Love Anime Games?
Anime is the Japanese style of animated features or feature-length films. Western audiences are probably most familiar with anime through cartoons such as “Pokemon”, “Digimon” or “Naruto”, or the work of Hayao Miyazaki in cinema (films such as “Spirited Away” or “Howl’s Moving Castle”, although these are not considered to be in the typical anime style).
Anime has inspired hundreds of computer games, as the look and form of anime cartoons lends itself superbly to games designed for PCs and Gaming Consoles. Such games allow anime fans to enter familiar, fantasy-based realms where they can take the form of their favorite anime characters.
The kind of games you can play on your PC are usually for free or for a small subscription, generally take the form of simple Flash-games (“Flash” in this case being Adobe’s software that is used for creating animations and games), or MMOs or MMORPGs. “MMO” stands for “Massively Multiplayer Online”, whilst the “RPG” extention means “Role Playing Games”. These types of game see a player adopting an online, character-based personality and competing with hundreds – and sometimes thousands – of other players in real-time on the internet.
If you fancy taking a quick glance at the type of anime games that are available online, or taking the plunge and immersing yourself in a detailed, online fantasy world, then here are the top ten sites where you can find enough anime-based fun to keep you occupied for hours.
Kongregate is a community-based site where game creators can upload their efforts and allow other people to play them. Players can then rate games once they have had a go. Most of the games on the site are Flash-based, although a few use Unity, a software platform designed to create 3D games. Kongregate is free, although there is a paid option at $30 a year which gives you superior options over those who want access without paying out. The site hosts over fifty games that answer to the “anime” tag, including a popular one that allowed you to create your own anime character.
Gameslist hosts or has links to 11,000+ free online games, which should be another to entertain anyone stuck indoors on a rain-soaked day, or who just wants some quick online fun. We found twenty anime games, although most of them seemed to involve dressing up anime characters in different fashions. We did find an anime fighting game though, which allowed you to battle some famous anime heroes, such as Naruto and Princess Mononoke.
Games Dreams is probably the number one place in which you can both play online games and discuss them. The Games Dreams forum has dedicated sections for all types of games, from Flash to Facebook, and on all types of platforms, including PCs, PS3s and XBoxes. The community has a membership close to 50,000. You can search through the site’s links for anime games, and if you find one that doesn’t appear on the site, you can add it for the benefit of the rest of the community.
Fupa stands for “Fat Upper Pelvic Area”, although what that has to do with online gaming is anyone’s guess. When we visited the site, we were told that there were currently 734,323 players online, playing 60,000 online games. Amongst the anime games we found was one called “Galactic 123 SE”, which follows the tale of two old friends as they fight to survive in a scifi-based fantasy world.
We got excited by this site, as “Kiba” is a fantasy anime series that has been running since 2006. However, we were soon disappointed as this appeared to be a coincidence. Kiba games concentrates on games for younger internet browsers, but there are games for more mature audiences. We found 14 anime games, but most of them gave players the opportunity to create and dress up their own anime characters. We did find a fighting game using characters from the popular anime series Dragon Ball, though.
Two Player Games has the theme one would expect from its title, but there is a dedicated section for one player games as well. Amongst the site’s MMORPG games we found a link for Eden Eternal, a superbly detailed and feature-rich anime game that has been running since 2011. We found a few anime-based flash games on the site as well, all based on the theme of fighting.
A nicely-designed site, although a little ad-heavy for our tastes. The site has sections for games designed for kids, as well as for adults, and has a top ten list so you can easily see which games are the most popular. We found nine anime games, including one that enterprisingly married anime with basketball. All games can be rated once you’ve played them.
Mochi Games offers free membership to its hosted games, most of which have been independently developed by hobby programmers. Their MMO section contained a link to the afore-mentioned Eden Eternal, and another game called DDTank which had a distinct anime flavour. Typing “anime” into the site’s search engine promised 2,000+ anime games, but sadly this huge number turned out to be due to the deficiencies of their search engine algorithm.
A site dedicated solely to flash games, we found this site a little difficult to navigate and it could never seem to deliver what it appeared to promise. The most popular anime game of the site was “Anime Smash”, which revealed itself to be your typical fighting game.
Anime is not solely a masculine pursuit, and neither is online gaming. Games for Girls Club is a collection of online games that are designed to appeal to female gamers, and in particular preteen and teenage ones. There are games that cover topics such as kissing and babysitting. Most of the anime games involved dressing up, but we were surprised to find a link to Grand Fantasia, a free anime-style MMORPG game.
