All images we see on our computers, phones, televisions and anything else with an electronic display are built up by pixels, yet programmers and developers try their hardest not to let you actually see them.

Isn’t it a shame to hide them though, while they can produce such beautiful images and games using the pixel design style called ‘pixel-art’.
Personally, I can really enjoy a good pixel-art picture, but also enjoy the realistic graphics we find on most modern console games. Let’s first talk about what game developers do to get game graphics smooth and free of jagged edges.

-       Anti-aliasing:   In the old days almost everything we saw on our computer screens was made out of rectangles and squares. Trying to make diagonal objects just didn’t look right until anti-aliasing was ‘invented’. In short, anti-aliasing makes curved and diagonal lines appear to be smooth by filling in the jagged edges with shading.

Example:

-       Resolution: What also helped was upgrading our screen resolution. Your resolution is the amount of pixels that are crammed in your monitor. Imagine having a 21” monitor with a resolution of 1600 x 1200, this means you’ve got 1.920.000 pixels displaying on that monitor. The rule with this generally is the more, the better.

-       Vector Graphics:  A better display of images on higher resolution devices could be ensured by using vector graphics. While images built up with pixels (bit maps) are harder to handle, vector images are very easily modified in size. The bigger you blow up a bit map image, the more pixels the graphics system will have to come up with to try and make the image look smooth. With vector graphics you can blow up an image without limitations and there will never be any jagged edges.

Do note that all vector images are in the end translated in to a bit map image when output from the graphics system, and put in to work. This only happens at the very end of the process though, which allows the image to keep its clean edges on any resolution, in any size.

We just can’t say goodbye.

With all these new techniques game developers use to create beautiful designed games, improve their game engines and being able to make the game worlds look more and more like the real world, why do we still love pixel art games so much? Isn’t this way of designing our games very out-dated?

This is a question that could be aimed at us Kairosoft fans. All their games are made with pixel art and we love it. I’ve even seen complaints about the pixel art being too blurred out in some occasions, and I´d have to agree; blurred pixel art is just wrong. While Kairosofts pixel art can be considered to be of high standard, there are games out there with much higher quality pixel art. Of course Kairosoft is going for a cartoonish theme, though the buildings and surroundings are still pretty detailed. There are other games out there where developers have chosen for a more detailed design overall, generally using more pixels per inch (higher resolution) and a wider color range. No matter how beautiful, lush and detailed though, pixel art will never really look realistic.

We could blame our love for pixels to the Nostalgia Effect as DaveNg88 likes to call it. Most of us grew up knowing none other than games designed using pixel art. There just was no other way to do it back then. I remember Mario from way back looking like a collection of blocks, stacked up to form a tiny Italian plumber on my first Game Boy, looking nothing like he looks in the Mario games today. Playing Robocop and Dragonball Z on my SNES and a lot of pixel art games like Pokemon on my Game-boy, how can we not grow to love them?

Mario, from block to person.

That being said, among us are a lot of pixel lovers who aren’t from the old days when pixel art was all we could get, they just love it for how it looks. Maybe it’s because pixel art looks cute. The way characters are often made to look very cute with their small bodies, big heads and big eyes just appeals to a lot of people. That combined with the rich colors in most pixel art makes the whole thing just look happy, vibrant and easy for the eyes.

Restrictions.

While technology today enables us to play games with graphics of such high quality, we can’t tell the difference from animation or photography, we are still restricted to our consoles’ specifications. High-end consoles like the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 can display beautiful graphics on our televisions. Especially with televisions being able to output High Definition (HD) quality images, there isn’t a lot more we could wish for. Not to forget PC games being able to display the same quality on our monitors. Though these game platforms do not have a lot of restrictions, most handhelds do. With us being Kairosoft fans I’m going to narrow it down to the platforms we all play their games on.

Smartphones, whether you own an iPhone or an Android device, most of them are able to display beautiful graphics. While a phone’s sole purpose is for contacting family, friends or anyone business related, these days phones can also be seen as a gaming console. Almost everyone is playing social games like Wordfeud and Draw Something, but we also like to go solo playing RPG’s, arcade, adventure and puzzle games. Some of these games have simple yet stylish designs and others have beautiful realistic designs. Games like Angry Birds have a high quality, yet simple vector design, while Infinity Blade looks realistic and can actually be compared to a console game, graphics-wise. These types of design can both be considered to be of high quality design, being able to show HD quality graphics, yet there are still a whole lot of pixel art games out there! This is of course due to the love for pixel art, as I talked about earlier, but I think there’s a little bit more to it than just that. I’ve seen a lot of “3-D” games on my iPhone which, when downloaded, just really looked bad. No pixels but strangely shapes cars for example. The reason for this is the use of Polygons. With polygons they create 3-D models of objects which is a good technique for a console, but usually not a handheld device. Games on a DS often use this method of design too, but to me this really just doesn’t look good. Balls become octagons and faces look pointy and square like Pocahontas.

This just looks horrible

Sometimes developers want to make that awesome PS3, Xbox or PC game available for us on our handhelds too, but I say no thanks! Battlefield 3 on my phone? Nope. Assassins Creed on my DS? Nope! They want to make these games just as beautiful as the console/PC games but in my opinion, it’s just impossible. (At least until there was a PS Vita…)

Mmmmm, Pixels. . .

Personally, I love pixel-art for the way it can produce images more lush, colorful and vibrant  than other modern designing techniques. Colors can really blast out of your screen with pixel-art. Details are just amazing, to create a pixel-art picture takes a lot of work, so every line, object and shade is placed well thought trough. You don’t want to waste precious time creating something you don’t want to keep in the final version of the picture. Pixel-art can be so full of colors and different little objects. Some artists create pictures we can look at forever it seems. Artists can make so many different things happen in a picture it doesn’t ever seem to get boring looking at it. Characters, and I’m not scared to say this being a man, they just look cute like said earlier, the big heads and small bodies can look really funny and just appeal to me. For a good example of good pixel-art pictures, you can click the below example image, created by the design firm “eBoy”. Their pictures mostly have everything I love about pixel-art in them so look at their gallery and enjoy.

An amazing piece by eBoy

So with everything being said above, I think we can sum it up in a few important reasons why we still love pixels-art.

• We reminisce about the old days, when all games had pixel art graphics, and think about how much we enjoyed those back then.
• The graphics mostly just look cute, lush, colorful and vibrant even though it doesn’t look photo realistic.
• Finally, sometimes, due to certain restrictions, pixel art is still the most user/platform friendly way to go on most handheld devices.

Pixels, their designs might look simple, but the contrary is true when using them to design whole worlds. Let’s not underestimate the work that goes in to creating games using pixel art, like the Kairosoft games we all love so much. Enjoy these games and think about all the work that went in to creating it. Doing this all of us might even be able to understand why Kairosoft can’t release a game every month.

Adventure (1979)
Ok, so technically, I wasn’t born yet to experience to play this game in its entirety, but I think that it’s on appropriate to acknowledge this game as the birth of the Easter egg. This all stemmed from a disgruntled employee of Atari, Warren Robinett. At the time, Atari had no faith in Warren, and even when he went on to create the seventh best-selling Atari 2600 game of all time, they still refused to give him credit for producing the game. What Atari didn’t count on was Warren deciding to add his own name into the game as a producer credit, regardless of how Atari felt. Hiding his name into the code of the game, and making it accessible only through the most abstract of means, Warren had inadvertently created the first Easter egg, and began a trend that would transcend through all generations of gaming.

Reptile (1992)
One of the more famous secrets to be found in a game, Reptile was an Easter egg that many players first stumbled upon at random in arcades, and eventually at home. Players were required to win two flawless victories on the pit stage (without blocking as well), with the second victory coming from a stage fatality. This all had to be done with a silhouette passing in front of the moon, which would happen only once every 8 times the stage was played on. Player found a lot of satisfaction in finally figuring out how to fight against Reptile (the home versions of the game included hints from Reptile himself on how to fight him), and he became so popular that he has been a regular character in the Mortal Kombat franchise since his inception.

Chris Houlihan Room (1991)
Another well-known Easter egg from the same era of gaming is perhaps one of the most famous of all time. For those who don’t know, Chris Houlihan was the winner of a 1990 Nintendo Power magazine contest, which allowed for his name to be put into the new Zelda game, The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past. It was a dream come true for any child who was a fan of video games during that generation. Unfortunately for Chris, the only way to see his name was to abuse a glitch in the game. You had to run so fast that you skipped the screen you were meant to go to, and instead ended up in the Chris Houlihan room. In fact, the room largely remained hidden until emulation became available for the SNES, which allowed hackers to discover the room. Truly, it was one of the most well hidden Easter eggs in the history of gaming.

The Ice Key (1998)
Banjo Kazooie was a sleeper hit back on the N64, and also had its fair share of Easter eggs. After hackers were able to break into the code of the game, they discovered that there were a slew of hidden items in the game. However, the evidence of hidden content in the game was confirmed by the Ice Key in Wozza’s cave, which sat in plain view of the player, albeit behind an impenetrable wall of ice. This infuriated players, as it was obvious that the key could be collected, but there was no way of obtaining it. Once again, hackers managed to get into the files of the game to reveal a method to unlock not only the Ice Key, but also 6 coloured eggs. The real mystery behind these items was that they served no real purpose. They were supposed to be implemented for the rumoured ‘Stop n Swop’ feature, but when that was scrapped the items became useless, which led to wild speculation to the true purpose of the items. The items gained such notoriety that they were implemented in the sequel with an actual purpose.

No Easter Eggs Sign (2004)
At the time, Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas was heralded as the greatest game of its generation. For anyone that played the game, it was hard to find anything to fault it. It was a perfect mix of free-roaming mission structured gameplay that involved a wide variety of tasks in a truly enveloping game world. As such, Rockstar inserted a huge number of Easter eggs into the game, as a reward for the player who was willing to explore it to its very depths. One of my favourites was located on top of the bridge joining San Fierro and Las Venturas. If a player managed to get up there, they would find a sign stating, ‘There are no Easter eggs up here. Go away’. It was a legitimate laugh out loud moment for me, and made me appreciate the effort that developers put in to try and give the players extra content to find in their games.

As I stated before, Easter eggs have become so embedded into gaming culture that gamers expect them to be included in everything that they play. However, what is the true purpose of an Easter egg in a game? Personally, I think that it’s their way of saying thank you to the gamer for bothering to explore their creation. As gamers, we don’t fully realise how much work goes into developing what we love, so for those of us that try to get the most out of our games, we are aptly rewarded. Do yourself a favour, and go on an Easter egg hunt through your favourite game this weekend. The developer that made that game will appreciate you effort to fully discover their game, whilst you will feel a sense of achievement for uncovering the hidden secrets of your games.

Happy Easter everyone.

Here’s a link to it in the market https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.kairosoft.android.restaurant_en#?purchaseButton=PYfNAmO-0i1uNy76E0BQHiRcVUY%3D

So we got some of you with the april fools joke. Sorry about that, but the good news is the game is very real and will be coming to an Android near you before too long. I think the success of the game on the Android system could be a deal breaker for the company getting it translated to iOS. Let’s cross our fingers and hope so. We don’t have a ton of information about the game since it has only recently been shown to us. The developer, from Germany, has sent us a few screenshots and a character sketch. I know a lot of you are huge on details, as am I – so I am getting as much as possible. From what we’ve been told so far you start the game off as a lonely pirate at [INSERT YOUR ISLAND NAME HERE]. The first plunder missions grant you fame and loot, until you reach a fame level high enough that a new pirate has heard of your adventures and joins your party. The missions will grant you weapons, new ships (you start out with a pinnace), and maybe even an epic pirate hat! The ships look cool, but don’t have any major usage except to allow more pirates to go on missions, as for now. Your pirates visit buildings like the Disco Dancing Monkey or any other funny named buildings to get stronger.

These details are all the developer was currently willing to give, but will definitely keep us up to date. We look forward to a developer that will listen to our thoughts, and keep us updated. Stay tuned for more information!

Visit the forums for more information.

Cafeteria Nipponica For Android

Ok ok.. I know some of you are fans of HSS, so i’ll leave it alone

Then I decided to do a little research on my new found love “Kairosoft” to see what they were about. Well, the site was in Japanese so that wasn’t very helpful. Then I found them on Facebook & Twitter, and got a few replies here and there and one email reply, but nothing too special. I decided that with my experience in online forums I was going to make a home for English Kairosoft fans, but wasn’t sure how big Kairosoft’s fan base really was since they didn’t do much communicating. I wanted to see if it was possible to get their support before I started a fan based community for them so I tweeted “@Kairosoft im thinking about making a Kairosoft forum. “Kairospot” for people to discuss your games. Would that be okay?” of course I never got a reply out of them for that, but this other fellow Steve10 did respond: “@Pro I was also thinking about making one, maybe we could work together or something?” and within’ 2-3 days Kairospot was up and running. Little did we know that the community would turn out to be such a success. Steve & I have a gold mine here, not financially so much, but as a community. Everyone is nice, addicted, and has something to contribute to this place. So Kairosoft is still running deep in my veins, always waiting for the next release or response from them and I love sharing the news with all of you. Maybe recent communication with Kairosoft will bring us a bright future. I hope everyone has enjoyed my short blog, and I would love to hear how you became a fan of Kairosoft in the comments.

Generally, to sign up for any iTunes account outside of your home country, you will need a credit card with billing information that belongs to an address in the other country.  However, anyone can create an account to download free apps, songs, or books by using the following method.

(Click on an image to see its full size. Please note that the screenshots are from iTunes version 10.5.3.3 for Windows so there’s a possibility that they might look slightly different than your version.  Also, my screens are in English since that’s the language I chose to install iTunes with so yes, text in parts of the Japanese App Store should partially show up in English or whatever language you installed with.  Isn’t that great? :3)

1. First off, download iTunes.  (The link goes to the US Apple page.) If you have a portable Apple device, you pretty much have to had installed iTunes at some point to sync it to the program.

2. Go to the bottom of the iTunes home screen and select the little country flag icon.

3. Once on the page where you can select another country, scroll down to Asia Pacific and choose Japan.

4. On the Japanese iTunes page, you can either head to App Store to choose to download any free apps there (just pick any from the Top Charts list of Free Apps on the right sidebar) or do a search for any free app or a company that offers demo/Lite/free versions of their software like Kairosoft.

5. When viewing the product information page, you will see a “Free App” button under the app’s icon.  Click on it and you will immediately be greeted by the log in screen.  Select “Create New Account” then “Continue”.  Read the Terms and Conditions and privacy policy, check the box next to “I have read and agree to these terms and conditions.” and then choose “Agree”.

For what it’s worth, yes, the Pocket League Story Lite product page shows English text and screenshots for me.

6. Fill in all the information on this screen! You can uncheck the boxes if you don’t want any info from Apple.  When you’re done, click “Continue”.

7. Now here’s where the fun begins. Select “None” and ignore the code redemption & gift certificate field unless you actually have a Japanese iTunes gift card to use.  As for the account information, this is what you need to know:

• You can enter your name in whatever language you use.  Likewise, for the fields that require the phonetic spelling of your name, just re-enter whatever you wrote for Last and First Name.
• Postal codes, along with the city and prefectures, are at http://homepage1.nifty.com/tabotabo/pzips/jp_post_zip.htm.  Choose a prefecture and on the next page, the lists are read as postal code, city, and then street. Note that you may need to add a hyphen after the first 3 numbers of the postal code for iTunes to accept it.
• For the telephone number, you can enter whatever you want.

When you’re done filling out the information, click “Create Apple ID”. That’s it! ^_^

Additional Information: Buying Apps

For apps that require monetary payment, you will need to locate some source to obtain a Japanese iTunes gift card such as eBay, JBox (http://www.jbox.com/product/ITUNESCARD), or The NPP Store (http://nihongoperapera.com/store/index.html) Depending on the seller, they may e-mail you the code. Some can provide it to you within a few hours while others will send it next business day.  I’ve only used JBox to get my cards and always got my codes through e-mail so I can only vouch for them.

When you have the card or code, go to the bottom of the iTunes Japan store and choose “Redeem”.

On the code redemption screen, type in the code and click “Redeem”.

Now you can start buying Kairosoft Japanese games to your heart’s content! ^_^

Submit your fan art now by clicking here!

We will hold a voting process at the end of the month period for winners and runner ups.

Just in case anyone asks, yes the logo can be resized.

First, I will talk about the hot spring itself and the similarities between the game and the true culture of the Japanese. Onsen is a phrase used to describe a hot spring. They are usually situated around a volcano (sometimes inside an inn), as Japan is a volcanically active country, which creates a natural heating of the water. Many people believe that the springs have healing properties brought out by the minerals applied to the water. Some people may ask for massages.

Onsens were originally used as public bathhouses where anyone was welcome as long as you followed some simple guidelines (which I will explain later on in another part). Now, many travelers, from couples to anyone looking to relax, visit Japan just for the hot springs. They can be in any shape or size. Some are outdoors (roten-buro) or indoors (noten-buro). Some are publicly run by a town or city and some are private. These private onsens are often included as part of a hotel or inn (such as the inn you run in HSS). Onsens are often pointed out on a map by a symbol that literally means “hot water”. The flooring can be made of marble, granite, special tiles, Japanese cypress, acrylic glass and stainless steel.

Onsens must have at least one of the predetermined chemicals and must be 25 degrees Celcius. Each bath will have a different chemical within the warm, steamy waters. Major, luxurious hotels feature themed spa baths and artificial waterfalls.

Thank you for reading this part of my Japanese culture informative. If I made any mistakes, please alert me via conversation. More will be coming your way soon. Please leave any suggestions below and tell me what you think!

Written by eVo