What happends after that? No idea. It is something I will need to think about and decide. But something will happen. I´m just not sure what.

So now you know. This is not goodbye forever, it´s just a subtle notice that we will be closing down the fool and doing something else instead.

Thanks for these 8 years!!!

It is said that all good things must come to an end and maybe, just maybe we have hit that point of no return for the Fool.

This was the first blog I started and I´ve enjoyed writing here but as things stand now I don´t have time, energy or just about anything that actually makes me want to keep this place. It could be an awesome thing to work with just for fun or just to keep it alive for “keeping it alive for the interwebz”.

But I´ve grown tired. I have enough blogs around the web as things stand now and I an wailing back and forth all the time. I still enjoy writing in English and I would love to write more. It just isn´t coming out as I want. School has ended(?) and I have some leftover stuff to do there but it will work itself out. I´m looking for work at the current point and above all I´m trying to recover from the oldest dog dying. It´s been 6months already but I´m still struck with tears almost every day.

So writing for this blog just takes third or fourth place.

I will not end things right now. I just recently payed for another year of hosting so I´ll be using this for at least one more year. But after that? Who knows. I am sure hell don´t know at this moment. If I do keep it i´ll probably redo the design and change the content to be something more focused and not this wide of area. We shall see.

It comes a time for when developers want to bring a awesome game out to the west and bring joy and addictions to gamers worldwide.

Nyu Media teamed up with three former SNK developers to bring us Yatagarasu Attack on Cataclysm. A 2d fighting game with love for Street Fighter 3 3rd Strike and Blazblue alike. They have 6 days to go and they are a bit short on money. They asked us to notice this to our readers and while I can´t donate any money to this good cause I can write this post.

The donationpage is found here: http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/yatagarasu-attack-on-cataclysm

They just recently released details of the controller that is given to any who will donate 5000US, you can see it here

and read a more detailed report of it here.

During these last 6 days they will also have quite the streaming schedule

August 6th Kusoge Kings *NEW*
Start Time: 6pm (PDT), 9pm (EDT), 2am (GMT), 10am (Japan)
Livestream URL: http://www.twitch.tv/dakidukno

August 6th Offcast
Start Time: 7:30pm (PDT), 10:30pm (EDT), Aug 7th 3:30am (GMT), Aug 7th 11:30 am (Japan)
Livestream URL: http://www.twitch.tv/offcast

August 7th Kusoge Kings *NEW*
Start Time: 6pm (PDT), 9pm (EDT), 2am (GMT), 10am (Japan)
Livestream URL: http://www.twitch.tv/dakidukno

August 8th Bifuteki
Start Time: 5pm (PDT), 8pm (EDT), 1am (GMT), 9am (Japan)
Livestream URL: http://www.twitch.tv/bifuteki‎

August 9th ManVsGame
Start Time: 11am (PDT), 2pm (EDT), 7pm (GMT), 3am (Japan)
Livestream URL: http://www.twitch.tv/manvsgame/

August 10th Orochinagi
Start Time: 9am (PDT), 12pm (EDT), 5pm (GMT), Aug 11th 1am (Japan)
Livestream URL: http://www.twitch.tv/arcadestreet

August 13th Kusoge Kings *NEW*
Start Time: 6pm (PDT), 9pm (EDT), 2am (GMT), 10am (Japan)
Livestream URL: http://www.twitch.tv/dakidukno

August 14th Kusoge Kings *NEW*
Start Time: 6pm (PDT), 9pm (EDT), 2am (GMT), 10am (Japan)
Livestream URL: http://www.twitch.tv/dakidukno

August 18th Unlimited Media
Start Time: 6am (PDT), 9am (EDT), 2pm (GMT), 10pm (Japan)
Livestream URL: TBC

You can also read more and get loads of links to the different stream here.

They need 11 500US to bring Yatagarasu here! So if you can, please donate!

Here is a trailer from the game

and we finish with some nice screenshoots

Finished themeing

I´ve just recently finished most of my studies. I still have some classes to complete and I will be studying more during the autumn for the hopefully final year of my studies before I start working for real.

During these last two years of studies I´ve been taught how to think and what to do right when designing. As it stands today The Fool is a pretty good design, but it also has some flaws that I would like to rethink and redo.

My own knowledge of wordpress and theme making has increased quite a bit. So I might be finished with buying themes from companies and using them for this blog. I´ve designed and coded Deculture, a swedish blog about anime, manga, games and visual novels. You might call Deculture a sistersite to this as I´m the creator of both and I´ve been thinking about redesigning this for quite some time.

I just recently finished upgrading the design of my own personal blog and it looks quite lovely if I do say so myself(no link will be given to this personal blog as I´m quite still not ready to go international with “who” I really am.) and given what I created there I would really love to redesign this design to make it worthwhile and something that I can place in my own portfolio.

So to all my readers out there that might write a comment, a new design made directly by me? Does that sound nice or interesting?

A magazine look?

This site for the longest time had Arthemia as it´s theme. A good theme and it posted a magazine look. The thought was to bring you news and interesting articles along with the daily stuff of any anime/gaming blog out there. This thoughtline has somewhat expired for me and I´m wondering if that really is the way to go. It would be awesome to try and create a frontpage which is more of a daily news thingy than the ordinary blog layout it has now. But would this be sufficient? As well as me myself not liking to see 40+ articles on the front page in all different shapes and forms makes it a bit frustrating that these type of themes are called “magazine” themes.

I would like to make it a more conservative magazine theme which puts focus on certain posts and the latest posts published. How to do this though is hard as crap. One solution could be to make it a bit like the Rumour theme from Colorlabsproject with masonry techniques and getting a good look at it all.

At the same time I wonder if this really is a good way to go about it? To create a single page with navigation for the users? is that really good and dandy? In some ways it is and for some it would most likely be enough. For me though I lose the focus on certain “hot” posts that we might have or might write in the future. Somehow these posts needs to be incorporated into a theme like Rumour. Which is kinda hard as the design is good for displaying posts, not “hot posts”.

More dignified look

I´m browsing the web almost daily. As I enjoy designs I take much pride in browsing the web for nice designs. The “magazine” look has become a bit of a rarity from theme developers and I would really like for someone or some company to bring the magazine themes back. There are still a lot of things that can be done with them.

Is it the real deal for the Fool though? To have a front page with some “Hot posts” and then the latest forcing you as the visitors to visit the “blog” part to get the posts in their natural order? We have stopped being a magazine I believe and it sucks, we are not more of a “blog” than anything which sporadically publishes something new. Do you as the reader want to have a more “magazine” look with a front page consisting of posts from different categories and then having to visit archives or a “blog” page to read the very latest in a good fashion or are you tired of it and just want to have the posts in the normal fashion?

People who want to comment about this are fully needed to do this as I will be trying to use your comments and what not for the base of the redesign. To tryout my new skills as a content manager as one could say.

So, thoughts? Comments? Love ? Hate? Do tell me what you think about these thoughts.

For those that have read any of my posts in the past, it may come a bit of a surprise me posting about VN’s, as it’s not something I’ve done in the past. I only recently (about a year ago) tried getting into them, but I’ve been enjoying them more recently. With the launch of “Virtue’s Last Reward” on the Vita (I really recommend that to PS Vita owners by the way, the story is great and has a very cool system to tell it), and the fact that I pickedup a WP8 phone, so can control my PC with it and play VN’s from the comfort of my bed, sofa, etc. So when I saw that MoeNovel was popping up and picking up “If my Heart Had Wings”, I was instantly intrigued.

Although I’m hopeless at making it myself, I really do love my anime art. I don’t collect Dengeki Moe and E2 just for the Eechi, I really do love spending time just appreciating the art, and I have quite a few game art books I own as well. MoeNovel says that they’re going to be using “high quality visuals and cinematics” and if the above image is anything to go by, well, then you have me hook, line and sinker.

What amazes me more is that the UK Magazine, NEO, is even supporting the release (that’s right, all the way over in Europe, not the USA). I read NEO and they are quite the hater of anything fanservice, and VN’s are this personified. This makes me instantly think “this is going to be something big”, so therefore I want to experience the game as soon as I can. Yes, MoeNovel, are only doing Teen rated games so they get NEO’s “seal of approval”, but I don’t mind this. I actually play some of these games for the story more than the sex scenes, yes I know that sounds cliché, and the art is a definite second in my priorities.

Rather than me telling you what the games about, I suggest checking out the site here. If you’re looking for buy you can find it on J-List. There are a few games I get excited about, Tales of Xillia next month is one of them, but I’m excited for this as well. With the art looking the way it is and what looks to be a simple but not underwhelming setting, I hope it proves to meet my expectations.

NO we are not closing The Fool, no we are not dead. We are simply busy as hell. I´m doing my final year of school(might add on one more) and I´m working my ass of for that. If I can just finish up school I´ll have a bit more free time to spend on playing games. Which should result in more reviews and more stuff.

I might go back to posting about new games that I buy and such again. I just haven´t decided yet. Also to be more creative and show of my mad wordpress skills I might redo the theme for The Fool but this time I´ll design and code it all by myself. Having some ideas that should work wonders and make it all look extremely sexy when I´m done with it all.

A theme like this has worked brilliant so far and I might just change some fonts and a bit more designwise and then keep the rest. But what is tempting enough is to go full crazy and redo just about everything. I have a small mockup done on my HDD and it looks pretty sweet if I do say so myself. Future will tell the tale.

I´ve been watching some anime to relax and my memory is quite vivid for some of the shows so that will also resume when I get my final paper done for school. So things will hopefully look better in the future. Either that or then I will have found myself a good job and I can´t do anything at all ;p

And it´s finally summer! After a long and terrible winter here in Sweden the weather has finally started to become warmer. It´s all fine and dandy so yeah, summer, the hot scorching summer heat and allergy from pollen… it feels good to be alive sometimes.

Anyone more than me that is pumped for this release and can´t wait to sink your teeth into the juicy beat em up game? I´ve already preordered my copy so I´m waiting and waiting. Looks to be a brilliant game again from Vanillaware and I still have Odin Sphere and Grim Grimoire to finish.

I´m hyped out for this title so much I can even forget that the amazoness and sorcerer looks like sluts and have nothing to do with that kind of design in a game like this.

If there are people out there who might be interested in running this game with me online when it is released, do let me know in the comments.

I got the chance to ask Ryan Phillips from NISA some questions. Now I want to share these questions and answers with you guys as well.

Can you tell us a bit about how the company came to be? What were the main reasons for starting the company?

NIS America, Inc. is a subsidiary of Nippon Ichi Software, Inc. of Japan, which established its North American operations on December 24, 2003. Nippon Ichi Software, Inc. was founded in 1994 in Gifu, Japan, as an entertainment company. NIS America, Inc. is committed to marketing the most innovative and creative titles in the industry. We at NIS America, Inc. will continue to work hard to bring exciting new titles to satisfy both our fans and new users.
Why did you decide on the name Nippon Ichi Software America?

The title of the company was decided by our previous company president, Mr. Haru Akenaga. The actual reasoning behind it is a bit before my time, but my guess is that it seemed appropriate to maintain our parent company’s name while adding ”America” as at our inception it was our new primary market.

Xeed ran into some problems with bringing Grand Knights History over. Rumours say the translation was as good as complete. Have you had talks among yourselves as to bring this much anticipated game to the US?

Unfortunately, I don’t have any news on this particular title.

Why did you decide to start to also localize anime shows? Can you tell us how you decide on what anime and even games outside of the mothercompany that you localize?

Our anime business was created as we felt that it was a great fit for our mission statement of bringing over exciting Japanese culture to a western audience. Our anime title selections are chosen on two stipulations/guidelines – if it is story driven, or comedy driven. We usually don’t rely on the women in the stories to sell the titles. As for games outside of Nippon Ichi titles, they are usually handled by our producer , but fan interest and whether it is a good fit for NISA are definitely other factors that help influence our choices ^^

The Witch and Her Hundred Knights, can you tell us a bit more about this title? It seems to have the ordinary quirks from a NISA game but there also seems to be new game mechanics and such that we haven´t seen yet in the previous games?

The Witch and the Hundred Knights is a full-fledged action RPG that we at NISA are really excited about! It’s a new direction as it will be our first true action-RPG – with an isometric/3D environments. Art-wise, Disgaea fans will enjoy this series as they illustrations are drawn by Takehito Harada. Again, we’re really excited for this one as it’s going to have more action than our typical SRPG titles! Look for more info on that in the upcoming months!

Which charater from the Disgaea universe is the favorite among you? We all know how much you love to abuse and work those poor Prinnies to their death. Except for these cute penguins what character/s is/are your favorite?

Outside of Prinny, my personal favorite is Laharl. He just has the funniest reactions to the things that happen to him and really in my personal opinion is a comedic genious ^^ – plus I have a Laharl Prinny plushie in my car ^^

Are you able to tell us how Disgaea 4 sold? Was it more or less to your expectations?

Disgaea 4 sold really well for us across the board. I can’t go into exact specifics, but I can let you know that it sold extremely well!

Will there be any more clothing created? Could there be a competition on your store to create a funky and crazy design for some clothing and it would be created?

We actually created a new t-shirt for Anime Expo this year for our Online Store. It’s called the ”Billion Damage T-Shirt” – definitely check it out, dood! A new t-shirt design competition could definitely be a possibility! We encourage all our fans to utilize our ”Pram’s Wishlist” to help give us new ideas for promotions! Keep your eyes peeled on our store – we may be selling new items this fall ^^

What is your take on the visual novel market? There are some all ages games for Playstation 3, one of them being the remade Tears to Tiara which is a strategy jrpg. Is there any possibility that NISA will start to localize these visual novels as well? Or is it a franchise to shallow and the released games will sell to few copies to be of any interest?

The visual novel market in the West is really difficult. It is difficult to weigh in all the localization effort and time/capital it takes to localize a large text-based game (outside of RPG’s of course) against the projected interest in the title & or sales. We know that there is a fanbase for it, but it ultimately comes down to if it is profitable or not.

What does the future hold for NISA? Can you speculate into this is there any nice new info coming soon?

Next year is actually looking to be a very big year for us! This year was a bit more low-key, however next year we are looking to really push out a bunch of new exciting titles. We should have more information soon on that! Thank you so much for the interview!

Freesia, the guardian of the forrest has her work cut out for her. People, monsters and mysterious rivals want to invade the forrest of Lita all for their own reasons. Freesia won´t have anything of that though, she will punch, kick and throw anyonw who dares to threaten the forrest. She is in fact the forrest guardian.

You are not entertained? Then look for these features

•2.5D combo-crazy fighting action!
•A huge repertoire of techniques, special moves and magic to obtain and use!
•Hugely satisfying freestyle combinations & attack chaining!
•Fun cast of characters and story!
•Three difficulty levels!
•Story mode, Guardian mode and Gallery!
•New game plus! After clearing the game, carryover your skills and mana to a new game!
•52 achievements! (Steam-compatible in Steam version)
•Double original soundtrack with ETHER VAPOR Remaster, available at bandcamp.com, only $9.99: http://edelweissjp.bandcamp.com/

You want some HD screenshoots? Well here they are

You need to know the price? It´s a doujin game from Nyu Media so it´s so cheap Freesia didn´t have to hunt them down to drop the price any lower, it´s a majestic grab at 7.99US! And it´s being released today on Steam!

Wait you don´t know if you want it even for the slick price? Then by all means grab the demo and then decide!

As for those who are still deciding maybe a gameplay trailer will do the trick?

Today Nyu Media has released their title Ether Vapor Remastered on Steam! And it´s for only 7.99US so it´s quite the bargain and it´s just the perfect game for any of you schmup lovers out there!

When you are not sure if you want it or not, then do read the review and make up your mind!