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Doki Doki Majo Shinpan hits the beach
Great news for -- well, pervs! And also people like us who think skeezy DS games are hilarious. SNK Playmore's infamous witch-touching adventure series, Doki Doki Majo Shinpan is returning this summer with an appropriately summery sequel. Doki Majo Plus includes unspecified "new scenarios" and "new systems," as well as new characters like the demure Kanan Kiara. This time, the investigation takes place during an island vacation.What hasn't changed is the goal of the game: to find "witch marks" on the bodies of your classmates. And the fact that this series is as unlikely as ever to see release outside of Japan -- which is probably okay. But before we condemn SNK for this stuff, keep in mind that this is what pays for those fancy new sprites in King of Fighters XII.
Doki Doki Majo site updates with new trailer
The official website for Doki Doki Majo Shinpan Duo recently updated with a new trailer, showing off everything you'd expect from a sequel to Doki Doki Majo Shinpan. There's an introduction for each of the game's characters, as well as brief snippets of gameplay tossed in for good measure. Oh, and near the end, you can get a look at the big Limited Edition package of the game.%Gallery-20329%
Doki Doki Majo Shinpan Duo's limited-edition stuff
A few weeks ago, we saw concept art of the promotional stuff SNK's using to try to trick Japanese otaku into dropping $91 for the "Special Box" edition of Doki Doki Majo Shinpan Duo, including two Nendoroid figurines. Now pictures of the real materials are online to look at, in case you would like to see what people are going to be waiting nervously in front of Akihabara electronics stores for.In addition to the Maho Akai and Seika Koron figurines and Lulu and Kuro phone strap, the set comes with a guidebook to the students in the game's schools, and a color-changing card that allows you to rub the image of a sweater off of a picture of Haori Kureha. And shame. Shame is in the box.
More new characters to bother in Doki Doki Majo Shinpan Duo
New screens of SNK's awkward adventure sequel Doki Doki Majo Shinpan Duo have revealed three new characters: another angel who will compel Akuji to annoy and prod girls in his ongoing witch hunt, and ... another girl, no doubt to be annoyed and prodded. Also some guy!The bespectacled angel Senome comes from the same angel world as Lulu and the demonic-looking Kuro, and keeps up on the latest angel-world news via "Angelnet." Which sounds rather like SNK is portraying her as an angel Internet nerd. Cute! Seiji is a school friend of Akuji's who is, for some reason, unpopular. Also he may be a girl, because we can't tell sometimes.The (obvious) girl, Himeki, is a self-styled reporter who carries a camera around to document everything she sees. She becomes interested in the reports of supernatural activity on campus, though something tells us she will soon wish she had not investigated it.
Doki Doki Majo Shinpan Duo forgoes nipples
Since Doki Doki Majo Shinpan Duo is risqué in its essence, we're not surprised that the boxart would also be rather ... bold. The blue bar that wraps its way around the cover lets perusers of the box see through the girls' clothes, hence the assaulted looks on their faces.The girl on the left used quick reflexes to cover herself up, while the girl on the right only had a sliver of indecency exposed. The girl in the middle, though? Not so lucky -- not even because her breasts were displayed for gaming consumers to see, but because she has no nipples. Maybe she's related to the guys in Duel Love? Or, maybe that's how you go about proving she's a witch.In all seriousness, we don't expect SNK to put nipples on the front of the box. Maybe they should have gone with a different design, though, so that the girls wouldn't look like ... well, freaks. Still, we know most guys aren't too picky when it comes to this kind of thing, and will enjoy the opportunity to stylus-poke the ladies of the game nonetheless. Oh, and the little pointing hand in the bottom right says "touch," lest your forget your task.
Doki Doki Rabbit Shinpan 2 Duo
The first Doki Doki Majo Shinpan game, in addition to hiding witch emblems on young girls' bodies, also featured a hundred instances of a "Reverse Panda" character. Finding these in the game's environments unlocked extra material. This aspect of the game didn't get discussed much, because despite the endangered status of the giant panda, the Reverse Panda is nowhere near as controversial as the rest of the game.It's back in Doki Doki Majo Shinpan 2 Duo, and this time it's joined by Usamaru, a rabbit in a kimono. It's nice to talk about this game in non-skeezy terms for once.Oh, SNK also revealed two more girls: a shy student and a maid. There are also new screens of the battle mode, in which you fight these girls. The battle mode seems to have been expanded and altered, with multiple abilities to choose from.%Gallery-20329%
Doki Doki Website Shinpan Duo
The website for Doki Doki Majo Shinpan Duo is open, and it really reflects the first game's success. While the website for the original game had an intentionally low-budget look (which had the nice bonus of being low-budget), this one has navigational graphics and everything.In addition to screens (which we've seen before) you can read (Japanese or machine-translated) character bios, and listen to short audio messages from each character. There's also downloadable character art, if ... you need a fairly high-resolution image of a Doki Doki Majo Shinpan Duo character. You can browse all the screens and portraits in our handy gallery.Two unused buttons remain in the navigation, so we look forward to uncomfortably salacious surprises in the near future![Via Famitsu]
Watch Doki Doki Majo Shinpan Duo in action
If you don't mind watching your game trailers taped from a crowded store in Akihabara, you might want to check out this video of Doki Doki Majo Shinpan Duo (posted after the break due to its NSFW nature). Who knows, you may be especially interested in the game knowing that you can poke two different sets of girls if you buy the super expensive limited edition bundle.Of course, if all you really want to see in this video are the NSFW butt wiggling, boob jiggling, and crotch touching parts, that all starts after the 1:05 mark.
Doki Doki Limited Edition Bundle
SNK has just announced that they'll release a limited edition of Doki Doki Majo Shinpan Duo, along with the regular edition, on July 31st. The Doki Doki Majo Shinpan Duo Special Box will include a CD-ROM of promotional footage, cellphone accessories featuring angel Lulu and demon Kuro, and Nendoroid figurines of Maho Akai and a new character, Ibuka Koron (we think that's the name). The promo materials have yet to be finished, but here's a preview image of the Maho figurine.The bundle will retail for a shocking (to people not used to Japanese video game special editions) 9,240 yen ($91). Thankfully, looking at new screenshots remains free.
Doki Doki Majo Shinpan manga is just like you'd imagine
Good to see that the official Doki Doki Majo Shinpan manga, which has been collected into trade paperback form, stays true to the series' hallmarks. It is in fact a manga about a guy compelled by an angel-thing to go poke girls until they reveal themselves as witches. It's significantly more unsettling in the manga, because, while it lacks the agency of the games (you're watching girls get poked instead of taking part), the ways in which these poor girls get messed with falls outside of the limitations of the game. One girl is stuck in a gigantic spider web, for example, and another has her Neo Geo Pocket knocked out of her hands by her own breasts when Lulu the "angel" begins harrassing her.The poor Neo Geo Pocket. [Via Kotaku]
2007: A year in OMGWTF
2007 is almost over, and the end of the year brings joyous tidings of List Season. It's the time for taking stock of the last 12 months of gaming, and trying to make sense of it by putting things in numerical order. Join DS Fanboy for our best-ofs, worst-ofs, and other categories-ofs.Our favorite system has two screens, is controlled with a stick, and features extremely popular games about petting dogs and doing math. What we're saying is that it's not that surprising when something weird related to the DS comes along, because everything about the DS is weird. But the things on this list are above and beyond the baseline DS weirdness. Nothing has made us go "hmm" this much since the Phil LaMarr-ious C&C Music Factory: Make My Video. Turns out, it was a banner year for crazy junk happening. Join us after the break as we look at some of the most bizarre DS stories of 2007.
Running with the devil in Doki Doki Majo Shinpan 2
Teaser posters for Doki Doki Majo Shinpan 2 decorated SNK's booth at TGS, and now SNK has started releasing screens and information about the game, which looks pretty much exactly like the first one. Akuji, the protagonist of Doki Doki Majo Shinpan, is now guided by a cute lil' devil called Kuro in the sequel, instead of the angel, Lulu, who enabled his witch-touchery in the first game. Amusingly, despite the apparent change in alignment, Akuji's directive is exactly the same: poke at girls to determine their status as witches. We guess he must have a different reason to find witches in this new game. The deep Doki Doki Majo Shinpan storyline will just keep us guessing until the very end!
Metal Slug 7, Doki Doki Majo Shinpan 2 on the way
This week's Famitsu contains two SNK mini-megatons, according to the NeoGAFfers liveblogging their readthroughs. First, a sequel to a game that plenty of people think shouldn't have existed in the first place, Doki Doki Majo Shinpan. Maybe this one will be less boring than the original. Or, maybe it'll be exactly like the first one.The other game is something that people can express their interest in, even outside of the safe anonymity of the Internet: Metal Slug 7. This is the first game in the main series not to be released to arcades, and it's going to be a DS game (Metal Slug 3D was a Japanese PS2 release, and Metal Slug Advance came out on the GBA). It also means that the same system is getting brand new (2D) Contra and Metal Slug games, and is therefore the best system ever for the run & gun game.
Doki Doki Majo Shinpan artwork rips
For those who place little value in the chase, that exhilarating, flirtatious period when nothing is guaranteed, actually playing through Doki Doki Majo Shinpan is secondary to groping its adolescent witches. Rather than have you labor through the text-heavy release's dialogue and plot setup, Stage Clear has posted artwork wrested from the Japanese game, enabling you to skip the journey and get right to your depraved destination. While none of the shots are scandalous enough to land you a ten-year stay in a federal prison, we wouldn't say that they're safe for work viewing either. The wiccan nymphets are depicted in poses that would leave Humbert Humbert dizzy with delight ("the king crying for joy, the trumpets blaring, the nurse drunk"), their faces reacting to the taps and strokes of an unseen stylus. Scurry shamefully past the post break for a couple of those images.
Buffering ... Buffering ... Majo Shinpan
If you've been following Doki Doki Majo Shinpan with the same level of interest as we somehow have developed, then you probably saw our first video footage of the game, taken from a store demo. But that was in a noisy store, shot with a handheld camera, and not really the ideal presentation for game video.Well, this is significantly more ideal. It's a Windows Media stream of that same video, in much better quality. The only problem-- like we said, it's a Windows Media stream. Expect to wait a bit.[Link goes to a streaming .WMV video.][Via Dengeki]
Doki Doki Majo Shinpan has sound?
Here's an interesting item for people whose primary interest in Doki Doki Majo Shinpan is the music: an official soundtrack CD will be released on July 25th. We've only heard a few seconds of drowned-out music from the game, so we have no idea as to its quality.There's also the Doki Doki Majo Shinpan Special Fanbook, which contains artwork from the game and developer interviews, as most fanbooks do. In addition, it comes with a mousepad, two posters, and ... a paper doll. For some reason, we think this is going to be the bigger seller.
Let your fingers do the witch-touching
Who would have guessed that our little witch-hunting game, Doki Doki Majo Shinpan, would explode like this? Now it's a ridiculously blatant preorder bonus offered at selected retailers. What goes perfectly with adventure games about witches? That's right: phone cards. It was so obvious that we're surprised we didn't think of it ourselves.We're starting to wonder if the witches are even bad witches -- they look kinda sweet (and top heavy) to us. Maybe the hero is hunting them to see who he should take to the beach. Got a "witch crest?" Great, grab your bikini and get in the van!
Doki Majo ads to make shoppers uncomfortable in public
We can't resist posting this gallery of advertisements for our favorite witch-groping game, Doki Doki Majo Shinpan. Like pretty much everything else about the game, these ads show a brazen sexuality that we aren't used to. Sure, American ads have plenty of scantily-dressed women, but they don't have Shift-JIS mascots pointing at those womens' chests and exclaiming "Breasts! Breasts!" We aren't going to turn this into a debate about decency. We just want to enjoy this game and these ads, which display the website's "Are you a bad person?" entry question, on the level of pure hilarity. This game doesn't make us want to discuss society's issues. It makes us want to giggle.
English-speaking gamers can hunt witches, too
At least, we hope that the new English version of the Doki Doki Majo Shinpan site means we might see it in this part of the world sometime in the distant future. Though the site still only lists a Japanese date, there are at least two translated versions -- Chinese and this rough new English site -- so we'll keep our eyes peeled for any signs of a non-Japanese release. [Thanks, Ricardo!]%Gallery-3277%
The witch hunt goes international
SNK's Doki Doki Majo Shinpan has been doing great business in preorder, and seems to be getting a lot of attention. Now it looks like SNK is responding to this success by marketing the game in ... China! A new translated version of the website has appeared, offering the same content in Chinese. No, it doesn't help us any, but at least they're thinking about some international marketing. That's one baby step closer to an English localization, right? The Japanese page has been updated too, with the screen cleaner shown above (which some Japan-based reader should really think about securing for us) and new screens of the first-person Magic Battle Mode. Apparently, somehow, you can do something to upset the girls. Just touch the "Read" button to determine if it's a witch check out the screens.[Via Canned Dogs]
