It's the end of the month, and time for another update from Hiroyuki Maeda's Lovely Lady Lab! This time we have two lovely ladies, both from RPG franchises.

First up is Miu, Princess of Faria, expert archer, and a major new character in White Knight Chronicles 2. Her competition in long-range combat is Cora, from Metal Max 3. Sporting an ensemble of white dress and black metal artillery, she's not someone to mess around with either.

Starting last Friday everyone's favorite themed pub in Tokyo, Luida's Bar, introduced some new Dragon Quest themed desserts for fannish consumption. These are all available for a limited time only.

Since everyone's out playing Dragon Quest IX these days, you all probably know who Sandy is. The first new item in the menu is all about her -- Sandy's Chocolate Sundae, with a flower, a chocolate butterfly, and a swirl of whipped cream meant to represent her hair. It's yours for 650 G (all prices are quoted in DQ gold pieces, exchange rate to Japanese yen is conveniently 1:1).

For those on the go, Luida's Bar is offering a cute package of Momon sablé cookies. Six to a box for 750 G.

And the last new item on the menu is another special box of cookies, this time in the shape of Loto's Emblem, the very symbol of DQ heroism. These goodies are a little fancier than the Momon cookies, and priced a little higher at 1100 G for a box of 8.

For more fun, customers who visit anytime before the end of August can receive Slime or KingSlime themed pool toys. If they have the appropriate scanning apps on their DSi or cell-phones, there's a free set of Wii avatar download material available as well.

It's been a while since we looked at anything from Lord of Vermilion II. Square Enix has been busy producing cameo materials for many of their properties. Recently, they reprinted a set of four cards taken from Valkyrie Profile: Lenneth, Freya, Brahms, and everyone's favorite morally ambiguous sorceror genius, Lezard Valeth.

That's not all they've included, though. New to the game are these four cards, from one of S-E's more successful only-in-Japan games in the Super Famicom period.

Introducing Arakes, Byuunei, Forneus, and Aunas, the four Noble Devils of Romancing SaGa III in their stronger, endgame forms. Again, I have to wonder why S-E is going through the trouble to do full 3D rendering for characters from a series that is technically on the company's B-list. I'm still hoping for more SaGa remakes.

And finally, as a gift to all Famitsu readers out there, Lord of Vermilion 2 presented in last week's issue a special card: the (very) common "Weekly Famitsu" card with its special skill, Cross Review.

I don't know enough about the game to understand the stats and other info on the back of the card, so I can't say how good it is in the game. For all I know it may be more useful than their reviews. Maybe.

When I first saw the title of our next featured game, I almost jumped for joy. Then I calmed down and remembered that Final Fantasy Legend was the US re-title of the original SaGa games. Final Fantasy Legends (with an S) is a new spin-off title from the folks who brought us Final Fantasy IV - The After. Like that game, Legends is (for now) a cell-phone title. Let's take a look:

Well, it looks like a Final Fantasy game. A lot like an FF game. After hitting the nostalgia nerve with a sequel to a game that never really needed one, the devs have apparently decided to create what amounts to a "lost" Super Famicom installment to the series. It's all in there -- an ancient Empire enforcing the peace, something strange going on with the four sacred Crystals, and a job-class system wherein a new job or two is introduced with every installment. The first four screens are pretty plain, with idle chit-chat about people flying dragons in the past, a scene with a Crystal ("No problems here!"), and a battle that could have come straight from Final Fantasy IV. The last screen (taken from a different source) shows an actual boss. The name is partially obscured, but I'm pretty sure from the first two kanji that it's called the Guardian. Even more interesting, the accompanying text in Famitsu suggests that revisiting cleared scenarios later in the game reveals new details or even major alterations to events.

Now, let's meet the characters.

The junior members of the cast are Saul (main character), Grave (friendly rival), and Diana (probable love interest). Friends since childhood, they hail from the small kingdom of Lux. Saul's dream is to be accepted into the flying corps of the Avalon Imperial military. We'll just have to see how far he actually gets in fulfilling this dream.

Now we have the senior members. Aigis is Diana's big brother, a strong warrior, champion of Lux, and Saul's mentor. And last, there's Elgo the prophet. Out of everyone else in the realm, only he seems to sense that something is wrong with the great Crystals.

And that's the party. Whether or not the game is worth the effort remains to be seen. Unfortunately, it's following the same release pattern as The After, so it probably won't be coming to my cell-phone provider till 2012. Shikata nai tsutai.

I think I need to pioneer my own branch of anthropology. I'd call it "paleogameology". And in this newly christened field of study, there would be special importance placed upon the video store's bargain bin. Seriously, it seems like everyone is unloading their old PSX games right now, and the sheer variety of material to be found is crazy. The introduction of the CD-based console and workable (if crude) 3D programming makes for a veritable evolutionary bonanza of Burgess Shale proportions, and I'm finding cheap, new, strange titles every time I take a look. Here's two more:

For two bucks, Crime Crackers is a pretty good buy. It's also one of the earliest attempts (if not the earliest) at creating a first-person-shooter RPG. The player goes through the scenarios with a team of three characters. The lead character does the fighting, but can be switched out at any time. The team is balanced between a small-arms specialist, a heavy artillery specialist, and a light-saber specialist, uses weapons charges instead of MP, and has a team-based EXP system. It's also much closer to the original Wolfenstein or Blake Stone games in terms of FPS gameplay, but since I haven't really played any game in that genre since the late '90s, that's about my level of ability anyway. If I end up liking it, I might even get the sequel (also for about two bucks).

At about the same price, Houshin'engi (Annals of the Sealed Deity) provides entertainment in a completely different RPG field. It's mostly a tactical RPG, with some sim-building elements, and gives the player the ability to literally blast parts of the playing field out of existence. I haven't had much time with this one, but it seems interesting enough for me to get into at a later date.

It's summer time, and that means it's time to hit the beach! Hobby Japan and Queen's Blade Partners have teamed up to provide some must-have items for any serious beach-bum otaku. And by that, we mean beach blankets with Queen's Blade characters on them. These aren't the kinds of gals who'd go around in itsy-bitsy, teeny-weeny yellow polka-dot bikinis, of course. In fact, I'm not even sure if these blankets are safe to view at work. Better take some precautions....