Take a look at the above picture. See anything wrong?

Now think of the possibilities on how it happened.

Answer after the cut.

The increase in size of Nana’s right boob is actually
1) Camera angle
2) the frills on her black top is curved, and shaped like a boob.

Now you know how.

I’ve spent five days being addicted to this game. I play it on the train ride to school, often missing my stop, and I play it during lunch break, and forget to eat.

This review will take a look at Project Diva’s gameplay and interface. All images used come from the visual library in the game.

Gameplay

The first thing that struck me was the high difficulty in obtaining a combo. The judgement is rather strict, and pressing too early will cause a break. I’ve noticed that pressing a split second later than you usually would would allow you to combo better.

Aside from the free-play mode, there is also Miku’s room, in which you control a camera and follow Miku around her room as she interacts with the various objects you unlock. It’s rather interesting (Much like watching someone play The Sims), and you get to take screencaps and do weird things to them like in Luka Days 8D.

The Bad

Starting off with the negative. There are some pretty strange things about the interface that makes you wonder what Sega is doing with their beta-testers and debugging team.

First off, and probably the most important: The lack of an auto-save function. I spent two hours clearing song after song and made the mistake of switching off my PSP.

It’s not surprising, given that music games like DJMax and Taiko no Tatsujin have an auto-save function you can enable, and because I was so used to that, I didn’t bother saving the first time round. It’ll be more convenient if Project Diva (hereafter referred to as PD) had this so I won’t have to worry about saving each time I obtain a high score.

Secondly, the two-step confirmation before the start of each game in free-play mode. There are two screens which prompt you to select ‘Yes’ before you start a song. The second screen is for one to turn off the beat sound, but that could have been integrated into another menu in the selection screen. It is also a chore to keep switching off the sounds, because I prefer to play without it.

Another fairly major gripe I have with the game: It is completely dependent on one thumb. Sure, the inclusion of all four buttons on hard mode may up the difficulty a notch, but it gets rather boring when you only need one hand to play. I’ve seen some reviews draw comparisons with PD’s gameplay to Beats, and Beats utilises both the D-pad and right-hand buttons.

Lastly, the wait time during the intro, before the beats start to appear gets annoying, especially if you are trying for perfect. An Ouendan-style implementation would have been better, to skip right to where the first beat falls. The Retry/Return buttons should be tweaked, too. Retry is the default selection, and is only helpful when you fail a song. It gets irritating when you try to skip the score/ranking scroll and press Retry instead. The ED is also too long for its own good, and you can’t skip it.

The Good

The song unlocking sequence! I suppose many a supercell tard went straight for the tab ryo’s songs were under. It’s a nice way to unlock the songs you want to play first. The rhythm (Or beatmaps, to use osu terms) is easy to pick up, especially so if you’ve heard the song before.

Next, the screencap function, which can be used anywhere in-game except the loading screens and when you are in free-play mode. To screencap, just press the right shoulder button and save. It can be used to capture images in your visual library, and is thus a roundabout way to get loading screens and PV images on your memory stick.

Which brings us to item interaction. In Miku’s room, Miku does a lot of strange things which leads to my spamming of the right shoulder button. Things like air-karaoke, and trying to balance a book on her head, and doing stiff leaps in front of posters. It’s all very cute to observe.

Lastly, the edit mode. In edit mode, you can create new beatmaps to the music library in PD (Which includes awesome music like Luka’s Double Lariet, and Miku’s Saihate), or import your own music to create beatmaps from (Just press the shoulder button to access the music in your PSP memory card). There are many options to choose from after that, like camera angles, poses, scenes and even a real-time beat allocation function. The file can be saved and edited, or shared.

Some maps are up over at the Project Diva atwiki uploader. This function makes up for the disappointing lack of Black Rock Shooter, and many other songs, and will probably keep fans playing for a longer time. I’ve tried a few maps so far, but some aren’t very good yet, probably because they need time to familiarize themselves with the edit interface. Nevertheless, give these a try (You just need to extract the file to the savefile folder in your PSP memory stick, and put the accompanying music file in your Music folder).

To end off, if you enjoyed the songs in PD, an album has been announced today. Titled “Hatsune Miku ‐Project DIVA‐Original Song Collection”, the album will retail for 3000円 on the 22nd of July, and will include a total of 13 tracks (Tracklist over at Famitsu).

Work’s been quite busy for me. Here’s a quick update:

- Lia’s getting married. Wow. At her age, she should. Congratulations to her and her hubby, along with the kid in tow. =D

- Several people I know around the blogosphere are either planning to go or going to either Nana’s, Yoko Kanno’s, or both concerts. INSANE AMOUNT OF MOOLAS EXPECTED TO SPILL.

- I call dibs on blog + bonkurasu. Type out www.bonkurasu.com and it’ll redirect back here. =D (You girls know who you are.)

- Here’s some updates with regards to Daicon; I’m too lazy to eleborate on the entire thing, but it’s about the lighstick call routine for Minorin.

- *UPDATE* Picture of MG Exia Below:

Am I gonna buy it? No. But I’ll buy the decals that will be out this month.

MG Exia decals

Char’s Counterattack EFSF use

Char’s Counterattack Neo Zeon use

…

zawa… zawa…

———–

…
———–

And that’s all. (orz)

Today, I picked up a copy of Famitsu, and saw this.

Yes, the one night of legend, the (!) Persona Music Live, is finally coming out on DVD!

Hell yes, preorder time. More information is available at aniplex’s site here.

Now, my life would be even more complete than before if I could attend the Famitsu-initiated PRESS START 2009 Symphony of Games, but that would be impossible, so I’ll be content with what I can get.

(I would kill to hear 全ての人の魂の詩 played by an orchestra though.)

And this post is to dedicate the presents I received (or on hold because the stuff ain’t here yet XD)

- Perfume’s upcoming ⊿ album from ume
- a pair of great sounding Denon AH-D1001 from Lss
- Tonight’s Transformers II movie tickets by Julius_Firefocht from NK-DS

There might be more to come, but I’m not expecting anything more, anyway. ^^;;

Also, many thanks from well-wishes by my colleagues, some SGAB peeps, NK-DS people, janice, jy,” Paner, horcruxes77, chanus_aloba, ArtemisMaster, PolynesianDancer, Keyfob “(from Perfume City Forums), Nocab (from Perfume City irc Channel), Satomi (thanks for the e-birthday card XD), etc (updated as of 5:30pm GMT+8)

And the above is Perfume’s P.T.A picture I saw while lurking the intarnetz. It’s a much smaller version of the P.T.A’s 1 year anniversary wallpaper.

Among many other new songs!

Announced two months ago, the next installment of the Taiko no Tatsujin games by Namco for the arcade, (titled Taiko no Tatsujin 12 Do~n! to Zoryouban. Namco insists that it isn’t Taiko 13) will include supercell’s rocket-to-popularity, Melt.

Being the mad taiko fan I am, I would have posted this a long time ago, but my final year project eats up all my free time and leaves me feeling quite hollow at the end of the day. But I won’t rant about that any further.

A romanized partial songlist is up ahead, and the ones of particular note are in bold.

＜Ｊ－ＰＯＰ＞
Himawari
Ayumi
Nihon no Mikata -Nevada kara kimashita-
366Hi
Kimagure Romantic
Sunao ni naretara
Sobakasu (note: The return of a classic!)
Ｐｕｎｉｓｈｍｅｎｔ
Melt

＜Anime＞
Odore dore dora Doraemon ondou
High touch! (from Pocket Monster Diamond and Pearl)
Samurai Sentai Shinkenjya-
Let’s Fresh Precure!
Ｊｏｕｒｎｅｙ ｔｈｒｏｕｇｈ ｔｈｅ Ｄｅｃａｄｅ (from Kamen Rider Decade)
Shugo Shugo! (from Shugo Chara! Doki)
Triangular (from Macross Frontier)
Ｄｒａｇｏｎ Ｓｏｕｌ (from Dragon Ball Kai)
Ｔａｎｋ！(from Cowboy Bebop)

＜Variety＞
ＮＩＧＨＴ ＯＦ ＦＩＲＥ
Ｉ Ｗａｓ Ｂｏｒｎ Ｔｏ Ｌｏｖｅ Ｙｏｕ

＜Game＞
ＴＥ－２０ (from Fighting Layer)

＜Classic＞
William Tell Overture

＜Namco Original＞
Future Labo
Yuugao no Kimi
Ｍａｎｙ ｗｏｗ ｂａｎｇ！
Negaigoto☆Puzzle
Kechadon２０００
Yokuderu２０００

As you can see, there are enough songs to justify it being 13, but no, Namco insists that it is only a Zouryouban. Does that mean that we can hope for more in 13? I certainly do!

One of the most interesting additions to this installment would be of course, supercell’s Melt. The official Taiko blog has posted a short comment by ryo, translated below-

I am greatly honored for Melt to be part of Taiko no Tatsujin, thank you very much!

It’s a very upbeat song and may be a little difficult, but it has a pleasant rhythm to it when played. Please go try it out for yourself!

-

Some screencaps

961! 961!

And a slime has appeared.

More screencaps are up over at the Taiko blog, here

Here’s hoping that a local arcade will bring this one in.

News direct from her blog and her official site’s schedule page, May’n announced her collaboration with Makkun, with the song titled “Miracle Upper WL”, and will be on sale from August 21st at the price of 1200yen. Also, the CD’s up for pre-order on CDJapan already.

Now, I have no idea if Makkun will duet with May’n this song on the following day, which is Animelo 2009. But I do hope that the song will be performed live during the opening segment, or May’n’s segment. Or even Makkun’s segment; whichever it is, as long as it’s gonna get performed live!!!

Yes. The above is a Transformable Chogokin variant of Mazinger Z with God Scrander, transformable into Big Bang Punch mode. I was half-expecting a Chogokin version when Bandai announced a kit version to be out sometime in August. Now that the pictures hold truth to my expectations, well done.

16cm tall. Late October release, 9,240 Yen (inclusive of tax).

More pictures on the God Scrander Mazinger Z Chogokin and other revoltech news over here.

More coverage for the Burst Ignition pack.

The above is a totally OOB build of the MG Exia, non-painted, no stickers, no markers to outline the panel lines. It’s purely fixed up and photographed. Even with that, the kit looks great from the pictures. The MG line is getting more and more newbie-friendly, not to mention it’ll make any first time kit builder beaming with joy.

While the October issue of Hobby Japan will be bundled with the XN-raiser, it is not only limited for 00-raiser’s usage. The other 4 Gundams can use it too, but what amazed me is that it is also compatible with all the other MSs as well! Ume will be pleased about mounting the XN-raiser on Susano-wo. 8D

I’m not a sucker for moe blobs (again) but this month is double whammy.

First I realised/noticed the Nendoroid Al Azif too late, and now a completed preview of the Saber Lily version.

For all you Type-Moon or Fate/Stay Night suckers, click on the picture above for the link to the post.

Saber Lily will cleave you if you don’t buy her when she is out.