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EA’s Tetris Monsters is now Japan’s top iPhone game

Rick Martin 2013.08.23

This week saw the launch of EA’s ambitious new mobile game for Japan, Tetris Monsters. The game is a puzzle-meets-RPG hybrid, and it’s very clear that EA is trying to follow the model set by Japan’s favorite mobile game Puzzle & Dragons.

Since launching on the Japanese App Store late Tuesday night, Tetris Monsters has rapidly ascended the iOS charts, and today it became the top ranked game in Japan, and the second ranked free app overall. (Update 17:45 JST: It is now the top ranked overall app, no doubt thanks to this article!)

Social games expert Serkan Toto expressed his thoughts on the title so far:

I think the game is very well executed and contains all the elements of a hit game in Japan: local production, good graphics and sound, all the usual monetization techniques, great IP, a bit of innovation on the puzzle mechanics etc.

Coincidentally, on the same day that Tetris Monsters launched, Puzzle & Dragons publisher GungHo Online Entertainment announced (PDF) that it had surpassed 18 million downloads. Serkan also questions whether EA can win over these fans who are already so deeply invested in P&D [1].

If the game proves to be a success here in Japan, then surely EA will port it to other mature mobile markets like the US or Korea. Tetris Monsters might have even better luck building momentum outside Japan, where Puzzle & Dragons won’t be the same kind of obstacle.

Check out our quick demo video of Tetris Monsters below if you’d like a quick introduction to how it works.

By ‘deeply invested’, we can also interpret this in a financial sense as well, since the game has been a huge money maker for publisher GungHo. ↩

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Japanese photographer to hold ‘Cosplay made in Japan’ exhibition

SCORE 1,234

Yukari Mitsuhashi 2013.08.23

Japan’s cosplay culture has attracted fans all over the world. And one photographer at the center of this culture is Yuji Sudo. This August he is holding his first solo exhibition for a series called ‘Cosplay Made in Japan’. The collection of works, titled ‘Between erotic and shameful,’ showcases his works from the past 15 years where he has examined the thin line that exists between eroticism and cosplay. All of the cosplay costumes are original, made by Team Cosplay. Yuji Sudo was born in 1963 and he graduated from Nihon University’s art program, after which he moved New York. After returning to Japan he began work as photographer focusing on fashion, music, and advertisement. The ‘Cosplay Made in Japan’ exhibition will be held at the Emon Photo Gallery in Hiroo, Tokyo starting on August 24th and running until September 14th. For those of you who can’t make it to the gallery, his works can also be found in his recent book entitled Dempa Models x 100Cosplay where he worked as a producer in collaboration with an upcoming Japanese pop idol group Denpagumi. You can check learn more about ‘Cosplay Made in Japan’ on this Facebook page. Check out some…

Japan’s cosplay culture has attracted fans all over the world. And one photographer at the center of this culture is Yuji Sudo.

This August he is holding his first solo exhibition for a series called ‘Cosplay Made in Japan’. The collection of works, titled ‘Between erotic and shameful,’ showcases his works from the past 15 years where he has examined the thin line that exists between eroticism and cosplay. All of the cosplay costumes are original, made by Team Cosplay.

Yuji Sudo was born in 1963 and he graduated from Nihon University’s art program, after which he moved New York. After returning to Japan he began work as photographer focusing on fashion, music, and advertisement.

The ‘Cosplay Made in Japan’ exhibition will be held at the Emon Photo Gallery in Hiroo, Tokyo starting on August 24th and running until September 14th. For those of you who can’t make it to the gallery, his works can also be found in his recent book entitled Dempa Models x 100Cosplay where he worked as a producer in collaboration with an upcoming Japanese pop idol group Denpagumi.

You can check learn more about ‘Cosplay Made in Japan’ on this Facebook page. Check out some more of Sudo’s works below.

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Japan’s KLab partners with Kabam to better serve US and European users

Masaru Ikeda 2013.08.23

Japanese mobile game developer KLab (TSE:3656) today announced that it has partnered with US-based Kabam to start publishing apps in the US and Europe using Kabam’s publishing platform. As part of the partnership, the Japanese company plans to start distributing Eternal Uprising next month, a remake app of fantasy RPG Requiem of God Destruction that won over many Japanese fans in 2012. To date KLab has been providing apps to the global market through its US subsidiary, but it will switch its distribution channels in Europe to the Kabam platform, since markets in the region have different languages and different charging models. The US company has channels to 100 different markets around the world, which provides help for Klab in terms of app localization, marketing, and fees collection. Kabam established a $50 million fund last April to help Asian game developers generate revenue in US and European markets. For the US company, the partnership with KLab is the first step of the initiative. In Europe, the smartphone gaming app market recently started to pick up, and many Japanese gaming companies are aggressively looking for local partners to intensify their European businesses. KLab had a 1.1 billion yen (about $11 million)…

To date KLab has been providing apps to the global market through its US subsidiary, but it will switch its distribution channels in Europe to the Kabam platform, since markets in the region have different languages and different charging models. The US company has channels to 100 different markets around the world, which provides help for Klab in terms of app localization, marketing, and fees collection.

Kabam established a $50 million fund last April to help Asian game developers generate revenue in US and European markets. For the US company, the partnership with KLab is the first step of the initiative.

In Europe, the smartphone gaming app market recently started to pick up, and many Japanese gaming companies are aggressively looking for local partners to intensify their European businesses.

KLab had a 1.1 billion yen (about $11 million) operating loss last year due to delays publishing new game titles. But it showed rapid recovery in the last few months, and raised 930 million yen (about $9.3 million) from Japanese ad agency Hakuhodo (TSE:2433) and Oak Capital last month.

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Flirt with virtual characters in Japanese chat simulator game

SCORE 2,128

Yukari Mitsuhashi 2013.08.23

Games that simulates love and relationships are always a popular genre here in Japan. Searching the term ‘love simulation’ on Japanese app review portal Appget gives no less than 17 results. One of the newest ones is ‘Henshin-Kudasai’, which can roughly be translated as ‘Please text me back’. The app is a casual game that simulates romantic texting in a familiar chat application user interace. Henshin-Kudasai was released just two weeks ago, but already it has nabbed more than 500,000 downloads. The app’s interface is as simple, resembling a regular mobile chat app. After installing, you can input your sex and your name, and then characters of the opposite sex will start texting you. There are 26 characters in total, including both men and women. Each of these characters has a distinct personality, such as a 34-year-old Kabuki actor, a 37-year-old chef, or a 26-year-old struggling pop idol. The goal of the game is to win as much love as possible by choosing responses that your the counterpart might like. This includes the timing of your responses, so if you want to play hard to get, you might let some time pass before responding to someone’s text. By accurately anticipating…

Games that simulates love and relationships are always a popular genre here in Japan. Searching the term ‘love simulation’ on Japanese app review portal Appget gives no less than 17 results.

One of the newest ones is ‘Henshin-Kudasai’, which can roughly be translated as ‘Please text me back’. The app is a casual game that simulates romantic texting in a familiar chat application user interace. Henshin-Kudasai was released just two weeks ago, but already it has nabbed more than 500,000 downloads.

The app’s interface is as simple, resembling a regular mobile chat app. After installing, you can input your sex and your name, and then characters of the opposite sex will start texting you. There are 26 characters in total, including both men and women. Each of these characters has a distinct personality, such as a 34-year-old Kabuki actor, a 37-year-old chef, or a 26-year-old struggling pop idol.

The goal of the game is to win as much love as possible by choosing responses that your the counterpart might like. This includes the timing of your responses, so if you want to play hard to get, you might let some time pass before responding to someone’s text. By accurately anticipating what a character prefers, the heart mark within the chat interface turns pink, showing how much the other person likes you.

The company behind this popular love simulation game is a Japanese internet company called Basic. In the past, they have has released apps such as Light the match, and Eto Eto Wars which uses characters from the Chinese zodiac.

Henshin-Kudasai can be downloaded for free over for both iOS and Android.

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Check out the sights from LINE’s ‘Hello Friends’ event [Photos]

Rick Martin 2013.08.22

Yesterday we had the pleasure of attending Line Corporation’s ‘Hello Friends in Tokyo’ event, the second such conference for the Japanese mobile powerhouse. If you’d like to replay the event in its entirety, it’s still available over on Ustream. We covered all the highlights here if you’d like a quick rundown. But for those who couldn’t attend the event in person, we thought we’d share some of the sights that weren’t shown on the livestream. If you check out the photos below, you can see some of the fun that took place outside the conference hall, most of which focused around Line’s characters and a merchandise shop. It was somewhat symbolic that Line held this event right next to Tokyo Disneyland, perhaps making a subtle statement about their aspirations for the Line character business, now being rebranding as ‘Line Friends.’ For even more information on the growth Line, check out our interactive Line Timeline, now in both English and Japanese.

But for those who couldn’t attend the event in person, we thought we’d share some of the sights that weren’t shown on the livestream. If you check out the photos below, you can see some of the fun that took place outside the conference hall, most of which focused around Line’s characters and a merchandise shop.

It was somewhat symbolic that Line held this event right next to Tokyo Disneyland, perhaps making a subtle statement about their aspirations for the Line character business, now being rebranding as ‘Line Friends.’

For even more information on the growth Line, check out our interactive Line Timeline, now in both English and Japanese.

Reception at the event. At this point I'm suspecting there will be lots of green today. — Reception at the event. At this point I’m suspecting there will be lots of green today.

Line's fancy press passes. Very cool. — Line’s fancy press passes. Very cool.

Line characters guard the entrance to the auditorium

Line's in-house media crew getting ready — Line’s in-house media crew getting ready

Line animations play before intermission

During the 20 minute break, attendees could check out the line store. These three greet you at the entrance.

Line Pop and Line Pokopang roulette. Win some balloons and other merch.

Line character James etched in frosted glass on the store window

Line characters were in attendance too, getting pics taken with attendees

Line character figures near the entrance

A souvenir from the show. Line character donut. I bit into his head!

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New iPhone Twitter client from Japan lets you send stickers!

Rick Martin 2013.08.22

Readers may recall back in April when we featured the very clever Stamp Messenger, an app that lets users send animated stamps in Facebook messages. Since then, of course, Facebook has added support for its own stickers, although they’re not especially impressive. But the company behind Stamp Messenger, Tokyo-based Pickles Inc., has been busy with something else in the meantime. Now it is bringing Asian sticker fun to Twitter via its new app PicTwick. It’s an iOS Twitter client that, in addition to having a slick design, lets you send sticker images to your friends quickly and easily. Check out our demo video above to see how it works. It’s a media-rich experience, supporting the in-line display of photos and video from 13 different services, including Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube, Vimeo, Vine, Tumblr, Path and more. And for those who like a customized Twitter client, PicTwick includes 11 different colorful skins – although so far I find myself liking the wood finish of the default theme very much. You can also load your own backgrounds from a wide selection, or even load your own background from your camera roll. But it should be noted that viewing these stickers outside the app…

But the company behind Stamp Messenger, Tokyo-based Pickles Inc., has been busy with something else in the meantime. Now it is bringing Asian sticker fun to Twitter via its new app PicTwick. It’s an iOS Twitter client that, in addition to having a slick design, lets you send sticker images to your friends quickly and easily. Check out our demo video above to see how it works.

It’s a media-rich experience, supporting the in-line display of photos and video from 13 different services, including Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube, Vimeo, Vine, Tumblr, Path and more.

And for those who like a customized Twitter client, PicTwick includes 11 different colorful skins – although so far I find myself liking the wood finish of the default theme very much. You can also load your own backgrounds from a wide selection, or even load your own background from your camera roll.

But it should be noted that viewing these stickers outside the app is not as smooth as it is from within PicTwick. Users will see a web link with the sticker, as well as links that encourage you to download the application. (Update: It looks like you can view them on Twitter, but not in direct messages) [1].

It’s still a pretty solid Twitter client though, even if you never send a single sticker. So if you’d like to try out PicTwick for yourself, you can get it for free over on the App Store. (h/t Weekly Ascii)

I’d also love to see List support, although I expect that wouldn’t be a priority for Pickles. ↩

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