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Israel’s Nordau Creative unleashes virtual dragons upon Tokyo Game Show

Rick Martin 2013.09.23

While we were primarily focused on Japanese mobile game makers in our visit to the Tokyo Game Show, there were lots of foreign developers and publishers who brought great games to show off. The one that stood out the most for me was from Israeli studio Nordau Creative. They were turning lots of heads with their Kazooloo augmented reality dragon fighting game. This mobile title makes use of a large board that you place on the floor, which when viewed through the camera on your phone or tablet, appears as a sort of inter-dimensional vortex that spawns angry dragons for you to fight. Admittedly, these AR games can be somewhat gimmicky sometimes. But watching visitors dance around Kazooloo game boards shooting at floor dragons makes me think that this one has more potential than most. To try the game out for yourself, you’ll first need to get the app from the Apple App Store or Google Play and then purchase one of the available boards from the company website, which will then be shipped to you. They range in price from $14.99 for a mini-board, to $49.99 for larger sizes. If you’d like a visual demo of how the game…

tokyo-game-show-201316 — The Nordau Creative team, featuring Kazooloo AR game at Tokyo Game Show

While we were primarily focused on Japanese mobile game makers in our visit to the Tokyo Game Show, there were lots of foreign developers and publishers who brought great games to show off.

The one that stood out the most for me was from Israeli studio Nordau Creative. They were turning lots of heads with their Kazooloo augmented reality dragon fighting game. This mobile title makes use of a large board that you place on the floor, which when viewed through the camera on your phone or tablet, appears as a sort of inter-dimensional vortex that spawns angry dragons for you to fight.

Admittedly, these AR games can be somewhat gimmicky sometimes. But watching visitors dance around Kazooloo game boards shooting at floor dragons makes me think that this one has more potential than most.

To try the game out for yourself, you’ll first need to get the app from the Apple App Store or Google Play and then purchase one of the available boards from the company website, which will then be shipped to you. They range in price from $14.99 for a mini-board, to $49.99 for larger sizes.

If you’d like a visual demo of how the game works, you can check out their promo video for the game below.

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Now with 200M game downloads, Line Corporation adds MapleStory title

Rick Martin 2013.09.12

Line Corporation made some headlines earlier today when it announced that its games lineup had surpassed 200 million downloads [1]. There are more than 230 million registered users for its Line chat platform, and many of them are spending time with the company’s many casual game titles to date. What’s most interesting to me about Line’s gaming success so far is that it has all been with relatively unremarkable IP. Its biggest game to date in terms of downloads has been Line Pop with over 32 million, followed by Line Bubble with 25 million. But I’m expecting even bigger figures when Sonic Dash comes to Line this fall. Nexon’s Maple Story celebrated its tenth anniversary this year In addition to announcing its lofty downloads milestone, the company also rolled out Line MapleStory Village today. This is a farm/town-building game from the successful Maple Story franchise by Nexon, which celebrated its tenth anniversary this year. Line MapleStory Village is currently available in Japanese, English, and traditional Chinese, and is available worldwide with the exceptions of China and South Korea. This game should fare well around the Asia region even without those big markets [2]. If you’d like to give it a…

Line Corporation made some headlines earlier today when it announced that its games lineup had surpassed 200 million downloads [1]. There are more than 230 million registered users for its Line chat platform, and many of them are spending time with the company’s many casual game titles to date.

What’s most interesting to me about Line’s gaming success so far is that it has all been with relatively unremarkable IP. Its biggest game to date in terms of downloads has been Line Pop with over 32 million, followed by Line Bubble with 25 million. But I’m expecting even bigger figures when Sonic Dash comes to Line this fall.

Nexon’s Maple Story celebrated its tenth anniversary this year

In addition to announcing its lofty downloads milestone, the company also rolled out Line MapleStory Village today. This is a farm/town-building game from the successful Maple Story franchise by Nexon, which celebrated its tenth anniversary this year.

Line MapleStory Village is currently available in Japanese, English, and traditional Chinese, and is available worldwide with the exceptions of China and South Korea. This game should fare well around the Asia region even without those big markets [2].

If you’d like to give it a try, you can get it now as a free download for iOS and Android. Check out the trailer below for a preview.

For more information on the growth of Line and its vast repertoire of games, please check out our interactive Line Timeline which chronicles its growth from its launch back in 2011.

The milestone was reached on September 6th, according to the company. ↩
And even though it is a stupid farm/town-building game… ↩

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Japanese romantic simulation chat app adds more characters, hits 1M downloads

Rick Martin 2013.09.12

A few weeks back we told you about an unusual chat app from Japan called Henshin Kudasai. Roughly translated as ‘Please text me back’, the interesting thing about this application is that it doesn’t actually require any second person for you to engage in a flirty chat. It’s a romantic texting simulation game. When we last checked in, the app had 500,000 downloads just after its launch. And now, according to the folks at over at Growing App Henshin Kudasai has surpassed a million downloads since then. Last week, there were six new virtual characters added for users to chat with, bringing the total to 32. That seems to have given the game a boost because in the past week the game has been gaining momentum, becoming the top simulation game in the iOS app store, and breaking into the top 20 free apps overall (see chart below). For Android, it has also fared pretty well, peaking at the third position among all free apps on Google Play in Japan back on August 26th. The game was created by Japanese internet company Basic, and if you’d like to give it a try, it’s available as a free download on iOS…

A few weeks back we told you about an unusual chat app from Japan called Henshin Kudasai. Roughly translated as ‘Please text me back’, the interesting thing about this application is that it doesn’t actually require any second person for you to engage in a flirty chat. It’s a romantic texting simulation game.

When we last checked in, the app had 500,000 downloads just after its launch. And now, according to the folks at over at Growing App Henshin Kudasai has surpassed a million downloads since then.

Last week, there were six new virtual characters added for users to chat with, bringing the total to 32. That seems to have given the game a boost because in the past week the game has been gaining momentum, becoming the top simulation game in the iOS app store, and breaking into the top 20 free apps overall (see chart below).

For Android, it has also fared pretty well, peaking at the third position among all free apps on Google Play in Japan back on August 26th.

The game was created by Japanese internet company Basic, and if you’d like to give it a try, it’s available as a free download on iOS and Android.

henshin-kudasai-app-annie — Henshin Kudasai rankings on iOS, via App Annie

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Brave Frontier: Alim’s first mobile game is a strong debut [Video]

Rick Martin 2013.09.11

Back in July we reported about a new Japanese mobile gaming studio called Alim, which was jointly established by Fuji Startup Ventures, Gumi Ventures, and B Dash Ventures. Its first mobile game, Brave Frontier, was generally well when it launched, even briefly becoming Japan’s top overall app back on August 8th [1]. Brave Frontier is a sort of card battle RPG, very reminiscent of Puzzle & Dragons in some ways, but without the puzzles. Like most games in this genre you have a party of characters that you can evolve and enhance, and you can also add one friend character to your team each time you venture into battle. Characters correspond to elements/colors, with some more effective against enemies in a rock/paper/scissors fashion (like Puzzle & Dragons and others). I was curious to see that my colleague Junya Mori was into the game, and I had him give me a quick demo of the game (see video below). He points out that the story is not especially great and the loading times can be slow, but that the graphics are really fun at times and gameplay is solid – certainly a great first effort for the folks at Alim. Brave…

Back in July we reported about a new Japanese mobile gaming studio called Alim, which was jointly established by Fuji Startup Ventures, Gumi Ventures, and B Dash Ventures. Its first mobile game, Brave Frontier, was generally well when it launched, even briefly becoming Japan’s top overall app back on August 8th [1].

Brave Frontier is a sort of card battle RPG, very reminiscent of Puzzle & Dragons in some ways, but without the puzzles. Like most games in this genre you have a party of characters that you can evolve and enhance, and you can also add one friend character to your team each time you venture into battle. Characters correspond to elements/colors, with some more effective against enemies in a rock/paper/scissors fashion (like Puzzle & Dragons and others).

I was curious to see that my colleague Junya Mori was into the game, and I had him give me a quick demo of the game (see video below). He points out that the story is not especially great and the loading times can be slow, but that the graphics are really fun at times and gameplay is solid – certainly a great first effort for the folks at Alim.

Brave Frontier is still only available in Japanese, but I hope that one day they expand language support to cover other markets abroad. These Japanese mobile RPG titles are pretty cool, and I hope western markets warm up to as they gradually move beyond the domestic market.

There’s so much cross-over and cross-pollination in this card battle and RPG genres these days in Japan, and sometimes it makes games a little boring — but on the other hand, it means that developers are standing on each others shoulders and building on what seems to work in the industry. And that’s good to see.

The game launched at the same time that the new studio was announced. Note that it’s only available in the Japanese market. ↩

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Hot new mobile game from Okinawa rides an early wave

Rick Martin 2013.09.09

Thanks to the folks over on Gamebiz for pointing out that a new made-in-Japan mobile game, Ancient Surfer, has surpassed 100,000 downloads in its first four days. The title launched last week (on September 5th) for both iOS and Android, and since then has done fairly well in its home market of Japan (currently third in the iOS sports category), as well as other big markets like the UK, Brazil, and Thailand. The title features dead-simple two-button controls for turning, a button each for right and left, and with the Unity game engine the graphics are very impressive. The iOS version is plagued by a really irritating ad in the upper right, however, perhaps enough to keep me from coming back to the game. I’d consider paying to remove it, but I saw no such option readily available. Ancient Surfer comes from SummerTime Studio based in Okinawa. We don’t often have the pleasure of featuring companies from that part of Japan, so it’s certainly great to see a game like this one do well. According to Gamebiz, we can expect to see another new title from the studio in the coming weeks. If you’d like to give Ancient Surfer a…

Thanks to the folks over on Gamebiz for pointing out that a new made-in-Japan mobile game, Ancient Surfer, has surpassed 100,000 downloads in its first four days. The title launched last week (on September 5th) for both iOS and Android, and since then has done fairly well in its home market of Japan (currently third in the iOS sports category), as well as other big markets like the UK, Brazil, and Thailand.

The title features dead-simple two-button controls for turning, a button each for right and left, and with the Unity game engine the graphics are very impressive. The iOS version is plagued by a really irritating ad in the upper right, however, perhaps enough to keep me from coming back to the game. I’d consider paying to remove it, but I saw no such option readily available.

Ancient Surfer comes from SummerTime Studio based in Okinawa. We don’t often have the pleasure of featuring companies from that part of Japan, so it’s certainly great to see a game like this one do well. According to Gamebiz, we can expect to see another new title from the studio in the coming weeks.

If you’d like to give Ancient Surfer a try yourself, feel free to pick it up from the App Store or from Google Play. Or check out our demo video above.

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Megaman creator turns to Kickstarter to crowdsource new project

Rick Martin 2013.09.02

Megaman was one of my favorite games growing up. The iconic side scroller from Capcom is one of the greatest games ever made. The game’s creator, Keiji Inafune, broke away from Capcom back in 2010 to start over with his own studio called Comcept. And now that team is using Kickstarter to get a new game off the ground. It’s called Mighty No. 9, and if you liked Megaman, you’ll probably be excited about this. Check out Keiji’s introduction to the game in the video above. The Mighty No. 9 Kickstarter project just launched on Saturday, and is already near its fundraising goal [1]. And while the initial target of $900,000 will go towards getting the game made for Steam on PC, other ‘stretch goals’ (as you can see below) include funding Mac and Linux versions, as well as versions for PS3, Xbox 360, and Wii U. Readers will no doubt notice that there is no mention of a version for mobile phones, but I hope that this falls within one of the two ‘? ? ?’ stretch goals (again, see below). The estimated release date is spring of 2015, so this is not going to be a very rapid…

Megaman was one of my favorite games growing up. The iconic side scroller from Capcom is one of the greatest games ever made. The game’s creator, Keiji Inafune, broke away from Capcom back in 2010 to start over with his own studio called Comcept. And now that team is using Kickstarter to get a new game off the ground. It’s called Mighty No. 9, and if you liked Megaman, you’ll probably be excited about this. Check out Keiji’s introduction to the game in the video above.

The Mighty No. 9 Kickstarter project just launched on Saturday, and is already near its fundraising goal [1]. And while the initial target of $900,000 will go towards getting the game made for Steam on PC, other ‘stretch goals’ (as you can see below) include funding Mac and Linux versions, as well as versions for PS3, Xbox 360, and Wii U. Readers will no doubt notice that there is no mention of a version for mobile phones, but I hope that this falls within one of the two ‘? ? ?’ stretch goals (again, see below).

The estimated release date is spring of 2015, so this is not going to be a very rapid development process. But obviously gaming fans in the US are enthused about the concept. And supporters of the initiative can look forward to some really fun rewards too, including beta access (for a $99 contribution), your voice or face in the game ($1000 and $2500 respectively), or even dinner with Keiji Inafune.

It’s interesting to see yet another Japan-based initiative turn to Kickstarter to get off the ground [2]. We wish them luck!

As I write this, the project is nearing $700,000. ↩
They’ve enlisted the assistance of 8–4 for localization, PR, and translation, and it looks like their efforts with the Kickstarter page has worked out very well! ↩

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Sonic Dash to play important role in LINE’s expansion plans

Rick Martin 2013.08.26

Last week we had a chance to attend Line Corporation’s Hello Friends in Tokyo event, where the company announced it would be adding video calls, music, and e-commerce to its repertoire of services. But also announced on the day were a wide range of new games, including perhaps the most recognizable franchise to come to the Line platform, Sonic Dash. It is expected to be released this fall for iOS and Android. Sega’s Sonic Dash is already a fairly established title (see its previous gameplay trailer below), having broken into the top five iOS games rankings in 15 countries since its initial launch back in March. When it launches in the fall, it will likely be Line’s highest profile game thus far. At the Line event, the company’s chief strategy and marketing officer, Jun Masuda, noted: Sonic is a famous character in Japan and abroad, and in order for us to move into the global market, I consider this title to be very important. In the subsequent Q&A session, Line CEO Akira Morikawa said that activity in its North American expansion can probably be expected around the end of this year. With a strong line-up of games, led by familiar…

line-sonic-dash — Line’s Jun Masuda announces the upcoming addition of Sonic Dash

Last week we had a chance to attend Line Corporation’s Hello Friends in Tokyo event, where the company announced it would be adding video calls, music, and e-commerce to its repertoire of services. But also announced on the day were a wide range of new games, including perhaps the most recognizable franchise to come to the Line platform, Sonic Dash. It is expected to be released this fall for iOS and Android.

Sega’s Sonic Dash is already a fairly established title (see its previous gameplay trailer below), having broken into the top five iOS games rankings in 15 countries since its initial launch back in March. When it launches in the fall, it will likely be Line’s highest profile game thus far. At the Line event, the company’s chief strategy and marketing officer, Jun Masuda, noted:

Sonic is a famous character in Japan and abroad, and in order for us to move into the global market, I consider this title to be very important.

In the subsequent Q&A session, Line CEO Akira Morikawa said that activity in its North American expansion can probably be expected around the end of this year. With a strong line-up of games, led by familiar titles like Sonic, Line’s mobile content portal looks well positioned to win over that market. The company is in talks with game developers around the world in an effort to create what it says is a symbiotic relationship, offering games wider distribution on a global scale.

Line is a newcomer as a game publisher, and it has only been in the game business for 12 months or so. But already it has seen considerable success as a sort of gateway to native app games. It was disclosed at the event that Line Games earned 2.6 billion yen (or over $23 million) in monthly revenue for July 2013.

Other games announced that last week’s event include the Rainbow Chaser (which will feature Line’s own characters), Puzzle Bozzle (from Taito), MapleStory Village (NHN), Let’s Golf (Gameloft), Shake Spears (from Russia’s Alawar Entertainment), and more.

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

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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)…

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) 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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Line Pokopang is another inexplicably popular puzzler

Rick Martin 2013.08.19

Line Corporation’s chat platform continues to be an amazing distribution channel for its repertoire of games. The company’s hottest game these days is Line Pokopang, proving popular on both iOS and Android platforms where it is currently the top ranked free app in Japan. The title is a casual puzzle game, with a very light RPG aspect that challenges you (a cute pink bunny) to defeat enemy monster invaders. It’s a simple match-three game with a one-minute time limit (indicator is on the bottom) to defeat the baddies, with special blocks that you can explode to speed up the process. Initially released back on May 28th, Pokopang has been doing particularly well on the Android platform in Japan holding now lower than second position overall on Google Play store since June 15th, and ranking as one of the top grossing apps as well. For iOS, Pokopang has been a top ten mainstay since around mid-June, currently ranked as the top free app here in Japan. The game has been advertised on television over the past week or so, and certainly that has likely contributed to its recent popularity. But I confess, I’m still a little surprised that the game is…

Line Corporation’s chat platform continues to be an amazing distribution channel for its repertoire of games. The company’s hottest game these days is Line Pokopang, proving popular on both iOS and Android platforms where it is currently the top ranked free app in Japan.

The title is a casual puzzle game, with a very light RPG aspect that challenges you (a cute pink bunny) to defeat enemy monster invaders. It’s a simple match-three game with a one-minute time limit (indicator is on the bottom) to defeat the baddies, with special blocks that you can explode to speed up the process.

Initially released back on May 28th, Pokopang has been doing particularly well on the Android platform in Japan holding now lower than second position overall on Google Play store since June 15th, and ranking as one of the top grossing apps as well. For iOS, Pokopang has been a top ten mainstay since around mid-June, currently ranked as the top free app here in Japan.

The game has been advertised on television over the past week or so, and certainly that has likely contributed to its recent popularity. But I confess, I’m still a little surprised that the game is still doing as well as it is.

I’ve been playing the game a little bit, and while I’m not usually very interested in Line’s casual titles, this one is not so bad – but it most certainly will not be eating into any of my Puzzle & Dragons time. Pokopang is a little pushy in asking you to involve your friends on Line, and I expect that aspect has helped its popularity too.

It is pretty cute too, I suppose.

If you’d like a better idea of how Line Pokopang works, check out our demo video above. To try it for yourself, you can get it as a free download from the App Store or Google Play.

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Japan’s Ninja Striker is a wonderfully retro 8bit game for iPhone

Rick Martin 2013.08.16

Here’s a really fun mobile game for you to kick off your weekend with. Ninja Striker is a great little side-scroller, designed in the 8-bit style that children of the 80s will love. It has very much a Sonic or Mario Bros feeling, with coins to collect and oncoming monster baddies to slash up. But because it’s a mobile game, the controls have been simplified in a very clever way. All you need to do is point where you want your ninja to fly or strike, and he’ll do it. He’s pretty immune to gravity as well, capable of clinging to walls and ceilings too (sort of like Ninja Gaiden). Developed by Q-cumber Factory, Ninja Striker is usually priced at 85 yen (or a dollar), but it’s free right now for a limited time. I’ve been enjoying it a lot today, and I recommend you give it a try as a nice casual time killer with a dash of retro nostalgia. You can pick it up over on the App Store, or if you’d like a preview of the gameplay check out our video demo below.

Here’s a really fun mobile game for you to kick off your weekend with. Ninja Striker is a great little side-scroller, designed in the 8-bit style that children of the 80s will love.

It has very much a Sonic or Mario Bros feeling, with coins to collect and oncoming monster baddies to slash up. But because it’s a mobile game, the controls have been simplified in a very clever way.

All you need to do is point where you want your ninja to fly or strike, and he’ll do it. He’s pretty immune to gravity as well, capable of clinging to walls and ceilings too (sort of like Ninja Gaiden).

Developed by Q-cumber Factory, Ninja Striker is usually priced at 85 yen (or a dollar), but it’s free right now for a limited time.

I’ve been enjoying it a lot today, and I recommend you give it a try as a nice casual time killer with a dash of retro nostalgia. You can pick it up over on the App Store, or if you’d like a preview of the gameplay check out our video demo below.

gaming

Israel’s Nordau Creative unleashes virtual dragons upon Tokyo Game Show

Now with 200M game downloads, Line Corporation adds MapleStory title

Japanese romantic simulation chat app adds more characters, hits 1M downloads

Brave Frontier: Alim’s first mobile game is a strong debut [Video]

Hot new mobile game from Okinawa rides an early wave

Megaman creator turns to Kickstarter to crowdsource new project

Sonic Dash to play important role in LINE’s expansion plans

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

Line Pokopang is another inexplicably popular puzzler

Japan’s Ninja Striker is a wonderfully retro 8bit game for iPhone

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