Video: Toots Visits The Japanese PlayStation Store
With the news last week that the PS3 demo of Echochrome was on the Japanese PlayStation Store, my interest had been piqued to create a Japanese account on my system and visit the Store of our far East friends. It was pretty simple. I found this great YouTube video to help with the process. I won't waste your time with a step-by-step process, simply follow the video and you will be browsing the Japanese Store in no time.
What I found over there was quite compelling. The Echochrome PS3 demo looked beautiful on my TV, and there was more narration in the demo than the PSP version. It was interesting to see that all of the narration was in English, instead of Japanese for the Japanese demo.
Then I searched around for a new experience on the store. It's quite similar to the American Store, but just organized a little different. If you are familiar with the American Store, then you should have no problem navigating it. After a little digging, I came across the Yakuza 3 demo, called Ryū ga Gotoku Kenzan!, which was gorgeous. The game is set in the Ye Olde Japan of the Edo period in 1605, instead of the modern setting of the previous Yakuza games. It's very beautiful, and throws you into the sandbox environment of a street festival with confetti filling the air and people performing in the streets. Your objectives are clearly noted on a map, so just go up to the people the markers point you to and talk to them.
After playing with the demo for a while, I recognized the white cat Mainichi Issyo that frequently appears in Japanese PlayStation ads, so I downloaded the "game" to see what he was about. The title is not so much a game, but an RSS reader. The cat invites his friend over to read you the news feeds in an impromptu news program. It's hilarious, I had no idea what they were saying, since it's all Japanese text, but they set up cardboard boxes as their desks and talk about general topics of the day. One such news program I came across was a cooking show where they talked about making a barbecued pork vermicelli bowl, which looked delicious, so I ordered some Chinese food to stave off my hunger pains.
I would recommend starting yourself a Japanese account to check out all of their regionally-exclusive content we will never see Stateside. It was a wonderful experience, to immerse myself in their language and culture by checking out the games that are specifically targeted to the Japanese audience.
Toots
Posted to Hot Stuff, Video Games, Videos on 10 March 2008
Other stuff like this: japanese playstation store, ps3, psn
