When people (especially gamers) think of Japan, often the first things they think of are the skyscrapers and neon lights, the shops with gleaming rows of electronics in Akihabara. Or maybe of the treasures to be found in Osaka Den Den Town. The cutting edge technology and cutting edge fashion. I don’t live in that Japan.

The second thing people will often think of is the castles, temples and ancient shrines. Well, I don’t really live in that Japan either but it is probably a closer stereotype. I live in a modern apartment, but outside my window I can see a farmer working on a rice paddy right next to the parking lot. On my way to work, I will pass two game stores, about twenty farms, four 7-Elevens and a castle. Small towns are often mixed up like this with the old and the modern living side by side. Even in huge cities like Tokyo you might find a sacred shrine smushed between two huge modern buildings. But I digress..

What I am trying to say is that while I often travel to the larger cities, I live in a small town. And the type of game related things I see in my town are often different from what is hitting the big cities. It’s more laid back and relaxed. And when a game receives a push of advertising so large that can be felt in my town, I know it is going to be a title to watch. This is why I am starting this new segment. I will try to do an update every month, or every time something big happens. My town has a population of 70,000, which is considered very small by Japanese standards (even though it is a fairly largish city for Oita Prefecture). My town has seven games stores and a handful of department stores that have a selection of games. I will try, through these segments, to show you what gamers in Japan who don’t live in the big cities get to see. There are plenty of blogs that cover the Tokyo, Kyoto and Osaka gaming scenes and they do it very well. I will try to show a slightly different perspective. I hope you enjoy it.


Today I went to the local game shops for the first time since my trip to America. I was excited to see what the shops would look like post-E3. Here are some of the things I found.

New Super Mario Bros is huge. Just huge. This is one of three kiosks for this game. The other two are not playable and are instead running a looped video. Personally, I thought so many advertisements was a bit of overkill, but they did the same thing back with Nintendogs and that turned out pretty well for Nintendo.

My town finally got a DS download station! I used to have to visit bigger cities like Fukuoka to get the newest demos but now there is one within walking distance from my apartment. The top screen was showing the Wii promotional video from E3 and everyone who stopped to look at it seemed impressed. I also noticed that, when it’s covered with all this stuff, it looks a lot less like an iPod nano.

This picture does not do it justice, but this is by far the dirtiest DS I have ever seen. Grubby fingered kids have turned this gleaming white beauty into a dingy gray. Since the screen is so bright, you can’t see the horrible scratches gouged into the screen. Still it seemed not to trouble the other customers. It was hard to find a time when there wasn’t someone playing it long enough for me to snap a picture.

I whipped out my DS and checked to see what demos were available. There were four choices. Tetris (not pictured), Sudoku, English Training, and one I wasn’t very familiar with called Bioum. Of course I downloaded it.

The game was very interesting. First you draw a closed shape and then it sort of comes to life and begins growing and moving. You have some indirect control over it with the stylus. You can urge it to go in one direction or another. There were other strange creatures there as well, but my red guy seemed to ignore them. I will probably give it another try later and spend a bit more time to figure out the overall concept.

Near the back of the store one of the employees was hard at work. He was designing a display for the Wii. There is a lot of room for creativity, even in the chain stores. Staff with creativity can make their own displays. When the new Winning Eleven game was coming out, this store made a 3D model soccer field. It had two goals and a small ball, which you could hit back and forth with these small nets. The small stadium even had various video game characters (Mario, Cloud, Link, etc.) in the stands cheering. I wish I had taken a picture of that. Anyway I am not sure what this new display will be, but until Nintendo supplies an actual Kiosk for the store they will use this handmade one to get customers interested in pre-ordering. Since these things are often pretty big, I asked him where he was planning to put it. He pointed to near the front of the store and told me that it would take the place of the Xbox 360 display.

It’s kind of sad that the 360 is being overlooked already, there are some games like Blue Dragon and Lost Odyssey on the way that look fantastic and might sway me to buy one. People might be quick to say that this store just isn’t giving Microsoft a chance, but the fact that the 360 is loosing its place might have less to do with the fact that it’s an Xbox 360 kiosk and more to do with the fact that it’s a broken Xbox 360 Kiosk.

Usually this system is up and running fine with some kids huddled together trying out Ninety-Nine Nights, but so far three times I have seen it displaying nothing more than an error message on that beautiful HD screen. Today was one of those days.

The red circle of death is not the advertising that they are looking for.

On my way out I was very happy to see another red object sandwiched between large displays for Final Fantasy XII and Xenosaga III. It was the Mother 3 kiosk! Ok, it looked a little cheap with just a TV covered in red paper and a video of the game running, but frankly I think most people who are going to buy this game were already sold on it when it was a Nintendo 64 title. I know I was.

And so ends this chapter of Nintendo news from my neighborhood. I will keep you updated through and beyond the launch of Wii. And hopefully give you a glimpse into gaming outside the excitement and chaos of the big cities.