Originally I wanted to write this blog as a lead up to a game I've been looking forward to coming out in July.Anarchy Reignsfrom your friends and mine atPlatinum Gameshas really caught my attention for a number of reasons. I would be lying if the original appeal had nothing to do withMadWorldthat came out on the Wii. I'vewritten a bit about that game before, but long story short, I liked it. The game wasn't perfect or anything, but it had a lot of entertaining quirks, a great voice cast, and an even better soundtrack. Not to mention the insane joy ofBayonettafrom the same developer promised they would keep up the great work with Anarchy Reigns.

But as of 5-25-12, it's officially TBA for North America and Europe. It's still scheduled to release in Japan early July... but that doesn't help me any. So now I'm just going to use this post to talk about it and somehow take the edge off the indeterminate wait.

Anarchy Reigns (I'm Cautiously Optimistic)

Much like Matt Rorie's attitude toward movies, I never play a video game wanting to hate it. It would be better if everything was awesome so fun was easy to come by. But I really have no idea how well Anarchy Reigns is going to turn out. It certainly sounds good on paper. Most things do. From the multitude of YouTube videos I've watched, it seems like a cross between a fighting game and a beat em' up, with a little arena combat to make full use of pick ups and environmental hazards. One possible move involves hanging from the bottom of an attack helicopter and redirecting its missiles and nose gun to shoot enemies stuck on the ground. If a match takes long enough, they have critical threats appear in the form of submarine missile strikes, rampaging big rigs, monsters, and more to up the ante. Comparisons to Power Stone and jokes about a Platinum Games Smash Bros. game have already been made.

How it Plays (I Guess)

The most telling thing (to me, at least) about how this game plays is a few scattered videos of a training room where you can practice character specific combos like a fighting game. Bayonetta had something like this in the form of a loading screen where you had the option to press select and hang out to play with different weapon combinations. So far, the combos just seem to be button combinations. No quarter circles or stick movement. On top of that are the character specific "killer weapons" that do serious damage for a short amount of time and recharges through damage inflicted and received. Naturally these work into combos. It doesn't seem like a basic button masher a beat em' up format would suggest. This I can wrap my head around.

What I'm not sure is how it's going to work when you're running around a 3D plane and have to target specific enemies or opposing players. I hope it's a happy middle between MadWorld (the game's primary inspiration) and the tight controls of Bayonetta. I'm not big into multiplayer, but I can't fathom how they're going to pull off an eight player free-for-all and make it feel good. They do have other game modes in the form of the usual suspects, including a football (soccer) looking game, class based team battle, and capture the flag. Personally, I'm more interested in the survival mode, which is basically horde mode with three players. Co-op is more my cup of tea. But my concerns still stand in that mode too. This is why I try to remain cautiously optimistic.

An Interesting Crew of Killers

On a more positive note, the biggest thing going for Anarchy Reigns for me is the delightfully crazy cast that make up the sixteen (plus Bayonetta as DLC) playable psychopaths. The character reveals didn't really pick up until they introduced a man with a revolver in his cybernetic right leg who fired it when he kicked and kneed people. That's not to sell Jack Cayman, Black Baron and Mathilda short as returning familiar faces from MadWorld... but it only got better from there, so I'll make a quick list of my favorites.

	Durga I love the concept of this guy. Durga here has a giant revolver built into his cybernetic right leg. All of his voice acting so far makes him sound totally unhinged. It seems obvious they tried to take Adon's Jaguar Revolver and make it as literal as possible. He attacks with his legs exclusively, which makes it easy to work in his cannon when he kicks people. Of course, it's a lot more fun to see him in motion.
	Edgar Oinkie Possibly to make up for the blatant tiger theme of Durga, they have the animal hodgepodge of Edgar Oinkie. As a... human... he wears a pig mask and makes light of his weight and size with karate moves and Sonic the Hedgehog style spin attacks. His killer weapon isn't so much a weapon, but a green drug that turns him into a lizard-ish mutant in a way that would make Bane proud in order to do some Fist of the North Star business. Did you get all that? Considering Platinum has released a trailer for every character, I can't help but post a link to Edgar's, here.
	Ai Rin Something you might not know about me, is that I rather enjoy the time honored trend of making characters that blatantly reference Bruce Lee in video games. Ai Rin covers that base with electrified nunchaku and a great idle animation where she never keeps her feet still. Not to mention she makes plenty of appropriate noises when swinging her weapon around. She gets by in style in an outfit resembling Lee's Game of Death suit. If you like funny Bruce Lee noises and lots of flashy movement, here's Ai Rin's intro video.
	Garuda The most obvious thing about Garuda is that he's a transforming jet robot. That automatically earns him a Starscream reference, if not Optimus Prime for his blue color scheme. But I like his design, not to mention his killer weapons are a mean pair of drills. Another thing is that he can throw two characters at the same time, due to his size. I don't know many games where characters have the ability to throw two people at once. That's pretty awesome. Get your transforming jet, drills, and double-character throwing action here.
	Mathilda So Mathilda is actually a returning character from MadWorld. You may or may not remember her as the silent woman who demonstrated all the Bloodbath Challenges by killing the Black Baron in the process. Her role in Anarchy Reigns hasn't dulled her fondness for pain and spiked bats. It's great to have an opportunity to play as the woman behind the man. I find it surprising. Her video has been out for a long time, but I'll link it here anyway just to be consistent.

I could probably list more, but I'll stop here and just say that there are more crazy characters. I can only hope they'll all be fun to play.

Tracks that Kill

If you haven't played MadWorld, the majority of the soundtrack (or all of it, I guess) was rap tailor made to address the characters and basic set up of the game. Anarchy Reigns continues the trend, and I couldn't be more excited. Even if the game somehow turns out to be total garbage, I can take solace that the soundtrack will turn out solid. I'm no connoisseur of rap or hip-hop. Most of my exposure is from the mainstream and a dash of lesser known stuff due to my roommates in college. But for the game and the style, there's really no better choice of genre. Most of rap nowadays is aggressive by nature, banking on rivalries and talking shit as part of the material. Is there any better music for a man driving a double chainsaw down someone's throat?

Still, I know how subjective music can be. If you really hate this kind of stuff or quality, I can understand that.

The official site for Platinum Games have released a few preview tracks that I wanted to share. And I don't mean to imply that I love all of it, but I do have my favorites.

This is Madness: - A more low key track compared to the others, but still nice. What? Sparta?

Testin' Me:- First heard in Leo's introduction trailer, it caught my attention immediately. I can't wait to hear the full version.

Play For Keeps:- A damn catchy song with some pretty good rhymes. Very upbeat for talking about winning at all costs.

Days of Old: - A full version of the Black Baron's theme. I love all the horns in the chorus.

Unknown Track: - This is a trailer for the various battle modes, but the song in the background is awesome. It might be the full version, but I'm not sure. I still felt like sharing it.

Hurry Up and Wait

So until Anarchy Reigns gets released, those are a few reasons why I'm still looking forward to it. I hope everything works out well. I hope it's fun. I would love to play as a man with a revolver in his mechanical leg and remember it fondly. Not sure how the story will work out, but I bet it will be deadly serious contrasted by the insanity of everything that happens during gameplay. And if I had to sell it to you... Bayonetta is going to be in it. That's pretty cool, right?

Originally I wanted to write this blog as a lead up to a game I've been looking forward to coming out in July.Anarchy Reignsfrom your friends and mine atPlatinum Gameshas really caught my attention for a number of reasons. I would be lying if the original appeal had nothing to do withMadWorldthat came out on the Wii. I'vewritten a bit about that game before, but long story short, I liked it. The game wasn't perfect or anything, but it had a lot of entertaining quirks, a great voice cast, and an even better soundtrack. Not to mention the insane joy ofBayonettafrom the same developer promised they would keep up the great work with Anarchy Reigns.

But as of 5-25-12, it's officially TBA for North America and Europe. It's still scheduled to release in Japan early July... but that doesn't help me any. So now I'm just going to use this post to talk about it and somehow take the edge off the indeterminate wait.

Anarchy Reigns (I'm Cautiously Optimistic)

Much like Matt Rorie's attitude toward movies, I never play a video game wanting to hate it. It would be better if everything was awesome so fun was easy to come by. But I really have no idea how well Anarchy Reigns is going to turn out. It certainly sounds good on paper. Most things do. From the multitude of YouTube videos I've watched, it seems like a cross between a fighting game and a beat em' up, with a little arena combat to make full use of pick ups and environmental hazards. One possible move involves hanging from the bottom of an attack helicopter and redirecting its missiles and nose gun to shoot enemies stuck on the ground. If a match takes long enough, they have critical threats appear in the form of submarine missile strikes, rampaging big rigs, monsters, and more to up the ante. Comparisons to Power Stone and jokes about a Platinum Games Smash Bros. game have already been made.

How it Plays (I Guess)

The most telling thing (to me, at least) about how this game plays is a few scattered videos of a training room where you can practice character specific combos like a fighting game. Bayonetta had something like this in the form of a loading screen where you had the option to press select and hang out to play with different weapon combinations. So far, the combos just seem to be button combinations. No quarter circles or stick movement. On top of that are the character specific "killer weapons" that do serious damage for a short amount of time and recharges through damage inflicted and received. Naturally these work into combos. It doesn't seem like a basic button masher a beat em' up format would suggest. This I can wrap my head around.

What I'm not sure is how it's going to work when you're running around a 3D plane and have to target specific enemies or opposing players. I hope it's a happy middle between MadWorld (the game's primary inspiration) and the tight controls of Bayonetta. I'm not big into multiplayer, but I can't fathom how they're going to pull off an eight player free-for-all and make it feel good. They do have other game modes in the form of the usual suspects, including a football (soccer) looking game, class based team battle, and capture the flag. Personally, I'm more interested in the survival mode, which is basically horde mode with three players. Co-op is more my cup of tea. But my concerns still stand in that mode too. This is why I try to remain cautiously optimistic.

An Interesting Crew of Killers

On a more positive note, the biggest thing going for Anarchy Reigns for me is the delightfully crazy cast that make up the sixteen (plus Bayonetta as DLC) playable psychopaths. The character reveals didn't really pick up until they introduced a man with a revolver in his cybernetic right leg who fired it when he kicked and kneed people. That's not to sell Jack Cayman, Black Baron and Mathilda short as returning familiar faces from MadWorld... but it only got better from there, so I'll make a quick list of my favorites.

	Durga I love the concept of this guy. Durga here has a giant revolver built into his cybernetic right leg. All of his voice acting so far makes him sound totally unhinged. It seems obvious they tried to take Adon's Jaguar Revolver and make it as literal as possible. He attacks with his legs exclusively, which makes it easy to work in his cannon when he kicks people. Of course, it's a lot more fun to see him in motion.
	Edgar Oinkie Possibly to make up for the blatant tiger theme of Durga, they have the animal hodgepodge of Edgar Oinkie. As a... human... he wears a pig mask and makes light of his weight and size with karate moves and Sonic the Hedgehog style spin attacks. His killer weapon isn't so much a weapon, but a green drug that turns him into a lizard-ish mutant in a way that would make Bane proud in order to do some Fist of the North Star business. Did you get all that? Considering Platinum has released a trailer for every character, I can't help but post a link to Edgar's, here.
	Ai Rin Something you might not know about me, is that I rather enjoy the time honored trend of making characters that blatantly reference Bruce Lee in video games. Ai Rin covers that base with electrified nunchaku and a great idle animation where she never keeps her feet still. Not to mention she makes plenty of appropriate noises when swinging her weapon around. She gets by in style in an outfit resembling Lee's Game of Death suit. If you like funny Bruce Lee noises and lots of flashy movement, here's Ai Rin's intro video.
	Garuda The most obvious thing about Garuda is that he's a transforming jet robot. That automatically earns him a Starscream reference, if not Optimus Prime for his blue color scheme. But I like his design, not to mention his killer weapons are a mean pair of drills. Another thing is that he can throw two characters at the same time, due to his size. I don't know many games where characters have the ability to throw two people at once. That's pretty awesome. Get your transforming jet, drills, and double-character throwing action here.
	Mathilda So Mathilda is actually a returning character from MadWorld. You may or may not remember her as the silent woman who demonstrated all the Bloodbath Challenges by killing the Black Baron in the process. Her role in Anarchy Reigns hasn't dulled her fondness for pain and spiked bats. It's great to have an opportunity to play as the woman behind the man. I find it surprising. Her video has been out for a long time, but I'll link it here anyway just to be consistent.

I could probably list more, but I'll stop here and just say that there are more crazy characters. I can only hope they'll all be fun to play.

Tracks that Kill

If you haven't played MadWorld, the majority of the soundtrack (or all of it, I guess) was rap tailor made to address the characters and basic set up of the game. Anarchy Reigns continues the trend, and I couldn't be more excited. Even if the game somehow turns out to be total garbage, I can take solace that the soundtrack will turn out solid. I'm no connoisseur of rap or hip-hop. Most of my exposure is from the mainstream and a dash of lesser known stuff due to my roommates in college. But for the game and the style, there's really no better choice of genre. Most of rap nowadays is aggressive by nature, banking on rivalries and talking shit as part of the material. Is there any better music for a man driving a double chainsaw down someone's throat?

Still, I know how subjective music can be. If you really hate this kind of stuff or quality, I can understand that.

The official site for Platinum Games have released a few preview tracks that I wanted to share. And I don't mean to imply that I love all of it, but I do have my favorites.

This is Madness: - A more low key track compared to the others, but still nice. What? Sparta?

Testin' Me:- First heard in Leo's introduction trailer, it caught my attention immediately. I can't wait to hear the full version.

Play For Keeps:- A damn catchy song with some pretty good rhymes. Very upbeat for talking about winning at all costs.

Days of Old: - A full version of the Black Baron's theme. I love all the horns in the chorus.

Unknown Track: - This is a trailer for the various battle modes, but the song in the background is awesome. It might be the full version, but I'm not sure. I still felt like sharing it.

Hurry Up and Wait

So until Anarchy Reigns gets released, those are a few reasons why I'm still looking forward to it. I hope everything works out well. I hope it's fun. I would love to play as a man with a revolver in his mechanical leg and remember it fondly. Not sure how the story will work out, but I bet it will be deadly serious contrasted by the insanity of everything that happens during gameplay. And if I had to sell it to you... Bayonetta is going to be in it. That's pretty cool, right?

I'm interested in that game. Platinum Games is pretty amazing, so I'm also cautiously optimistic.

I guess we'll just have to wait and see.

I am pretty hyped for Anarchy Reigns, but i'm worried that they'll focus too much on multiplayer. I believe that you can only play as 2 characters in Single Player. WTF. I can't play online, so i'm afraid i'm fucked.
But the character are pretty interesting! My top 5 is Blacker Baron, Mathilda, Fei Rin, Weird Russian Guy who Electrifies People and Rin Rin. Yep, Rin Rin from MadWorld is here too. And thank you SOOOO much for showing me the full Blacker Baron Song. I love you.

@MikeGosot said:

I am pretty hyped for Anarchy Reigns, but i'm worried that they'll focus too much on multiplayer. I believe that you can only play as 2 characters in Single Player. WTF. I can't play online, so i'm afraid i'm fucked. But the character are pretty interesting! My top 5 is Blacker Baron, Mathilda, Fei Rin, Weird Russian Guy who Electrifies People and Rin Rin. Yep, Rin Rin from MadWorld is here too. And thank you SOOOO much for showing me the full Blacker Baron Song. I love you.

Yeah! RinRin was a surprise. I didn't think they'd go any deeper than Jack, Baron, and Mathilda. Now she has two sisters Ai and Fei.

As for story mode, the release trailer made it look like there were opportunities to play as other characters, possibly co-op. It might just be the way they cut it, so I could be wrong. That can be found here if you're interested. A few more songs can be heard in the background as well.

@MikeGosot: Hard to say. The majority of the information is in Japanese. It just looked like a lot of other characters were running around in the supposed "story mode" section of the trailer. Maybe it was leader board stuff. I can't be sure. Here's hoping though.

@MikeGosot: Hard to say. The majority of the information is in Japanese. It just looked like a lot of other characters were running around in the supposed "story mode" section of the trailer. Maybe it was leader board stuff. I can't be sure. Here's hoping though.

I was sort-of looking forward to this one. Love the characters, and it's from Platinum so I pretty much start off liking it more than most games I see trailers for, but I'm still not sure about the actual game part of it. Still sucks to hear it got delayed, but holy crap the soundtrack is sounding good so far. If it's half as good as Mad World's OST, then I'll be floored.

@MikeGosot: Bummer. I guess that makes more sense though.

@MikeGosot: Bummer. I guess that makes more sense though.

Happened to stumble upon this while seeing if any new discussion about the game has cropped up and I thought I'd chime in with a few points since I played a demo of the game at last year's TGS.

• Combos in Anarchy Reigns are indeed done solely through the buttons. Control-wise, if you think God Hand mixed with free-roam movement instead of tank controls in that game, you're on the right track. Obviously in terms of speed and overall flow, it's more influenced by Bayonetta than God Hand, but yeah.
• The game features lock-on targeting if you need to hone in on a specific opponent. The demo that I played at the show was limited to four players, so it's hard to be certain how effective it is in more populated matches, but it's hardly a feature that's going to make or break a match depending on if you use it; like God Hand, a game that had some decent crowds ganging up on you pretty regularly, the game is good about keeping your attack orientation automatically focused on somebody if you start a combo even without auto-target turned on.
• It's hard to be certain if it'll be the case with the final product, but it seems like the maps are pretty-well spaced such that when you're playing 8-16 player matches not everybody is going to be fighting in the same place constantly. In my experience, you end up with a lot of one-on-one or two-on-one mini-fights that result in people moving around the map naturally.
• The multiplayer mode has bots, but otherwise has no local multiplayer support of any kind. The official reason is that stuff like split-screen comes with its own set of challenges (ie: frame rate issues, etc.) that the development team seemingly deemed weren't worth the time and effort to overcome at the expense of other priorities. The game also has no LAN support which, while perhaps not an entirely surprising thing, was something I was still hoping for personally in exchange for the lack of any split-screen.

You all probably know it already, but there's a demo of the game coming for Xbox Live and PSN on this Friday. Technically it's only going to be up on the Japanese servers at this point, but not only is bypassing that extremely easy, but the demo, like Vanquish's and Bayonetta's before it, feature full English support. Apparently you get a sampling of both the single player and multiplayer portions, so hopefully that'll answer some lingering questions you all might still have. Beyond that, if there's any Japanese information you specifically want translated, feel free to ask; I live in Japan and am a translator.

I was pretty much sold the second I heard "Platinum Games next game...". Bayonetta and Vanquish has shown me that those dudes know how to make awesome, over-the-top fast action games.

@Pepsiman: Thanks for the information Pepsiman. Those are some great points I haven't caught wind of yet.

A day ago or so I stumbled upon a lengthy video of a developer going through a 16 player battle royale match and yeah, those maps do look big in that case. There seems to be enough room to make space and slug it out with the nearest competitor, with ramps and vents to gain some altitude or move quickly from one side to the other. The sixteen player Battle Royale seems appropriately nuts.

It's nice to know about the demo too. I suppose it'll take some subverting of XBLA, but that should answer a lot.

As a quick question you may or may not know the answer to, I figure I'd ask it just in case. The bots in multiplayer... is that something you can set up to practice or play by yourself? Or is that just to fill out teams when players drop in or drop out?

SEGA is fucking stupid not to release this during the summer drought internationally. Platinum has said that everything is ready (localization etc) on their end.

@Sarumarine: My understanding regarding the bots is that you can set them up yourself and play multiplayer matches by yourself with them, including ostensibly in an offline capacity. JP, the main English speaker at Platinum who does community stuff in addition to his regular duties, made it sound like that was a feature they were planning to elaborate on later when the topic was brought up in their forums a while back.

Accessing the Japanese XBL store to get the demo is as easy as setting up another silver account on your console and simply setting the country to Japan. You might or might not be able to retain the menus in English; my 360 is back in the States, so I haven't really had the chance to use my Japanese account recently, but at least prior to the last dashboard update, I remember the menus switching languages at least by default. Somebody will almost certainly post a guide for how to get this demo specifically for non-Japanese speakers when it comes out on Friday, though, so the process should be relatively painless.

@Nentisys: Indeed. They have until, what, mid-August at the latest before the drought ends and the game is up against the onslaught of fall games for the rest of the year, right? Some people are theorizing that they might use E3 to get more word about the game out and gauge release times that way and while Platinum will have a presence there, to my knowledge, that's mostly, if not entirely, for Metal Gear Rising, at least officially. Like you said, the fact that Sega pulled this move despite the game already going gold disturbs me.

@Pepsiman: Oh okay. Thanks. I hope bot matches are an option. It would be nice to have a mode to practice characters or just mess around with them (especially considering I'm not great at competitive multiplayer).

@Nentisys: Yeah, the delay seems weird considering the game is finished. I don't have any source for this, but didn't Patrick or some site somewhere say SEGA wasn't doing so well? If they have to pick and choose releases, maybe they thought Anarchy Reigns could wait. But like many people have said, they're missing a good window to risk burying it under bigger releases later in the year. Either way, it totally sucks.

I hope it doesn't spiral into a situation where it ends up not coming out in North America or Europe or something.

@Pepsiman: No local multiplayer support sucks, but thanks for the information. I have some things to ask:

- In Multiplayer, there are common enemies running around or just other players? This might seem like a weird question, but sometimes the trailers get confusing, showing bosses in multiplayer and all that stuff.

- There are alternate costumes?

- Your username is Pepsiman, because of the game or the commercials? This is important, lifes are depending on it.

EDIT: ALso, do you plan in doing a review? Your Catherine review was the first English review of the game that i found, so i think it would be awesome if you could do the same thing to Anarchy Reigns.

@MikeGosot: In order of what you asked:

• Normally it's just you and the other players fighting in multiplayer. If I had to guess, the footage you were seeing with other enemies in multiplayer was from the game's survival mode, where it's you and two friends duking it out against what I presume to be waves of AI enemies. That's what the Japanese launch trailer seemed to imply.
• Not sure about alternate costumes. There are at least alternate colors for team matches and whatnot, but beyond that, I'm not sure. From what I remember, I think there are tweaks that you can make to your character's setup before a match starts, though, so costumes might well be one such thing.
• Mostly the game, but I'm certainly fond of the commercials, too.
• I may do a review. We'll see. I'll actually be back in the States for a while by the time the Japanese version comes out, so I'm going to play this release date situation by ear and see what comes out of all this before deciding one way or the other.

I was pretty hyped for it I thought it was basically online co-op Bayonetta. Back in the day, beat em ups had mulitplayer this was a standard feature, but in the transition to 3D, people stopped doing it for some reason. I thought this would be a glorious return to form and was really excited.

Then I saw 10 minutes of gameplay footage from an online match. The multiplayer is deathmatch and it the actual combat looks really clunky, like how Metal Gear Revengence and Lollipop Chainsaw look. I still have some interest in it, but I don't think the Bayonetta dude had any hand in producing this, which dismissed all my excitement about it.

@sickVisionz: Yeah, I imagine it would be hard to nail that kind of speed and accuracy on the level of Bayonetta with multiplayer. Not to say that's impossible, they'll probably do it one day. But Anarchy Reigns seems to lean closer to God Hand in that respect.

The demo is out now for Japanese XBL and PSN under the game's Japanese title of Max Anarchy (マックスアナーキー in kana). I don't have access to either of my consoles at the moment, but I'm told that it contains two single-player missions, as well as six characters that you can play in online matches (or with bots) in a handful of modes. Since it is just a demo, you can set up a free account for either service and be set to go. The process itself is pretty straightforward as long as you remember to set the registered region to Japan specifically. In XBL's case, you may need a Japanese Hotmail address (I'm not 100 percent sure since it's been years since I signed up for mine) and as for PSN, the sign-up menu will become Japanese when you change the region, so here's a translation from NeoGAF that should help you out since I'm too lazy to do it myself. Searching for the demo itself should be relatively easy since the interface doesn't change on either service when you switch languages, although, again, you need to be careful about searching it under the Japanese name and not the international one. There seem to be a good number of American players that have gotten the demo, so with any luck, you should get matched up with them and not have to put up with any potential ping-related issues. There are also some other things I want to note, but since I already detailed them out in a PM conversation between Sarumarine and myself, I'm just going to copy-paste.

I didn't realize would happen until I read it on GAF was that the XBL demo is restricted to Gold members for the time being. HOWEVER, Microsoft is holding a free Gold weekend and this includes Japan, so you should be able to download the demo regardless. The weekend here is set to start at 2 AM JST, which has already passed and potentially means that you could download the demo right now. If you can't, then you just need to wait for it to become Friday in the States and then you should be able to nab it regardless.

As for the demo download itself, GAF was also kind to remind me that you can just queue it directly online from the Japanese XBL site. To do this, go to this page for the demo. The download button is the green one at the bottom that says "Xbox 360 にダウンロード." (Basically the only button on the page that says "Xbox 360" aside from the one in the nav bar at the top of the page.) From there, you'll be prompted to sign in as usual onto the site. Presumably, this means you sign in using the e-mail address you used to sign up for the Japanese account, but I'm not 100 percent certain since I've always just downloaded this sort of stuff directly from the system. You'll then be asked to agree to a TOS thing; just hit the check box and click on the left button to proceed. From there, it should give you a download prompt of some sort. Since the free weekend still isn't in effect yet here in Japan, I've actually been denied when trying to download it myself just now, but that should be how the process works.

Also, since I'm already on a roll, apparently the demo defaults to Japanese by default. I've included a picture from GAF of where on the options menu you need to go to toggle the game to English; from what I've read the language doesn't take effect until after you quit out from the menu, so don't be surprised if it stays Japanese until then. Worst comes to worst, you can manually download the demo to your computer and burn it to a DVD. The instructions for doing so can be found on this page of the NeoGAF demo thread.