EDITOR'S NOTE:
Shoutout to Reader Jake who alerted us to the existence of this thing we call Osaka Simulator FINAL.
Good afternoon. Please, meet Kasuga Ayumu. Or, as she's better known, Osaka.
Wh-what the heck? Who told you that? Don't listen to 'em, Osaka, you're the strongest!!
Ahem. So, as long-time readers will know we're not good at keeping up with The Animes (or The Mangas), but we have very specific taste. Cyber City Oedo 808? Hell yeah. Fist of the North Star? Sign me up. And I'm like halfway through the original Sukeban Deka manga. We also, however, have a soft spot for silly stuff, as evidenced by our shrine to all the game references in The Squid Girl and bestowing the title of Saviour of Anime to Hi☆sCoool! SeHa Girls. So, one we wanted to watch for yonks but never got around to was Azumanga Daioh, an adaptation of a 4-koma series which is basically 'high school girl hijinx' but we're OK with that silly kind of thing. We finally, as in in 2015, watched the whole show after finding the Class Album boxset (which IIRC was never released in the UK, this is a US import) in a games shop (?) in Llandudno (???). We liked it. The show-stealer is, of course, Osaka, the transfer student from Osaka (hence the name) who is, well, Osaka. Hopefully these clips demonstrate that her power level is off the chart for normal humans, so we like her.
Anyway, what interests us today is Osaka Simulator FINAL, a desktop application (if that's the appropriate term) that stars Osaka. Produced by hirahira.net and released in 2003, it's almost like The Sims if The Sims had absolutely no gameplay mechanics. That's why we're calling it an application instead. Osaka resides in a room that's pretty empty when you first start, and has only basic clothes, but she starts with a certain amount of money and earns pocket money after every day (yes, there is a full day/night cycle, but Osaka doesn't sleep for long). During the day she... Well, she does Osaka-like things, like swinging back and forth on her chair, stretching and generally being lazy. As a passive observer, you can't interact in any way aside from zoom in and move the camera around. At certain points, however, she'll watch TV and get the chance to buy a new thing for her room or for her to play with, such as an exercise machine, a witch hat or even a butcher knife (so you can sorta-recreate the moment from the show where she wanders around half-asleep with the knife). Buy the thing and it gets added to the room.
And, er, that's it really. Everything you get gives Osaka different actions she'll randomly perform (she really loved the teleportation item while I was playing, though) so there's plenty to see Osaka do. If that's your thing. It takes quite a while to get everything, considerng there's also some food items that are offered repeatedly for sale as they're finite, but the menu (available from a right-click) lets you know what percentage of items you've got. Once you've bought everything, Osaka's TV explodes and you get the credits, after which she'll fix the TV and carry on... Being Osaka. Downloading the update from the official page adds a function after you unlock everything, where pressing Z and X will cycle through all the clothes and accessories for Osaka (in a seemingly random order). That's your lot, and that sounds really boring but... I had this thing running for about 3 days, just idly in the background, and every time I went back to it Osaka was doing something different, be it falling flat on her face after rocking on the chair, riding around on a Segway wearing a straw hat, or sleepwalking. It was kinda hard to turn away and switch it off.
So, if you feel you don't waste enough time when you're procrastinating on your computer, find Osaka Simulator FINAL for... Some kind of a time. Sadly, it's no longer available for sale at hirahira.net, so you're on your own for finding it. Good luck.
There really wasn't much to this one, was there?
Well... This was our apology for missing June 2015's updates.
That probably says something about the attitude we hold towards our update schedule.
... Why do I feel like this should be one of our April Fools' Day pages?
