So back on April 1st (that’s April Fools Day) I posted up a joke news story about a brand new Shaman King videogame. Sadly, they are not making it. It’s not real. Every year I try to come up with something that’s believable, but it hasn’t happened yet. Strangely I do have a pretty good record.
Many, many years ago I also predicted that the Shaman King anime got licensed. Oops, sorry about that. Well, 4Kids doesn’t have the license anymore (they lost it on December 31st 2009). Last year I did a rumor about a Shaman King/Jumbor/Ultimo crossover manga. Well, that hasn’t happened yet, but there was alot of cross promotion this year.
So for this year, I actually had this idea a couple months ago. Of course I sat on the idea until mid-March… so I only just had the ad made, not any mock-screenshots. So speaking of which, here’s a “clean verison” of the fake ad I created (click to enlarge to full size).
I started with the logo at the top, since we needed some English in there to show that it’s a crossover. Next I needed to make a logo for the game, since that makes it cooler. The “Shaman King” is from the Remix Track volumes. I just wiped out the color from the logo and added my own gradient. Next adding in the “of Fighters” logo and a poor translation of “Shaman King of Fighters” in Japanese below it. I took the “flare” form the logo and added it back to the “F” in the subtitle.
Next I started to build the layout. The border was taken from Mankin Fanbook 2. Next it was grabbing the stock images from the Shaman Files. Except the current Hana, that’s from somewhere, it’s been used alot of places.
I picked the Vita… since that’s easier to write in English. The Japanese was written in English and then tossed into Google Translate. Jezzy helped clean it back up to make it a bit more “Japanese.” But anyone who knows Japanese could tell that it’s not how you would write anything. The finishing touch was adding the manga panels in the background. Great way to fill the white space.
So to make it look crummier… added some grain to the image. Then print it out, and slide it into an old copy of Jump Kai. Then take some crummy photos. Then upload the photos to a Japanese website… and bam! Make a news post and you got it done.
Every year I try to make it better and better! So watch out for next year, since who knows what I’ll do next! And if this does become a videogame… then… that would be awesome! Sorry for disappointing anyone who was looking for this game (but I really want it to happen! Maybe it will inspire someone to make a fangame? Let me know if it does!)
