Empire Interactive's Hello Kitty: Big City Dreams follows Hello Kitty as she moves out of Sanrio Town to seek a new life in The Big City. What will she find when she gets there? Minigames!

As Kitty pursues her goal of moving into a penthouse apartment, she can do chores for her neighbors and meet new people. If it sounds a lot like Animal Crossing, that's probably no coincidence. As it turns out, it looks a lot like Animal Crossing too. But we'd love to play a Sanrio-themed Animal Crossing. As far as we're concerned, the closer the ripoff, the better.


[Via GamesPress]

We were already a bit weirded out by the announcement of Hello Kitty being named Japan's "Tourism Ambassador" to China and Hong Kong, despite not existing. But now, seemingly in celebration of the mouthless cartoon cat's new increased visibility in China (or just as a result of weirdly fortuitous timing), she'll "honor" one of China's most beloved national symbols in a series of athletic competitions.

Either that or Sanrio and publisher Dorasu just thought that putting Hello Kitty in a panda suit for a whole game would be cute. Which it is. Hello Kitty Panda Sports Stadium features 12 sporting minigames starring cats clad in panda suits, but only judo and baseball have been revealed in screens. But, really, any sport would be made better with the addition of Hello Kitty's blank stare peeking out of the cushy maw of a plush panda head.

This Hello Kitty decal set for the DS Lite has a lot going on. There's the obvious Kitty, outlined in a rhinestone-like pattern, and the "Hello Kitty" name, just as we'd expect from a Hello Kitty-branded product.

But everywhere there's not Kitty, there are flowers and butterflies. Every area of vinyl that can have a flower on it has a flower on it. We haven't tested this theory, but we're pretty sure it would confuse and irritate our real cats. This is quite a divergence from the last batch of Hello Kitty skins we saw, which were quite nicely designed!

[Via Aeropause]

Move over Mama, there's a new set of cooks in town. Make that a nest ... of bunnies. Sanrio's Sugarbunnies, to be exact, and they are ready to bring you on board for a delicious candy-making revolution. Bunny twins Shirousa and Kurousa have been charged with making candy for everyone, and as far as we can tell, they have to select the right recipes and ingredients to satisfy a variety of sugary cravings through Cooking Mama-style minigames. But the Sugarbunnies go beyond the limits of Cooking Mama, it seems, as they need to harvest the proper ingredients for the recipes. Sounds a little like Animal Crossing on the farm and in the kitchen to us, and that's really all we need to know to be interested.

The Sugarbunnies will be bounding onto the DS in Japan this fall.

Ever been asked a question regarding biographical information about a Sanrio character, but you can't answer because you're too far away from your extensive Hello Kitty database? You're in luck, if you get into that very unlikely situation in the future, and you can read Japanese!

Hello Kitty's Fashonable Party contains biographies of 300 Sanrio characters, with info about their birthdays, favorite food, and ... probably other stuff too. The game will quiz you about this stuff, presumably so you can memorize it. Fashionable Party also contains a dress-up mode and, predictably, a spate of minigames as well. In this case, though, the minigames are probably welcome since they bring the only actual gaming to the Party.

Hint: there aren't many. San-X no Chara Sagashi Land (San-X Character Searching Land) offers the exact same kind of gameplay as Quickspot, with San-X trappings. San-X, for those of you who don't follow the Adorable Junk scene, is a sub-label of Hello Kitty creators Sanrio whose characters are ... different enough in some inscrutable way to be separate from the main brand.

So, instead of getting to look at two nearly-identical Katamari Damacy images (sigh) and drawing circles around the differences, you'll be scrutinizing Tarepanda the sleepy panda, Kogepan, the anthropomorphic bread who has depression, and others. And for your troubles you get a gallery of mascot images. Of the same characters you were just staring at.

We don't mean to sound down on the game-- we're actually really surprised at what new genres the DS design is encouraging. There may have been 'look at two things at once and spot the differences' games before, but the DS is absolutely perfect for them.

We've included a few precious screens after the break.