Hello Kitty’s birthday to be held in MMORPG Celebrations, events, charity in Hello Kitty Online begin November 1st, 2008

Hello Kitty turns 34 on November 1, 2008. To celebrate the occasion, Sanrio Digital today announced a birthday party for Hello Kitty that will be held inside Hello Kitty Online www.hellokittyonline.com,  the eagerly anticipated MMORPG. The celebration begins on Saturday November 1st, and will include a birthday party lasting through the week-end, a week-long series of in-game quests and events, and a charity event that lets players convert effort they spend inside the game into real cash donations to charity.

Hello Kitty Online is a MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Role-Playing Game) based on the popular Sanrio characters. The game transports players into the cute and cuddly world of Sanrio Land and is fully integrated with official Sanrio portal SanrioTown.com, which utilizes blogs, email, video sharing, games and more to create a digital and social experience accessible at any time, even in-game. The game is currently in Founders’ Beta phase. The present version of Hello Kitty Online will shut down on November 8, 2008, to allow the development team to continue work on the game and prepare for Open Beta. Current players, however, will retain their characters and certain benefits in future versions of the game.

While other MMO games are busy celebrating Halloween this weekend, Hello Kitty Online is getting ready for a celebration of a far greater caliber. Tomorrow marks the 34th Birthday of Kitty White, the big-headed icon we commonly refer to as Hello Kitty, and Hello Kitty Online is preparing a birthday celebration fit for a character that’s been on more erasers than the words "I love you." Festivities kick off tomorrow with a weekend-long birthday party, with KW herself appearing in-game, which I suppose we are supposed to be thankful for. "Gee, thanks for showing up at your own party."

The celebration continues into the week, with a contest to see which guild can build New York City landmarks the fastest and a charity event called "Food for Friends", in which guilds will produce food items in-game, with the total amount created translated into cash donations made by Sanrio Digital to UNICEF and the Asian Youth Orchestra.

Only 6 (six) more days to go.

If you don’t know what I’m talking about, just press PLAY!

A new Hello Kitty Laptop? It looks less blingy than the other one and has a printed coating look with various Hello Kitty printed all over it, cute!

Japan’s relentless drive to merge terminal cuteness with ultimate technology has taken a curious turn. It seems that Sanrio, parent company of the ubiquitous Hello Kitty brand, is determined to leave no stone unturned when it comes to marketing their all-conquering brand. How else to explain the newest appearance of the mouthless wonder: on the Roomba robot vacuum. Roomba is a robotic vacuum cleaner that can clean your place automatically (by rolling and roving around your living room silently and quietly)

Roomba, a product of the cool-sounding iRobot company, is a self-contained robotic vacuum that patrols your home or apartment in search of dust and dirt. Like all roombas, the vacuum cleaner employs sensors to help it avoid stairs and, basically, is one of the only Jetson-ish home appliances to ever successfully cross the line from cartoons to reality.

However, the curious Japanese propensity to cutify, well, everything meant that sooner or later the Roomba would get a makeover. In this case it’s sooner - September 30 is when the Hello Kitty Roomba hits Japan’s department stores and online retailers. Better have your Hello Kitty credit card handy though (yes, it exists), at 84,500 yen - about $800 - the Hello Kitty Roomba is anything but cheap and as a home appliance it’s anything but a child’s toy. (via Impress Watch)

Too cute for words! Discovered and published, can’t wait!

so I got to admit that as a fan of all things cute and Hello Kitty, the whole Hello Kitty Online thing flew by me the first time round, and then I sort of looked on at the sideline as everyone was raving about it. It didn’t stop just during the closed beta, it kept going and going and going.

First off, I am a fan of this, really! But for those of you who remember we heard news about this up and coming game for so long, I was not even sure it was real! And now I missed that first big beta! I will be there the next time and will take it seriously!

The folks at Sanrio are hosting an incredible event in Hong Kong called Hello Kitty Black Wonder which is also advertised here in Sanriotown.

The general mission is to rescue Hello Kitty and Daniel in a series of clues and games that herald a little bit of Alternate Reality Gaming. It is actually like a theme park really but in a gothic, dark sort of halloween way.

The video above I got from Sanriotown, some slideshows of the event.

The Graphics and design is funky, some pictures from Apple Daily.

Here’s poor Daniel in Jail, you have to go rescue him! Looks sort of cowboy western like.

Special items are also on sale and looks like they are selling quickly!

Yes, it’s true, there is a Hello Kitty Anti Virus product! Symantec should be worried for Kitty has set its sight on that market too!

From the description it looks to be a standard Anti Virus software with apparent emphasis on being really easy to use, it’s also just plain cute! Antivirus and Firewall service all in one. It appears to be using the Custodia backend according to the description which is the actually the first time I have heard of this company so it is an interesting attempt to differentiate. It’s currently only available in chinese.

The service comes complete with all the pink that is Kitty! Some more screenshots attached.

Thank you to sidekick for the link post, that’s how I found it, as a random comment on one of my blog entries!

This is like everywhere..

The story of Hello Kitty rediscovering its japanese roots (even though she is an english girl according to her bio)  but the most interesting quote is that Sanrio themselves don’t seem to know why Kitty is so popular…wooot?

Even for Japanese fans, Hello Kitty, associated initially with elementary school-age girls, is wooing newcomers, with boxer shorts with glittery cat designs targeting young men and lingerie with cat-inspired lacing for adult women.

“We have to keep changing so people won’t get bored,” Sanrio manager Kazuo Tohmatsu said. “Ideas we would have thought out of the question 20 years ago are perfectly fine today.”

Sanrio officials acknowledge they don’t know for sure why Hello Kitty has proved so popular. But the absence of the mouth, a key feature for reading emotions, is believed to be one reason, allowing onlookers to add their own interpretations to the character.

I may have posted this before, but I saw it again and wanted to share it with you all, just hilarious.

I don’t really like Doom or any shooter game for that matter, but the irony is just fantastic, I hope they all go around and get cuteyfied (and kittyfied in the process!)