Touch! Double Sport, Bandai Namco new 3DS game with dual gesture

Bandai Namco has announced a new Game for the 3DS, Touch! Double Sport.
Similar to Wii Sport, this new Touch! Double Sport features many mini-games like soccer, baseball, boxing, archery… Nothing special so far, until you discover that it will require to be played with a pair of sticks or your finger (left and right) and comes with a new innovative UI to let you control and finely tune each of your movements.
Scheduled for June 2011, this new Touch! Double Sport will be sold in Japan at around 4800 Yen.

Sega Toys unveils “Wappy Dog” your NDS new best friend

Behold Sega i-Dog younger brother Wappy Dog! Introduced in the US during the last Toy Fair 2011, Wappy Dog is born from the collaboration between Activision and Sega Toy in order to bring a little Robotic Toy capable to interact with a proprietary NDS Game.
Schedule to be released later this year Wappy Dog can interacts with both the video game and alone.
Alone you will be able to pet or talk to your little new friend and Wappy Dog will respond to each gestures by making noise or even glowing different colored lights on its cheeks or eyes.
Once your NDS turned on and playing Wappy Dog’s dedicated game each little sound emitted during your playtime will be understood by Wappy and will trigger an action. If you cannot take along Wappy with you it will be possible to “Transfer” Wappy to your NDS and continue to play with him at several “mini” games where Wappy will help you to solve.

The Japanese Arcade Game Show is still kicking hard!

Year-by-Year the AOU or All Nippon Amusement Machine Operator’s Union Show taking place far, far away from Tokyo at Makuhari Messe, tends to shrink little by little. Yes, like almost everywhere around the world, arcade games do not attract as many as people as they used to, but small does not necessarily mean boring and actually this year, AOU was quite interesting.

BANDAI NAMCO

I believe that Tekken does not need any introduction and today Bandai Namco introduced their latest iteration of Tekken with Tekken TAG 2 Tournament. If I am no longer a fan of this kind of games, I have to admit that Tekken and its gameplay do not get old! With gorgeous graphics and impressive arcade cabinet, this new Tekken TAG2 will give hours of fun to the fans of the series and will definitively warm-up the atmosphere during friendly matches.
Bandai Namco also introduced a new “racing” game similar to Konami’s 3D Road Fighters, call here Maximum Heat 3D. With a very basic Gameplay,you are racing against other virtual or non-virtual player and have the choice between a 2D mode and a 3D Mode with 3D Glasses.
The last game that we enjoyed a lot at AOU was Dragon Ball Zenaki Battle Royal. Sure I may not be really objective on this one since I am one of Dragon Ball biggest fans EVER! But really this game is just gorgeous, graphics are amazing, the gameplay really interesting with enough tactics to make it more than just a fighting game and top of all you can now fight against Virtual or non-Virtual adversaries!

KONAMI

Konami did not have much to introduce this year that we didn’t already know, sure they announced some interesting upgrades to their music game series including Jubeat as well as their Guitar Game, but the most interesting section on Konami’s stand was Love Plus Arcade. Love Plus, for those who where hiding under a stone for the last couple of years, is a “Girl Friend” simulator, and here you can play with your favorite character or virtual GF at many different games such as choose the best outfits for her, card games and so on. Once again, this kind of game is not really my cup of tea but you have to admit that the character design is just fantastic and that Konami put a lot of attention on this game and this at so many levels that it would be a shame to just ignore Love Plus Arcade entirely.

SEGA

SEGA had with BANDAI NAMCO the biggest stand this year at AOU and among many very interesting games including CHOAS Code (Fighting), Project Diva Arcade and 3D (Music Game), Virtual Fighter 5 Final Showdown (Fighting), Boarder Break V2.0 (Mecha) and Let’s Go Island 3D (3D Shoot), SEGA introduced two major tactic/manager games with STAR BOAT where you will have to build your team of speed boat racer and fight against other teams,and using the same concept but on a different sport, Horse Race 3, here you will have to select the best horse and jokey and win races in different locations.
Once again these sort of Tactic games are really not my kind of thing, but Sega has built-up an incredible set-up for both games giving each player the sensation to really manage a team of professional sport players and face the difficult challenge to manage each aspect of the game during an entire season.

TAITO

The last but not the least, TAITO did not have a huge stand this year but has several nice little games upgraded of already available games like Haunted Museum II and Music GunGun 2 (Shoot).
But the most interesting one was by far their new “Sonic Blast Hereos” a “punching game” with five different stages where you will have to “punch” your way through to get to the final stage and save the earth from a meteor shower!

GOODIES

There are no AOU without goodies and you will find in the gallery below some of the best Goodies that can be only found in Japanese UFO Cather games!
Anyway do not forget to watch our 10-minutes video (above) and the gallery below with over 90 High-res pictures of the event!

Cowon released its new V5S PMP in Korea

Cowon released this morning in Korea its latest PMP the V5S. Being an upgrade of this actual V5, the V5S is also able to play full HD video on its 4.8” (800×480) screen without prior conversion, but now comes with a fully featured set of Dictionaries in both English, Korean and Chinese as well as several e-Books made to help Korean students to improve their knowledge.

Sanwa introduces hideous iPad Stand with Stereo Speaker

Made and designed by the Taiwanese company KEYDEX, this hideous aluminum stand with 2×1.5W Speaker is now available in Japan thanks to, or because of Sanwa.
Named 400-SP013 in Japan this new dock is made for people who do not have taste and/or people who may have too much money around .

NEC introduces its first Android Netbook, the LifeTouch Note

This morning NEC has introduced in Japan a new Netbook, the LifeTouch Note. unlike any other conventional Netbooks, the LifeTouch Note comes with Android 2.2 and runs on NVIDIA’s Tegra 250 Mobile Processor (Tegra 2).
The LifeTouch Note is available in three different flavors with a WiFi, 3G and 8Gb of internal memory version as well a a WiFi only version and finally a WiFi only model that only comes with 4Gb of memory.
All models comes with a 7″ LED backlight resistive touchscreen with a 800×480 resolution, GPS, accelerometer, an SD and SDHC card slot and a 2Mpix camera.
NEC also confirmed that its LifeTouch Note is compatible with the Android market and is confident that this new LifeBook Note will give the overall “Notebook” thingy a second chance in Japan.
NEC also worked on a better SNS/Mail/Text + Photo integration where you can from one click add pictures to any SNS services Mail or Text in just a few seconds. NEC demonstrate today how easy it was for them to write a text, import a photo into the text and send it to Mixi, a Japanese SNS service, in just a few click.
Finally the LifeTouch Note comes with a weight similar to the iPad of 699g for it’s WiFi only version and should give you enough juice for nine hours of fun. As the price of this new LifeTouch Note is concerned you should expect something ranging from 40,000 Yen for the 4GB and WiFi model, 45,000 Yen for the 8GB WiFi one and 45,000 Yen for the 8GB 3G+WiFi version.
One a personal note and despite the very interesting form-factor and gorgeous keyboard I wished that this new LifeBook Touch would have come with a capacitive screen and a more elegant body. Sure the LifeTouch Note is fast and responsive as well as looking pretty nice once its lid closed but the overall plastic used on this LifeTouch Note looks way too cheap for me.

LG Optimus 3D the world Second 3D Phone Hands-On

Introduced at CES, LG’s Optimus Black crossed oceans and mountains to visit Barcelona today! There is nothing new about the Optimus Black and its amazing 4” WVGA NOVA display and WiFi direct, but we finally had some quality time with it and could enjoy its sleek (9mm) thin and well built body (No crappy plastic here sir!). Like every other Optimus showed at MWC, the Optimus Black is fast and responsive. Now among the 3D, the Black and the 2X, offering the same impressive performances, I am not sure which one to take!

LG Optimus Pad, the First 3D Tablet that requires 3D Glasses?

Sure we may be a little rude here with LG’s latest Optimus Pad, but to tell the truth and despite its dual Cameras on the back and its capacity to record videos and shoot photos in 3D, the Optimus Pad does not comes with a Glasses-Free 3D Screen and it will require you to get a pair of 3D glasses to enjoy 3D content on the go. This said like the Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 (Soon on this later) the LG Optimus Pad comes with full approval of Google and features the company’s logo on the back.
Known as G-Slate in the US, the Google Optimus Pad comes with Android 3.0, a Tegra 2 CPU (Dual Core) and a stunning 8.9” WXGA screen… Like most Tegra 2 devices these days, the Optimus Pad is capable to record Full HD Video and even support HDMI output.
Finally the good news is that LG is planning to propose its LG Optimus Pad in Europe within March!

Samsung Galaxy S 2 Hands-On

Sleek, thin and light this is what the Galaxy S 2 is all about! Coming with a stunning 4.27” WVGA Super AMOLED Plus screen that is both bright and vividly colourful. Running Android 2.3 and a 1GHz Dual Core CPU, the Galaxy S 2 is just impressively fast and makes using Sasmung’s TouchWiz 4.0 UI a bliss. The Galaxy S 2 also comes with a 8Mpix Camera that will be able to shoot 1080p video for you, and even if we could not check the result of our test, what we have seen on the screen was very promising.
So now here we have a fantastic phone made by another Korean manufacturer, if things go on like this, it will soon be almost impossible to choose between them all!

Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 Hands-On

Behold the all mighty Galaxy Tab 2 from Samsung, the one that we were all waiting for! The first Galaxy Tab was a nice little device but needed some polish to make it overpass Apple’s iPad, and to be honest I hope this Apple second generation iPad will be a killer, since the Galaxy Tab 2 is really here to kick some Apple’s ass!
Sure the Galaxy Tab 2 is impressive with its gorgeous 10.1 1280×800 screen but it is also pretty huge compared to the actual Galaxy Pad. We are sure that many will complain about this size increase but many will appreciate this change making the Galaxy Pad 2 now a “big” as an iPad.
Unlike the first Galaxy Tab, this new model comes with Google’s Logo and Runs on Honeycomb android 3.0. The difference is quite important since here Samsung did not add any graphical improvement or its usual TouchWiz interface, nope the Galaxy Tab 2 is pure Google wonder without anything to spoil the fun and to slow down performances.
Regarding performances the Galaxy Tab 2 comes with a Dual Core Tegra 2 CPU that delivers enough power to run everything smoothly and even let you capture Full HD Video on the go via the Tablet’s 8Mpix rear camera.
Snappier than the Galaxy Tab first generation, the Galaxy Tab 2 is a real beauty and finally offers Samsung something to compete against Apple. Personally and even if I have already invested a lot in many iPad apps and Games, I would not mind ditching my iPad for this new Galaxy Tab 2.