Death by Degrees' Nina Williams makes her debut on Noesis

With the help of the crazy talented people over at the Xentax forums, Death by Degrees, more than 10 years after its release, is finally decoded and ready for extraction. 

CR鉄拳 Tekken Pachinko - Nina Williams CG Cinematics Compilation

I finally found a way to upload a compilation video of the complete set of Nina and Anna scenes from CR鉄拳 without YouTubes compression doing horrible things to the image quality. Viewed at 1920x1080 full-screen this compilation video will display the cinematics in their original resolution as found in the iOS App (400x224 and 400x256). Naturally, Youtube's compression is still present, but not as noticable as in the previous video. Enjoy.

Tekken Pachislot trumps competitors with Nina Williams content en masse

Goddamn, and I thought CR鉄拳 had a lot of Nina content. Well, it got trumped by 鉄拳3rd in that regard, the Yamasa developed pachi-slot machine that has been released to Japanese pachi-slot/pachinko parlors in early July, and just recently got ported to iOS mobile devices.

CR鉄拳 Tekken Pachinko - Nina Williams Edition /Part 1

Here's part 1 of my edit of video footage featuring the Williams sisters from the CR鉄拳 pachinko iOS app.

CR Tekken Pachinko Nina Williams goodness for the iPhone

Imagine the look on my face when I found the CR Tekken pachinko (CR鉄拳) released as an ipad/iphone game on the Japanese appstore. Finally, no need to sit through hour long youtube videos of people playing the pachinko anymore, just to get a shaky-cam glimpse at some never-to-be-seen-live-in-the-west Nina goodness.

New CR Tekken footage of Nina Williams

As was pointed out to me by fellow Nina fan and reader of this blog, Fredrik, new footage of CR Tekken (you know, that soon-to-be-released Japanese pachinko) has been released online. Mixing some familiar Tekken FMV scenes with a lot of new exclusive prerendered CGI it features video introductions for a selection of 9 characters, and luckily for us Nina afficionados Nina's scenes are beautiful, action packed and all new. [In an effort to tame the picture clutter I will be using jump breaks from now on. For more info and additional pictures - I usually have lots of them - please click the "read more" link below]

Nina Williams memorabilia/merchandise/useless collectors' stuff

Got a little surprise in the mail today...

Tekken Revolution and Nina Williams' face both get an update

September will see the release of a major update for Namco's PlayStation3 exclusive free2play title Tekken Revolution, which will finally add Nina to the game's character roster. In the short trailer Namco released to highlight the update we get a good look at Nina's new face which received a substantial makeup makeover due to Namco's desire to prettify the female cast...

Nina Williams in Shunya Yamashita Art Book Beautiful Noise

Videogame character and Bishoujo figure design illustrations take center stage in Shunya Yamashita's latest art book Beautiful Noise. Amongst art for games such as Disgaea, Mass Effect and Lollipop Chainsaw, and illustrations for franchises such as Neon Genesis Evangelion, Star Wars, X-Men, Ghost Busters and Men in Black, a great deal of the artist's attention went to his illustrations for Tekken Tag Tournament 2. Unsurprisingly, Nina Williams is the obvious star of the 37-page Tekken section...

Death by Degrees character design artwork

Death by Degrees' beautiful character design artwork. The concept art, which is one of the game's many bonus unlockables, includes designs for protagonist Nina Williams, her main antagonists, and basically every other character in the game. Check out the actual image files extracted from the PlayStation 2 DVD after the jump...

magazine scan - PSM - Nina Williams headlines PlayStation 2 2005 Preview

I've been going through a whole bunch of old video game magazines lately. At one point a few years ago I was buying stacks and stacks of gaming mags on eBay, looking for things to add to my collection - be it reviews, previews, cover stories or just some random article mentioning Nina or featuring her picture. So, I've been trying to sort out the collection, listing all the magazines I own and - above all - the magazines I still need to track down and buy. With this list in my hands it looks like I still have quite a few hours days months of eBay grinding ahead of me. At the same time, I've dug up some - more or less - interesting/funny/informative/completely random stuff from the gaming magazines of yesteryear that I will scan peu à peu and post here. Don't expect anything groundbreaking, I'll basically post anything that is more than just 2 words and a picture, thus 3 words and a picture will do just fine, so expect triviality...

Tekken 3 x Star Wars - Nina Williams "red card" figure

This must be one of the coolest and most unique promotional figures Namco has ever created for any of their games. Check out why, after the jump...

All Wii U exclusive Tekken Tag Tournament 2 features

Here's a blonde.bomb first: I haven't yet touched this version of the game myself (due to lack of Wii U), still, I'm happy to present to you a breakdown of Tekken Tag Tournament 2's new Wii U exclusive features, starring Nina Williams...

Shirogumi CG wizardry for Death by Degrees - Nina Williams

In an effort to highlight the beauty of Shirogumi's masterful CG wizardry I put some of my direct-feed screen captures of Death by Degrees' stunning FMV cinematics through a very extensive (and in 2 cases several-hours-long) 'Photoshop remastering process'. Now that sounds pretentious doesn't it :-D Check out the results and a little history lesson on Shirogumi Inc. after the jump...

Nina demonstrates Tekken Tag 2's best item move and I lol

After the jump, watch Nina demonstrate Tekken Tag Tournament 2's ultimate item move...

Anna Williams has her own shiny new blog

Just as we've come to expect from her, Anna is quick to follow her older sister's lead; she has a blog of her own now, too. ;-) It's run by an online-friend of mine and is written in Polish, so you should at least speak some /or know how to use Google Translate. If you're a fan of the Lightning Scarlet head on over to http://lightningscarlet.blogspot.com/ to get your fix of Anna Williams...

Spoiler Alert: A look at Nina's CG ending cinematic in Tekken Tag Tournament 2

If you aren't one of the few lucky people who got Tekken Tag Tournament 2 early before its official release next week or one of the many lousy guys who snatched the torrent of the Xbox360 version, this might still be news to you. Nina finally got the Hollywood action movie type ending cinematic she deserves. Not that I don't like the more quiet (Tekken 2) or personal (Tekken 3) endings, or those with a humorous touch (Tekken 1, 5, 6), but I've always wondered why the Tekken games so rarely depict her in action heavy scenes. You know, the obvious standard assassin stuff: sniper guns, melee combat, acrobatics, stealth, an actual assassination for once... Well, we get all of that in her Tag 2 ending movie. I say it's been long overdue. It's an action packed look at the job that pays her bills and with a running time of 1:47 it's one of the longer endings in the game.

What's also interesting is that Namco seems to have used a high-poly version of her in-game model for the scene and not the Blood Vengeance model used in the game's intro movie. So I guess the character ending FMV's were created and rendered in-house at Namco, unlike the intro which has been created by Digital Frontier, the studio behind Tekken Blood Vengeance. Probably to cut costs. The in-game model works very well with the setting, though.

Get spoiled after the jump...

Oilshock Designs Tekken Tag Tournament 2's 2P Outfits

It hasn't been officially announced yet, but the Gamescom2012 console built of Tekken Tag Tournament 2 has quietly revealed character costumes designed in collaboration with Japanese design studio Oilshock Designs. All of the designs are casual/street wear outfits sporting prints by Oilshock Designs. Nina is one of the characters to be wearing one of these in Tag 2. Her exclusive outfit is composed of jeans or leather pants (can't really make that out), knee-high boots and a turtleneck sweater with rhinestone embellishments or a print (can't make this one out either) that reads 'GIVE A KISS TO'. Since her default battle suit outfit (the infamous space suit) is really quite out there, I'm always happy to see her in something more casual. Good choice on the basics and colours, Namco/Oilshock.
So why title this post 'fail'? When I wrote this up yesterday I somehow completely ignored that Nina's extra outfit is in fact one of the few that DOESN'T say Oilshock Designs beneath them on the character select screen. :-/ Oh well, due to lack of news I still decided to post my big time fail write-up, even if now all the references don't make much sense.
Oh.. and if you think Anna-with-bandana looks ridiculous in that last screenshot up above, wait until you see Ito Ogure's Octo-Anna (nsfw). Shudder.

Screenshots were taken from Gamescom Videos on Youtube, hence their low resolution. All print and artwork designs by Oilshock Designs.

Oilshock Designs specializes in graphic design works for apparel and has been running independently since 2006. They have also handled designs for BALS Tokyo interior goods, Sony Computer Entertainment's PS3, Ayumi Hamasaki's 2009 live tour and for X-Japan's DVD package. Oilshock Designs has released 6 design collection books which have become best sellers in the industry, selling more than 100,000 copies in 2 years. www.oilshock.jp
 

Major CG Intro Movie Screen Time for Nina Williams in Tekken Tag Tournament 2

Intro update! Tekken Tag Tournament 2's console opening cinematic has been revealed just in time for Gamescom 2012. Though I doubt it's the full opening movie, it provides some clarification regarding the scenes we've already seen short segments of. The actual video might not be news to you as it has been up a day or 2 already, but as usual I had to wait for Namco's PR/press department to release an HD version for the games press folk, so I could take somewhat clear pictures insted of pixelated hot mess youtube screenshots. (The slight grain effect is a filter Namco used, btw.)

Nina looks fabulous here, she even dropped a few sizes just for the intro movie,... or is it the in-game camera adding 10 pounds? For some reason Namco decided to have slim model-sized Blood Vengeance Nina star in the FMV movies while fit and muscular Haywire Nina takes over the screen for the in-game action. I like them both, so nothing wrong with that. I'm just really happy Nina's getting some major intro movie screentime this time around. I know, she's one of the few characters to have appeared in every Tekken opening FMV, except Tekken 4's, but her screen time in the Tekken 6 one was just way too short for my taste, even though the ending movies kind of made up for the lack of Nina in the opening (she appeared in 3 of them).

If you haven't already seen the video and want to know what happens right after the last screen shot up above, see for yourself: