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Japan’s weirdest tower defense game now has 9M downloads, and a few weird commercials

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Kyoto-based mobile game publisher Ponos has announced that its popular tower defense title Battle Cats has surpassed 9 million downloads as of May 3rd. At the same time, the company is announcing that its repertoire of smartphone apps have now seen over 33 million downloads in total. That total surprises me, because while the company has a lot of games, Battle Cats is the only one that has ever really gotten my attention. While it has been a while since we’ve looked in on this title (the English version was retired last year, much to our despair), the most recent million downloads have come in 110 days, quicker than the previous million, which required 137 days. Ponos has recently started airing a series of commercials here in Japan for Battle Cats starring singer Sachiko Kobayashi. They’re pretty strange little promos, which is perhaps fitting, given how strange the game actually is. They ran from April 28th until May 4th, and likely were a big help in giving the game a push in the past few weeks. I’m still a big fan of this game, and if you don’t mind venturing into a Japanese-language title, I encourage you to check it…

battle-cats-9m

Kyoto-based mobile game publisher Ponos has announced that its popular tower defense title Battle Cats has surpassed 9 million downloads as of May 3rd.

At the same time, the company is announcing that its repertoire of smartphone apps have now seen over 33 million downloads in total. That total surprises me, because while the company has a lot of games, Battle Cats is the only one that has ever really gotten my attention.

While it has been a while since we’ve looked in on this title (the English version was retired last year, much to our despair), the most recent million downloads have come in 110 days, quicker than the previous million, which required 137 days.

Ponos has recently started airing a series of commercials here in Japan for Battle Cats starring singer Sachiko Kobayashi. They’re pretty strange little promos, which is perhaps fitting, given how strange the game actually is. They ran from April 28th until May 4th, and likely were a big help in giving the game a push in the past few weeks.

I’m still a big fan of this game, and if you don’t mind venturing into a Japanese-language title, I encourage you to check it out.

Via Gamebiz.jp

Japanese app cleverly sneaks snapshot of girls in a kissing pose

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Japan is often known for its unusual products, and we have written a little about them in the past. One app that is pretty ridiculous, but also very sneaky and smart at the same time, is Yahoo’s ‘Kiss-Shiyo!’ Android app. Its name when translated means “let’s kiss.” Think of a girl that you find attractive, for example. You’re not dating her and you probably won’t in the future, but you still find her attractive. You wonder what she would look like when she’s trying to kiss someone. That’s when the Kiss-Shiyo app comes in handy. The app will produce a picture showing you how she’d look when she’s about to kiss someone — all without revealing your ulterior motive. The brilliance of the app lies in how it produces this picture. Kiss-Shiyo is camouflaged to look like a fortune telling app. It displays a candle displayed on the screen, and if you ask her to blow it out and make a wish, the app takes her photo. That’s it. It’s super simple. If the girl has some sense of humor, you will not only get a cute photo of her, but hopefully also a good laugh. Kiss-Shiyo is a creation…

Kiss-Shiyo-Yahoo

Japan is often known for its unusual products, and we have written a little about them in the past. One app that is pretty ridiculous, but also very sneaky and smart at the same time, is Yahoo’s ‘Kiss-Shiyo!’ Android app. Its name when translated means “let’s kiss.”

Think of a girl that you find attractive, for example. You’re not dating her and you probably won’t in the future, but you still find her attractive. You wonder what she would look like when she’s trying to kiss someone. That’s when the Kiss-Shiyo app comes in handy.

Kiss-Shiyo-candleThe app will produce a picture showing you how she’d look when she’s about to kiss someone — all without revealing your ulterior motive. The brilliance of the app lies in how it produces this picture. Kiss-Shiyo is camouflaged to look like a fortune telling app. It displays a candle displayed on the screen, and if you ask her to blow it out and make a wish, the app takes her photo. That’s it. It’s super simple.

If the girl has some sense of humor, you will not only get a cute photo of her, but hopefully also a good laugh.

Kiss-Shiyo is a creation that came out of Yahoo Japan’s Lab, an experimental initiave from the internet giant. On its website, the Lab showcases different projects, including Yubichizu and FashionNavi. Yubichizu is an intuitive web app for tablets that lets users draw on a map to find the distance to nearby stores for example. FashionNavi, meanwhile, is an color-focused image search designed specifically for fashion.

You can download Kiss-Shiyo app on Google Play.

New Japanese iPhone game challenges you to have as many babies as possible

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Lots of weird and wonderful apps pass through Apple’s App Store, and that seems to be especially true here in Japan. We’ve already written about a few of them in fact. But one game popped on our radar over the past few weeks, an unusual title by the name of Egg and Seed. While there is a sort of background story behind the game, it is pretty trivial and obviously contrived. As the human race faces extinction, you play the role of a special ‘super egg’ which has to avoid viruses and liaise with as many swimming sperm as you can. Sounds like a party, right? The purpose is simply to have as many babies as possible, and continue to try to beat your high score if you can. I myself had 80 babies just this morning, so I challenge you to top that if you can. Like any game this strange, I couldn’t help but wonder what was going through the heads of the folks who creates it. A response to Japan’s supposed no-sex crisis perhaps? I decided to get in touch with the developers to ask. It turns out that, for Ryo Shirakawa and ‘Ika’ [1], this game…

egg-seed-logo

Lots of weird and wonderful apps pass through Apple’s App Store, and that seems to be especially true here in Japan. We’ve already written about a few of them in fact. But one game popped on our radar over the past few weeks, an unusual title by the name of Egg and Seed.

While there is a sort of background story behind the game, it is pretty trivial and obviously contrived. As the human race faces extinction, you play the role of a special ‘super egg’ which has to avoid viruses and liaise with as many swimming sperm as you can. Sounds like a party, right?

The purpose is simply to have as many babies as possible, and continue to try to beat your high score if you can. I myself had 80 babies just this morning, so I challenge you to top that if you can.

Like any game this strange, I couldn’t help but wonder what was going through the heads of the folks who creates it. A response to Japan’s supposed no-sex crisis perhaps? I decided to get in touch with the developers to ask. It turns out that, for Ryo Shirakawa and ‘Ika’ [1], this game (their first and only game) was merely a trial to learn game programming. But after making it initially, they found they could make it better by adding a few extra features and functions. Unlike many made-in-Japan games, it’s ready to go for international users too, with an easy interface and a great app description on the App Store.


egg-seed-0 egg-seed-1

Surprisingly the end result, Egg and Seed, after briefly breaking into Japan’s top ten app rankings, still sits among the country’s top ten games in the action and adventure categories (see chart below), a pleasant result for what looks like a mere side project from its developers. The control mechanism for this one is smart, and I look forward to future games from these guys whenever they decide to get really serious.

The game is available over on the App Store if you’d like to give it a try.

egg-and-seed
Via App Annie

  1. Ika is the apparent nickname of one of the two developers.  ↩

5 great ideas acknowledged at Yahoo Japan’s ‘Internet Creative Awards’

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Here in Japan, internet giant Yahoo Japan holds its ‘Internet Creative Awards‘. The awards began back in 2006 to discover and support digital creators. Winning products are carefully selected by participating judges, and the final results were just announced from a list of 340 nominees. The awards are divided into general (individual creators or projects) and corporate creators. Let’s take a look at some of the winners from the ‘general’ portion. The grand winner was Dots Dog, a cute app designed for children ages one to three years old. All a child needs to do is to touch the iPhone screen at three points to draw three dots. The dots, wherever they’re placed, will be turned into a face of a dog. The app recognizes the size of the dots, making the dog’s expression unique each time. Kannon is a soon to be released iPhone app that turns everyday sounds into a real-time animation. The app picks up on surrounding noises like the squeak of a chair, breathing sounds, or people chatting. The resulting animation could look like a face, or a mysteriously random letter. The app will be available for download soon for the price of 170 yen. Kigurumi…

Yahoo-internet-creative-award

Here in Japan, internet giant Yahoo Japan holds its ‘Internet Creative Awards‘. The awards began back in 2006 to discover and support digital creators. Winning products are carefully selected by participating judges, and the final results were just announced from a list of 340 nominees.

The awards are divided into general (individual creators or projects) and corporate creators. Let’s take a look at some of the winners from the ‘general’ portion.

The grand winner was Dots Dog, a cute app designed for children ages one to three years old. All a child needs to do is to touch the iPhone screen at three points to draw three dots. The dots, wherever they’re placed, will be turned into a face of a dog. The app recognizes the size of the dots, making the dog’s expression unique each time.

Dots-Dog

Kannon is a soon to be released iPhone app that turns everyday sounds into a real-time animation. The app picks up on surrounding noises like the squeak of a chair, breathing sounds, or people chatting. The resulting animation could look like a face, or a mysteriously random letter. The app will be available for download soon for the price of 170 yen.

Kigurumi Camera is an app (for iPhone and Android) that turns any facial photo into a kigurumi. Kigurumi is a costume people put on when they’re tyring to represent cartoon characters or animals. The app doesn’t do much but it makes a sort of a weird twisted photo of your face putting on your kigurumi. It was awarded for it’s mysteriousness and since people often shared the resulting photos online.

A few friends of a soon-to-be-married couple invented a new kind of ring. It’s called ‘Sao-ring’ (Sao comes from the name of the bride), and it’s sort of a prank because when the ring is placed on the groom’s finger, it sends out his location to his wife. When he takes it off, the signal is turned off. But why would he ever if he loves her truly? This project is fun, but the use of geolocation technology here is intriguing.

Saoring

Arart (AR-art) is an iPhone app that breathes life into things on the screen. When a user holds up an iPhone to an art work, the art expresses itself on your iPhone screen. Check out the video below.

Punishment Punch Girl: Japan’s latest ‘weird’ game is surprisingly good

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One of Japan’s hottest new mobile games over the past couple of weeks has been Punishment Punch Girl, a (strange) new fighter game from e-Dragon Power and Craft & Meister. I understand that well-known game designer Noritaka Funamizu (C&M), of Street Fighter II and Monster Hunter fame, worked on this title. The premise of the game, as noted already by a few Western publications, is an unusual one. The hero is a high school girl who is tasked with beating up perverts (often very strangely dressed ones) who lurk on the train. Looking beyond the unusual concept, Punch Girl is a really fun game. I’ve been playing it over the past few days, but I confess, it’s not something I really want to play when anyone is looking! In addition to the overall style of Punch Girl, the fun part of the gameplay is mastering the technique of, well, kicking ass. You have to keep your enemy airborne long enough to inflict the required amount of hits, and to do that you’ll need variety of directional attacks. Building a repertoire of attacks (they can be added in exchange for your collected experience points) really hooks you into the game. You…

One of Japan’s hottest new mobile games over the past couple of weeks has been Punishment Punch Girl, a (strange) new fighter game from e-Dragon Power and Craft & Meister. I understand that well-known game designer Noritaka Funamizu (C&M), of Street Fighter II and Monster Hunter fame, worked on this title.

The premise of the game, as noted already by a few Western publications, is an unusual one. The hero is a high school girl who is tasked with beating up perverts (often very strangely dressed ones) who lurk on the train. Looking beyond the unusual concept, Punch Girl is a really fun game. I’ve been playing it over the past few days, but I confess, it’s not something I really want to play when anyone is looking!

punishment-punch-girl-03

In addition to the overall style of Punch Girl, the fun part of the gameplay is mastering the technique of, well, kicking ass. You have to keep your enemy airborne long enough to inflict the required amount of hits, and to do that you’ll need variety of directional attacks. Building a repertoire of attacks (they can be added in exchange for your collected experience points) really hooks you into the game. You can check out our video demo above to see how this works.

Putting cute girl characters in the role of a fighter always seems to prove popular in various media (see Lollipop Chainsaw, Machine Girl [1]), not surprisingly among male audiences. So far it is doing pretty good here in Japan, becoming the second ranked iOS app overall back on October 29, having initially launched back on October 16. Currently it is ranked 22nd overall, although it was still in the top ten just earlier today.

On one hand, I hope the game gets published in English as well because I think it could really do well with Western audiences. But at the same time, I think the sense of humor behind the game might just be passed off as Japan being weird, rather than Japan being creative and funny.

Overall I think it is a pretty interesting game. It’s very enjoyable, and hard to put down once you get going. If you’d like to give it a try, you can get it as a free download over on the Japanese App Store.

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  1. Or maybe it’s just chainsaws? What if Evil Dead 2 was remade with a school girl? Hmmm…  ↩

LINE continues to be the perfect app distributor, as its photo app hits 40M downloads

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Line Corporation has announced today that that its photo decoration and effects app Line Camera has surpassed the 40 million downloads mark. That’s a pretty significant accomplishment, although one wonders how many of those 40 million have stuck with the app given the abundance of alternatives available in Line’s home market of Japan [1]. I was curious to look at the pace of Line Camera’s growth, given that I hadn’t checked in on the app in over a year (see chart below). After its initial launch in April of 2012, the app picked up 5 million downloads in its first month, and went on to snag 20 million just after New Years. With 40 million announced today, it’s likely that Line Camera’s growth will continue to be completely dependent on how fast the Line chat platform – which is how it is distributed – can grow. Still, there are lots of photo apps that didn’t have such an effective distribution platform as Line, most notably services like Papelook (said to have been downloaded by half of Japan’s young girls who own iPhones), or FX Camera, which had 25 million users as of this past March. For more information on the…

line-camera-40-million-campaign

Line Corporation has announced today that that its photo decoration and effects app Line Camera has surpassed the 40 million downloads mark. That’s a pretty significant accomplishment, although one wonders how many of those 40 million have stuck with the app given the abundance of alternatives available in Line’s home market of Japan [1].

I was curious to look at the pace of Line Camera’s growth, given that I hadn’t checked in on the app in over a year (see chart below). After its initial launch in April of 2012, the app picked up 5 million downloads in its first month, and went on to snag 20 million just after New Years. With 40 million announced today, it’s likely that Line Camera’s growth will continue to be completely dependent on how fast the Line chat platform – which is how it is distributed – can grow.

Still, there are lots of photo apps that didn’t have such an effective distribution platform as Line, most notably services like Papelook (said to have been downloaded by half of Japan’s young girls who own iPhones), or FX Camera, which had 25 million users as of this past March.

For more information on the growth of Line and its vast repertoire of apps, including Line Play, please check out our interactive Line Timeline which chronicles its growth from its launch back in 2011 up until the present day.

line-camera


  1. I was one of the early downloaders, and I’m no longer using it. Although admittedly, it probably would have been weird for me to keep doing so.  ↩

Can’t find your iPhone in your purse? Tunewear has the case for you

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Women’s bags tend to be the destination for an endless number of daily items. This causes a problem. When your phone is ringing, we often struggle to find our phones among the clutter, and we sometimes even miss the call as a result. Well, worry no more! A new iPhone case from Japan solves this problem. It’s called Julia Phone Pochette by Tunewear. This iPhone case is essentially a tiny sholder bag, just big enough to hold your handset. It also comes equipped with several pockets for your IC cards (for public transport) and a pretty gold chain to strap over your shoulder. It comes in three color variations: red, pink, and green, and is available for 3980 yen (or about $42). There are a lot mobile phone accessories and decorations in Japan — some weird, some cute, some very convenient. This product reminded me of a past initiative by Softbank Selection, where they turned to Facebook to find out what kind of things women prefer for their mobile phones. It’s great to see companies paying attention to women’s needs in this way. I’m sure it’s a strategy that will pay off with big sales, especially here in Japan.

JuliaPhonePochette

Women’s bags tend to be the destination for an endless number of daily items. This causes a problem. When your phone is ringing, we often struggle to find our phones among the clutter, and we sometimes even miss the call as a result. Well, worry no more! A new iPhone case from Japan solves this problem. It’s called Julia Phone Pochette by Tunewear.

This iPhone case is essentially a tiny sholder bag, just big enough to hold your handset. It also comes equipped with several pockets for your IC cards (for public transport) and a pretty gold chain to strap over your shoulder. It comes in three color variations: red, pink, and green, and is available for 3980 yen (or about $42).

There are a lot mobile phone accessories and decorations in Japan — some weird, some cute, some very convenient. This product reminded me of a past initiative by Softbank Selection, where they turned to Facebook to find out what kind of things women prefer for their mobile phones.

It’s great to see companies paying attention to women’s needs in this way. I’m sure it’s a strategy that will pay off with big sales, especially here in Japan.

Raising Titan: Japan’s latest disgustingly cute iPhone game

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Readers may recall that a few months back we mentioned a really strange, but really fun game from Japan called Alpaca Evolution. The game can be described as kimo kawaii or “disgustingly cute”, and millions of downloads later Japanese mobile users have really taken to it. In case you thought that sort of hit was a one time thing, another equally weird mobile game is number one in Japan’s App Store today. It’s called Raising Titan. Update: This app appears to have been removed from the App Store. I’ll keep you posted if I learn why. When you start the game you’re given a little newborn character to care for, with options to feed or bathe it when needed. After a while, you level up to become a new, stranger looking giant, and it continues in this way until you become something quite monstrous. There’s also a mini game that looks very much inspired by Alpaca Evolution, where your giant has to eat up as many tiny humans as possible within the given time. The title is was the top free iOS app in Japan for a while today, and is also doing well in Taiwan and Hong Kong. If…

Readers may recall that a few months back we mentioned a really strange, but really fun game from Japan called Alpaca Evolution. The game can be described as kimo kawaii or “disgustingly cute”, and millions of downloads later Japanese mobile users have really taken to it.

raising-titan

In case you thought that sort of hit was a one time thing, another equally weird mobile game is number one in Japan’s App Store today. It’s called Raising Titan.

Update: This app appears to have been removed from the App Store. I’ll keep you posted if I learn why.

When you start the game you’re given a little newborn character to care for, with options to feed or bathe it when needed. After a while, you level up to become a new, stranger looking giant, and it continues in this way until you become something quite monstrous. There’s also a mini game that looks very much inspired by Alpaca Evolution, where your giant has to eat up as many tiny humans as possible within the given time.

The title is was the top free iOS app in Japan for a while today, and is also doing well in Taiwan and Hong Kong.

If you’d like to get a closer look at the wacky gameplay, check out our video demo below.

app-annie-raising-titan
Via App Annie

More iPhone underwear coming soon from Bandai due to popular demand

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Photo via LikeCool There are lots of iPhone covers out there, but most of them protect everything except your homescreen button. But never fear, as toy manufacturer Bandai has the answer. It’s called Smart Pants, the world’s first underwear for your smartphone. The product first became available in March as a sort of plastic ball prize (or gashapon) in vending machines. It got lots of buzz online and the company plans to sell more this coming June. The Gashapon balls are sold for 200 yen (or about $2) each. These Smart Pants are made out of silicon, and are available in eight different designs including men’s briefs, leopard print thongs, and strawberry-patterned panties. One Japanese blogger has written a post showing his iPhone modeling all the different looks, if you’d like to see more. Gashapon is where the social games mechanic ‘Kompu Gacha’ comes from, which was famously regulated by the Japanese govenment last May. Kompu comes from the word ‘complete,’ referring to the act of completing a set of items. Bandai’s Gashapon vending machine was first released way back in 1977, and it is still popular among young children — although almost all Japanese adults are familiar with the…

Bandai-Smart-PantsPhoto via LikeCool

There are lots of iPhone covers out there, but most of them protect everything except your homescreen button. But never fear, as toy manufacturer Bandai has the answer. It’s called Smart Pants, the world’s first underwear for your smartphone.

The product first became available in March as a sort of plastic ball prize (or gashapon) in vending machines. It got lots of buzz online and the company plans to sell more this coming June. The Gashapon balls are sold for 200 yen (or about $2) each.

These Smart Pants are made out of silicon, and are available in eight different designs including men’s briefs, leopard print thongs, and strawberry-patterned panties. One Japanese blogger has written a post showing his iPhone modeling all the different looks, if you’d like to see more.

Gashapon is where the social games mechanic ‘Kompu Gacha’ comes from, which was famously regulated by the Japanese govenment last May. Kompu comes from the word ‘complete,’ referring to the act of completing a set of items. Bandai’s Gashapon vending machine was first released way back in 1977, and it is still popular among young children — although almost all Japanese adults are familiar with the game.

There are over 40,000 Gashapon vending machines throughout Japan, so if you’re lucky you might be able to finally find some underwear in one of them for your mobile phone.

Smart Pants is another “weird Japan” idea. But weird or not, it’s always refreshing to see this kind of creativity, even if it’s a little on the strange side.

Why I love Japan’s stupidest mobile games

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It has been said many times that Japan’s mobile space is unique. And I’m repeatedly finding that this uniqueness extends to the kinds of mobile applications and content that the country produces. And while I don’t want to say that Japan has weird taste, some of the more exotic creations (we’ve highlighted many of them before) that have come from this country are mind boggling from my western point of view. But in a way, that also makes Japan’s app space sort of beautiful. Earlier today I mentioned Alpaca Evolution, which is a ridiculous game where you have to bash all your alpaca brothers and absorb them into your own body as you evolve. It’s a crazy concept, but the artwork is great, the game play is simple – and surprisingly it’s a lot of fun. Is it dumb? Definitely. Is it great? In its own way, it’s that too. Another iPhone game I came across today might be even more simple, and maybe more ridiculous too. It’s called Pluck Hair, and it tasks players with (you guessed it!) plucking hairs as fast as you can with a gentle swipe of your finger, but if you do it incorrectly or…

It has been said many times that Japan’s mobile space is unique. And I’m repeatedly finding that this uniqueness extends to the kinds of mobile applications and content that the country produces. And while I don’t want to say that Japan has weird taste, some of the more exotic creations (we’ve highlighted many of them before) that have come from this country are mind boggling from my western point of view. But in a way, that also makes Japan’s app space sort of beautiful.

Earlier today I mentioned Alpaca Evolution, which is a ridiculous game where you have to bash all your alpaca brothers and absorb them into your own body as you evolve. It’s a crazy concept, but the artwork is great, the game play is simple – and surprisingly it’s a lot of fun.

Is it dumb? Definitely. Is it great? In its own way, it’s that too.

hair-pluck

Another iPhone game I came across today might be even more simple, and maybe more ridiculous too. It’s called Pluck Hair, and it tasks players with (you guessed it!) plucking hairs as fast as you can with a gentle swipe of your finger, but if you do it incorrectly or in the wrong direction, you’re charged with a time penalty.

In a way, it disturbs me that I played this game for about a half an hour. And it disturbs me even more than I bothered to record a video to show it to you (see below).

But there’s a very simple element of joy that exists in this game. I think it’s the same flavor of joy that exists in the Nameco series of games, where it just feels good to harvest mushrooms.

To put it in simpler terms, I think it’s the same reason we all like bubble wrap.

Undoubtedly many readers will dismiss it as stupid. It’s easy to say that this is just Japan being Japan. And I’m not saying that games like Pluck Hair aren’t stupid.

But I really like that somewhere in Japan there’s a developer who pensively said to himself, “A hair plucking game? F**k yeah, I think that’s a good idea.”

That’s just awesome.