Kurosawa & Ouendan (Homebrewed Part 3)

Akira Kurosawa's films are considered classics, I watched my first (Rashômon) in a history of film course in college. One of my favorite anime series is based off his film The Seven Samurai and is appropriately named Samurai 7. So when I found out that a lot of his films that had passed into the public domain were collected and converted to be viewed on the DS, I jumped at the chance to watch them. I have Ikiru downloaded and loaded on my flash card, but I have yet to watch it. It comes highly recommended from my friends Grant and Erin so hopefully it does not disappoint.

The group that put out Kurosawa's works has also released a bunch of other films and media for the DS. Download at your own risk though as I can not guarantee they are in the public domain like I linked on the Kurosawa films. You may want to consider converting your own DVDs down to a portable size (.dpg) instead with this guide.

Update: The webmaster of moonbooks.net left a comment on this post letting me know that all of their content is in the public domain. That is great news!

Over the weekend I picked up Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan 2. It is the sequel to the Japaneses origin of Elite Beat Agents. While the menus can be a bit a confusing, unless you read Japanese, they are simple enough to experiment with and figure out in under 2-3 minutes. The actual game play is the real meat and potatoes though. It is a touch screen rhythm game that is synced with a variety of Japanese pop music (J-pop). The story behind the Ouendan is an agency of male cheerleaders who dress in uniform (see above) and assist people in tough situations by cheering for them to different songs. If you fail at the rhythm game then the people you are helping fail as well. Only in Japan!

Site Watch
The Escapist had a great series on gadgets last week. One of the articles that struck me as interesting was on nomadic (homeless) life with just a DS. It makes reference to bunch of great homebrew apps with in an unfamiliar context.