Part of the beauty of Japanese mobile culture is the wide variety of accessories that you can add to your phone. And in recent years, that means lots of fun iPhone cases (see the bubble wrap or Domu-kun cases that we recently featured, for example). But Japanese manufacturer Nitto has come up with what might be the mother of all iPhone cases with its ‘Trick Cover’. The case is comprised of two hinged portions, one of which holds your iPhone, and the other makes up a flippable cover. But as you can see in the ever-so awesome video above, the magic happens when you hold one part, and swing the other part about – just a you would a pair of nunchucks [1]. Interestingly, you can hold a transit card like Pasmo or Suica in the cover portion, or even order a custom design to be printed on the exterior. The hinged case structure also allows you to prop up your iPhone at various angles for easy viewing. But you’ll most likely be far too busy fighting bad guys with your mobile nunchucks for anything as trivial as that! Trick Cover is available in black or white, and costs 3200…
Part of the beauty of Japanese mobile culture is the wide variety of accessories that you can add to your phone. And in recent years, that means lots of fun iPhone cases (see the bubble wrap or Domu-kun cases that we recently featured, for example).
But Japanese manufacturer Nitto has come up with what might be the mother of all iPhone cases with its ‘Trick Cover’. The case is comprised of two hinged portions, one of which holds your iPhone, and the other makes up a flippable cover. But as you can see in the ever-so awesome video above, the magic happens when you hold one part, and swing the other part about – just a you would a pair of nunchucks [1].
Interestingly, you can hold a transit card like Pasmo or Suica in the cover portion, or even order a custom design to be printed on the exterior.
The hinged case structure also allows you to prop up your iPhone at various angles for easy viewing. But you’ll most likely be far too busy fighting bad guys with your mobile nunchucks for anything as trivial as that! Trick Cover is available in black or white, and costs 3200 yen (or about $31). — [Via BCN Ranking]
Last week Tokyo-based development studio Wizcorp unveiled a fun mobile game for iOS called Celulo. You’re presented with a grid of cells or circuit components, and the idea is create a continuous circuit connecting the left and right sides of the playing area. But in order to win big points, your circuit should be as long and winding as possible. And you should make as many circuits as possible within the given time limit. Simple right? Well, it initially took me a while to figure things out, but once you get over that initial hump, Celulo is really lots of fun. There are bonus items that you can use during your game to double your points, or to freeze the screen to give you extra time, for example. The game also provides Facebook integration, as well as weekly tournaments that you can partake in with friends. If you’d like a demonstration of how the game works, check out my short video demo above. I’m looking forward to playing it some more over the coming weeks. The folks at Wizcorp point out that this is a HTML5 game, “boasting speed and performance which leave many native apps in the dust.” Readers…
Last week Tokyo-based development studio Wizcorp unveiled a fun mobile game for iOS called Celulo. You’re presented with a grid of cells or circuit components, and the idea is create a continuous circuit connecting the left and right sides of the playing area. But in order to win big points, your circuit should be as long and winding as possible. And you should make as many circuits as possible within the given time limit.
Simple right? Well, it initially took me a while to figure things out, but once you get over that initial hump, Celulo is really lots of fun. There are bonus items that you can use during your game to double your points, or to freeze the screen to give you extra time, for example. The game also provides Facebook integration, as well as weekly tournaments that you can partake in with friends.
If you’d like a demonstration of how the game works, check out my short video demo above. I’m looking forward to playing it some more over the coming weeks.
The folks at Wizcorp point out that this is a HTML5 game, “boasting speed and performance which leave many native apps in the dust.” Readers may recall that it was about a year ago when Japanese gaming giant GREE announced its investment in Wizcorp, aiming to capitalize on that same HTML5 expertise.
I’ve been a fan of Japanese online music service Beatrobo for about a year now. With an English website that targets global users from the very start, Beatorobo lets you build music playlists primarily from YouTube. So far I’ve been using Beatrobo on my Mac via its web interface. I prefer creating an app for it using Fluid rather than running it in my browser, allowing for quick and easy tab switching when needed. And that’s all well and good when I’m on my Mac, but I’ve been craving a Beatrobo mobile app for a while now. So I was pretty pleased on Friday to hear from Beatorobo CEO Hiroshi Asaeda, who pointed out that the music service has finally hit Apple’s App Store. I’ve been casually using it over the past few days, and so far it has practically all the features that attracted me to the web version. In fact, the interface may even be better suited to mobile as its far easier to scroll through playlists and pick a song you like. The one drawback that I found was that you can’t search for new songs as you can in the web app. But I’m told that…
I’ve been a fan of Japanese online music service Beatrobo for about a year now. With an English website that targets global users from the very start, Beatorobo lets you build music playlists primarily from YouTube. So far I’ve been using Beatrobo on my Mac via its web interface. I prefer creating an app for it using Fluid rather than running it in my browser, allowing for quick and easy tab switching when needed. And that’s all well and good when I’m on my Mac, but I’ve been craving a Beatrobo mobile app for a while now.
So I was pretty pleased on Friday to hear from Beatorobo CEO Hiroshi Asaeda, who pointed out that the music service has finally hit Apple’s App Store. I’ve been casually using it over the past few days, and so far it has practically all the features that attracted me to the web version. In fact, the interface may even be better suited to mobile as its far easier to scroll through playlists and pick a song you like.
The one drawback that I found was that you can’t search for new songs as you can in the web app. But I’m told that this will be coming in the next version of the app. For now the focus is more on social interaction, as the people search feature lets you find friends who may have songs or playlists you like. In this way, the emphasis is on social music discovery, rather than just searching through YouTube’s music offerings. For example, I’m enjoying exploring the music that my brother is listening to on Beatrobo, as we used to frequently recommend tunes to each other in person.
Overall, I think this is a great step for the company. I don’t know if they will run into issues with music providers or with YouTube for offering this kind of service, and I’m sure they are treading very carefully. But it’s a quality service, and with other online music providers like Spotify or Rdio not yet serving the Japanese market, I think there’s an opportunity here. At least for now.
Beatrobo previously raised $600,000 in funding in April of 2012 from CyberAgent Ventures, Movida Japan, and KLab Ventures.
It’s a little like making mixed tapes, for any of you who may have grown up in the 80s like me. ↩
For all you old school gamers out there, here’s a fun new photo app from Tokyo-based Mfro that will take you back to the early days of console gaming. It’s called Famikon Camera, an allusion to Nintendo’s first game system released in Japan in the early 80s [1]. What’s fun about this camera app is that parts of it actually feel like a game, taking on a faux Mario Bros look, with a choice of four pipes – each one corresponding to different kinds of photo framing options: nomikai (or drinking party), meals, going out, and other. From there you’ll be presented with a variety of photo frames and overlays that you can apply, with looks corresponding to many of your favorite classic games. When you add your own photo (it can be a picture taken live with your camera, or one from your album), you can then apply one of many pixelating filters so that it blends well with the 8-bit style. For example, below you can see a street scene with the fun Mario Bros frame applied. If you’d like to check out Famikon Camera, you can get it over on the App Store. The company has also…
For all you old school gamers out there, here’s a fun new photo app from Tokyo-based Mfro that will take you back to the early days of console gaming. It’s called Famikon Camera, an allusion to Nintendo’s first game system released in Japan in the early 80s [1].
What’s fun about this camera app is that parts of it actually feel like a game, taking on a faux Mario Bros look, with a choice of four pipes – each one corresponding to different kinds of photo framing options: nomikai (or drinking party), meals, going out, and other.
From there you’ll be presented with a variety of photo frames and overlays that you can apply, with looks corresponding to many of your favorite classic games. When you add your own photo (it can be a picture taken live with your camera, or one from your album), you can then apply one of many pixelating filters so that it blends well with the 8-bit style. For example, below you can see a street scene with the fun Mario Bros frame applied.
If you’d like to check out Famikon Camera, you can get it over on the App Store. The company has also recently released its HadoukenCamera camera app, which is somewhat similar to the Kame Camera app that we featured last week.
Or Famicom, as it’s usually referred to in English. ↩
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.
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.”
Japanese mobile game publisher Cocosola has announced that its Alpaca Evolution game has surpassed the 4 million downloads mark. I was pretty surprised back in March when it was announced that the game had reached a million downloads, so naturally, 4 million is no small feat either. The object of the game, as I previously mentioned, is to bash your fellow alpacas and absorb them into your own body so you can evolve into something of an alpaca monstrosity. Yes, it’s very weird, but at the same time it’s sort of cool too. You can see more about how it works in our demo video above. While the gameplay is painfully simple, the character appears to have hit the same kimo-kawaii sweet-spot as Ponos’s Battle Cats. And like Ponos, which is capitalizing on the appeal of these cute characters by expanding into merchandising, Cocosola is selling game-related goods as well. If you pop over to runatown.com, for example, you can check out a wide assortment of Alpaca Evolution iPhone cases (pictured below). The game was originally released back in February, meaning that these four million downloads have come within the very short time span of less than three months. So…
Japanese mobile game publisher Cocosola has announced that its Alpaca Evolution game has surpassed the 4 million downloads mark. I was pretty surprised back in March when it was announced that the game had reached a million downloads, so naturally, 4 million is no small feat either.
The object of the game, as I previously mentioned, is to bash your fellow alpacas and absorb them into your own body so you can evolve into something of an alpaca monstrosity. Yes, it’s very weird, but at the same time it’s sort of cool too. You can see more about how it works in our demo video above.
4 million downloads in less than 3 months
While the gameplay is painfully simple, the character appears to have hit the same kimo-kawaii sweet-spot as Ponos’s Battle Cats. And like Ponos, which is capitalizing on the appeal of these cute characters by expanding into merchandising, Cocosola is selling game-related goods as well. If you pop over to runatown.com, for example, you can check out a wide assortment of Alpaca Evolution iPhone cases (pictured below).
The game was originally released back in February, meaning that these four million downloads have come within the very short time span of less than three months. So its pace thus far is impressive to say the least.
Cocosola says that new updates to the game are on the way very soon, bringing new evolutions for fans of this very strange game. (Cocosola, via VS Media)
There are no shortage of newsreader apps out there these days, especially as the landscape adjusts in the wake of the announcement of Google Reader’s upcoming retirement. Most of our readership will no doubt already be aware of useful reader apps like Reeder, Feedly, Leaf, or even maybe even SlowFeeds. But it’s also interesting to see what kinds of reader apps are emerging here in Japan [1]. We recently featured the news curation app Gunosy which pulls news that you might like by analyzing your social media accounts, and even emailing you interesting stories every morning. It’s a handy service, although it’s currently for the Japanese language only [2]. But today I stumbled across another handy made-in-Japan reader app called FeedDrop. While it’s not as smart as Gunosy, the app is useful in that it comes with a number of pre-made content categories, each of which can be toggled on or off by the user. You can also search for your own content feeds, and this process works surprisingly well, giving you RSS and XML feeds for just about any search you can muster – in English or Japanese (note, I tried it with English ones, see pictures below). There’s…
There are no shortage of newsreader apps out there these days, especially as the landscape adjusts in the wake of the announcement of Google Reader’s upcoming retirement. Most of our readership will no doubt already be aware of useful reader apps like Reeder, Feedly, Leaf, or even maybe even SlowFeeds. But it’s also interesting to see what kinds of reader apps are emerging here in Japan [1].
We recently featured the news curation app Gunosy which pulls news that you might like by analyzing your social media accounts, and even emailing you interesting stories every morning. It’s a handy service, although it’s currently for the Japanese language only [2].
But today I stumbled across another handy made-in-Japan reader app called FeedDrop. While it’s not as smart as Gunosy, the app is useful in that it comes with a number of pre-made content categories, each of which can be toggled on or off by the user. You can also search for your own content feeds, and this process works surprisingly well, giving you RSS and XML feeds for just about any search you can muster – in English or Japanese (note, I tried it with English ones, see pictures below).
There’s also a ‘read later’ function that allows you to simply tag any article to be sent to your ‘read later’ queue. While this is certainly useful, there isn’t any styling that makes the articles any easier to read within the app, so it’s hard not to just send articles to Pocket each time. However, in terms of integration with applications that typical Japanese users like, FeedDrop excels. Twitter, Facebook, Hatena Bookmarks, Evernote, and Line are all supported, as well as the afore-mentioned Pocket.
But of course, like Gunosy, the app’s interface is in Japanese only, which is disappointing to see [3]. But it’s definitely an app that might be of interest to our readers here in Japan.
I’m curious to hear what news readers you guys are experimenting with these days. If you have any interesting recommendations, particularly anything that might be made in Japan, do let us know in the comments.
The Gunosy app interface looks very much inspired by Reeder, so if you like Reeder, you’ll feel comfortable with this app too. ↩
I can’t help but recall what Atomico’s Niklas Zennström mentioned back during the Japan New Economy Summit, noting that if you’re in the software business, you might as well be making it for the global market. I think an app like FeedDrop would be welcomed by users outside Japan if it ventured beyond just Japanese. ↩
Here’s a really fun iPhone game from Japan that is created entirely with shadow puppet characters. It’s called Shadow Love, and it’s a side-scrolling platformer where you take on the role of a cute shadow bunny rabbit, just like the type you probably tried to make when you were a kid. Your task is to navigate to the end of each round, evading other shadow puppet enemies like snails, crabs, porcupines, and even alligators. Even the backgrounds, buttons, and inter-titles are made in this shadow art style, and it gives the game a really nice look, especially with the colored backgrounds. Shadow Love, which was developed by Japanese game publisher Strawberry Gohan, has been around for almost a year now. But for some reason it hasn’t really gotten much attention, even in its home market of Japan. That’s a shame too, because the gameplay is really smooth, with very easy-to-handle controls. There are two versions of Shadow Love available: one for $0.99 (for iPhone or iPad, with retina support), which has 30 stages to play through; and there’s also a free version called Shadow Love Free Plus, with five levels to play. If you’d like like to learn more, check…
Here’s a really fun iPhone game from Japan that is created entirely with shadow puppet characters. It’s called Shadow Love, and it’s a side-scrolling platformer where you take on the role of a cute shadow bunny rabbit, just like the type you probably tried to make when you were a kid.
Your task is to navigate to the end of each round, evading other shadow puppet enemies like snails, crabs, porcupines, and even alligators. Even the backgrounds, buttons, and inter-titles are made in this shadow art style, and it gives the game a really nice look, especially with the colored backgrounds.
Shadow Love, which was developed by Japanese game publisher Strawberry Gohan, has been around for almost a year now. But for some reason it hasn’t really gotten much attention, even in its home market of Japan. That’s a shame too, because the gameplay is really smooth, with very easy-to-handle controls.
There are two versions of Shadow Love available: one for $0.99 (for iPhone or iPad, with retina support), which has 30 stages to play through; and there’s also a free version called Shadow Love Free Plus, with five levels to play.
If you’d like like to learn more, check out our demo in the video above.
I started playing Puzzle & Dragons a few months back. Or at least, that was my first serious look at it [1]. Prior to that, I had picked it up for a few plays only to put it down just as fast. It’s a game that takes a little bit of time to get into, and in the English version the help menu isn’t really an adequate primer for what the game has in store. And while I’ve come to really love the game, I think it can be tricky for newcomers. What follows is a short explanation of what I’ve learned about the game so far, as well as what I wish I knew when I first picked it up. The mechanics of the puzzle is not immediately apparent to start. If you haven’t tried the game yet, I’ve included a short video explainer above to help you get the gist of how to recognize basic orb patterns that can quickly be solved, and once you master those, you can move on to more advanced techniques [2]. Looking ahead to possible combinations makes the game feel somewhat chess-like sometimes, in that you need to plan ahead to execute your…
I started playing Puzzle & Dragons a few months back. Or at least, that was my first serious look at it [1]. Prior to that, I had picked it up for a few plays only to put it down just as fast. It’s a game that takes a little bit of time to get into, and in the English version the help menu isn’t really an adequate primer for what the game has in store. And while I’ve come to really love the game, I think it can be tricky for newcomers. What follows is a short explanation of what I’ve learned about the game so far, as well as what I wish I knew when I first picked it up.
The mechanics of the puzzle is not immediately apparent to start. If you haven’t tried the game yet, I’ve included a short video explainer above to help you get the gist of how to recognize basic orb patterns that can quickly be solved, and once you master those, you can move on to more advanced techniques [2]. Looking ahead to possible combinations makes the game feel somewhat chess-like sometimes, in that you need to plan ahead to execute your moves within the limited time you have. I used to be a chess fanatic, and perhaps that’s why this game appeals to me so much.
It’s also not at all obvious for a beginner how to best power up and evolve your monsters. While it’s important to save magic stones to try to get rare eggs from the machine, you’ll find in later levels that in order to acquire evolution material for specific cards, you need to find out in which dungeons you can acquire it. You could keep playing until you stumble across it, or you could check one of online databases for the game that are out there.
I still don’t fully understand evolving monsters and building teams, and there are lots of other resources out there that you might want to check out to learn more about that. But I do like that the depth of the game and the fact that I’ve been casually playing for months and there’s still so much more to learn.
Everybody must get stones
Spend a magic stone to continue?
Why Puzzle & Dragons has been such a money-maker for GungHo Entertainment? It’s all about the magic stones, the games currency. You’re occasionally awarded a stone, or simply given one as a gift upon login – but no matter how you get them, you probably ought to save them to either expand your monster box (in early stages especially) or to take a shot at the rare egg machine.
But the game draws on the same money-making principle of video game arcades back in the 70s and 80s: insert coin to continue. And sometimes after you’ve played a long round only to lose to a tough boss, you’ll be tempted to spend a magic stone to continue. Or, if you have no magic stones, you’ll be very tempted to buy one.
As a personal rule, I try not to spend any money on any virtual goods in games [3], and I’m really glad that the game isn’t crippled as a result. Game play isn’t really hampered at all, in fact. I don’t think I’m a hardcore fan of the game, but I do pick up the game daily, which is more frequent than any other mobile game.
What day is it, anyway?
Puzzle & Dragons has special dungeons available on certain days of the week. On the weekend for example, you earn more coins than usual, which can then be used to pay for power ups later on. Thursday is a fun day for me as it awards wood monsters, and I’m working on building a wood team. But this pattern of recurring in-game events is a pretty brilliant strategy from GungHo. Gamers look forward to the weekend when they can rack up lots of coins, or to special events during the week when there might be an increased chance of finding a rare monster. There are events on special occasions too, like a recent easter event, or the current spring event which just started.
No doubt gamers who take Puzzles & Dragons more seriously may find the information above somewhat trivial or obvious. But I think since the English version of the game still hasn’t come close to being popular on the US app charts, I thought I’d pass on a little information about why I like it so much. Besides the fun of the puzzles alone, there’s a lot of enjoyment to be had in collecting rare monsters and building a team. I enjoy the card battle genre, and P&D has all the right elements of that, I think.
Anyway, if you’d like to learn more about the game, I’ve included some more resources below. Some of them are deeper than you’ll need starting out, but keep them on hand for when you start to get hooked. If you have any advice to give I’d be delighted to hear it, so don’t hesitate to leave a comment below.
Note that I’m referring to the US/English version of Puzzle & Dragons, as opposed to the Japanese version. ↩
Some of the tutorials that exist on the net seem to indicate tactics that are far more complex than my simple video demo. I look forward to diving deeper and learning more. ↩
The money I spend in the Apple Store is usually on text editors or, more recently, on the very expensive Dragon Dictate, which I used to write this post. ↩
Japanese chat application Line pulled off a pretty impressive feat this week, achieving the top spot in Apple’s Chinese App Store in the social networking category on April 8. This is especially interesting because so far in Asia, each of the big chat app players Line (Japan), Kakaotalk (Korea), and Weixin/WeChat (China) have each dominated on their home turf. For Line to become the top social networking app in China, having only launched back on December 12, is a significant achievement. According to a China Daily report, it was helped along initially by being introduced via Qihoo 360’s Mobile Assistant. After becoming the top social app on Monday, it has since dropped to number two. But the app is still rising in the overall ‘free app’ rankings (currently ranked 7th), and I wouldn’t be surprised if it reaches number one overall in the next few days. Line is branded as ‘Lian wo ’ or ‘Link Me’ in China, with apps available on iOS, Android, and PC. Given the fact that some individuals in China can be hostile towards Japanese brands, it’s encouraging to see a made-in-Japan service getting some love in the country. Weixin is, of course, still China’s dominant…
Japanese chat application Line pulled off a pretty impressive feat this week, achieving the top spot in Apple’s Chinese App Store in the social networking category on April 8.
This is especially interesting because so far in Asia, each of the big chat app players Line (Japan), Kakaotalk (Korea), and Weixin/WeChat (China) have each dominated on their home turf. For Line to become the top social networking app in China, having only launched back on December 12, is a significant achievement.
According to a China Daily report, it was helped along initially by being introduced via Qihoo 360’s Mobile Assistant. After becoming the top social app on Monday, it has since dropped to number two. But the app is still rising in the overall ‘free app’ rankings (currently ranked 7th), and I wouldn’t be surprised if it reaches number one overall in the next few days.
Photo: China Daily
Line is branded as ‘Lian wo ’ or ‘Link Me’ in China, with apps available on iOS, Android, and PC. Given the fact that some individuals in China can be hostile towards Japanese brands, it’s encouraging to see a made-in-Japan service getting some love in the country. Weixin is, of course, still China’s dominant chat app in terms of overall downloads.
On a related note, Korea’s Kakaotalk has recently made a little progress in Japan, announcing last week that it has surpassed the 10 million downloads milestone, although it’s still a distant second to Line’s 45 million.
Weixin, while dominant in China, has a tougherchallenge on its hands in achieving success among non-Chinese users.
For more information on the growth of Line, please check out our interactive Line Timeline which chronicles its growth from its launch back in 2011 up until the present day.
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Rick Martin
