Chris_D

Kansai is the part of Japan containing the cities Osaka, Kyoto, and Kobe. Kobe city is famous for the immense damage it received during the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake in 1995.

The Kansai area is far from the epicentre of Friday's quake and it was barely felt by most residents. However, this hasn't stopped panic buying in local supermarkets. Perhaps residents are expecting an escalation in the number of quakes across the country or it could be that they have just realised how...

This is a conversation I had with Haruto, a 24 year old university student from Osaka, who was job hunting in Tokyo on the day of the earthquake.

Me: So you said you went to some company seminars in Tokyo. When was that?

Haruto: Oh, last Friday.

Me: Last Friday? That was the day of the big earthquake!

Haruto: Yeah, let me tell you about it. I was in the seminar and at around 2:50 I felt the earthquake.

Me: It must have felt...

Some of you may recall Killzone 2 Craziness - Ben Dutka Goes eXtreme on Edge Magazine, my blog post about PSXExtreme Ben Dutka's rant against Edge's 7/10 Killzone 2 review. Well, another Sony flagship title, Gran Turismo 5, also received the 7/10 treatment from Edge. Of course, it goes with out saying that Edge was hardly alone in their criticisms of the game, with areas such as the interface and lack of consistency in car models coming under fire various publications.

Recently, I...

Please see my previous blog post: My Game Studio - Farmsoft.

OK, I'm still hooked on Game Dev Story. This time I decided to take on the challenge of a strictly PC-only developer. Also, I wanted to follow in the footsteps of the many fine Japanese PC developers by focusing mainly on dating simulations. It wasn't as difficult as I thought it would be but the growth of my company was definitely a bit slower. Somewhat unintentionally, I ended up producing a million-seller Fantasy RPG...

Like much of the internet, I've been enjoying Game Dev Story. As a simulation it has a lot of flaws but I still found it a lot of fun to visualise the type of studio I was creating. I might have started out planning to make the next Halo-killer but, and this is one thing the game gets right, I quickly realised that I had a lot of limitations on what I could do. I was never a fan of the Gameboy back in the day but, somewhat unintentionally, the Gameboy ended up being the foundation of Farmsoft's...