So, congratulations if you can read this, it means our servers are momentarily working. I'd like to personally apologize to the internet at large for our current inability to get our nonsense sorted. Our blog, various portions of the website and the forums are going up and down like trained seals at Sea World (I could have opted for something dirtier here, but we follow the spirit of the ESRB guidelines, if not the letter). You may have noticed the time (and money) that Capcom has put into growing our online community presence over the last year. The good news is that in the last 16 months, our traffic and registered users has jumped by a huge factor, something along the lines of 4x where we were when Seth and I started here in Nov. 2006. The bad news is that this huge growth in traffic means that our poor, cranky servers are as overwhelmed as Jessica Simpson at a spelling bee. Bright side is that new servers have been ordered, so we should be rocking some serious hardware next week. Until then, please bear with us.

Lately, we've been hearing a lot about this whole "Facebook" thing. Evidently, it's sorta like the Friendster of MySpace, or something. Plus Napster, with a dash of Ask Jeeves. Irregardless (<-- always surprised that is a real word), we've finally given you something to do on Facebook other than stalk ex-girlfriends and/or beg them for a job/snu-snu/both. Presenting the first case file of Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney in convenient Flash-y, Facebook app-y flavor. Sharp-eyed internetz afficiandos will recognize this as the next evolution of the Flash demo we presented here a few weeks ago. Commence to spamming friends, acquaintances, college chums, guild mates, band members, meter maids, made-up profiles, celebrity impersonators, Furries and what/whoever else you link to. Get the word out, legal fans!

If you bumped into Reuben Langdon in a gothic cathedral, you'd be excused for checking to see if he was holding weaponry or about to transform into a demon. Reuben has provided mo-cap and VO for everyone's favorite demon-slayer-who-isn't-Buffy for the last few years. Today, Reuters news service has an article entitled "Videgames Gives Actors Second Chance" -- which is vaguely insulting to both games and actors, if you think about it -- but contains some quick words from the man who makes Dante sound so crazy/sexy/smirky. It's a quick bit, buried beneath some

"Before the game came out, nobody knew who I was," Langdon said. "I get way more attention than I ever got as a (screen) actor."

Read the whole durn thing here.

Amerika-Mura in Osaka is one of those truly uniquely Japanese locales that most gamers/anime fans/n3rrrdz assume makes up 90% of the island nation of Japan (the other 10% split equally between ninjas, robots that turn into other things and giant rubbery monsters). Gwen Stefani might have taught a nation of teenaged white girls about Harajuku, but those chicks are posers compared to the hardcore rock fashionistas that cruise this Osaka hotspot. Read on for more, with some great photos I took on my trip. As you can undoubtedly tell from the name, Amerika-Mura is literally "America Town," a series of interconnected streets that hold up a crazy rock-'n-f'n-roll funhouse mirror to what the kids in Osaka must assume is American culture. Huge global brands like Apple, Nike, Adidas, American Apparel and suchlike sit right next to Japanese outlets like UniQLO, B.S.T. ("Beast") and approximately 300 shops that would make Hot Topic blush with shame and hide its stupid Fallout Boy t-shirt. Gutterpunk kids with neck tatoos and green spiked mohawks stride past Japanese b-boys on skateboards; the few muscle cars, choppers and convertibles you'll find in Osaka are all cruising around Triangle Park; the boys all look like girls (imagine Cloud Strife with acne and one-off sneaks) and the girls mostly look like, well, strippers. Music cranks out of every shop in the area, filling the air with US hip-hop, Japanese reggae (for reals, AZN kidz with dreads and Lion of Judah tats are funny as hell), various forms of electronic dance music and straight up, god-bless-Amerika rock. Needless to say, I find Amerika-Mura to be heaven on earth, a tiny neighborhood of ever-changing sites and sounds that are equal parts awesome and hilarious. The majority of kids coming into this area in Osaka are not just dressed to impress, but dressed to blow away. While kids in Harajuku tend towards wackier displays of goth frippery, the Osaka-ites are all about looking like they just stepped out of a J-Pop music video. I didn't know that hair could be gelled out into such gravity- (and taste-) defying heights. I was completely awed by these kids' dedication to fashion; In late January, Osaka is occasionally hit with snow flurries, so I was wearing a combo of thermal shirt, hoodie and snowboarding jacket with gloves, scarf and wool cap. The girls in this area of town (and nearby Shinsaibashi mall) were rocking a jean shorts/jacket combo that made it look like they had on nothing more than their jacket, fishnet stockings and pointy, pointy boots ("whore boots," as Shigemi from Capcom Europe deemed them, much to our delight). Keep in mind most of these girls weighed in at 90 pounds because they were wearing about 20 pounds of jewelry and hair product. The dudes were a bit more appropriately dressed, with the current winter fashion tending towards big, shiny, puffy shell jackets with fake fur lining. And slapped-on patches with the requisite jumble of English words that probably only make sense when run through the Bablefish Japanese to English translator. And maybe not even then. Of course, pair that with artfully ripped jeans sporting holes big enough for owls to roost in, and your overall heat retention has been negated. Just looking at the crowd made me cold, but as far as I could see, there were no T-Energy posts nearby. Stomping through the streets and alleys (literally) of Amerika-Mura, I marveled at the incredible display of stylized fashion on display. Then it hit me: it's not that all the kids on the streets in Amerika-Mura look they just stepped out of a music video, it's more like they just stepped out of a video game. While North American gamers tend to chuckle at some of the DMC fashion choices (really, all those buckles and bangles while sword fighting?) or have simply come expect wacky looks from a Japanese game, I never realized that clothes of similar style could be found on every street corner and in every boutique. Where is Japanese youth culture fashion coming from? Are the games influencing the look of the trends or are the outre clothes being fed into a PlayStation mixmaster? Do the kids in Osaka all look like Final Fantasy characters, or has Square simply been snapping photos of teens on its lawn and then chasing them off with a hose? I can't answer those questions, but what I can tell you is that if you're a six-foot-tall foreign devil closing in on 200 lbs., don't even bother trying to buy a pair of jeans in this particular corner of the world, unless you want to be made to feel like the last living member of the Fat Boys. While scoping an amazing pair of jeans with dragons embroidered on the leg, the helpful shopkid told me, "Ok, ok, two-XL! I get for you!" Screw you, slim, I'm going back to Mos Burger for seconds.

1up is breaking the devil out of hell this week with tons of inside information on all things weepy demon-related. Check back with their rockin' minisite daily for fantastic video, interviews with key members of the dev team and much, much more!