Hiding deep in my RSS aggregator was this little gem:

Essentially, according to an interview in DTM Magazine (01/2009), the newest addition to the Vocaloid line will be bilingual! Yes, it will pull from both an English and Japanese database for it's words making it accessible to both Western and Eastern audiences! Other details include updates to the interface for English use, such as native English input, katakana input, and dual DBs in a single track. [needs verification]

Anyway, time to trowl Japanese book stores until I find a copy of that magazine. Spend Spend Spend!

Edit: Whoops, forgot to cite the Source

I really should stop going to Kinokunia during lunch. It sems i hemorage money every time I step through those doors... But the Biri-Biri figure that I got with my December issue of Dengeki Daioh is cute so I gues it's OK.

Crappy photo is crappy. Anyway, Miku has now taken up residence on top of my work computer, always looking down upon me with her angelic smile...

I am weak. Saw this at Kino and I couldn't resist. It also came with an ultra cute figure that I'll be setting up at work tomorrow.

Hey everyone!

Been a while since i posted on here because of work and school and all of life's normal stuff but i happen to take a snapshot of something while i was costco so hopefully you guys like. Its basically about 3 pallets worth of moon cake. those familiar with the chinese tradition know what it is. I've grown up with moon cake all of my life and it just seems so funny to see so much of it in one place. ENJOY! comment

Liddo

Got this awesome Lucky Star Nyamo Pon Pon Ball with my issue of Comptiq this month (3 week delay from Japan release). Let's put him in fun places!

Looks like I got a new friend at the office... So the question is: should I set it up? EDIT: Damn white balance!

Blade magazine announced that Kozue Amano, whose manga Aria had recently ended, is returning to the magazine with a new yet unnamed work. From the looks of the preview image (above), the setting is going to be oceanside and possibly European influenced, much like her Aria comic. Aria fanboys worldwide finally breathe again knowing that there is a future, and the future begins in January, 2009.

source: ANN

Side Note: First post since my eye injury, probably won't be posting much until I fully recover.

The Dawn of War 2 Cinematic Trailer is finally here!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yu4ABhVd28U
Watch it on Youtube.

With such oozingly beautiful screenshots such as these, I'm totally anticipating Dawn of War II. Looking forward to this game much more than Red Alert 3 and even Star Craft 2!

This game looks totally badass and I'm sure it won't disappoint.
Looking forward to it in Spring 2009!

It's been a while in the writing but I thought it's about time I wrote something at least about Artificial Girl 3 from Illusion that I was excited quite a while ago...and considering that my last post was about Anime, it seems fitting to post about the other major thing I'm known for around here...H-games.

Artificial Girl 3 (AG3) is Illusion's latest push in a long line of sandbox games where you can make your own virtual girl doll and do "things" with her. Great in theory, no?
You get the chance to take the girl into a wide variety of locales in the game world to do numerous things with her, from sitting around on the sofa to having a VERY late night H-ing.

Comparing AG3 to its predecessor of the same series (AG2) there have been improvements - the in-game items is more easily accessible by right-clicking and Illusion finally adopted a WASD keyboard setup (miracles of miracles!) to control directional movement. AG3 has also surprisingly cut back on a lot of ambitions by lowering the amount of special moves and techniques the girl has or that you can do to the girl, which is both a blessing and a curse. It's good since everything can be done straight in-game without having to use those magical floating buttons that seem to pop up during H...but the lack of variety and the inability to choose what you want to do (other than 2 basic positions and whether to initiate H) makes the game pretty repetitive after a while. There are additional positions and actions, like getting the girl to ride you or go down on you, but it's all controlled by the AI and incredibly frustrating for the player to get it to do (there's some traits you can pick up to help increase the chances, but even then it's iffy).

The last major thing that's changed is the character creation for AG3; this time around Illusion has separated the character creation into its own application (which coincidentally was released earlier on by Illusion to showcase AG3 as a demo) which is incredibly deep...you can literally take control and change a wide amount of settings on how the girl looks down to how much hair she has in the bottom. The problem with this is...the clothes are also given the same blank slate treatment. So, as you can guess, the clothes will have to be built from literally the ground up before you can clothe the girls! Hardcore doll dressers would definitely get a kick out of this, but I can imagine many casual gamers being irritated with this change.

Finally, just like every other Illusion game, AG3 still suffers from severe (and I do mean SEVERE) polish and refinement of the most basics of things: The environment cuts out, the props and doodads you can get easily stuck on, walls can be glitched, hair cuts through character's bodies, and the list goes on. I've waited until the expansion pack to come out in order to give a more fair review than obssessing over these things but unfortunately the "add-ons" (would you really call it add-ons if it should be in the original game?) comprised of very half hearted additions of hair styles and very cosmetic changes. The expansion, laughable as it is, is STILL necessary to have a decent experience playing this game, just because of the minor refinements and additional voicing and random statements from the girls to keep the game playable.

The game's fun for the first 10 minutes while the relative "newness" of the game is still sinking in, but will only hold a strong appeal to people that like the thought of playing with a virtual doll to dress up and H with.

That's it for this post, hope you guys find it informative and enjoy reading it