To your left, excellent local amenities, and to your right, a Japanese man in his underwear battling bears and the undead with a pink trowel.
zombies (Page 2)
Real escape games involve getting out of a certain place within a tight time limit, so it’s no surprise that the latest franchise to get the real escape treatment is I am a Hero, a zombie horror manga.
Halloween just keeps getting bigger in Japan. While stores are full of all sorts of cute paraphernalia to mark the celebration and a number of Halloween activities are marked on the calendar, there’s one very special event that’s bigger and more unusual than any other in Tokyo. In fact, it’s so popular the organisers sold all 2,000 tickets in one evening and are now offering an extra three hundred tickets to those who get in quick by applying online.
It’s the Zombie Party Village, which comes alive once a year with thousands of walking dead—all of whom are free to dance to their unbeating heart’s content without being bothered by angry mobs and cross-bearing priests. If you’d like to be a part of the 2,300-strong zombie dance collective, read on to find out all the details after the break.
I’m never really sure what I should call the zombie action series that began as a hit PlayStation game in 1996. Resident Evil, its internationally used name, is a lot more colorful than Biohazard, its Japanese one, but only the first of the many games takes place primarily in a home. What’s more, the source of the trouble is science run amok, not dark magic, so the “evil” part seems a touch melodramatic.
On the other hand, there are now five films in the franchise, with a sixth on the way, all of which are produced in English and usually come to Japan only after already premiering overseas, so score one point for Resident Evil.
But in the case of its upcoming stage adaptation, set to open in two months, I really think Biohazard is the most appropriate name, because it looks like every single member of the cast is Japanese.
Summer is the season for ghost stories in Japan, and at the end of August we sent one of our reporters to try out the terrifying haunted house from the horror masters and game fans at Obaken. Amazing as that six-room production is, Obaken has since expanded its scale to something even bigger: Zombie Camp, a two-day excursion that combines the majesty of the great outdoors with the threat of rampaging zombies!
Here’s something to make “Not Sure if…” Fry’s head explode out of sheer confusion. It looks like there may or may not be a zombie epidemic spreading throughout Tokyo which affects only young, college-aged girls.
…Or it could be a strange, niche soft porn site for lonely Japanese lovers of horror and very cute girls.
Like millions of people around the world, I am a member of a sports club. For a small monthly fee, I can take classes, run, cycle, lift weights, swim lengths in the pool or just relax in the sauna. And just like so many others, I hardly ever go.
I have every intention of exercising, I really do, but getting off my arse and carrying myself to the gym can be harder than the exercise itself sometimes. If only I had something to motivate me, something that wouldn’t take “I’ll go tomorrow” for an answer. Something like, oh I don’t know, a herd of ravenous zombies sprinting after me…
As we announced earlier this month, Japan will get its own version of Left 4 Dead at four selected arcades beginning this weekend. However, the Square Enix and Valve collaboration will look a little different once Japanese gamers deposit their 100 yen coins into the machine. Although Left 4 Dead’s zombie apocalypse is still set in the United States, the undead exterminating main characters take the far less intimidating form of a schoolgirl, university student, bartender, and tour guide.
If you were in Yoyogi Park this past Saturday, you may have been slightly unnerved to see the apparent signs of an impending zombie apocalypse. On Saturday May 16, I, your intrepid RocketNews24 reporter, rose up as one of the walking dead and joined other brain-hungry biters in a sunny shamble through the park.
Gore-splattered heads up, zombie fans! Left 4 Dead Seizonshatachi, or “survivors”, arcade magnate Taito’s riff on Valve and Turtle Rock Studios’ hugely popular first-person zombie shooter, is not only ready to tear through the population of Japan but is about to be trialled at four selected arcades beginning May 23.
Details and videos after the jump.
Starting this April in arcades everywhere, darlings of the idol scene, AKB48 will be making their debut in an arcade game. Unfortunately for fans they are also zombified and require you to take aim and unload on them with your handgun.
It’s called Sailor Zombie AKB48 Edition, and as the name suggests it features members of the pop squad dressed up in adorable sailor outfits. Also as the name implies, the cuties are reanimated corpses who desire to eat your brains.
Since its inception in Canada in 2003, Zombie Walk for Kids has spread to England, Australia, Mexico, and, at last, Japan. And, like a proper infection, it’s really catching!
Though still focused mostly on major cities like Sapporo, Osaka, and Tokyo, the events are growing and gaining lots of shuffling, moaning followers. Just a few days ago, one was held at the Arakawa Amusement Park in Tokyo–and we have the horrifyingly adorable photos of zombie kids to prove it!
Japan is facing a potential crisis. While the rest of the world has been readying itself for the zombie apocalypse for years now thanks to the likes of author Max Brooks and his The Zombie Survival Guide, the inhabitants of the land of the rising sun have been given precious little to prepare them for life after society has been torn to shreds by the flesh-hungry living dead.
Thankfully, with World War Z–a movie loosely based on Brooks’ 2006 novel of the same name–finally hitting Japanese cinemas on August 10, the powers that be have decided it is time to arm the nation with the knowledge it’ll need to survive. Arriving in bookstores next month, a Japanese language version of The Zombie Survival Guide might just keep the country going until we can start rebuilding society.
As I’m sure the vast majority of our gamer crowd is aware, it’s almost time to wrap up this year’s annual industry-oriented trade fair, E3 (Electronic Entertainment Expo). RocketNews24 has already covered the big announcements for Sony and Microsoft’s upcoming consoles, the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, but it’s time now to take a trip through the exhibition booths, where game producers showcase their upcoming titles. Most provide game demos and release brand new trailers to introduce curious attendees to the game’s plot and basic game play. Capcom, however, took a different approach for their booth promoting the all new Dead Rising 3. It’s different in that the booth could barely be approached at all!
Warning: this article contains graphic images that some may find disturbing.
Hello, my name is Michelle and I have an unhealthy fear of zombies.
It’s not just the scary, fast moving urban zombies like from Dawn of the Dead that get to me. Even the comedy parody zombies from Shaun of the Dead had me covering my eyes, trying to go to my happy place. I don’t know if it’s because of their disfigured bodies or their relentless quest for brains, delicious brains; all I know is zombies scare the bejesus out of me.
But despite my own anxiety when it comes to the undead, the rest of the world loves zombies. From San Francisco, to London, all the way over to Sydney, Australia, people willingly dress in zombie drag and gather together to lurch through the streets as an undead mob. Even Tokyo’s Roppongi is not immune to zombie fever, hosting the most recent zombie walk in Japan and a monthly zombie bar.
We’ve had a Wii U in the RocketNews24 office, not to mention out on the shinkansen bullet train, for about a week now. Despite being made by a Japanese company, the console isn’t available in Japan for another 10 days, and many Japanese and foreigners alike are clamouring to know how the new machine works and, most importantly, whether games on the platform are really the magical experience Nintendo would like us to believe.
We picked up New Super Mario Bros U, Call of Duty: Black Ops 2, ZombiU and Nintendo Land along with our import machine, and are happy to say from the outset that these are all genuinely good titles. This isn’t a review as such, but since we have a number of lifelong gamers on the RocketNews24 team, especially our main man Kuzo, we were keen to share our impressions with you regarding how the four biggest titles launching alongside the Wii U show off the new console, not to mention which of the games are most likely to satisfy once they arrive in your sweaty little hands come December 8.
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