J-pop earworm of the week - Perfume: The Best Thing

Not done this for ages, but it was on in the car when I popped to the shops at lunchtime, and it's been stuck in my head ever since. Usual Perfume rules apply, vocoded vocals, cuteness, catchier than swine flu. No video for this one, so here's a cheesy montage of random pics. Yay!

Cave cave-in!

After the recent NTSC-J only release of Death Smiles for XBox 360, coming warm on the heels of previous region locked releases, I'd given up on ever seeing any Cave shmups for my console. The announcement of Mushihimesama Futari rubbed so much extra salt into the wound, as the original is one of my favourite shooters.

Sure, I could get a Japanese 360, but they cost quite a bit to import, they weigh a ton so postage ain't cheap, and let's face it, 360's aren't renowned for their build quality. So no, I don't really want to go down that road. No Cave shmups (or Otomedius Gorgeous, or IdolMaster) for me.

Or so it seemed, until a recent poll from Cave gave me (and countless others) a direct link to the team. While they wanted to know what game Japanese fans would like to see ported to XBLA, they inadvertently opened themselves up to a swathe of westerners sending begging letters - begging letters that seem to have had a result!

Makoto Asada from Cave blogged the results of the XBLA poll this week (Guwange is the winner), and he took the time to address the Japanese only releases the company has made so far.

"Death Smiles" was released only for Asia, but the region for "Mushi-hime sama Futari" has not been decided yet. I believe it will be decided around the time of Tokyo Game Show 2009.

We are very happy to have received so many e-mails from overseas."

I sent one of those emails, and for once it's nice to have a company listening to it's customers. Don't let me down Cave, I want to be blasting bugs come November! *excited*