker for PSP.
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And the Japanese release of God of War III was welcomed by a comic that has game hero Kratos having an…unfortunate experience in the men’s room:
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The game itself debuted at #5 in its release week, selling a bit over 40,000 copies.  As far as has been reported, there is no messy urination in the actual game.

Sometimes I wish I had a cooler cellphone, but mostly I just can’t get into the mobile gaming craze. I’m probably sounding older than I’d like to with that comment. For those that can, Tales of Phantasia is coming to cell phones. Here’s the newest Famitsu scan of it, though there’s not a whole lot to it:
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Upcoming on my playlist…

I’m excited to delve into this Ryu Ga Gotoku series, dubbed “Yakuza” internationally.  Somehow it’d flown under my radar until this year, but it’s like one of those “once you see it, you can’t unsee it” kind of things.  I never realized how huge this series is here.  I’d seen Yakuza 4 scans in Famitsu frequently, but thought nothing of it.  But, working for an RPG site as I do, now that I’m aware of all these folks calling it an RPG, and futhermore, comparing it to Shenmue, I notice it all over the place.  Yakuza 3 is on its way to my house and I plan on picking up Yakuza 4 once I complete that, assuming I enjoy it. Here’s the first part of a Yakuza 4 walkthrough for those mporters that have beaten me to it. Sorry the first shot is a little blurry.
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Food…
In America, I didn’t eat at McDonald’s nearly as much as I do now in Japan.  Recently, they cycled through some promo burgers called the “Big America” line.  I enjoyed all of these, my favorite being the New York burger. Each franchise had a cap on these of how many they could sell. I walked into three separate joint one day, all of whom claimed they were out of the New York burger. I was like “Hey brother, I’m from Pennsylvania and a lot of my family lives in New York. Surely, just for me, you can whip one up, right?” The guy looked around and kinda smirked and was like “OK, just one.”
So yeah, at the end of the announced schedule, I was excited to se the Texas burger make a brief return:
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Till next time~
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-Heath Hindman

If you’ve got any questions or requests for coverage, by all means email me at nr@rpgland.com, or send a messge via Facebook or Twitter.  Thank you for reading!

Topics: American Gamer in Japan, Dragon Quest Monsters: Joker 2, Etrian Odyssey III, Inazuma Eleven 3, Yakuza 3, Yakuza 4