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Puzzle Trooper: Making the puzzle/RPG accessible to the West

Rick Martin 2013.09.02

Last week game developers Kabam and Gumi launched their Puzzle Trooper game for a number of markets worldwide, on iOS and Android. The game is clearly very much influenced by the wildly successful Puzzle & Dragons, but it takes advantages of one key area where P&D could have done better: localization. For Western users who play Puzzle & Dragons, including myself, it may take a while to grasp many of the game’s core concepts. I think that in the English version of the game, some things (like combo multipliers, orb manipulation, and knowing which elements are most effective against other elements) are not adequately explained to beginners. Check out my video below for a more visual comparison. This is the best game ever from the Southeast Asia region Developed by Gumi’s Singapore team, I think that Puzzle Trooper is very deliberately trying to do what Puzzle & Dragons overlooked in its localization, presenting that proven puzzle-RPG game model to global audiences in a manner which they can understand [1]. There are countless similarities with P&D, but the characters are completely different (and very much not in a Japanese style), presented as army troops that can be collected, enhanced, and evolved….

Last week game developers Kabam and Gumi launched their Puzzle Trooper game for a number of markets worldwide, on iOS and Android. The game is clearly very much influenced by the wildly successful Puzzle & Dragons, but it takes advantages of one key area where P&D could have done better: localization.

For Western users who play Puzzle & Dragons, including myself, it may take a while to grasp many of the game’s core concepts. I think that in the English version of the game, some things (like combo multipliers, orb manipulation, and knowing which elements are most effective against other elements) are not adequately explained to beginners. Check out my video below for a more visual comparison.

This is the best game ever from the Southeast Asia region

Developed by Gumi’s Singapore team, I think that Puzzle Trooper is very deliberately trying to do what Puzzle & Dragons overlooked in its localization, presenting that proven puzzle-RPG game model to global audiences in a manner which they can understand [1].

There are countless similarities with P&D, but the characters are completely different (and very much not in a Japanese style), presented as army troops that can be collected, enhanced, and evolved. I’ve been playing the game for a few days, and so far I really like it a lot. There is an interesting player-vs-player option where you can game with friends over Bluetooth, which looks fun. And the in-game text is pretty humorous, as are the fun character names.

So far the game has been made available to markets outside Japan, and it is currently number one in the role-playing category in Thailand, Malaysia, Spain, Russia, Brunei, and the Dominican Republic. I look forward to seeing how far this game can go now that Kabam is on board with Gumi. The company’s CEO Hironao Kunimitsu is pretty enthusiastic about the title, telling me that his Singapore team did a great job, adding “This is the best game ever from the Southeast Asia region.”

If you’d like to give it a try, you can get it for free over on the App Store.

It should be noted that Puzzle Trooper has not launched in the Japanese market. So if anyone is wondering why GungHo is (apparently) not upset about a game that borrows so heavily from its hit game Puzzle & Dragons, perhaps that’s one of the main reasons. In any case, as much as I like Puzzle & Dragons, I think it’s good that Gumi can build a game like this one. ↩

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Again? Really?! More media misinformation on Facebook in Japan

Rick Martin 2013.08.29

Here we go again. Yet another report (mis-)using SocialBakers stats to create the unfounded narrative that Facebook has serious troubles in Japan 1. Taylor Beck over on Fast Company’s Co.Labs blog writes “Why the Japanese Love Twitter But Not Facebook“: Facebook […] is proud of the 21 million users it claims in Japan. Despite alarming reports in June–derived from Facebook’s own self-service ad tool–that Facebook in Japan had declined by 19.5 percent in half a year, Facebook Japan’s new director told the daily Nikkei on August 14 that its numbers are fine: 86% of the 21 million Japanese are using the mobile service (versus the global average 71%), and 72% of mobile Facebook users in Japan use it daily, much higher than the global average, 57%. The “alarming reports” he mentions are based on SocialBakers figures (in turn, based on Facebook’s ad tool, as he says). Taylor goes on to cite another source for good measure: No independent data are available for Facebook’s latest performance in Japan, but The Guardian, among other media, have reported recent declines in Japan and other markets, especially on Facebook’s desktop use. But it turns out this new source is the same as the first….

Here we go again. Yet another report (mis-)using SocialBakers stats to create the unfounded narrative that Facebook has serious troubles in Japan ¹. Taylor Beck over on Fast Company’s Co.Labs blog writes “Why the Japanese Love Twitter But Not Facebook“:

Facebook […] is proud of the 21 million users it claims in Japan. Despite alarming reports in June–derived from Facebook’s own self-service ad tool–that Facebook in Japan had declined by 19.5 percent in half a year, Facebook Japan’s new director told the daily Nikkei on August 14 that its numbers are fine: 86% of the 21 million Japanese are using the mobile service (versus the global average 71%), and 72% of mobile Facebook users in Japan use it daily, much higher than the global average, 57%.

The “alarming reports” he mentions are based on SocialBakers figures (in turn, based on Facebook’s ad tool, as he says).

Taylor goes on to cite another source for good measure:

No independent data are available for Facebook’s latest performance in Japan, but The Guardian, among other media, have reported recent declines in Japan and other markets, especially on Facebook’s desktop use.

But it turns out this new source is the same as the first. Here’s an excerpt from that article from The Guardian:

In the last month, the world’s largest social network has lost 6m US visitors, a 4% fall, according to analysis firm SocialBakers. […] Users are also switching off in Canada, Spain, France, Germany and Japan, where Facebook has some of its biggest followings. A spokeswoman for Facebook declined to comment. (bold is mine)

Nevermind that SocialBakers actually criticized The Guardian (twice) on its own blog saying that the figures are estimates intended for marketers, not journalists:

The numbers are from Facebook’s ad interface, and Facebook unlike other companies, updates this data on a pretty regular basis. No other company does that – they give you rough estimations on an irregular basis, which is not enough in todays moving social marketing world.

SocialBakers used to have charts for country user numbers (Japan’s charts used to be here), but they have now been removed because of stuff like this. The Next Web has more on the matter.

So I hope that puts it to rest. If you build alarmist Japan-hates-Facebook narratives with this particular building block as your cornerstone, you’re going to have a bad time ².

Facebook does indeed have challenges ahead in Japan, with the meteoric growth of Line – and on this front the article had lots of good points. But overall, I don’t see any evidence of Facebook having significantly more issues than Twitter, as the link-baity headline suggests.

Just to be clear, I really hesitate to do these little ‘media police’ posts. But on this site we work pretty hard to try to make sure that people understand what’s happening on the Japanese net. And while we’d like to stay positive, sometimes addressing stuff like this is necessary. Tedious, but necessary.↩
Regarding Taylor’s peripheral assertion halfway through his piece that Twitter has caught on in China, he regrettably cites a Forbes article that is based on a very questionable Global Web Index report. I’ve already addressed that whole mess here.↩

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Kobito for Mac lets you share bits of code with Japanese programming community [Video]

Rick Martin 2013.08.28

In the past we have featured Japanese code/knowledge sharing service Qiita. With over 20,000 domestic users (and over 220,000 monthly unique visitors [1]) the platform is an important hub for Japanese programmers. While many people that I speak to often refer to it as a sort of Japanese Github, sharing on Qiita is more akin to sharing a Gist on Github. As with Gists, any code you share can have nice syntax highlighting, and that’s really handy. Notes shared on Qiita are written in Markdown format, and the startup has also produced a handy Markdown editor for Mac OSX called Kobito that integrates with its service. So you can compose notes or explanations of code snippets you want to share, and post directly to Qiita for the app. The split screen Markdown preview is somewhat reminiscent of Mou or MultiMarkdown Composer. When you publish you also have the option to share to Twitter, or publish your note as a Gist as well. This latter option is especially handy since there is likely a huge overlap between Qiita and Github users. Qiita just published a new 1.7 release of Kobito today if you’d like to give it a try. Or check…

In the past we have featured Japanese code/knowledge sharing service Qiita. With over 20,000 domestic users (and over 220,000 monthly unique visitors [1]) the platform is an important hub for Japanese programmers.

While many people that I speak to often refer to it as a sort of Japanese Github, sharing on Qiita is more akin to sharing a Gist on Github. As with Gists, any code you share can have nice syntax highlighting, and that’s really handy.

Notes shared on Qiita are written in Markdown format, and the startup has also produced a handy Markdown editor for Mac OSX called Kobito that integrates with its service. So you can compose notes or explanations of code snippets you want to share, and post directly to Qiita for the app. The split screen Markdown preview is somewhat reminiscent of Mou or MultiMarkdown Composer.

When you publish you also have the option to share to Twitter, or publish your note as a Gist as well. This latter option is especially handy since there is likely a huge overlap between Qiita and Github users.

Qiita just published a new 1.7 release of Kobito today if you’d like to give it a try. Or check out our video demo below for more details.

These numbers are from back in May of this year. ↩

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Mobile app lends a hand to expectant mothers in Japan

Yukari Mitsuhashi 2013.08.27

There are many ways for expecting mothers to prepare for the birth of a child. One can participate in classes to learn about how to better care for a baby, buy baby beds and other necessary items in advance, and even baby-proof the house. Here in Japan, there is one other thing you can do to prepare. You can install a useful mobile app that helps women when they go into labor. It’s called ‘Jintsu-kitakamo‘. Jintsu Kitakamo can roughly be translated as ‘I think my contractions have started’. It lets you count the time that has passed between each contraction. When the pace between contractions shortens and mothers are close to going into labor, they can call pre-programmed phone numbers with a single tap. It could be your husband’s cell phone number, for example, or the number for a taxi company. The time you’ve counted can be sent by email, taking away the hassle of texting on your own to update concerned people such as your mother or your husband. The app also provides tips from ‘senpai’ mothers (those with children already) and lets new mothers ask questions regarding pregnancy in general. In Japan, many taxi companies provide services exclusively…

There are many ways for expecting mothers to prepare for the birth of a child. One can participate in classes to learn about how to better care for a baby, buy baby beds and other necessary items in advance, and even baby-proof the house. Here in Japan, there is one other thing you can do to prepare. You can install a useful mobile app that helps women when they go into labor. It’s called ‘Jintsu-kitakamo‘.

Jintsu Kitakamo can roughly be translated as ‘I think my contractions have started’. It lets you count the time that has passed between each contraction. When the pace between contractions shortens and mothers are close to going into labor, they can call pre-programmed phone numbers with a single tap. It could be your husband’s cell phone number, for example, or the number for a taxi company.

The time you’ve counted can be sent by email, taking away the hassle of texting on your own to update concerned people such as your mother or your husband. The app also provides tips from ‘senpai’ mothers (those with children already) and lets new mothers ask questions regarding pregnancy in general.

In Japan, many taxi companies provide services exclusively for expectant mothers. By registering for the service in advance, these mothers are put on top of wait lists for urgent occasions. One popular service, ‘Jintsu Taxi‘, is provided by major taxi company Nihon Kotsu. A year after its launch, there were around 21,000 registered mothers-to-be, and it has been used 7,710 times. One in five pregnant women have registered to the service.

The birth of your first child can be very stressful, especially when you go into labor. Jintsu Kitakamo may be a very niche service, but it is one that definitely serves a great need.

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In the footsteps of Puzzle & Dragons, Quiz RPG rides TV ad to success

Rick Martin 2013.08.26

About a week ago we told you about how Japanese game developer Colopl (seriously, that’s its name) had added popular geo-location restaurant game Boku no restaurant II to its platform. The company is busy this week as well, pushing its Quiz RPG: Wizard & Wiz the Black Cat here in Japan. The quiz/RPG hybrid game (which takes more than a few pages from the playbook of Puzzle & Dragons) has been promoted in a Japanese TV commercial (view it on YouTube) since August 19th, pushing it past the 4 million downloads milestone as of August 23. In the charts below (for iOS and Android rankings) you can see exactly the kind of boost TV promos represent for mobile games in Japan. Meanwhile, the game has just been released in English as well for anyone who wants to give it a try. The official English language title is Quiz RPG: The World of Mystic Wiz [1]. I was curious to check it out and see what quality of questions it has. So far the questions are decent, although it seems to me that there are an unusual amount of ice hockey-related questions for some reason or another [2]. If you’d like…

About a week ago we told you about how Japanese game developer Colopl (seriously, that’s its name) had added popular geo-location restaurant game Boku no restaurant II to its platform. The company is busy this week as well, pushing its Quiz RPG: Wizard & Wiz the Black Cat here in Japan.

The quiz/RPG hybrid game (which takes more than a few pages from the playbook of Puzzle & Dragons) has been promoted in a Japanese TV commercial (view it on YouTube) since August 19th, pushing it past the 4 million downloads milestone as of August 23. In the charts below (for iOS and Android rankings) you can see exactly the kind of boost TV promos represent for mobile games in Japan.

Meanwhile, the game has just been released in English as well for anyone who wants to give it a try. The official English language title is Quiz RPG: The World of Mystic Wiz [1]. I was curious to check it out and see what quality of questions it has. So far the questions are decent, although it seems to me that there are an unusual amount of ice hockey-related questions for some reason or another [2].

If you’d like quick walk-through of the English version (h/t Serkan Toto), you can check out my video demo above. The battle card mechanics will be familiar to anyone who knows the genre, letting you collect, enhance, and evolve cards as you proceed on your quest.

Overall the game is not a bad one. And I might play it a little more if I didn’t like Puzzle & Dragons so much. If you’d like to try it in English, you can download it for free from the App Store or Google Play.

Colopl has also released a Korean version of the title, and that’s also available for iOS and Android.

Note that when I referred to the Japanese title in English in the first paragraph, I opted to translated the title directly. ↩
I’m not complaining. I’m Canadian. ↩

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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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Japanese UI improvement platform planBCD raises $800,000

Takeshi Hirano 2013.08.20

See the original story in Japanese.PlanBCD is a platform that helps developers to improve the user interface on their web services. Kaizen Platform Inc., the Tokyo-based startup behind the service, announced today that it has raised seed funding worth $800,000 from Gree Ventures, GMO Venture Partners, and CyberAgent Ventures. With these funds, the company plans to intensify its system development and marketing efforts. The service provides developers with an A/B testing environment, especially useful for improving web content and interfaces, comparing the performance of multiple available options. It helps you test and optimize processes like sign-ups, purchases, or landing pages. Unlike other conventional services, planBCD allows you to conduct this time-consuming, trial-and-error process by only embedding a single-line of JavaScript on your website. The video below shows more details about how it works. In the closed beta version, they’ve seen examples where users have improved conversion rates on their websites by 130% to 170%. [T]here’s a big barrier to optimizing user traffic for clients unless they improve user interface on their websites. The most remarkable part of the service is that PlanBCD gives you ways to crowdsource the UI and UX improvement process, something which is often difficult to assign…

See the original story in Japanese.PlanBCD is a platform that helps developers to improve the user interface on their web services. Kaizen Platform Inc., the Tokyo-based startup behind the service, announced today that it has raised seed funding worth $800,000 from Gree Ventures, GMO Venture Partners, and CyberAgent Ventures. With these funds, the company plans to intensify its system development and marketing efforts.

The service provides developers with an A/B testing environment, especially useful for improving web content and interfaces, comparing the performance of multiple available options. It helps you test and optimize processes like sign-ups, purchases, or landing pages. Unlike other conventional services, planBCD allows you to conduct this time-consuming, trial-and-error process by only embedding a single-line of JavaScript on your website. The video below shows more details about how it works. In the closed beta version, they’ve seen examples where users have improved conversion rates on their websites by 130% to 170%.

[T]here’s a big barrier to optimizing user traffic for clients unless they improve user interface on their websites.

The most remarkable part of the service is that PlanBCD gives you ways to crowdsource the UI and UX improvement process, something which is often difficult to assign someone in your company. The accumulation of A/B testing results will be stored on the service, helping you hand the process over to someone else if necessary.

The service is a combination of an easy-to-implement environment and crowdsourcing features. Kaizen was launched back in March of 2013 by Kenji Sudo. He previously worked at Japanese human resource company, Recruit, supervising the company’s ad-tech services. Sudo explained:

At Recruit, I was involved in ad optimization services for online advertising. But I learned that there’s a big barrier to optimizing user traffic for clients unless they improve user interface on their websites. But if we help them improve their websites, it hurts our overall business efficiency to the point where we can’t work on it. As a result, only rich companies can engage in the improvement process. So this was why we launched the testing service.

He notes that the service has acquired 200 crowdsourced workers for the UI testing operations, and they are appropriately ranked corresponding to their past testing performances.

The service’s pricing has three tiers according to the kind of workers you crowdsource your UI improvement tasks. It’s 100,000 yen ($1,000) a month for Standard, 200,000 yen ($2,000) a month for Professional, and 500,000 yen ($5,000) a month for Maestro. The service has a money-back guarantee so you will not be charged if you can’t see any improvement in your website performance. The charge is comprised of the monthly fee mentioned above plus a charge for how many times the embedded JavaScript test code is called.

The service is already used by many clients, including some enterprise companies. It’s a good indication that new business models comprising of a tool and a crowdsoucring service could be trending in the near future.

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Now with 21M users in Japan, Facebook looks poised for a serious push

Rick Martin 2013.08.14

Thanks to Serkan Toto for pointing out some updated user numbers for Facebook in Japan. He cites the company’s managing director in Japan, Atsushi Iwashita, who disclosed to The Nikkei that the social network has 21 million monthly active users in Japan. That’s up from 19 million back in February. Serkan relays lots of other juicy stats (check them out here), but perhaps the most interesting tidbit was that Facebook plans to double its sales force in the country over the next year, and start TV advertising in the country. In Japan, TV advertising often proves as a key catalyst for social services (see Line) and games (see Puzzle and Dragons). If it does the same for Facebook then this could means a huge boost for Zuckerberg’s network. We have seen lots of interesting social media campaigns in Japan leveraging Facebook recently, and that’s only going to continue. In terms of Facebook’s own ad business, COO Sheryl Sandberg pointed out recently that companies here are really starting to come on board: I was actually in Japan and Korea, meeting with advertisers just a few weeks ago, and we are seeing companies that really weren’t doing much with us a year…

nikkei-trendy-facebook-japan — Photo: Nikkei Trendy

Thanks to Serkan Toto for pointing out some updated user numbers for Facebook in Japan. He cites the company’s managing director in Japan, Atsushi Iwashita, who disclosed to The Nikkei that the social network has 21 million monthly active users in Japan. That’s up from 19 million back in February.

Serkan relays lots of other juicy stats (check them out here), but perhaps the most interesting tidbit was that Facebook plans to double its sales force in the country over the next year, and start TV advertising in the country.

In Japan, TV advertising often proves as a key catalyst for social services (see Line) and games (see Puzzle and Dragons). If it does the same for Facebook then this could means a huge boost for Zuckerberg’s network.

We have seen lots of interesting social media campaigns in Japan leveraging Facebook recently, and that’s only going to continue. In terms of Facebook’s own ad business, COO Sheryl Sandberg pointed out recently that companies here are really starting to come on board:

I was actually in Japan and Korea, meeting with advertisers just a few weeks ago, and we are seeing companies that really weren’t doing much with us a year ago increasingly adopt us as part of a core part of their spend. So I remain very optimistic about our growth across Asia and the rest of the world.

Another Facebook exec Brad Smallwood, the company’s head of measurement and insight, will be speaking at AdTech Tokyo 2013 next month as well, recently announced as a keynote speaker. So if you’re in town at the time, be sure to check it out.

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Mixi spins off popular photobook printing service as wholly-owned subsidiary

Rick Martin 2013.08.09

One of my favorite made-in-Japan mobile applications is Mixi’s Nohana photobook printing service. Of course, being a new dad I’m somewhat biased towards applications like this. But still, the service has enjoyed some popularity in Japan lately, briefly becoming the number one free iOS app having been recently featured on national television. And now it looks like Nohana is being granted a little bit of room to maneuver from its parent company Mixi, as was announced today that it is being spun off as a wholly-owned subsidiary this coming September, to be known as Nohana Co., Ltd.. Mixi noted in its announcement that because Nohana has many customers right now, this change was made to ensure that the venture can operate and make decisions rapidly as it continues to grow. The incorporation will also mean that Nohana’s staff will expand from its current total of four to 10 or 15 [1]. For those not familiar with the service, the Nohana app lets you upload photos from your smartphone, assembling them into 20-page photo-booklets which are then printed and sent to your door. The first book you order in a month is free (except a shipping fee of 90 yen, or…

One of my favorite made-in-Japan mobile applications is Mixi’s Nohana photobook printing service. Of course, being a new dad I’m somewhat biased towards applications like this. But still, the service has enjoyed some popularity in Japan lately, briefly becoming the number one free iOS app having been recently featured on national television.

And now it looks like Nohana is being granted a little bit of room to maneuver from its parent company Mixi, as was announced today that it is being spun off as a wholly-owned subsidiary this coming September, to be known as Nohana Co., Ltd..

Mixi noted in its announcement that because Nohana has many customers right now, this change was made to ensure that the venture can operate and make decisions rapidly as it continues to grow. The incorporation will also mean that Nohana’s staff will expand from its current total of four to 10 or 15 [1].

For those not familiar with the service, the Nohana app lets you upload photos from your smartphone, assembling them into 20-page photo-booklets which are then printed and sent to your door. The first book you order in a month is free (except a shipping fee of 90 yen, or about $1), but subsequent copies cost 525 yen. It seems the company is hoping that many parents will input their grandparents address as place to send second and maybe even third copies [2].

Mixi noted in the announcement that to date there have been more than 100,000 photobooks published by over 200,000 people, with a total of 3.8 million photos uploaded.

Nohana was originally launched back in February of this year as a product of Mixi’s internal Innovation Center.

I had a chance to pop my head into their office when I visited the DeployGate team over at Mixi. It’s not a big room, so I expect they’ll be given a little more space as well. ↩
As a new parent, this is a feature I plan to use frequently. ↩

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RoadMovies creates cool retro videos, is now Japan’s top iPhone app

Rick Martin 2013.08.07

Here’s another intriguing addition to our growing list of Japanese camera apps. This time it comes courtesy of the folks at Honda, and despite the name of the app, RoadMovies, it’s not just for use while driving. Originally launched late last year, the app has been climbing the iOS charts ever since, and is now the top free app in Japan. It also tops the photo and video category in Korea right now too. The app allows you to shoot a collection of very short video clips – either 24 x 1 second, 12 x 2 seconds, or 8 x 3 seconds – which are then stitched together to create a composite 24 second clip. Of course, this sort of function would work especially well while driving on a long road trip, and there’s an interval camera function that can automate the entire process if you don’t want to press the shutter button manually. You can set the interval settings to record a short clip every minute, or every 60 minutes, or any value in between. There’s also a handy distance interval function that lets you record clips after you’ve moved a specified distance, although you’ll need a GPS enabled…

Here’s another intriguing addition to our growing list of Japanese camera apps. This time it comes courtesy of the folks at Honda, and despite the name of the app, RoadMovies, it’s not just for use while driving. Originally launched late last year, the app has been climbing the iOS charts ever since, and is now the top free app in Japan. It also tops the photo and video category in Korea right now too.

The app allows you to shoot a collection of very short video clips – either 24 x 1 second, 12 x 2 seconds, or 8 x 3 seconds – which are then stitched together to create a composite 24 second clip.

Of course, this sort of function would work especially well while driving on a long road trip, and there’s an interval camera function that can automate the entire process if you don’t want to press the shutter button manually. You can set the interval settings to record a short clip every minute, or every 60 minutes, or any value in between. There’s also a handy distance interval function that lets you record clips after you’ve moved a specified distance, although you’ll need a GPS enabled device for this (i.e. it won’t work with an iPod Touch).

After you’ve shot your 24 total seconds of video, you can then opt to add one of eight available filters to give your composite clip some extra pop. The next step is perhaps the most fun, as you can choose one of 14 available background music tracks included in the app, all of which are pretty snazzy.

The overall effect is super retro, especially if you apply a filter. For a preview of the end result, you can see many examples of videos created with RoadMovies over on YouTube. Or you can check out Honda’s own promo video above which demonstrates how it works, with a sample video at the end.

If you’d like to check out RoadMovies, it’s available as a free download over on the App Store. From what I’ve seen of it so far, I recommend you pick it up.

Japan

Puzzle Trooper: Making the puzzle/RPG accessible to the West

Kobito for Mac lets you share bits of code with Japanese programming community [Video]

Mobile app lends a hand to expectant mothers in Japan

In the footsteps of Puzzle & Dragons, Quiz RPG rides TV ad to success

Japanese photographer to hold ‘Cosplay made in Japan’ exhibition

Japanese UI improvement platform planBCD raises $800,000

Mixi spins off popular photobook printing service as wholly-owned subsidiary

RoadMovies creates cool retro videos, is now Japan’s top iPhone app

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