Japan Spotlight: Akiba’s Trip: Undead And Undressed

Morning all! I'll be handling your news on this fine day and I thought I'd start things off with this.

Awhile back some community members expressed some displeasure that PSXE wasn't covering the more obscure Japanese games coming West. That made an impression on me since we do have so many Japanese game fans here. In lieu of an actual preview these are meant to get games on your radar that you normally wouldn't run across since they don't command big headlines.

With that in mind I'd like to bring your attention to this very… uh… original project being published by Xseed. Xseed is also known for having a hand in Ragnarok Odyssey and the Ys series. Akiba's Trip takes you to the Akibahara district of Tokyo, the cultural center for video games, anime, and manga that includes 130 real life shops. You'll have plenty of weapons to choose from whether it's a stack of comics or an errant motherboard. Sounds fun right? It's about to get weird.

You see, some demons have taken over the area and you're going to have to navigate the geek culture of the district and use a fancy smart phone app to identify demons. Then you'll expose the demons to full sunlight (the only way to defeat them) by whooping their butt and then literally exposing said buttocks by stripping off the demon's clothes. Seems like a good enough excuse to make a game where you can rip off people's clothes right? Sounds ripe for censorship though.

American fans of Japanese games often lament that certain things are cut from their games due to the very sensitive dispositions of conservative prudish types. None of that is going on here. A spokesperson told Polygon that nothing would be censored and all Japanese content would be in the Western release. Yes that includes the audio!

Now you know why the title could be read “Akiba Strip.” See what I did there? If this looks like your kind of game for crazy Japanese flair, which I know I like, you can look forward to it coming for Playstation 3 and Vita on August 5th of this year. Just so there's no confusion over previous entries, this is titled Akiba's Trip 2 in Japan.