The Japanese GTA:SA Release

Last month saw the long-delayed Japanese release of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas finally materialize over two years after it was released in the rest of the world. I've actually been playing this game in Japan since last year on a mod-chipped PS2 and can understand why it was the world's best selling video game in 2004. Like previous installments in the Grand Theft Auto series it has fun movie-inspired missions, entertaining storylines, humour, and meticulous attention to detail, all of which make it a joy to play.

Also like its predecessors it has the eclectic radio station soundtrack, wide range of vehicles and interesting game environment that make it enjoyable to just drive around exploring, causing havoc with guns and stolen cars, and blatantly ignoring the missions you're supposed to complete in order to progress in the game. Perhaps originally a form of emergent gameplay in earlier GTA games, this alternative use of the game is actively encouraged in GTA:SA with its much bigger, more varied landscape, as well as the addition of 'insane stunt bonuses' and more 'easter eggs' (including gang graffiti and insane stunt locations) to find.

Another feature of the GTA series is violence, and GTA:SA is certainly the most violent in the series. While the two previous GTA games, GTA3 (2001) and Vice City (2002), were released at the same time in Japan as the rest of the world, Capcom got cold feet about releasing GTA:SA following the banning of GTA3 by Kanazawa prefectural government. Now that that furore has died down and a new Z rating has been introduced for excessively-violent video games in Japan, the game publisher has been able to get GTA:SA on the shelves.

Anyway, better late than never as they say!

Japanese GTA:SA Trailer


GTA:SA Stunt Video
The phenomenal success of both GTA:SA and YouTube has led to a lot of fans creating their own stunt videos, like this one.



Dead Rising Commercial
GTA:SA is the second game to get the Z rating in Japan. This is the first one, Dead Rising, also from Capcom.

Caution: contains scenes of violence with some humour!

The Best Music Videos - Part 1

The Cardigans - My Favorite Game (1998)

As the only female member of The Cardigans, Nina Persson is the star of this video with the other band members only making a brief cameo appearance at the end. Directed by Jonas Åkerlund (the world's most controversial music video director, according to CNN), the video was banned by MTV for glorifying reckless driving. A re-edited version missing the ending and shots of car crashes was also released, but the version below is the uncut version. Enjoy...

The Sick Bar

Here's an article from my Big On Japan website about a place in Fukuoka where people who've had too much to drink can go and vomit. Mmmm, pleasant.

The Dirty Boot

It always makes me chuckle when I see reports on BBC News about Beijing's preparations for the 2008 Olympics. These articles tend to focus on the skyscrapers and shopping malls shooting up all over the city and on the breakneck pace of stadium construction but rarely make any mention of what Beijing will be like for Olympic visitors staying there.

Whenever I read about the city's preparations I can't help but think back to my trip there in 2004 and how unlike a future Olympic city it seemed: The lack of information and signage at the airport and the difficulty in finding anyone who could speak English there; the insanely dangerous traffic; the unregistered cabs and rip-off scams I had to watch out for; the dirty bank notes which came in so many denominations and sizes (including tiny ones the size of two postage stamps) and were sometimes counterfeit; and worst of all, the primitive sewage system which meant you couldn't flush any paper down the toilets, with the result that all the toilets I went to were disgusting and stank to high heaven.

One experience in particular made me question what the 2008 Olympic experience will be like for overseas visitors though, that of the dirty boot. I needed to get from the youth hostel where I was staying to Beijing Station in a hurry so I flagged down a taxi. The driver pulled over and got out to help me with my suitcase. We went around to the back of the car and as he popped open the boot I noticed the boot was full of soil(!) which he made no attempt to clear as he tossed my suitcase in. When I took my suitcase out at the station, of course, it was absolutely filthy.

To me this illustrated perfectly the fact that while superficially China appears to be improving things like technology, infrastructure and the standard of living, it still has a long way to go before it becomes a first world country - something which is ever-apparent if you just scratch the surface.

For all the money that's being spent on new shopping malls and skyscrapers, and all the general improvements to the city that have no doubt been made since I went there, I'm sure a lot of overseas visitors to the 2008 Olympics will experience some kind of unexpected situation which, like the dirty boot, highlights the superficiality of China's modernity.

One of the new Beijing Taxis, presumably with a soil-free boot