Playstation2 on Nanikore

Finished: Katamari Damacy

Sun, 19 Feb 2006 04:18:34 +0000

I just finished Katama r i Damacy on the PS2 [ English link] which a friend [LH] lent me a month or two ago. It’s a great little game, and since it’s been out a while, you might be able to pick it up cheap. Basically, you roll a ball around a home, then town, then country then world, picking up objects, which as your ball gets bigger, means you can pick up bigger objects. On each level, you have to achieve a certain size in a set time, or pick up a certain number of types of objects to complete the level.

The game itself is made in a very funky style with great tunes, weird sound effects, and a bizarre cartoon story between each level. It’s definitely a game you can burn a few hours away with on a rainy afternoon. Though not a very long game in itself, it as a lot of fun to go from rolling small erasers and such on the first level, to rolling Fuji-san and Godzilla in the last level to make a new moon.

Fortunately, last month Namco released the sequel " Minna Daisuki Katamari" (English title is" We love Katamari") which I’ve already bought, so now it’s time to get stuck into that!

Taiko no Tatsujin

Sun, 04 Jan 2004 04:39:15 +0000

One game I picked up for us this Xmas for the Playstation 2 was ’ Taiko no Tatsujin’ (Taiko Drum Master), which is a simple game, set in a summer festival scene, where 1 or 2 players bang the plastic drums in sync with symbols scrolling across the screen. It comes with a variety of tunes, from folk (enka) to J-Pop and some hard hitting punk. It’s a lot of fun.

Just saw this: Taiko no tatsujin merchandise. If you buy any, let me know if it’s any good. The game link is here. Looking at Namco’s site, it doesn’t seem to be available outside Japan. Has anyone seen it elsewhere? It’s a very ‘Japanese’ game, so I’m not sure how well it would fare outside of the Japanophile market.. Shame though - if you can get the game and the drums, get the set.

Hakuba

Thu, 25 Dec 2003 22:00:11 +0000

I’ll be disappearing for 3 days this weekend, to go snowboarding in Hakuba. Resort reports claim it’s drowning in powder which sounds great! Definitely looking forward to getting out there again! We’ve also got a room at a great little hotel we know which has great food. We’ve also got the Playstation 2 and a few DVDs packed to relax in front of after a hard 8 hours on the snow! Game on…

Original Comments

Comments from the original WordPress blog post.

jsb — 2003-12-29

Hey - how was Hakuba? I’m pretty green to the snowboarding areas in Central Japan - eager to hear your feedback. Tips on places to stay??

Regs!

graham — 2004-01-03

Hi, Just a quick response, as I’m on the road with my faithful old laptop visiting people through oshogatsu. Needless to say, Hakuba (Happo) was a great place as ever - the powder was great, and there’s a decent variety of courses. It’s maybe not up to Niseko levels, but it really is worth going to. I can recommend a great place to stay - the Hotel Taigakukan - which is a small family owned place which is cheap but has great food, nice rooms, a nice little bar and some great rotenburo. If you go to this page and book over the internet, you can get a 10% discount: http://www.snowjapan.com/e/hotel/viewhotel.php?hotid=25

Hope this helps, let me know if there’s anything else you need, and thanks for putting a comment on Nanikore!

Graham (aka nanikore/brightblack)