Expert Mode on the other hand concentrates only on the trading process and rewards you with a grade and ending. Both modes use the same main trading screen which is operated using the stylus. Here, a whole wealth of features is at your finger tips to help you predict the stocks that are going to make you the most money or go tumbling downhill. There’s the line charts which show you the trends of a stock, stat screens, news, reports that let you know more about the company you’re investing in such as their current condition and future plans as well as many search functions.


Bandai, Capcom, Taito, Nintendo… They’re all there.
As with the real stock market, trading is split into two sessions – a morning one and an afternoon one with a lunch break in between before resuming. Each minute ticks by in seconds and as this happens, the chart is constantly updated. You have the option to skip time by one day in Expert Mode or by thirty minutes if you’re playing in Story mode. I found watching the stats change by the minute was the best way of making any good amount of profit.

Kabutore makes use of five years of real Tokyo Stock Exchange data and you’ll find all the familiar Japanese gaming firms such as Nintendo, Capcom and Bandai are in there. Not all five years are used at once however because each game session randomly picks three months out of this data for you to play through in either mode. No dates are given so it’s very unlikely you’ll remember anything similar. By default, Konami is registered in your favourites board but you can also find other firms by syllable, ranking or the simplest way – drawing your own trend line.


Searching by trend lines is one way of finding firms you want.
The interface itself and the artwork are all presented in a very clean fashion with vector style graphics. Probably a good choice by the artists since if you’re going to be making big money in the stock exchange game, you’ll want to feel like you’re living a clean high class life. Characters have a number of facial expressions that change as the dialogue moves along but there isn’t much animation. Even on the board game part of Story Mode animations are very limited.