Japanese Anime & Computer Games: An Irresistible Combo?

The world ‘anime’ is an English word that originated In Japan to describe computer-generated animations depicting Japanese characters, and may refer to many different genres of content that match that general description such as sci-fi, magic, mythology, action, horror, romance, comedy and psychological series or movies.

A quick note that there are also many well-known subgenres such as Cyberpunk, Harem, Martial Arts, Kids, Mecha, Music, Sports, and Vampire. Some of these, such as Mecha, are well known to be more mechanical related, most of them include robots, cyborgs and so on.  

Anime & Video Games

The Japanese were way ahead of Western developers when it came to designing computer games right from the beginning. You can imagine Japanese players giggling at the poor quality of America’s Atari 2600, as they enjoyed titles using their amazing Nintendo Famicom, MSX and Sharp X68000 system.                                                     

Computer games and anime have been intertwined for years now – perhaps future generations will ask “which came first daddy – the pokemon or the pokeball?”. Joking aside, Sega were well known for including anime ideas in there games - “Zillion” was based on the anime of the same name and the light phaser peripheral included in many master system packages was actually modelled after the gun used in the Zilllion series.

Anime Hits the Slots Market

Slot developers are always looking for new themes which will excite players. Crossovers have always proven popular, such as music-based games like Gun N’ Roses, Motorhead and Jimi Hendrix. All of these titles use music and video from the named artists to keep players entertained.

We’ve seen a flood of slots based on superheroes – The Dark Knight, The Incredible Hulk, and Deadpool, just to name a few. We could be here all-day discussing slots based on famous movies or video games. Whilst those games tend to only remain popular whilst their protagonists are “in fashion”, anime has proven itself to be a theme with staying power – just take a look at Unibet Casino for proof of this!

Now let's look at a few of the best anime based slots available at online casinos such as Unibet.

Moon Princess

My favourite of these anime games, Moon Princess is technically known as a grid slot, with wins achieved by lining up rows (vertically or horizontally) of the same symbol, which are then removed from the grid and replaced with new symbols.

One of three princesses can activate their magic power randomly on any spin, and hitting a line (or lines) featuring all of the different princess symbols will cause a triple-power effect to take place on the grid. Clear the entire grid of symbols and you will be rewarded with a bonus round where you can choose your favourite princess to help you achieve big wins.

Play & Go have used this same design for a number of slots, but there’s no doubt that Koi Princess is definitely the most attractive of the bunch. Give this one a go, it’s a master piece.

Koi Princess

This game might not look like much to start with, but take a few minutes to play and you’ll soon realize that NetEnt has created a true masterpiece here. Twenty pay lines span the traditional five reel layout, and whilst many of the symbols are just typical royal symbols, they are drawn perfectly and blend extremely well with the higher paying picture symbols of gold coins, dragons, and the highest paying Japanese artifacts.

Whole reels can turn wild randomly, or additional wild symbols may be added to the layout during the spin, and there is a typical free spins mode triggered by hitting three or more scatters where these bonus features occur much more often.

We weren’t sure about this one at first – NetEnt makes a fair mix of truly excellent (Dead or Alive 2) as well as very poor slot designs (Starburst). I guess it all depends if you like high variance doesn’t it,  but why anyone would waste their time spinning Starburst instead of Koi Princess is beyond me.

Sakura Fortune

A typically high-quality anime slot from Quickspin, Sakura Fortune uses the traditional five-reel layout with 40 pay lines. You won’t find any typical royal symbols here, as they have been replaced by colored coins for the lower paying symbols and dragons and emperors for the higher paying ones. 3D graphics and Japanese style music complete the experience.

You should have no trouble finding this game available for free play (labelled “demo” mode in this game) so take a few minutes to play the game in demo mode before making a deposit and playing the game for real money.