texturemonkey

Howdy!

2011-05-17T01:03:00.001-07:00

I sure do blog a lot, but not over here so much anymore! Go here to see what's happening lately in my world ;)

And if you have an iPhone or Android, you'd do yourself a huge disservice if you miss out on a chance to download my game 180!

Land of the In-Between

2009-09-24T23:32:00.000-07:00

And returning to my weekly gaming blog - things are going alright, as mentioned previously things are very very busy over here. It's been a tumultuous week as my partner and I scramble through development of our second iPhone application, lots of highs and lows. The big news is that, about a month since the first proof-of-concept, we've finally got the main implementation of the bulk of the gameplay in place, there's much to do with bug-fixing and presentation adjustment, but overall we are both very happy to see it is coming along better than we'd planned! In spite of this, a major blow early in the week which is - well, it's a pretty ridiculous slap-in-the-face, one of the more awful things that a dev with a secret project could imagine, I will have to save this story for the post-mortem. That being said, we are doing our best to make lemonade out of the lemons -

Next week is Indiecade in Culver City, International Independent Game Developer's convention. I am not sure how this this will be run/organized, it's my first time attending (first time I would consider myself an independent developer!) but looking very forward to the con and also to showing our new project around, and getting some feedback from our peers. Drop me a line if you will be attending and would like to meet up!

Things are alright besides. I have put my normal job search on the back burner for some time, as I am concentrating on the iPhone business for the time being. I still send out resumes and reels to the rate of about 3 or 4 a week, but there's really not much available for artists of my level in Southern California for the time being, I figure things will remain quite conservative until next spring sometime - after the 2009 Holiday receipts have come in and been tallied, generally, and the big studios can sigh a little relief and stretch out their development plans a little more. It's all airtight right now and I am not too keep to look for work out of the area (though after this small project wraps up, I will look where I need to - a guy's gotta eat!)

In the meantime it's quite humbling doing the indie gig, it is also very liberating to no longer be tethered to the extremely inefficient world of big-studio game development. I am sure I will return to that world in due time, but for now it's very gratifying to be master of my own destiny without having to answer to morons and producers who's only concerns are covering their own behinds. I detest what game development has become in the large scale, though it is quite apparent this is where things are going as it becomes bigger and bigger business (and requires so much more investment, in time, manpower, and budget). A few companies have their heads on straight and know what they are doing, but plenty of them are run, erm, "willy-nilly" I'll say to be polite - good studios who deserve respect for their past accomplishments, but who are in way over their heads in the current economic and business climates. I don't need to name names, anyone who pays more than a passing amount of attention to the industry news of the past couple of years can easily think of a few high-profile examples of what I am referring to.

But such is the game industry, it's quite well-known for it's usual topsy-turviness, dating back to the days when I was a kid (Crash of 1984!) This too will level out, and then it will eventually go haywire again - studios who were huge and in charge will become top-heavy and semi-collapse, some small places will have their eyes the prize and their heads screwed on properly and take good advantage for their own shot at market dominance. And so, the worm turns...

Follow our studio's progress at HeadcaseGames.com

Re-Emergence Day

2009-09-17T17:22:00.000-07:00

Greetings, out there in video-land. I am awake from my longer-than-long slumber and here to resume my particular brand of musings on the state of the videogame union.

This blog has necessarily been dark for some time, as I have been busy on a daily basis with the other blog and my own personal one - as well as an endless stream of work to deal with - though that is all changing now, as it's time once more to pick up the... err.. keyboard and get busy again. Off we go!

2009 has been an inordinately busy year for me. I got let go from a studio early this year as a big project of theirs went off the radar, to put it kindly. The other title I devoted my blood, sweat, and tears to the year and a half (or so) prior to all of that is still waiting to see the light of day - that means this is the longest drought in my 12 year career in games since a release (3 years now) had my name attached to it.

Well then what have I been up to since? A bit of freelance, tried getting a startup console group off the ground, banded together with a buddy to get some iPhone development underway, released a respectable app between the two of us, got a second (and profoundly more ambitious app) well into development, partied with a bunch of my peers, had a crazy E3 return-to-glory, got back in touch with character modeling and skinning (I am a level artist!), started to unravel Radiant, substitute-taught a couple of level and concept art classes, started helping out ANOTHER startup, and now pursuing another possible freelance partnership, so.. um.. you could say it's been a rather busy year.

How does this all leave me? In a good place. I am much happier now, in many ways, than I was when I was "just another studio monkey" - I am feeling much more in control of my own destiny, and excited about where things are leading. What does it mean for the present though? Our new iPhone game will release (6 weeks-2 months from now) and I am very excited for it. Whereas our 1st title was a humble experiment to learn the tech and pipeline of assembling such a project from start-to-finish, the next one will be (already is!) a game which I think looks great and is incredibly fun to play for any gamer worth his salt- As for getting back into the rat race? Well there's a lot of things on the table, some mentioned here, many kept hush-hush for reasons that anyone with half-a-brain can reason why-

As for the state of the game industry, well there's much to say on that subject. We will broach that topic next time-

if I ever decide to raise children--

2009-07-09T00:51:00.000-07:00

So I just had a thought. If I ever end up being the father of children, I will name them all after early 1980's classic video arcade games.

There will be Zaxxon Alpert, my eldest. She will likely have Attention Deficit Disorder, and get a lot of scorn from me while she is growing up. As she ages I will regret being such an unattentive dick and try to spoil her, but she will be forever bitter and never really forgive me. We will always resent one another, I can see her happily checking me into the old age home when I reach my geriatric years.

The second child will of course be Q*Bert Alpert. He will be the strange kid of the group, always jumping all over the furniture and swearing. I think he might suffer from Tourette's Syndrome.

Our third child will be Tempest Alpert. A fair-haired girl, Tempest will be Daddy's Little Girl and always have me wrapped around her finger. Such a spoiled, unappreciative girl.. she'll probably grow up to be kind of a hot chick, but ohhh what a short temper!

Child Number Four will likely be Galaga Alpert. Yes, this child will undoubtedly be a homosexual, but what can you do? So long as he is happy with his life, then his mother and I will support him.

If we can afford it, I'd like to raise a fifth child as well, that would be Donkey Kong Jr. Alpert. The fat kid at school who no one likes - and yet always following in his daddy's footsteps. I'll rely on him to get me out of jail now and then.

E3 postmortem

2009-06-07T17:23:00.000-07:00

E3 came, it went, so now it is back to business. Right?

Overall it was a good experience, as noted earlier the first day was kinda blase' and the second day was a ton of fun and drama. The third day I sat around at home and did some work (because - there's never a shortage of things to deal with!) In hindsight I sort of wish I made it out for day #3, there's so much I never did get to investigate - but to be honest, it's much easier to digest so much of what's going on across the whole convention if one is just relaxing in front of their PC and sucking up all the newsfeeds from the various websites and podcasts. Hell, I have "I-don't-know-how-many" hours of podcast backlog to work my way through, but rest assured I will (there's a fair amount of useful information to glean from them..) That all being the case, I don't feel like I had less than what I'd consider an optimal experience, I suppose. Some things I'd like to touch on-

-Project Natal/Milo - I watched some Youtubes of this. Definitely interesting, and worth keeping an eye on. I have investigated this kind of motion tracking technology recently, not firsthand but I know enough to the point where it looks legit. But it will not be cheap I am sure. I am also goign to side with all the people who worry about products like this "fracturing the market" and therefore only appealing to a niche audience, rather than having a full support (See, Nintendo obviously got that one right with Wii). Honestly, for me the big impressive thing was having teleconferencing righ tin your own living room through your Xbox - calling up your friends and seeing one another on your screen, that's sort of neat (and believable!) As for playing games without holding some kind of device, though, it just doesn't seem like it'd "feel" right..

As for the Milo AI demo, it's tough to say. I think that's probably a "proof of concept" thing matched with a little kerfloozery. I don't think we'll see stuff like this "for real" awhile yet, but down the road..

-Zune HD - Zune always looked and sounded like some weird Microsoft excuse to me. I never, ever even saw one, or heard anyone say they'd want to look at one. What the hell is a "Zoon" anyway! This sounds like they are finally getting their act together though, "we'll just rip off the iPod Touch" pretty much, but supporting with Xbox Live is a marvelously powerful idea. I daresay there's no way they cannot earn some decent market share if they handle this smartly. Xbox 360 has made a believer out of me that "Microsoft has it in them to know what they are doing with this general market"- even in Japan, for crying out loud! I still think "Zune" sounds almost as dumb as "Prius" but I think they will be good.

-PS3 motion control - looks neat and I love the demos on Youtube. Again I think it's a bunch of neat things that will not really get the hardcore backing they'll require to really make a big splash, it'll be expensive and again - niche market. I think they are just trying to say "we know what's up too, just like everybody else, so don't by a Kiddie Wii or an Aging 360 rather than our unit." Come on, they showed impressive Eye Toy gimmickry for years now and no one cares, no one's doing anything to take advantage of that power. That just required a consumer ot shell out for merely the camera device - this entire motion control setup will cost how much more?

-PSP GO - did I rant about this last time? Even if I did, it still deserves some whining. This is a terrible idea. If they stuck a 2nd analog on there it'd be easier ot swallow but still not worth it. If they crank the price down (like one hundred dollars less, for starters) than it's slightly more understandable. I feel bad for whoever is in charge of convicing people to buy this thing! Mind you I don't dislike Sony, never did - I just want to see them get some good footing again to support their powerful partners, and missteps like this are costly and ignorant. At least they are supporting that Sony Ericcson device (even if it's technically sort of competing with themselves in some way)

-Wii MotionPlus, we played EA Tennis and it felt - well, I didn't get down and dirty with it, but I would not say it was noticably much better feeling than good old Wi Sports tennis (still a very fun game, in spite of it's age, if you ask me). I didn't try out any other MotionPlus games, I would LOVE a "table tennis" or "air hockey"game, would shell out in a heartbeat if it honestly felt right.. Anyway I think this will be the one to watch, see if people shell out for this add-on. They really should have pushed this thing out the door from the start - come on. At least it looks much more affordable than the competition noted above..

-Team Ninja picks up Metroid - people are noticably mixed on their feelings regarding this game, I can't argue. Maybe if NG2 had come out differently. Watching that video of Samus tossing aliens just looked.. stupid. I will give them the benefit of the doubt that they have some decent potential, but really this is just gonna feel like Metroid Gaiden (for a few reasons!) I think it will be forgettable. Leave Metroid to Retro/Armature/whoever's actually the Mother Brain of that thing (Gumpei!)

-Modern Warfare, Uncharted 2, Red Steel, Ratchet and Clank - the train keeps rolling. Assassin's Creed, well the trailer was pretty, I haven't paid enough attention to see where the actual gameplay was (more of the same right?)

-Disappointed to see no major iPhone presence. Come on.

Overall I would say E3 did a nice return to form, after the hibernation of the last couple of years. As I predicted, it was an industry of playing it safe, not pulling any crazy plans out from left field, and a sign that things are actually getting more conservative. Nintendo seemed strangely too relaxed, Rockstar seemed a little lazy/butthurt, I didn't pay any attention to Sega or Capcom (conservative, conservative). I bet next year will be interesting once more, but for now just sit back and play with your minigames, everybody.

E3 2009 - Day Two

2009-06-04T15:02:00.000-07:00

Whew! Well, here's what got done yesterday, then.

Tuesday was my "walk around and examine things with a critical eye" day. Wednesday was "hang out with all my buddies from various companies at the bar and talk trash and drink all day"-day. And of course try to take pictures of some booth babes occasionally. So then, I had a much better time than the previous day - it was more about relaxing and having fun than worrying about business..

Exhausted from the night before (following the first day of traipsing all over the show, "I'd hit the local tavern" for some drinking and dancing and had little more than 4 hrs of sleep!) I hopped outta bed, dusted myself off, grabbed a schwaerma at Al Wazir and hopped onto the Red Line straight to Downtown. 20 minutes in, met my buddies at the bar. Still a little hazy from the night before, chilled out and caught up and did the txt-message thing "Are you guys here? Well where are you?? meet at Gordon Biersch bar!" My buddies from Obsidian had already left by the time I showed up (lame!) but a lot of the ex-Neversoft fellows were hangin' around.. My buddy, his girl and I hit the halls and played a little EA Tennis on Wii (looks nice, more fun than the older Wii Sports version) and teased the girls at the Natsume booth, we grabbed the Ghostbusters promo guys and asked them to shoot the Afrika stuffed animals while I punched the giraffe and pretend-fed vodka to the zebra, it was sort of a full day. Take that Sony. You should have released Afrika YEARS ago. That's what you get. To be honest, I am wondering what a display to promote Home would look like... wouldn't that be a paradox?

Honestly we just fooled around a little, mostly just hanging out and having fun. Back at the bar, the crew was growing large and we got word of something going down at the Fig hotel and the pack of us moved on over there. One of the best things about E3 is the weird promo parties all over the place, some are big and some are quite small, but if you can find them and skeez your way in then you feel like a VIP for 15 minutes and can kinda hobnob with people who know what they are talking about, which is actually pretty fun! (Got to be careful not to be a jerk to people, especially when the free booze is flowing, don't wanna step on any feelings "how come your studio always makes such crappy games!" Oh,it happens...) Anyway we walked into this place like we thought we were actually supposed to be there, showed some guy with a list my E3 badge ad his face lights up "oh here's a wristband for the open bar!" WELL THANK YOU, SIR! One second it's empty and the next BAM 30 or 40 people crammed into a small tiny room eating deviled eggs and downing margeritas and talking about Play Control balance programming and iPhone app ideas..

The bathroom was strangely a mystery, asking a bouncer ended up with me and some random DICE guy (Mirror's Edge team) lost in the bowels of the hotel trying to find a W.C., finally we found one downstairs but there was a big IGN party raging down there and they weren't letting other people in. Somehow, some random Gamespy guy says "hey buddy I'll get you in," nice enough chap, we breeze past the bouncer and it's more similar madness as the upstairs Activision party only with WAY more booze and many many more people.. Scouting around, I ran into a fella with a Kaos Studios shirt on and struck up a conversation, about 30 seconds in it hit me "hey I remember you, job interview two years ago!" Kaos flew me out and we hit it off quite well, but I was way more tempted to stay in LA and work on the Aliens RPG at Obsidian (for an environment artist, that's pretty much a dream gig!) and though I've always wanted to live in NYC, there's a very tiny game-job scene compared to out here.. Anyway it was good to catch up with that dude, we went over stuff for a good 30 minutes. I ducked into the john and came back out, and WHOOSH the party done dried up. Seriously - all the booze was gone, all the people were gone. Retreated back upstairs to find my crew, that party'd wrapped up as well (and it was barely 10pm!) and so they all were chilling out back by the pool bar. I am there for one minute wen my buddy's girl starts swimming in the pool. Security was not a big fan of that, so they kindly asked us to split..

We were with a bigshot in our crew, he owns one of the companies I'd worked for previously - and he has a little crash pad downtown (separate from his house by the beach), was nice enough to invite us upstairs for more drinks and foosball. Seriously, this place was amazing - it's pretty much the dream of any dev who becomes successful that he can get a little satellite "home-away-from-home" place, load it up with art and booze and just go to chill to get away from the stresses of work and life, and just party..

My friend's wife lost her E3 pass, too bad she was borrowing it from his friend! He was not happy about this, rang us up and said "I'm coming over to get my pass, you had better find it (he hadn't been to the show yet, and with one day left wanted to at least get in once!) Anyway, the guy shows up and I gave him mine, I had enough E3 after two days personally. Situation defused, everyone's happy again, so we headed across the street to the bar to meet up with some other folks. Looks like the night can wind down peacefully..

..or can it? We walked in, nice little place, kinda posh, crowd was very mellow. A few of us walk upstairs and sit down - the bouncer rushes up and starts yelling "no one is supposed to be up here!" I guess he forgot to rope off the stairway. We apologized, we had no idea it was off-limits - I sat down to talk with some random artists who worked at Naughty Dog, and excited to get some contacts over there when my friend walks up "yeah, we've got to go now!" I guess the bouncer was not getting along so well with some folks in our gang, apparently still fairly rustled by the upstairs debacle. And so we split up and called it a night! My friend and I got a cab back to Silverlake, then I walked 4 miles back to Hollywood - hit my pillow and crashed O-U-T.

So, I had to leave some of the juicier bits out of this entry, I'll have to get to them someday. It was a crazy night! But that's what E3 is all about. Sure, it is a lot about business and the future of the marketplace, the tech - but it's also about the extravagance, the indulgence. I make no bones about it, working in games is a very demanding job that takes a LOT of time, energy, dedication, and just plain stubbornness. It winds you up pretty good, especially after you've done it for several years. As you go through this industry, you work very intimately with lots of people across various different disciplines, and you all really bond as you do this. It's quite fraternal, and it's my favorite part of the job. When E3 rolls around, this is when it feels like a celebration of this aspect, the gathering of lots of us folks - the low-end guys, the mid-level grunts, the rich-ass power players, we all get slammed together for a few days and it's our opportunity to just let our hair down for a minute and revel in our love of what we do and our camaraderie - while some of the people who we've helped make EXTREMELY RICH foot the bill and let us experience a little taste of the luxury for just a bit.

E3 2009, Day 1 report

2009-06-02T20:48:00.000-07:00

9PM, sitting at home for a couple of hours now, here's the wrap-up.

It's been 2 years since I've attended E3 (since many have!) so I was kinda looking forward to the Return of the Spectacle. Well, long story short - it was really meh, is all I have to tell you. Yeah, there were some interesting announcements, take your pick (Team Ninja doing a new Metroid, all the fancy new Xbox 360 and PS3 peripherals, Mario Galaxy 2 announcement, etc). But overall, just kind of a feeling that "man this would have been a lot more exhilarating a couple of years earlier!" I am sure there's a few things to it (not to get all into it, but yeah like I said it's not the same mood when you are job-hunting at E3 as opposed to just taking it in and relaxing, catching up with friends, and so forth) - really I was surprised that the attendance was much smaller than I had expected, you could actually get through the halls fairly easily and there weren't insane lines all over the place to see things from my POV. I guess it's sort of what I'd called in my previous post - things are pulled back these days, you're not really seeing a lot of impressive innovation, everyone's just trying to put out tried-and-true product that will ensure money coming in. But damn, so dull. Hey look ANOTHER Need for Speed! Sure it looks nice but who cares? PGR looked amazing 4 years ago! Another Shaun White. More cooking games. Yawny McYawnerstein.

Anyway, what did I actually look at?

-GI JOE - as was evident from the screens released months ago, this looked like a poor (very) last-gen game. The action and such didn't look so bad, but not noteworthy and the visuals were just very blase. Come on, we have Unreal Tech, why show us this?

-Need for Speed - see above.

-TMNT Smash - I didn't really look at it or play it but it looks like they are trying to follow the Smash Bros blueprint. Is that license still viable though? Stuff gets old.

-New Super Mario Bros. Wii - This sounded interesting to me. I could still sit down and play through a round of good old SMB. Unfortunately, the game was not exactly captivating. I never played New Super Mario Bros. (on DS) but I imagine it felt like this. This was not what I want Mario to feel like, to play like! It's all floaty now with the LBP-3D feeling, but not in a good way. Honestly I would much rather stick with the fanmade levels on LBP at this point. I am not a naysayer against new Mario (Galaxy etc) but something about this just didn't feel like I could wrap myself around it. I ran out of caring after beating a round. I don't like how it handles the 2P simultaneous mode, feels like an afterthought/frustrating.

-Zombie Apocalypse (PSN) - played excatly how I thought it would. Yawn.

-Pixeljunk Shooter - I knew this would be fun. These guys have that certain something that makes weird little titles fun. I would download this. Maybe just demo, but ya know.

-Wii Sports Resort - I wanted to try the new MotionPlus, but got bored watching the guy in front of me shoot hoops. I think the fencing might be alright. It's hard to get psyced about Mii stuff at a scene like E3.

-Transformers - they showed vids of it on the big Activision screen. I can't say much for the gameplay but they really nailed the visuals - it looks like what you'd want a Michael Bay Transformers game to look like. Hopefully they can put the pieces back together following the previous rushjob installment.

-Tony Hawk Ride - I was pretty tempted to try this out, with the new skatboard peripheral. I actually got pretty far in the (admittedly short) line but got bored waiting for the guy ahead of me to practice the simple maneuvers - also the screens they were showing didn't look very appealing at all, graphically. I will say this though, I can see why they decided to make a new board rather than use the Wii Fit board - skaters can grab the deck in their hands and get more of a "skater feeling" if that makes sense.

-DJ Hero - this is so tough to tell. They had a big demo where they really broke it all down and showed the nuts and bolts of the game - the thing is, with these types of games it's really hard to tell how it feels just by watching someone play it. It could be really fun or just very complicated and confusing. I applaud them for going out on a limb and at least, trying something a little unorthodox (such as it is). I will reserve judgement, it's definitely going to be a harder sell than Guitar Hero in some ways..

-Lego Rock band - saw this there, it was exactly as you'd expect. Rock band, with Legos, yawn. I make fun of it, but I think we'll probably pick this up cause Rock Band doesn't seem to age that badly. I don't like looking at the Lego avatars though, I wish they had a reskin with the current Rock Band? Or just release all the same tracks for us, same price? Please?

-Rock Band Unplugged (PSP) - this reviewed fairly well on IGN recently. I don't think there's anyway to say it's good or not after playing it at E3, it's reduced down to it's simplest formula (watching bars and hitting buttons) - and you can't hear the audio at all! So, don't ask me.

-Motorstorm PSP - looked alright, a little crunchier like PS1. I just donnnn't like PSP, what can I say.

What else did I see? Um.. Steve Wiebe was there playing Donkey Kong (OG) to try and recapture the world record, that was funny. People would cheer as he cleared rounds - it was odd. A little hypnotic to watch for awhile, but ti was getting late and we had to move on. I wish Billy Mitchell was there!!

There was a little "indie area," actually I wished this section was bigger. It was fairly anemic, but kudos to them for representing. Not much to really yell home about, but a couple of the games were actually pretty impressive! They mentioned there's some indie game fest due up in... October, I believe, I wanna say it was gonna be in Culver City. I'll check back on that, definitely would like to check that out.

It's hard to judge E3 by the same standard I usually would. It's one of those strange things that really seems to pop up in the more unusual times of my life, and now is not really any different. I can't say it's really the ideal time for me to be indulging in that madness, so I can't expect to have such a great time as I often do (and sometimes it's just been REALLY GOOD DAMNED TIMES!) I blame that on circumstances of life more than just some convention however (and not like my life is even bad, at all, it's just not as... innocent and rambunctious as it'd been in the past). There's obviously something to attending the show when you are a bigshot dev on a cool project vs when you are just a scrub lookin' for work.. hahaha. Ah well, time to hit the bar...

Kick me out of E3!! AGAIN!!

2009-06-01T18:22:00.000-07:00

What's up Mouseketeers. It's about 6:30 Monday evening, I just got back from downtown. Yeah, E3 isn't open to the masses until tomorrow, but I wanted to beat the madness and get a badge holder one day early - as opposed to waiting in line with 20,000 smelly nerds for a piece of plastic. I mean, I will wait with those same nerds all day long for other things I am sure..

It was funny walking in there. I was able to breeze Downtown from Hollywood in a flash (surprised!), parked for free (surprised - ALSO!), walked around the entire building the wrong way 'cause I am a moron, found my way to the South Hall Entrance where they were still setting up the most ginormous Rock Band Presented by Pepsi display I have ever seen, strolled up to the front of the line with my bade and presto. Actually, it felt like the end of E3s' past, since it was generally quite mellow with the occasional straggler here and there, and most folks seemed bored and sleepy. Soon, soon. Tomorrow will be a different story.

I am reminded of the last time that I was attending E3 without a job - that was back in 2001, I was freshly out of work from the collapse of 3DO (and my division, New World Computing). Working frantically to get my portfolio into some presentable state, and hurrying to get business cards printed until the last-last minute, I had been out of work long enough that I didn't have proper credentials for my own badge and so my programmer buddy from Neversoft lent me his ('cause he didn't care anyway!) For some reason, Matt put "Matty" on his badge - and I got randomly screened, after one hour, while entering an exhibit hall. "Is your name really 'Matty?' Let me see your ID!" I tried to call their bluff, but of course my Driver's License don't lie, so they stripped me of the badge and kicked me out, with my biz cards, portfolio samples and resumes - all I wanted to do was a find a job! Sob, sob. I didn't have a driver's license at the time so I sat outside and waited for the rest of my friends to finish up so we could go home. Pathetic, I know! I'd been 4 years in the game industry already - and now, a convention full of fat smelly nerds was rejecting me. Ah, the irony.

Well, that was (ulp) eight years ago. Sadly, I guess I may not have come so far, here we are at another E3 and I am still scrounging for work, same old story. In fact after I wrap up this entry, I need to bring my new business card template down to Kinkos/FedEx/whatever the hell they call it now and print up a bunch for my partner's and my new iPhone game venture. At least this time if I get kicked out of the show, it's cause I was doing something particularly unruly, not just crappy luck!

News-wise - lots of info already spilling out from the pre-show, Microsoft had their conference already earlier today. To tell the truth I've not done more than give a cursory glance to all the goings-on, what with running around and sending out bill payments and cashing checks and then all the admin setup for my new website, figuring out how to do MIDI capture and editing (I am 30 years too late, I know), and trying to give my girlfriend a moment of attention here and there... Anyway something about "Microsoft full-body movement control sensor," PSP GO (PSP GO AWAY!) .. they just don't understand... More Halo's (what's an ODSF?) Trailers for everything, I was proud to see a giant spectacular ALPHA PROTOCOL wall display inside of South Hall Section K.

The next couple of days will be a migrain, hopefully I can shmooze my way into some E3 party or other (yeah, yeah...) Good luck troops..

Pre-E3-itis, Second Verse

2009-05-27T18:52:00.000-07:00

It is so funny to watch the game websites and forums in the week following up to E3. All the big studios drop all their big plans in the weeks (and final days) before the actual show itself, seems to be the trend - isn't this one of the big reasons why the show's format got altered in the first place, supposedly (competing with one another for attention in the midst of overstimulation?) With that in mind, it's notable that there doesn't seem to be a lot of hubbub for anyone to be raving about. Sega and EA both have (relatively) lackluster showings. Nintendo seems pretty tight-lipped, I guess we can expect to see some semi-interesting Wii titles from them next week but I doubt anyone's expectations are so high (as noted in my last blog post, "things are rather quiet these days..") Unusual to hear about High Voltages upcoming games (it's been awhile since they made some noise?) Activision dribbled out a couple of early tracklisting morsels for their Guitar Hero franchise, but really is anyone THAT thrilled about some new tracks (in this age of DLC) - as well, the new Tony Hawk game's been getting a little press, though it's more of a lot of "what? they're thinking wa-what?" when considering their new balance-board remniscient peripheral and lofty (rumored) price-tag. The new DJ Hero Turntable popped up as well recently, no surprise there, I think a lot of folks are waiting to get their hands on it at E3 (any chance?) before it gets written-off as "too late to the Beatmania party.." Well, we will see.. Anyway, they got Call of Duty, which will sel no matter what..

But, yeah, all is quiet. I don't think anyone expects to see much noteworthy out of DS or PSP, and I doubt there's much more expectation for Sony to come strong with (potentially powerful) hype for MAG (I love that name!) XBox is getting long inthe tooth now, if anyone's got a chance of showing up with somthing crazy I guess it would be them - but they always leak their stuff notoriously early. All we got in our sights is the HD Zune - which is a lot, mind you, but it's still gonna play second fiddle to iPhone if you ask me, unless they do something particularly clever and outrageous.

Yeah, I may be full of a lot of hot air, but I have been watching these markets for awhile now. Again, it's a tight economy and the release slate for this year is scant - also lots of previous big players (like THQ and Midway) are getting spanked badly, while guys like Microsoft, Sony and even the all-powerful EA have been closing shops and letting people go quite a bit in the past years' time - include the already-wilting Sega in that list (and I am a Sega fanboy, mind you!), it's a telling sign if there's not a few more half-assed Sonic games showing on this years roster (yeah, there's a Winter Games one, but otherwise..). And does anybody remember a company called Atari??

So I am declaring this, the E3 where it supposedly returns to it's former glory, the Year of the Casuals. The year of the Stifled Development. Expect to see a lot of gusts of smoke and disappointment. So hilarious that they pulled in the reigns for E3 just as the whole industry was getting incendiary, Wii and PS3 and 360 were raging in their freshness and youth and money was being poured full-bore into development everywhere, studios were overambitiously augmenting their team sizes ("why make 2 hits when we can just as easily churn out four?!!")

Well, we'll see some interesting iPhone stuff. Anyway don't fret, as the economy buttons up (I hope!) we'll see better conventions in the future. For now, just enjoy the love-in.. Hopefully, I will be able to find a still-existing Kentia Hall, where I can play Paperboy and Galaga (and Scramble on the Vectrex!) while listening to 8-Bit Weapon. Sounds good enough to me.

PRE-3

2009-05-26T19:29:00.000-07:00

Hot Damn Applesauce, how did THIS happen? It's excatly one week to go 'till the Electronic Games Expo once again descends upon our horrible, innocuous town..

It's a shock really, I've known it was coming for some time now (waiting for it with baited breath) as it's quite a symbol for many things in my life. A deadline, certainly - but also a true milestone, in each of the years since I have moved out here (nearly 10, now!) E3 was effectively put on ice for the last couple of years, reduced to less than a pathetic shadow of it's former grandeur, as it were - I am quite surprised to see that it's supposedly going to be a huge mosh pit of videogaming madness once again, I have to admit.

I am actually - NOT really looking forward to it, as opposed to my usual attitude. Right now is not really a god time for me to be participating in such insanity, I am really really busy and also really really broke. In fact, I am feeling quite antisocial as well - if it were up to me, I wouldn't mind if they could somehow postpone it for another month or two (that'd make so many things SO much easier). But, of course, the world seldom works that way, so too bad right?

Anyway E3 is usually a celebratory time for me, when I get to go out feeling like "Mr Cool Guy" and getting recklessly drunk in public and making all sorts of scene. This time it will be different, I am sure I will knock back a few at the bar, but really what I want to do is scour the landscape, document as much as I can, I am much more business-minded these days then I was several years ago. With games, the proof is in the pudding, and there will be a whole lot of pudding on display in a few days. It's overwhelming and exhausting to think about, in advance. All I can hope is that some good comes of it, for me..

Things have been tremendously busy for me in the past months. I have been working on several plans with a few different groups of people. Much of it has been back-and-forth-nebulous, but enough of it has powered me to keep going forward. I'll spit some of it out into the world shortly, to whatever consequence.. I am very looking forward to that point, when you cut something loose and truly "get the ball rolling." It's so hard to build up to that initial point, it sounds quite doable on paper but the reality is often that there's so much middling BS to mind as well that things tend to get a little messed up here and there. At this point in my life, in ANY project, I really come to expect it. Still, without speaking too whispy, I will say that I have been exercising my creative muscles quite a lot lately and it's making me feel quite competent. Now, so long as my nerves can hold out in the meantime..

The game world is - well, it's there. This has been a rather quiet spring, leading up to a customarily quiet summer. There's no huge tentpoles sticking out for the other ass-end of the year, 2009 is such a wash compared to an oversaturated 2008 (itself an orgasmic followup to an also hectic 2007). Hell year-on-year it's been this gargantuan, unstoppable, quite ridiculous really. And now here we are at the plateau - gears is behind us, resistance, rock bands and guitar heroes, halo this and that, whatever else it is that sony makes - wii is following up with decent titles these days but their luster has finally worn (no mario kart or zelda these days!) What do we get this year? GTA DLC, Bioshock 2 and.. um. I guess Modern Warfare 2 will clean up at the end of the year. No slouch, but something punchy is missing. A LOT is missing.

I have taken my usually-keen gaze away from the console arena a bit and I've been watching the downloads, the mobile stuff.. not that it's all wacky, but it's at least a little noteworthy. iPhone is the big catchphrase these days, it's no surprise, it is still trying to find it's way as a unique platform (more than enough support is there, it has it's own crazy market, the tech is quite formidable) but the "gamer" market is not quite absolutely embracing it just yet, it's still sort of a glorified Gameboy. I am waiting for someone to come and clean up shop and take over, they are really sitting on a goldmine (and I wonder how long they'll be able to fly in the face of the competitors, specifically Microsoft with it's endless deep pockets and eyes set squarely on "taking over the world of ANY KIND OF OS and INTERFACE DEVICE")

Man, I am so tired. So much thinking, there's a lot of things on my mind these days. I can no longer just sit back ad let some higher-up make the decisions, and hope that they don't trickle down and ruin my life (again). I am trying to be much more proactive, it's a necessity. I will always feel like such an outsider in this spiteful industry, I guess there's something to that then.. Anyway, back to work.

hello from the great beyond

2009-05-01T14:16:00.000-07:00

well, it has been ages since I have posted on my "game industry blog," how's that then? Things are alright, it's been a few months that I am out of work now. All things considered, overall it is not bad. I am exceptionally busy, probably as much as I usually am during the thickest of it - trying to maintain my nerves as there's just so much volume to deal with lately. I feel like I finally understand how a producer feels, in some regards - just spending the day on the phone with this guy or that fellow, trying to see where everything is at, trying to keep some cover on the documentation of everything, trying to plan backups for A, B and C, and essentially trying to be the glue that holds everything together in some fashion. And, trying to be creative and productive on TOP of that (and also take out the trash, do the laundry). Hey! Yesterday I went to the gym! It was the first time in weeks.. sigh..

Despite my frenetic pace, I am in a good place. There's a lot of progress going on, it's not by any means smooth but I am certainly getting a lot of things taken care of. I am feeling ridiculously creative right now - since I am no longer quite so pigeonholed (and feeling powerless in that way), my brain is free to spit things out in a forum where it's actually useful for a change. I am getting a lot of valid ideas on the table, some useful, others which lead to usefulness, in some ways. It is very invigorating. Sure, I am broke and stressed, but at least I feel happier for a change..

The game world is pretty mellow these days, unsurprisingly. Not much new is out, not much is on the horizon. No surprise for this year, truly an in-between year in the Annals of Game History. I played the demo for Bionic Commando last night (the next-gen version) - they put out a multiplayer demo. Not my thing, but then, I am no multiplayer combatant. Seems fine for what it is, and some people like it. I think when the full game releases, it will look alright!

I am spending a lot of time watching the iPhone scene lately. very, very interesting market. Man, Apple are such stalwarts, everything they do is always so zigzaggy and stubborn but - damn them, they ALWAYS figure it out somehow!! I have much to day about iPhone.. for now I gotta get a move on..

nastiness

2009-02-23T23:41:00.000-08:00

Oh, I feel dirty. It was bad enough when (gulp) I acquired an Xbox 360, PS3 and Wii all within mere months of one another. Worse, when I participated in some kind of online connections with each. But now-- NOW-- I have actually downloaded and installed Steam onto my PC. HEAVEN HELP ME - I KNOW NOT WHAT I HAVE DONE. Sigh. That's just for research. It can't have any possible bad repercussions in the future, can it? ULP.

Things are alright. I am busy as hell with all that has been going on. Learning lots of stuff. Running things thru my head, particularly business-wise. To be honest, it's nice sitting around at home and really I'd love to pull away from the PC and plant in front of the TV and just.. play some frickin' GAMES, man. Once in awhile I will look into my shelf full of software, longingly "soon, my pets... soon.." You know what - some of those discs have been sitting there for YEARS. Some of them have never even been removed from their cases, even - pathetic, eh? It's not laziness, it's just I don't have time to enjoy my hobby anymore! What used to be my hobby anyway.. Well, if I DID have time to indulge right now, I am sure I'd be further investing time into LittleBigPlanet - also Thunder Force VI which I picked up as a second-hand import. My friends gave me some Xbox points for my bday so I would likely check out R-type Dimensions, 'cause it looks so neat and trippy. Honestly, as mentioned earlier, I am anticipating the eventual release of Space Invaders Xtreme (or whatever they call it) on Live - that's probably my #1 interest in all of gaming, odd as it may sound (I still regularly enjoy rounds of the oldschool one - even all these years later, there's still something weirdly entrancing about it). Otherwise, hook my X-Arcade stick up to the original Xbox and go to town with Mame. Right now my idea of paradise, dorky as it sounds, is going through a 12-pack and a full day of no worries and just that..

I have a new PC running here at home.. it's a.. damn, I AM so weak with the tech... a P4 3.80 Ghz, 2GB of Ram. Some kinda video card in there too. In spite of it all, I am a shitty nerd so I don't know what that means so much, other than that it doesn't choke and kill me wen I try and run Photoshop, a 3D app and mayyyybe a game engine all at the same time. It might not be psyched, but at least it doesn't crawl. Also, unlike my old box, the thing hardly sounds like a damned vacuum cleaner when it is running. I like the future! And, more bonus, it doesn't take 35 minutes from powering the on-switch! Well okay that last one is likely my own fault, between age, viruses, adware, shitty uber-fragmented drives and what-have-you. Also, this is funny - i have an older (couple years) 500Gb USB drive, Maxtor, it was essentially my jukebox - that and a bunch of necessary data as well, it pooped out on me like a good 9 months ago or so. I tried the freezer trick. i tossed it around a bit (bad idea). I set it in the closet for.. oh, 7 months. One day I will have enough spare scratch, perhaps, to shuffle it around for resuscitation, oh I dunno if it is worth it even. But I did find a "hard drive repair" program which attempts to file through the partitions and see what can be salvaged. Sure, why not, it's just sitting in the damn closet anyway! Ah so it's been plugged in, and the app's been running. I launched it.. Uh.. a week and a half ago? Let's see where it is now (checks) 14%. Oh okay that's incredibly promising. So now it's what, almost the end of February? So sometime after July 4th then maybe I can see how much of my data got corrupted then? Sigh.

business minded

2009-02-19T23:51:00.000-08:00

it's been a wild week, kind of. lots of ups and downs - lots of things to think about. stuff that makes me happy, stuff that makes me depressed. stuff that makes me feel pressured - i guess it sounds like every other week in my professional life, right? anyway, it's good to keep busy, and there's a lot of directions that everything could go right now. today i woke up VERY late, after being grilled by the unemployment lady on the phone (that stuff is still up in the air - lovely!) Cleaned up my house a little, took a long walk thru hollywood - i like doing that, makes me remember i live in a world that exists beyond just my desk, fridge and toilet - had a nice burrito ultimo at baja fresh, contemplated hitting hooters next door for $2.50 beer specials (all day Thursday!) but, super-stuffed from my $9 Burrito (yeah,I need to not do that stuff right now!) i continued to amble on down hollywood blvd, westbound. They blocked off the main street cuz the academy awards are coming up and they have a massive show to prep - i rounded the corner on la brea then made my way back homewards.

got home, downloaded Noby Noby Boy for PS3 (by the dude who made Katamari Damacy) - messed with that a bit, then plunged back into learning a new game engine, i need to produce a self-imposed test to get a shot at a decent job that i am looking at. I know a guy over there, I don't know how good of an in it is (but anything helps!) - looking at their editor, it's a little cumbersome but not TOO bad so far, just trying to adapt my usual style and pick up like I always do (a lot of that in my life lately!). I am familiar enough of the theme they wanna see, so i am not to worried about nailing it at this point - hell, i have done it enough times before. just concerned "will i make it in enough time, before someone else snatches up that position?" and all the usual "what other limiting factors are gonna work against me?" But yeah, the course is always the same really. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.

I have my hands in lots of things right now. Perhaps a few too many - mostly interesting, some kind of outrageous. There's enough stress to keep me motivated to follow up as much as possible, well - between that and hope for a better future. One day it will line up alright! But yeah, good to be busy, and kinda nice to feel like i am kinda in charge of my destiny --- kiiiinda. As usual, i must remain humble, good to be confident but bad to lean on it, especially during these trying times.

Grab another beer and get back to work - now!

that weight has fallen

2009-02-13T02:14:00.001-08:00

It was leaning against the side of my computer and keeping it from making the damn whirry "I am gonna explode someday, soon" noise.

Tonight I drove out to the valley, it was my friend's kid's birthday. it made me melancholy - i really dislike the valley (as many do) for several reasons, but i do miss working there. in my decade-plus career in the industry, I have to say that my time at Neversoft was definitely the happiest, in many ways. Yeah, there were umpteen million tony hawk games put out by the time I joined up, but it was still a labor of love for many of the folks cranking them out even after that many iterations - and there was still a long way for things to go. But, that's beside the point - that was one of those studios which had attracted and maintained such a potent staff of wonderful, talented people, not only in their own right but collectively. I always used to refer to it as "imagine if you worked at a company with all of your best friends," even some of the shadier guys who kind of were more standoffish at first ended up being really genuinely cool guys who were a blast to hang out with. Man, I knew people at that studio for ages, and for my reasons I avoided trying to get in the door, I suppose - when I finally came around, well - it was kind of late, but I was still there long enough to learn and appreciate what i have just relayed. And of course, time passed and things change, as they always do. Projects changed, people left, priorities changed. Obviously, since that relative lull NS has gone on to be an even bigger and dramatically more successful company (lightning struck twice, who would have thought) - but the point I am settling on now is irrelevant in that regard.

Hollywood, I love it here, I really do - but it's a damned dark place. Not dark like the Combat Zone, per se, but still dark and shitty enough that you see a lot of messed up things when you venture out for a good time with your buddies, you see a lot of stupid people doing asinine things. You see your buddies getting a little sucked up into it; you see yourself getting sucked up too. So, yeah, after nearly a decade of this, one tends to get kinda down and depressed I guess (plus, hey, I am getting old). But hell, tonight hanging out with my buddies, those of the gang I used to see every day, work alongside, man - they have things that stress them, but they just seemed HAPPY, you know? One of the guys from Neversoft, he and his wife just had a kid and we watched them unwrap her 1st Birthday presents with her. And it was really a good time - just happy people, happy being together. It makes me a little sad, thinking back to those days, when things just were a little less complex, when we were all wrapped up in this stuff together, that excitement and enthusiasm.

The future is still bright, and it still makes me excited. I have a mixed feeling about my experiences over the past couple of years, it's not my interest to get into it now very much - for my own personal reasons as much as others - but I will say that I am very proud of the strides I have made, the tools I have learned, the work I have done, the perseverance and fortitude I have displayed, if only for self-gratification. And also, very importantly, I have made other friends since moving on from "that dream job," every time that's honestly one of the brightest points of this whole deal, working in this industry. It's not a shitty competitive rat-race. It's a brotherhood, it's fraternity, it's respect and appreciation and admiration. Yeah, sometimes I have been betrayed to some degree, I have had stupid crap happen, that happens to everyone. You never get less bitter for it, but you learn from it, and you move on, and you must appreciate all the positives that come out of it.

It's a sad time for a lot of folks in the world right now, even in this blog I have been writing much of the layoffs at many game companies - yeah, well there's plenty of poor SOBs out there in the world who have nothing to do with the games industry who are getting the pink slips handed to them en masse as well, let's not forget about them either all right! Good luck to us all, steel up for some more shitty darkness, and hopefully something good will come out of all of this, soon enough.

tough as nails

2009-02-12T12:37:00.000-08:00

So, things are alright. 2009 has been quite an interesting year out of the gate, and it's barely even started yet. I have to say I was a little disappointed at the beginning "oh it will be another one of THOSE years" and now - well, it's gonna be something. Just not too sure what...

The world of videogames is evolving in difficult and strange, painful ways. I guess it shouldn't be shocking, and yeah "the salad days" as we knew them are definitely over. There's still a lot of exciting, fun times coming, but it's gonna be hugely different from PS1 and PS2 eras. The world shapes games, and they shape the world. It's okay - even from my jaded standpoint, things have been kind of stale for awhile and in need of a drastic kick in the pants. It will come - the seeds are there (xbox live!). Nintendo and it's juggernaut systems will keep sailing along pretty powerfully. I don't know what things will look like when the dust clears, the world will still be there though!

I am really busy with my website, I have spent several hours pouring over it the past couple of weeks - have a look! www.texturemonkey.com - those that have seen it before will probably think "oh doesn't look that much different really.." Well, with certain things you can work on them a lot over time, even artistically - and the changes will be nearly negligable to the naked eye, but when you're dealing with a, ahem, nitpicky audience, a little will go a long way. The point is I have been running my website, in one form or another (it's pretty much direct from the same source - it's always been a portfolio website!) and though it's been upended quite a bit over time, I have it pretty comfortably representing myself, professionally, at this stage. There's always more I could do with it - and some of the stuff up there is painful as hell to look at and must get resolved ASAP - but for what it is worth, I am proud of my work and how it is presented there. Let me take this opportunity to request any feedback (always!) on anything up there, the overall design/presentation/individual content, anything that anyone sees that looks like it should be revamped or removed or whatever, please let me know - any info is always welcome and useful.

It is a really busy time for me right now. I have so much to think about, and a lot of important things to deal with - I wish I could write more about it on this blog, I will when the time is right. I will say this much, it is exciting and stressful at the same time (but then that is how it usually goes). Either way, watch this space, no matter what I should have some cool things to show and interesting news to relay soon enough.

the disco will find you

2009-01-20T19:43:00.001-08:00

Tuesday night, I sit here at my desk at Obsidian, digesting a freshly-devoured turkey sandwich. This sandwich, it should be noted, not only had pickles on it, but also coleslaw - some semi-spicy mustard - a dabble of half-fake mayonnaise, and some healthier (?) cheese substitute that still tastes enough like cheese that i will accept it. All of this, compliments of the fridge which resides next to my desk will i work, every day. Ah hell yes, it is the life, isn't it, folks???

So, I am a bit down lately. Work is taking me out a bit, I review my eleven preceding years in the games industry and realize I still have to make "the big hit." I have had a couple of close calls, that is I have been at some places where if things worked out differently for me I'd be a rather rich man by now. I could have had some crazy guitar hero residuals. I could have had some insane WOW money. God damn, if only I had a crystal ball... But that's the thing. It's hard to see this stuff coming. You never know where your studio is going to steer, nor what will be the Next Big Thing. I mean, to harp on it again, look at freakin' guitar hero. Look at it! That thing could have been made a decade ago! (Oh wait - it was!) Well, there's a clear-cut case of something showing up before it's time and not being properly implemented, but at least someone was on the ball with the thought process. Anyway even at the start of it's current genesis (as opposed to Konami's initial offerings) it still had some hurdles to pass, and a couple of iterations to catch on, but here it is. And now it's just a box with bars that float down it, while zillions of dollars are being made. So.. what, then, IS NEXT?

This is what all my bretheren are scratching their heads on while they cruise on the freeway each day. "Where's the next idea? Who's got the next crazy gimmick that everyone will want to shell out megabucks for? What do we want - what do THEY NEED?" And then, less troubling, how many times can we repackage this chippity choppity and crank it out until the stuff is milked and drained?

Well, I won't get all crazy with this. I am not in this "just for the money" - but hell. I get tired of working my ass off and pouring my heart and soul into this stuff, and years pass, and I'm still driving a beater, dressing like I am homeless, feeling kinda crushed and run-over while the world kind of keeps whizzing past me. It's funny, I can sometimes think of some ways to "get rich quick" but hey - it's pretty hard to just detach yourself from your relatively stable sure-thing routine and put everything on the line like that, especially when we are not living in the most prosperous of times. Honestly - I am so happy and fortunate right now to just have a JOB, and one where the people are cool, the projects are cool, and there's a lot of things that I can feel positive about. Yeah, of COURSE there's problems which make me feel madness. Sure I hate scrounging and compromising things in my life, who doesn't. But the industry is a different beast right now, it's no longer a case of "hum a few bars and I'll fake it." Competition is beyond ridiculous now (look how many AAA FPS titles released in the past few months!) - there's just not really much room for dicking around. 2008 was an incredibly rough year for games, one that really surprised me a lot - and so my guard is understandably up for the new year as a result. At this point - just let me keep doing what I do. I will walk the walk and talk the talk. I won't be a bitch and I won't be a whiny "i wiiiiish things could be difffferent!" Yeah, we all get antsy sometimes (we are people, not robots!) but at the beginning of the day and the end of the day, I pass through the main lobby of this office building - and I always feel pretty DAMN good to be passing in and out.

So what am I playing right now? Well.. COD4 oooorah, and Mappy.

OOorah! I want to put colecovision on my game boy micro. OOOOOrah!

adios EGM

2009-01-12T19:38:00.000-08:00

and so, another great videogame institution comes to an end. Though in many ways, for me EGM has been gone for so many years now, at least the one "of my childhood" - that rough, rushed-out magazine with half-realized misinformation and crappy editing, but all the same it looked very loved by those who worked on it and hey, it SPOKE to me! I would run to the mailbox every month hoping the new copy would be tightly folded in there, waiting for me - i still have a bunch of the old issues in a box in my closet, held together with staples and tape. "Turbografx-16 or Sega Genesis, which is better? First look at Super Mario 4, and Sega Genesis CD-ROM!" Ah the good old days.

EGM as it's been since I've been working in the industry is a whole different affair, but times are of course extremely different - oh, but they are. I don't need to go into it for the umpteenth time, about how games are a much bigger corporate deal than the days of my youth when it was merely a "hobby/toy" type of thing in the eyes of the industry.. Also, it's very important to mention how media/news dissemination has changed rather globally as well. It's no surprise that magazines (print journalism) just cannot compete with online journalism in many ways, though that isn't to say that print hasn't still got an important place (or is no longer relevant). It's sad to see that the online arm of EGM (1UP.com) really dropped the ball in maintaining pertinence alongside rivals like Gamestop or IGN (perhaps they should have followed through with some kind of merger in earlier times) and kept their legacy going - as it looks now, things are just hitting a wall and splintering. That's not to say no good will come of this - a lot of the 1UP/EGM editors have quite high visibility on the games journalism scene, and no doubt many of the more "regal" ones will at least be able to maintain their presence elsewhere, in a way that people can still follow along. Yeah, things like "the 1UP show" and "the Brodeo" are no longer in existence, but they do leave a legacy and some smart and talented people in their wake. Hopefully, time and money will both be on their sides to continue in an appreciable fashion. I mean, I would watch the 1UP show as often as possible, it was far from perfect but certainly a great way to see what was going on arond the industry, in many ways (even if from a very particular view).

It's interesting to see where gaming journalism is going - other than EGM, I'd been a pretty staunch reader of IGN for ages (though as my time became more precious, and IGN became more blowhardy/illegible, I barely look at it more than a couple of times a month these days!). It's hard to argue with sites like NeoGAF, and Gamasutra - between those two, and the aforementioned podcasts, I would generally feel failry well-informed on the state of things across the board, in at least a pretty broad fashion. I still have things to pay attention to, but yeah - I have been spoiled! Please, some one else, rush in to fill the gap...

It was not hard to foretell the end of EGM. I think I made some mention of this in recent blog posts, basically several high-level people have been leaving long-held positions at the magazine/network. It was only a matter of time really (also, the PC edition closed up shop a good 6 months or so ago, as well...) I can't say I am really that sad about the physical mag coming to an end, again it's not the same as it was years ago, all things considered.. but it was nice while it lasted. Good luck to all of those who lost their jobs (it's been a pretty rough season!) and I absolutely look forward to hearing more from those talented folks in the future. I will go on the record here, if we see something else along the lines of a professionally-produced 1UP Show/1UP Yours/Brodeo set of things pop up, I would definitely pitch in a few dollars for a subscription (as opposed to the free model of the past). That would certainly be worth a few bucks to me!

2008 - year-end wrap-up

2008-12-27T18:57:00.000-08:00

And so, my little blog finds it's way to the end of another year, and I suppose it's my duty (absolutely!) to do a little summation of what 2008 had in store for the world of gaming.

Unlike the previous year, 2008 seemed relatively quieter/less disruptive overall. A lot of money was made, lots of big sweeping changed occurred, but overall the year seemed kind of grey in it's tone. I would say in the bigger scheme of things, it was a somewhat forgettable year overall... not a bad one, though.

Lots and lots of big releases for a year I hadn't expected much fanfare from. We saw the PS3 hitting it's stride quite a bit, after kind of a dull 1st year in existence. Xbox 360 of course had a great year, well at least consistent if not... noteworthy. Wii is continuing to be a mammoth money-making machine, and it saw some decent releases as well, but again nothing like it's previous year (though it saw a few very solid titles). DS and PSP sort of went on doing their thing, with expected efforts.

Economically, I can't say I know how much moolah the games industry raked in, but you can bet it was something hefty. I believe March alone saw something in the neighborhood of a BILLION dollars (a sum that previous entire years could not match!) and that was before some of the year's bigger releases had even come out. Despite the wild profits, game development has become exponentially more expensive, so in spite of wonderful sales, it's costing much more to get to those profits - we saw a lot of layoffs and studio closures this year, as the typical cycle of change continued in the industry. It really hit in earnest toward the end of the year (not unusual for such things) but what a bummer..!

Games releases - as noted, I was a little clueless about what was due to come down the pipe this year, but as it unfolded I wised up. We saw heavy hitters Metal Gear Solid 4 and GTA 4 of course, with much buildup and fanfare proclaiming these games to be the Second Coming for some time now. Ultimately, they may have failed to live up to that hype, and regardless of what their ultimate effects were on their audiences, they did deliver - and they DID sell loads of copies. Of course all eyes were on the Wii this year, as it's been building up quite a head of steam since release - for a variety of reasons, not least of which is it's remarkably well built-up userbase (hey, it is still challenging to find a wii system available for purchase on a store shelf! It has been TWO YEARS!) Wii did well with titles such as Smash Bros. Brawl, Mario Kart, and of course Wii Fit - regardless of how these titles rated, or their staying power, they were standout during the year for various reasons. Wii Music released for the holidays, a game which I am sure will always be remembered as one that never-quite-fit, though it does seem to have it's fans (though perhaps not the intended sales). Personally, the Wii surpised me with the "EA/Steven Spielberg Collaboration" Boom Blox, which looks horribly childish (and low-tech) but is just incredibly fun, particularly at parties. No one wanted to like this game, but after playing it I don't think anyone could argue that it's one of the most enjoyable videogames ever produced, in many ways..

PS3 games.. ummm.. it's escaping me right now, WHAT came out for this system - was lair this year? Sigh. PS3 is stuttering along, they aren't exactly falling apart at the seams but certainly failing to impress when it really counts. I guess we saw Ninja Gaiden 2 on PS3 - or was it Xbox? (Exactly! Well, it was only on Xbox actually) Devil May Cry released for both systems this year as well, a former PS3 exclusive that wanted to "make money" and I cannot blame them. So they got their MGS4
anyway, and the (who noticed?) Metal gear Online as well. I couldn't even tell you if there was a SOCOM. Gran Turismo Prologue I think (enough with this...!) Ratchet and Clank got a very tiny side-story (better than nothing, but commendable nonetheless). No Jak and Daxter, no Spyro, okay that stuff is a generation or two old but still we should have seen something by SOMEone. There's big holes in their release schedule, and not much excuse for it. I mean, money is waiting to be spent! At the end of the year we got another Motorstorm (who asked for it?) and Resistance 2 (should have waited another year, or "who asked for this either?") Sony is a smart and powerful company, who seem to be making some extremely predictable missteps. Yea, they are making money. Yeah, their system is "formidable." But they are losing a lot of ground for some pretty simple reasons. I guess this is what happens when you start getting top-heavy (and invested a bit much in the longevity of the PS2). I predict a better 09 for PS3, but still sluggish and stale. Lest I forget, at least we got LittleBigPlanet out of the deal, one of the coolest games I have EVER seen. Truly a game which maybe didn't "deserve" to exist (2D? DIY? on PLAYSTATION?) but it gives me hope and pride to see a game this gorgeous, brilliant, and full of pep and character come out with this kind of backing. It won't make them tons of money, but at least it shows some willingness to do something weird and different.

XBox has gone on as planned - business as usual. What the hell big-name titles did they release this year, I can't even get anything out of my head? Who cares. Xbox is to hardcore gamers as Wii is to everyone else. They are truly the PS2 of this generation, in that they have games for all walks of life. Unlike PS2, they are powerful enough (technically) to stand head-to-head with the competition (PS2 always looked weak next to Xbox and Gamecube, though it had many more "fun games" that everybody wanted). Okay, this is bothering me, WHAT DID COME OUT for Xbox this year? Mass Effect was the end of 2007 - fallout was mutli-SKU. yeah I know Gears 2. Um... Viva Pinata 2? Banjo-Kazooie? Fable 2? Shoot I am drawing a blank, what a cheesy way to wrap up my year-end of blogging then. I guess they kinda lay back and let the multi-platform stuff run the show on autopilot then.. which I guess you an do when a billion people have already purchased your platform, and keep doing so. Notably, 360 is extremely progressive in Japan, where once upon a time (forever!) any game system not produced by Nintendo or Sony or the like was instantly DOA. Same for 360 for a time. Anyway I have to hand it to them for turning things around. I am still waiting to see if my system dies... sigh. Online, nothing spectacular. Geo Wars II, but everyone's forgotten already. I was excited - to a degree - for Galaga Legions, but the demo left me uninterested (this, after all the enjoyment I got out of Pacman CE). As noted in an earlier entry, I am waiting to see Space Invaders Extreme over here, I think that'll be a blast...!

What did the PC guys get - well, other than the usual Multi-SKU stuff, EA/Mythic got Warhammer out the door hoping to steal a little WOW thunder - no clue how that's going, though I am sure it's only a matter of time until another one bites the dust (you can't stop those guys.. behemoth!) Of course the new WOW expansion released recently as well, and it moved record units, though again.. it's an expansion. WOW's gotta get old sooner or later, but it's got some crazy-remarkable staying power. EA Maxis' Spore finally saw light, after umpteen years of development and redevelopment - again, to no great fanfare. It sounds interesting, but another halfhearted effort at the end of the day, no doubt throttled by politics and economics. But hey, I am not gonna be one to kick EA when they are down, they have definitely been trying to do right by the critics as of late (much to their stockholders' chagrin).

--ONLINE --

PS3 finally got their "online experience" Home up and running, after much lead-up. I don't think many people like this thing, personally I see it as a warm pile, but I stand by my conviction that it still holds enormous potential - if exploited properly, it could become a really unique, enjoyable experience. It needs the right people in charge of it, someone with a combination of technical knowhow and imagination and enthusiasm to make it their baby, who won't cave into the suits so much - I think it could take off (I'd love to give it a shot!) That'll never happen, but as far as where it does go, time will only tell.

Xbox has their "NXE New Xbox Experience" as well, which I think is kinda gross as well, but at least they are trying to change with the times - even if it doesn't fit my taste (and I'd never promote "changing for the sake of changing," at least not in such a fashion). Still it's noticeably more accessible than Wii's 24Connect service - yuck - but hey at least Nintendo has done SOMETHING. Pathetic that it must be so championed -- Again, I'd love to be the person in charge of designing such things, as there's a lot they could learn from M$ Live and the PSN.

Soooo, yeah! Another year, all wrapped up all pretty with a big ol' BOW on it. And me, what did I play? Ah heck, I am no gamer. I just read GAF a lot, boy. I got a vectrex! That's fun! I got a TG-16 and CDRom and Japanese card to play JPN discs! I guess my most enjoyment was a few notable sessions of Boom Blox on Wii with friends, plus back to it with more Rock Band (though that's pretty stale by now. Still fun, but old!) Honestly we pulled Bomberman 2 out for SNES at a few parties this year and that got a lot of play, that was probably the most enjoyable gaming for me. I played a bit of Wii Fit, it's not "fun!" but it does feel useful and gets me more interested in going to the gym and stuff. I would love to see a tweaked-out version of this, or something.. I still have to charge up my gameboy micro with some other games... As for PSP and DS, lest I forget, nooooot much to sayyyyyyy. PSP is yawny, DS is always eh-to-really good, and iPhone/Google-thing are the ones to keep an eye on.

Am I excited for the coming year in games? Not really. It's just kind of grinding away at this point. Wii's the one to watch, always, it gets the "weird games" which I find enjoyable. Uncharted 2 will likely be fun, colorful, and more-of-the-same... God of War 2 will of course look excellent and be fun. Xbox will keep coasting. No one will care about PSP, and more weird little games will come out for DS. Everyone and their mother will keep wringing their hairs over WOW. Bleah.

---SCRREEEEECH! I almost forgot! Can't have a year-end wrap-up without some mention of the weirdness in the industry! Aside from all the upset (layoffs times a million), the usual hubbub- 19 new guitar hero games announced, activision/Blizzard merger and all of that fallout, death knells of giants like Midway and THQ, etc... we saw a lot of change in the gaming press. A lot of big names who were active in the press retired, or went over to dev, or what-have-you. Also my favorite podcasty-thing Retrogaming radio pretty much ran outta steam after a decade. Over all it was a lot of changing of the guard, across a LOT of sources that I followed, and I am not too pleased about all of that - a new day is dawning, and it's with a lot of the old guard being absent. And so it goes. Happy new year.

so WHAT in the HELL??

2008-12-22T20:35:00.000-08:00

Okay, so it is the time of the year - the end - when I would usually take the opportunity to sum up my thoughts on the whole past year of gaming. What's good, what's bad, what was a surprise, and what was -- the best, and worst! WELL - gonna save that for next time. This post will deal with the horrible state of the game industry, lately...

So, no one is a stranger to the notion that the entire country is in some economic turmoil right now, that's rather well-known. Plenty of people are out of work, there's no money ANYWHERE, we're all just freakin' miserable. Save for a new administration shortly to be inaugurated into the White House, it's pretty bleak bleak across the board, and that sucks. Two things - 1. Gasoline is about as cheap as it was like 10 yrs ago (how did that happen?) And 2. Videogaming, as a business, is doing better than ever in history.

So what's to complain about - well, for starters, a lot of the old guard is eating it hard. Typically (and ironically), right before the holidays is when the layoffs generally kick in. That sucks, but that is how it goes - therefore it is no surprise that some studious would downsize at this time of year. However I have never seen it happen at such record numbers. Like TEN studios have been suffering dire economic catastrophe and resorted to laying off staff this season! Maybe not ten, but certainly getting up there. I can't name them all - Aspyr, Midway (yeah, the long-standing old-timers!), Sony (not the games division yet, but even so) - Turbine, EA (record numbers of layoffs). Factor 5, Free Radical. That's off the top of my head, surely there have been a couple more. I know some Activision Blizzard studios got shuttered too (Mass Media, either laid off or closed completely, I don't recall). So what's this all about then? Games are making record money, to a ridiculous degree - where is it all going?

The development model is in need of a change. What worked with small teams on smaller-scale productions can't hold in this multi-million dollar climate. Studios NEED to churn out blockbuster titles to make money, since they are pouring so much dough into development. And now we have a peculiar phenomenon - even if a studio produces a quality title, will it even sell? It used to be the case where the worst thing one could imagine was that the market would be flooded with crap. Now, strangely, the market is flooded with good damned games! You look at the release schedule for the holiday season and what do you see - Tomb Raider. Resistance 2. Gears of War 2. Left for Dead. Dead Space. Mirror's Edge. Call of Duty 5. Rock band 2. Guitar Hero 4. LittleBigPlanet. Fable Fallout 3. WOW Lich King. This is the tip of the iceberg - thank GOD our game didn't ship this season..! Who has the time to play half this stuff? I guess it is actually GOOD people are losing their jobs, so they can manage to sit home and have time to play all these games!

So what is next? You make a bunch of decent selling games, then one bomb and you're toast - is that how this plays out? Suddenly making DS and PSP titles is sounding way more attractive. Is there money to be made there by anyone besides Nintendo? Man are those guys having the last laugh (and look at their Xmas release schedule, it's dead - they didn't even NEED to release anything! Mario Kart and Wii Fit are still doing well enough..). Then there's iPhone development, and beyond that things like Steam, Xbox Live, PSN, Wiiware.. all new models, all waiting for their time to hit, and in what fashion I cannot quite say. Well, it will be big, whatever form it takes, no one can deny that online deployment is the way of the future, and it is only a matter of time.

So, to my fallen comrades, I salute you. I have been laid off before, and it truly sucks. This is exacerbated if you have a family and all of that, especially now with the crushed economy and hell - it IS the holidays. I can't say what's to come, all I know is that it was a banner year for games (some of the best releases ever, and some of the worst layoffs and closures by a wide margin). Hopefully onto better times, though I suspect rocky roads lie ahead. We'll see how it goes. In the meantime, if you are reading this and you are on the other side, I wish you much luck and hope you can get crackin' on your demo reel... there's a damned lot of competition out there, that's for sure.

No Place like Home - thankfully...

2008-12-14T12:05:00.001-08:00

so, PS3's Home (beta) finally released for the general public's consumption a couple of days ago, how did it's much-anticipated release fare? Well, not so hot. The thing has been in the cooker for a good couple of years now, and as noted there's been a lot of anticipation of the thing - though I wouldn't say it was of the "hot" variety. Xbox live has been getting long in the tooth, the WiiConnect24 is just kinda.. sloppy, and now PS3 has their service to compete.

In their defense, the overall PSN looks good to an "average user like me." It's ripped-off the Xbox live service appropriately enough (which basically is what we'd had wanted them to do) and it's easily and cleanly accessible. It always seemed a fair question "why do we need a 3D version of this to walk around in?" Home tries to show us why this is cool. The graphics in Home are slick and clean, as expected of a system of this generation - but man! As soon as you touch down, and start wandering the landscape, you realize that there's just nothing to do in here. There's a bunch of 14-yr-olds spouting their shitty gang-speak about noting in particular, and a couple of sad-looking cases trying to explain that they think MGS4 is kewl. Of course, that's what you're probably supposed to WANT to do in an app like home, but something is just getting lost in the process.

I don't want to condemn Home. I still think it is a genius idea, it's very viable, if handled properly. At this point they've shot it out there just so they could at least say "it's out" and feel like they didn't completely waste their development time and budget - and now they can get honest-to-goodness feedback and supposedly concentrate on constructing a workable 2.0. As it is now, Home is empty and depressing, barely a hint at what could have been if it obviously hadn't misfired due to some (well-intentioned?) politics. No one will argue that the model is full of potential - one need only look at things like Facebook/Myspace, and of course WOW and Second Life. Sony can't expect to just put out "a product" with their label on it, and expect it to sing 'cause it's free. They need to put some minds behind this.

Walking around in the game it immediately becomes frustrating "oh I can.. I can walk. And what's this? I can sit as well. Oh! I can dance!" That's fine for starters. You know what I want? I want to skateboard! Rollerblade. SOMETHING. Rip off the whole Tony Hawk series, I don't care (it's been done). If ATVI had their heads on straight they'd just make a free online THPS world like this, it would get lots of flack but people would definitely live in it! I would! It's hard to look at a project like this when there's tings like GTA and Saints Row out there, online-ish communities where you can at least... do things. Okay maybe it's not cool to be able ot kill people in Home, but at least put a paintball (or lazer tag) arena in there. A climbing wall/jungle gym. Parkour. Something involving physics. A moonwalk. A weird carnival - something!

I can't let them get away with their bowling alley either. I didn't bother to try bowling - of course I wanted to see how the arcade looked. Man, it was sad. There were like 7 machines (3 different varieties?) and you had to wait in line to play. You watched someone else's avatar stand in front of a machine while they "played." Not moving, just.. standing there. Then you roll up, if you can get on.. and then wait a few minutes for the freakin' thing to load and play... echochrome? Would anyone "play" echochrome in an arcade? I played about 15 seconds and then quit the arcade. Please, Sony.. license like 500 old-ass arcade games from the early 80s (at least) and stick them in beautifully decked-out retro arcades. The newbs will hate it but us old-timers will love it - besides those old games are tiny (less than half a meg for the oldy-old ones, a couple megs after that) it would be no problem to stream that stuff over. Sounds like Namco is on the ball with getting this started, wisely...

So, basically the most entertaining part of Home was when I walked into a movie theater. A bunch of bored people were arguing over their headsets, yelling about how fat and stupid each other were. It was all very strange, but.. it was something to watch, and hey it was unique. People got bored and felt like they were wasting their time, so i guess they had to find some way to entertain themselves.

In closing, Home = not a colossal failure, but for what it is it doesn't measure up. Bring someone new in there and give them some power, for they definitely have some good foundation to build on - the enthusiasm just needs to come in.

some kid blogs, the internet looks at him, companies get mad

2008-12-08T23:57:00.000-08:00

and hilarity ensues. money is spent (pageviews) and lost (game developer, floundering, takes another groin-hit). So this dude at Factor 5 in northern cali writes in his blog about how the company is suffering some fiscal difficulties. Dunno how or why, the guy is all of a year in the industry but somehow some non-spider gloms onto it and the beans spill across 1UP.Com about the troubles - projects getting cut, money getting lost, people not getting paid, yadda yadda. The guy (he is 24) is using the internet for therapy (hey.. it happens) and now I am sure he is looking at no more work in the games industry for a little while, doing what little he can to save face (I'd do the same, deleting the offending blogpost and putting up a sloppy retraction). Hell I gotta give him credit, he probably cleaned up a little better than I would have, but that's just my insecurity.

Anyway good luck to him. I have heard of people getting blackballed in this industry, it was a mistake of youth and of course let's not yet forget that the Internet is truly Pandora's Box - we do not yet know what we wreak -

Having a blog is a difficult thing for me, I have a game blog and a personal blog. I keep this game industry blog not because I just LooOOooOOoove to do noting but write and write ad write about games all day and night, in fact it can be something of a drag sometimes - but the industry is quite fascinating, no matter what, and I do have a somewhat unique view from my perspective. I like to think that, whether or not I get many readers in here, I do hold some responsibility in some fashion to document my work, at the very least for myself - my work, and that of those around me, this industry around me, these times.

When my game blog was new, I discussed it with a fellow dev over dinner one fateful night, she being a writer as well, no doubt more capable than myself (well, technically, anyway) - she expressed interest in starting an industry blog of her own, but shunned the idea as it was "a conflict of interest." Well the Factor 5 fellow proved her right I suppose, but I maintain that it can be done, if properly, without threatening one's livelihood - and without sacrificing the dignity of the writing, as well.

Is this a perfect experiment? Far from it. I have learned from it, I have a lot to learn yet - perhaps someone will stumble on my own blog some day and hold me up to some scrutiny as well (be gentle!) Perhaps a current or future boss will happen upon it, and it may negatively affect my career - or, perhaps the result will be positive.

One thing is for sure, when dealing with business, one must take their world seriously, they mustn't act impetuous (even if our world is stifling-suffocating with manchildren, I mean hell we make videogames - about robots and boobies and tentacles and spaceships and crap) - but we must be responsible as well, across the board. Sigh - I could write a book, EASILY, I have worked 11 years in this field now. I have seen and heard (and been part of) all manner of crazy stories. I could make some money, probably, and get out of my grunt position. But you know what, that isn't what I want. I like sitting there, at my desk. I like building and lighting levels, hanging out with my buddies, figuring this stuff out. I love the insane politics and the crazy hours. Well, it's what I do.

Robot Rondo

2008-12-08T02:21:00.000-08:00

2:21am, monday morning. I am sitting here in my blue and yellow "police" shirt, eating birthday cake and drinking coke. i need to be awake in some hours to go to work. instead i am sitting here eating this crap and typing in my game-blog - oh well, i suppose i could be doing worse things at this hour, eh?

news, Space Invaders Extreme is coming to XBLA, which is a definite-buy for me. I don't know wen it's out (shortly I hope!) but this game received lots of critical acclaim in the portable incarnations, so I think I can see myself parting with a few bucks for some good timey-ness. I am a fellow who still actually (very much) enjoys a good game of classic space invaders, even all these years later. it's a hard game, but it rewards patience with addiction. On a side note, while i loved the Pacman:CE update, I wasn't so taken with the demo for Galaga Legions.. hey well, that is why they have demos. Right?

More news, one of my very favorite things in all of videogames, a podcast called "retrogaming radio," has finally been officially retired. This guy Shane Monroe, who I affectionately would refer to in the past as "the Michael Moore of Videogames," decided after 10+ years of consistent output to hang up his mike. This was the longest-running podcast i have been into, since the dawn of my own career in the filed actually - and I am quite sad to see it go. Knowing him, the show will not die a true death - I hope! - at the same time, I know that life goes on and at some point one must move on and say "enough is enough." I encourage any who read this to seek out the website, if you are at all passionate about the world of retrogaming there is a goldmine out there waiting for you to plunder (hey the show is about retrogames, so it's all currently as relevant as it'd ever be, really!)

More news also, I got my hands on a divx of a documentary called "chasing ghosts:beyond the arcade" - seek out the trailer on youtube. in this post-"king of kong" world, it's interesting to have a different, more documentary look at the world of early-80s competitive videogaming, the world and the people who lived in it, and what it was all about - see the other movie for what little was left in it's wake. Fascinating movie, I was interested to see it for a couple of years now, though not quite was I was expecting - rather dark, upsetting, I am a child of that era, and it all seems so distant and irrelevant now. Of course all of videogaming is so different now from those pre-crash days, no doubt, but it does seem sad how such a colorful and interesting time mutated into something completely and utterly different. A good lesson to learn from...

Work is alright, i have been busy. I had a long weekend, our office moved into swankier digs, tomorrow's the first day over there so it will be interesting to see how high-class it will be (I have expectations!) Though I must say, a part of me will always prefer the more humble locales of some videogame development studios. I remember when I was with Neversoft, and we moved from one office building into a larger, more dedicated facility - Yes it was fancy, but of course it was like leaving a somewhat exciting, touching piece of history behind. And so it goes, and of course they found even greater success since relocating. Hey here's to that, you know?

Early December, all the big releases for the year have come and gone. It's all quiet as we gear up for a little mellow time across the industry, and then of course the next phalanx of releases will be out for early-early spring. What's next on the radar, my head is a little low. Killzone of course - that's the biggest thing I can think of. I guess Infamous and Bionic Commando are due in some coming months as well, but really everyone is just quiet as heck these days. No surprise coming off of such a busy season, but.. hey, what the devil is up nintendo's sleeve, anyway? I guess they are just at the phase right now where they can truly kick back, take a breather, and let the money keep-a-rollin' on in.

nice and rotten

2008-12-01T02:45:00.001-08:00

the thanksgiving holiday is behind us, and now we can all get on with our lives.
Thanksgiving, as a yout', was traditionally the point of departure for me between my whole previous year of gaming and the beginning of the whole COMING year, the things i had been salivating over in gaming magazines for the past several months were finally seeing the light of day at Toys R Us, EBX and Child World, or the like. It was pretty much a high point of the year for me (well, of course I generally didn't like being in school very much, and I wasn't into sports and stuff like that, I suppose my parents were too lazy to kick my ass and make me go outside.. sigh) Anyway, now as an adult I view it from the flip side, seeing all these games trickling out just past halloween and the media barrage that accompanies them, of course driven in that particular way that only the internet can do -- yeah, if we had this stuff when I was a kid, I suppose I would have ended up being even more antisocial then I was already..

Thanksgiving was alright, we got a bunch of time in with Rockband 2, though I must admit that after a year, I have had enough. I have a long way to go with the drums, and I have barely touched the guitar - more than any of that I've not ever really touched the progression modes, in my househould RB usually serves as party entertainment. It's been fun while it lasted and it will be awhile yet, but the novelty has definitely passed (and I can't say I am too terribly looking forward to download many more tunes). I suppose if the selection blew wide open and there was a lot more to chose from - the selection, while decent, has always felt painfully limited to me, though I can not blame them for putting out a decent effort - then I would get a fair bit more enjoyment out of it for some months to come. I suppose that's up to the future of rhythm games, a genre which is still relatively early along in it's stride. The problem with the whole "yearly update agenda" they push with these things, is that it kills the potential and enthusiasm. Either that, or sink a shit-ton of R+D into the thing and blow a fat wad of cash to absolutely annihilate the competition. They don't need to, so they won't - the short term answer is it's a pretty powerful juggernaut, though the potential for better games inthe long term gets kind of diminished as a result. No matter really, since I suppose no one ever really knows what they are missing - though they do realize when they are bored...

Bookending the sessions of Rockband, we pulled out the SNES and played some Bomberman 2. I have had it sitting in my closet for a good year and a half or so, with little more than a session here and there in the past with the game. Truth be told, I never really caught the train on the whole Bomberman trend, not that I didn't dig it, the game just fell through the cracks with me. I did finally get wind of it several years later, and plunked down for a set, and glad to say I did, the game is a lot of fun! I realize there's like EIGHTY variations of Bman out there, and I can't really say I know where to go next (or that I really need to). Four-player local is enough for me, I guess I will see if I can hunt down the first SNES iteration as well as the game gets some praise. Really, games like that still hold up very well, they remind me that we don't need to churn out crazy tech to have extremely fun gaming. Honestly, they still look and feel more than satisfying enough.. I like when this happens, pulling up a rock and finding a whole cool branch of gaming that one was kind of oblivious to in the past, that can still be enjoyed.

your penguin has slowed you down

2008-11-26T01:08:00.000-08:00

Thunderforce VI is a shooter (R-Type type of shooter, not Quake style of shooter!!) has released for PS2 in Japan, it's been nearly 1 month. This was one of my favorite series of games in one of my favorite genres of games, and it's been.. about 10 years since the last iteration released. I guess I only was a big fan of the first two, but I still enjoy the music and aesthetics of those series to this day. that might sound weird, a little, but if you know the games, you know what I mean. I am tempted to plunk down the dough for an import, or an ebay, but i might wait till i can find it sub-$50 - especially since it doesn't sound like the perfect "return to form" that some might have hoped, or expected it would be. I guess I have to be supportive either way, and it does sound fun, but honestly I have a billion gazillion other games i can keep busy with any event. If they touted it truly as a must-have then that would be one thing, anyway I know better than to expect to see high-tech shooters from anywhere in the world these days that are any kind of SERIOUSLY competent.. that's okay, they're a pretty forgotten game, and at least i will have the oldies always kicking around. Anyway, makes me feel old, sigh.

Though if Compile spat out something like a decent followup back from the grave, I would have to pay attention I suppose...

I downloaded the demo for the new Tomb Raider Underworld 360 - gorgeous game, in this post-Uncharted world I guess it would pretty much HAVE to be. Not as charismatic as that title from hat i could see, but geez - breathtakingly gorgeous. These games have raised the bar, this is history right here. We won't see too much able to measure up to game like this, at least aesthetically, not much more this generation I am sure (just because - is it truly worth the dev time/cost yet?) I am not saying I wouldn't love to see more beautiful games of this nature, I am just saying it's not what you could consider cost-effective, ad if someday we reach the point where that's the rule rather than the exception to maintain such a level of quality, then the industry will be run markedly different, I will say that.

Picking up with LittleBig here and there, a remarkable game - NOT without it's issues for certain, but a fine entry nonetheless and I don't think you could find anybody, really, who hasn't been piqued by it. Yeah, it's definitely NOT for everyone, and in fact I think it's one of those titles which both alienates it's target audience (cumbersome community system, heavy difficulty, tricky play controls) while those who would truly enjoy such a thing are probably turned off by it's cutesy aesthetic. Also the editor (for the meat of the game - the designing aspect), while powerful and capable, is kind of wasted somewhat due to the fact that most people just DON'T WANT POWERFUL EDITORS WITH WHICH TO DESIGN STUFF. They really just want to be spoon-fed things that are fun off the bat and play them right then and there. I guess it is one thing if there's not a ton of other worthy titles demanding the average gamer's attentions at the moment. Personally, I am excited to play with the editor some more, I have a few ideas I would love to play with, but at this point my time is kind of precious and limited for such things, but hey - i am in no hurry, it's not going anywhere.

It boils down to the notion that i would love to design some 3D platforming of my own, but as mentioned above "i am always too busy" - still considering my career choices, i think this would only do me a good service, and I intend to get on with it. At some point!

I picked up a Wii game, Shawn White Snowboarding - unusual for me in many regards, but we have a balance board here and interesting Wii games (especially of this nature) are certainly few and far between. Still this one got a good bit of press, and it sounded like it might be worth a look for a few reasons. Like anybody with half a brain I enjoyed SSX back in the day (though A. never got terribly far with it and B. never really moved on from there so much) but after skiing in Wii Fit, I was interested in going a little further via the motion-control setup for such a sport-game.. Wort picking up, though I must say after being Tony Hawkified those aesthetics and "story" trappings are kind of a drag for me - it's pretty downplayed so I can't really complain. I just miss when the Japanese games did this stuff all weird and differently styled (jet grind radioooooo) and Nickelodean style just doesn't measure up the same.

Things are alright up Obsidian - always a few things to say about that place! They got out a genuinely cool trailer for Alpha Protocol about a week ago, I believe it's at Gamespot or somewhere. Also we got a cover story with PSM that is currently on the stands. Nice to see it getting a little bit of press here and there, the things not been announced a whole year yet - I look forward to when they start letting the substantial stuff release a little more and how that all gels.

Aliens is going along, we are pretty quiet across the board and I am gonna keep mum as well. Suffice it to say I am happy on this project, one thing that must be mentioned is that I really like my team here as well. The people are really nice, friendly, patient.. it feels good to get good feedback as well, and I feel my work/capabilities mesh well with the rest of the folks over there...

Lots more to say as usual, I hope to update this thing much more often in the coming year. Stay tuned.

no, no, no.. november...

2008-11-12T01:13:00.000-08:00

hullo, and welcome to the column. It's a busy busy season, so let us jump right in. The irony is that I perceived this fall as being a pretty dull season, last spring (and even into summer) - I guess I was being a bit clueless then, as it is one of the absolutely fullest schedules on record! I thought last year could not be beaten, between Halo and Mario and Ratchet and Clank and Crysis, Portal, COD, a bunch of other things - man was I wrong! Right now we are looking at Rock Band 2, Guitar Hero IV, Resistance 2, Gears of War 2, Left for Dead, Saints Row 2 (to a lesser extent, but still!, Mirror's Edge, LittleBigPlanet, of course the new WOW expansion is out in a couple of days, I believe a new C+C just released. The new Tomb Raider game is looking fine as well. Motorstorm if you like that genre.. Whew. If you are a gamer, you are a busy guy right now. It sorta sucks that all this stuff releases at the same time, in some ways..

Surely there's a couple more I missed in there, but ya get the drift..

As for what I have been up to, well I did manage to get my hands on LittleBigPlanet, honestly the only game I have really had my eye on for some time. It's a hot little game, a very powerful engine in there and I think we are going to see some wonderful product from the fan community. So far much of the user-created stuff I have looked at has been pure drivel, but I can suspect that some amazing stuff is coming down the tubes. Myself, I have not made it terribly far through the tutorials, but what I have messed with has piqued my interest - when I get some time to do so, I will put it trough the motions. I will tell ya, as my job already is somewhat close to design, it is a bit hard to wanna come home and start cracking the book with this thin, though - but geez. What a canvas. My mind keeps racing, how I would have loved this toy when I was a kid, that would have been IT for me. Every aspiring game-maker owes it to him or herself to pick up this masterpiece! I mean, it's definitely limited, but they could certainly use this for college courses at the high-end, and prototyping at the low end...

I downloaded the mirror's edge demo on PS3, a gorgeous game - some things are off about it, but I appreciate the balls to put out a game like that. Hopefully it will fare well in it's reception. As with most things of it's ilk, I had enough from merely putting in some time with the demo, but I would say it's worth looking at, some very very good looking shots in that game. I'd like ot see them use it as a springboard, use that tech and those ideas to get away from this clean sterile city, make it alive and rich. Kind of swing halfway between this and a tony hawk game, or something - just a playground that you can pull amazing, adrenaline-dripping stunts out of, get that wonderful rhythm going.

Work is going alright, as usual there's a billion things going through my mind about Obsidian these days. I am on the Aliens project about 6 weeks now, I have learned so much in the brief period - getting chances here and there to express that, it's coming faster now. I have said it before, it is truly like working at a completely different company since I've migrated from the previous title, in some ways..

That should do for now, lots on my mind gaming-wise but as is often the case, I will have to get into it later...

you're ON!!

2008-10-26T20:34:00.000-07:00

hello, texturizers, nothing to see hare. Mauve along.

I have been silent in my game blog for awhile now, maybe a bit longer than I'd like - I would think it'd be prudent to post in here maybe once or twice a week, at best, if I ever want it to be taken any-kind of seriously. But as usual, I have life and work and such to think about, and I do have my "real blog" to pour into when the writing bug strikes. Still, I have much to say on the world of gaming (and my work), so it'll come when it does. And it does, now..

At Oblivion, I mean Obsidian (was that a slip?) I have finally moved over to the Aliens team. Not sure how much I am allowed to talk on this stuff, so I must keep it pretty brief. After spending the last year and a half of my life living in Alpha Protocol, and all that entails, it is bittersweet to move on - I'll just say that the last work I was doing on that project looked like my best so far. Aliens-wise, well - I took the job with this studio specifically because I wanted to work on this title. So there! I am gonna miss working with Unreal Editor, though. I whined about it a good bit at first, but I feel pretty capable with it these days. So gratifying!

Nothing is spinning in my disc tray lately. AT ALL. The only modern-ish game-ish thing i have spent any time with was the Pixeljunk Eden demo on PS3. I seriously logged a good 10 hours in there - I didn't even feel the need to buy the full game, it was one of those where you can totally just cruise with the demo as it is. Fun though, nice little game to chill out and kick back with and while away some hours. Also downloaded the Mega Man 9 demo, expecting to make short work of it. holy CRAP tough. I am ashamed to say I could not pass the halfway mark of the stupid demo level - it only succeeded in pissing me off. Mind you I am a longtime lover of Mega Man TWO specifically - but geez. Anyway I think I am a huge loser if I don't shell out for Mega 9 sometime soon. 10 bucks, geez. Why the hell not.

LittleBigPlanet is the game I have got my eye on. I am going to see if I can snatch this business up this week - I sense this game might be something else. I haven't actually shelled out an honest $60 for a PS3 title yet, in the nearly one year I have owned the device - and the title that packed-in with it, Motorstorm, never got more than maybe 5 minutes of playtime from me (for shame! I know) so it is high-time to pick up something worthwhile, and this game looks like it's gonna be at least that. In this day and age of franchised IPs up the wazoo, it's no small feat when a game comes out with backing like this and interesting possibilities this intriguing. I expect it might end up boring, but I suppose that's only if I don't give it a chance...

Reading online about Wii Music, this is a title which most are scoffing at - and deservedly so? Maybe not - it looks deep, for whataver "it is," though I am not sure how one classifies this exactly. It looks like something I'd've had great fun with as a kid, and also looks like it is something I could enjoy playing with my girlfriend (and so, that is why I am eyeing it..) Weird looking title, but again, it's so refreshing to see Nintendo always going their own way with everything and sticking to their guns, their philosophy. It's nice to see this rubbing off a little on the competition as well (reference LittleBigPlanet, above) - trying weird things and just seeing it through to the end. This is what makes things interesting in the world, as opposed to the "static media" as I'll call it..

I bought an X-Arcade stick off a guy at work for 60 clams. This is basically a big chunk of wood with pro-grade joysticks and buttons sticking out of it, professionally manufacture of course. I have had a Hotrod for years, which is the same thing, but Hotrod's only good on PC - I feel a little out of place with that huge behemoth butted up against my workstation. The X-Arcade hooks up to my Xbox 1 as well, that being a modded Xbox with about a bazillion Mame (arcade) roms stored on it's HD. I love having that console but I hate playing arcade games with an XBox controller - the X-Arcade feels wonderful! Sucks that it took me so long to get this all figured out, but the price worked out at the end of the day. I'd still love to get a dedicated Mame Cab set up somewhere down the line, but this is a WAY more than satisfying substitute, perhaps superior in several regards. Playing Ms Pacman is STILL loads of fun, even all these years later.

Nintendo DSi, this cracks me up. What the hell is this? DSlite looks great as it is, a wonderful library, everyone loves it, etc. etc. This is kinda pushing it a little. Two cameras? No more GBA slot? Bah. It's interesting, and they will get some cool gear out for it I am sure. But let's just say I still have yet to buy any DS models at this point. I wonder how the new PSP is faring. Is there yet ANY halfway compelling reason to buy a PSP, for real? Hello? Echo-o-o-o-o-o...

everything in paradise is wonnnnderful

2008-09-20T23:27:00.000-07:00

greetings from the front gate! What's up, I do believe it's been a good month or so, at least, since I have last paid any manner of visit to this little hellhole i call "my gameblog." I guess a lot has happened, or not..

Right up a the first, what have I been playing? Answer, nooooot much. Nothing at all really. Just killing myself at the office as usual, I am lucky if i take 20 minutes out of my day while I am on the can to get in a little GBA action. Replace PER DAY with PER WEEK, per-haps, and then it's a little more accurate.

Anticipating the mega man 9 throwback release, not so much for the game itself (no way it can even be anywhere near as perfect as good ol' number two) but I am pretty interested to see what type of reception it gets from the community at large, this is a weird move to say the least. I will probably grab it as well, though to be honest all the MM's past three were getting kinda grating. Not that they were bad games, they weren't bad at all.. it was just "enough already!"

Our game is going along well enough, as usual there's a billion things I'd love to say as far as positives and negatives go, but that's what post-mortems are for. Meanwhile, I am supposed to be moving to the "dream project" as I like to call it, this coming week - it was supposed to happen (rather suddenly) last week, but got held over for various reasons. So I am a little suspicious of what is next, but I am sure it will outline shortly. Anyway, mixed feelings about all of that - I am used to working on a game until it is out the door, not working feverishly on one and then getting plucked and dropped right into a whole different universe. Hey, I can deal with it, that's my job! It's a little odd though, and kind of a new thing for me. Not a big deal though, but worth noting. I guess my beef is that with my current project, I've got a few loose ends I was planning on wrapping up, and suddenly I find myself having my hands washed of that, mostly - to what degree I am unsure, but I would expect it is pretty absolute (especially since the project I am moving to will likely not leave much headspace for external goings-on). Anyway, suffice it to say that's why I have been pulling madman-style hours at the office lately, to the displeasure of those involved in my social life...

you love blizzard right?

2008-08-18T03:06:00.000-07:00

i don't. i want my tree test again.
short news for a moment, in my nerdierier blog - i downloaded Bionic Commando Rearmed, the graphic/gameplay update of the ol' Capcom game from the days of yore. I played with it for a few minutes, after drooling at the trailers back when they were released. game's gorgeous, and it "feels" right - and sounds very cool - but you know what, setting back into those boots made me wish I was just playing the old original version! Kinda the same feeling i got after playing Contra:Shattered Soldier back on PS2 some several years ago, "this is nice and all, but I don't NEED it" - especially not when it was so perfectly nailed back in it's original incarnation. Still, it is a budget release (10 bucks!) and for the money you pay for it, it is more than worth it. Obviously the thing's an overblown promo piece for the real-deal update coming out later, and I hope it does well. Sounds like it is, already! Capcom is making some crazy waves these days, i gotta hand it to 'em. The 1942 upgrade was also fun to play, that might be worth picking up as well - nice retro feeling, cool FX. Commando upgrade is by far my least favorite, it -does- feel like Mercs, kinda, but it also feels a little less loved than these other titles. I played the demo and had enough..

I downloaded braid, after hearing much hemming ad hawing over the thing on podcasts. Initially, as I wasn;t so much in the mood, "this feels kinda draggy..." and if I'd not heard so much word-of-mouth over it, I would've never even checked it out at all (come on, "braid?") The game is cool, and the few minutes I spent with the demo have got me thinking "this is actually a pretty cool little puzzle game," if my time lightens up soon I will possibly just get the whole thing. Nice job!

I know, I am supposed to be talking about game and watch.. maybe later. I am just sad for the forgotten/never-minded fathers of videogames...

i hate this industry!

2008-08-14T18:58:00.000-07:00

yeah, i am referring to the latest Activision Blizzard news. Does anyone else feel a chill go down their spine when they hear that name? I am not disrespecting either company, or the new combined entity, mind you - obviously, very successful, hugely hugely popular companies with remarkable earnings between all of their properties. Yet it is unfortunate to hear of what happens post-merger, specifically with a lot of the relative second and third rate companies under their collective umbrella, their future plans, their staffing situations - none of this was unprecedented of course, though it seems kind of harsh how surgically and coldly it is being carried out. It's one thing to kick out the cobwebs when you're dealing with bottom-feeder appendages of a larger company, but when you are dealing with interesting properties (ghostbusters, tim schafer's brutal legend) and pretty well-established dev's (radical entertainment) it feels a little like a slap in the face. It's really true, you are only as good as your last hit. It makes me think with a chill about some things from my own past, and again a little more nervously about the potential of the future.

I have gone on about these things before, either in blog form or merely conversationally, at length - we all want to get "bought out," we want to be at the studio when they get picked up for real by a publisher. It's only win-win for everyone - well, it was, not so much anymore. Now it seems rather than getting that cash windfall, you might get squat - and more than that, your job is now under a much
pickier microscope, there's more suits concerned with "eliminating redundancies." Truly, to reap the benefits of selling out, YOU had better be doing the actual selling firsthand, if you wanna make out - and let your subordinates hope for the best as they scramble for the crumbs.

As usual, the model is all over the place, and it's hard to say who wins or loses in all of this, in the big picture - what lessons can be learned and "what is the battle plan" to survive as a grunt-level employee as the giant metamorphosis continues to take place in the bizarre and fascinating creature known as the game industry. Every day I hear more and more news which startles and tantalizes me, also which makes me wanna kick myself "ooops DAMN i have missed my chance!" There's always chance, infinite chance - but one must be able to balance their own business, whatever form it may be in, on top of an already-demanding day job, and whatever other social life and obligations there are as well.

Work is progressing on the project. I am putting in a lot of heavy hours these days, a lot of late nights, a lot of weekends. I am sad to say my productivity is a little draggy as I am feeling the burn - it's been a long project and I am feeling the wear and tear of next-generation asset production (it's still "next generation" until a few solid seasons of working to this specification have passed, alright!) Everything looks so much nicer and tighter than ever before, our engine is quite capable and powerful, but damn if only we had.. like.. 5 years!! Whew. I do look forward to wrappin gthis game up and giving my portfolio a much-needed overhaul, i will certainly have a higher grade of stuff to flaunt, for the first time in too long!

Not much gaming lately. I downloaded the Too Human demo, haven't touched it yet. Last night I downloaded a demo of a game called Braid as well, I plan to fire it up after i finish typing this - also picked up Outrun 2 for Xbox, and NO haven't touched that business either. Man - I just wish I had a solid day, errr entire weekend, left completely by myself with nothing to do, just sit back and drink some beers and play some games. That actually sounds rater nice.

Okay my girlfriend is making annoying noises to let me know she is hungry, so no Braid for me right now - but never fear, I will be back shortly to discuss a little thing they call Game & Watch.

ignore yourselves!!

2008-08-10T18:47:00.000-07:00

Greetings from the front lines!!! It is Sunday evening, just about 7pm, and I am watching the last vestiges of the weekend wither away and give into the harkenings of, yes, another week upon us. This weekend I spent much time here in the office - playing some catch-up still,due to my vacation (yeah, it's been a month now) and my tempo has been somewhat reduced which doesn't help things, but ohhhh, ohhh, what are you gonna do. Anyway I need to save off some files for my fellow level artist who shares this particular level with me,and I wouldn't wanna disappoint - further hindering things is the fact that I have to show up for jury duty tomorrow and fulfill a civic responsibility, oh golly gee, oh greatest day! Well, I don' look on such things as much more than a drag, really, as there's work to do and I don't much fancy propping up in a stifling courtroom full of hooligans downtown during the heat of the day - so hopefully I will be able to get in and out in a jif. Sigh, if the gods should be so merciful.

Working on the weekend is nonetheless a drag as well, as it should be the "me time," instead of "their my time" - but again, a necessary evil. I am getting quite burned out on the concept as I have been sacrificing for I-don't-know-how-many-years, as of yet, and that's not too good- but I have my eyes steadfast on the prize, and keen that someday, the payoff will be there. It's been 11 years nearly, and I am still scrapin' on by - things aren't bad, but life and all it's trimmings are certainly expensive, so a little compensation would be a nice thing. It's not too much to ask, is it? Well, no expectations ever, really, but I will see what pans out - someday, somewhere. It's up to me ultimately, I suppose.

I am sitting here at my desk, managing the meshes, cranking the fan, listening to whatever I can stomach on the winamp. I like to listen to repeats of Loveline while I work, surely I have mentioned this before. During the week I will pipe it through my headphones, but as the office is nearly empty on the late hours and weekends, I like to give my aural canals a little relief and just plug into the little tinny-ass speaker on my desk instead. This isn't bad, but I get a little redfaced when people start walking by as the speaker s going on about "I have trouble getting an orgasm while my boyfriend sloppily goes down on me!" So I will close the door or switch the channel. No joke, some poor schlub walked through the office with his goddamned extended family today as the speaker was booming "do some fishing, beat off, go dockside to watchthe sunset, have at myself vigorously, etc etc" I guess if you don't know the show than I sound like some sort of reprobate - well you can think of me as you like, faceless reader, that stuff helps me get through the hours alright? And there's many of them.

I hate closing the door in this room, it's quite poorly ventilated and already hot and uncomfortable in here, which is almost a nice change from my opposing usual set-up (wearing winter jacket no matter what time of the year it is, as game companies LoooOOoove to blast the AC all hours of the day and I feel like a popsicle!) The latest thing which makes me insane is the designer who works in the room next to mine, he likewise has taken to coming into the office during the less-populated hours to do - well, whatever it is in god's name he does in there (working? world of warcraft? far be it from me to satisfy that curiosity). The dude sits in there and (kindly) plugs in his headphones, for which I am grateful enough, but as his officemates are nowhere to be found in the weekend hours, the guy LOVES ot hum along to his music. He hums damned loud, I tell you. It's annoying - and I do seem to be developing my nice share of neuroloigical disorders at this point in the game, it makes my crotch tighten up and my brow get all furrowed. I wanna yell to the hapless guy SHUTTTT UPPPP DAMMMMN YOU but of course he is minding his own business, who am I to ruin the party...

anyway that's what runs through a guy's head over the weekend in the office. If you'll pardon me, I have some bits of work to wrap up so I can get myself 45 miles outta here and back to my sweet, sweet bed for some precious shuteye, at some point. Mercy!

apparently, this videogame will help me to lose weight

2008-07-26T22:24:00.000-07:00

yeah, i finally found a wii fit in stock at Best Buy a few weeks ago. I picked one up since my girlfriend'd been hounding me about it for ages - I wanted to buy one for my folks as well, but I think I will do that on Amazon rather than ship the damned heavy thing myself. Anyway I picked her up from her return flight from China a week ago, she'd been awake nearly the whole flight - when we got to the apartment, she immediately set it up and began jumping around and playing with the thing (I was amazed, I thought she would be completely destroyed from the traveling!) Sure enough, she bonked out after that - it was a funny scene though. I have yet to try the thing, I did the "ball dropping game" for one moment. I wanna get in the habit of using it though, my girth could stand it. Urp.

So not much else to say about games right now. I am playing Mass Effect and Gears of War, but I haven't touched either in over a month (nor have I got very far with either). I just haven't time to cool out in front of the tube right now! More than that, I am just not feeling the need right now either. If anything, playing a bit on my GP32 during the trip - I got sucked up into Rolling Thunder 2 (Sega Genesis) during the flight over there. Good way to kill time, started sort of clumsy and dull (and such had my memory of it always been) but playing through it got enjoyable. I might pick it back up - I believe there's a third as well, eh? Also I played the old Mario Tennis GBC game for a little while. Well-fleshed-out, but man - sports as RPG is sort of hilarious in a uniquely boring way. Make it more risque. Something (it's a kiddie game, I know).

E3 just came and went. Yawn! I don't remember the last time I cared so little. I have barely scratched the surface of going over the show coverage, but really it sounds like there really wasn't much to get excited about across the board. Yeah, of course there was a lot of good looking things to show off, but nothing that smacked people across the face. I guess that's a side-effect of removing the grandeur from gaming's biggest party. E3 now is more like a sad fart. Tough times. At least they brought it back to the LACC. Whatever, I am getting too old for that outright madness when it's on full-tilt-assault mode anyway, or something. To make up (well, more like "coincidentally") I found my way to Vegas last weekend, once again. There's enough madness out there instead, anyway.

Game's going alright. I am working pretty hard, late late nights. Sigh, it's nearly 11PM and I am at the office and it is SATURDAY NIGHT!! I can't wait to get home and collapse on the couch - make that the bed, really. It's a full weekend of crunching for me, and a long week ahead to boot. I need a drink....

..too bad..

brodelay

2008-07-01T21:26:00.000-07:00

what's up, game fiends. I am still on vacation, carousing through the weird bizarre land of China, but thought I would take a few minutes and draft an update to my game-design blog, or whatever one would call this trainwreck, really.

So of course I am quite out of touch with the world of game news these days - hell, out of touch with much WORLD news for that matter - but i do dip in here and there when I can get a moment, just to make sure it's not all gone the way of the dodo. You know, just in case. It sounds like things have been extremely busy in my absence - what's this, talk on an Xbox 360 price cut? Mega Man 9 is a throwback/retro-looking title? Castlevania fighter, and of course the announcement of Diablo 3 for next March (sigh, wish they could push that business back a little further, oh well hmm we will see, won't we. Go Fall!!!) And lots of news regarding all the millions of rock n roll games that seem to be all the rage with the kids these days. Lucasarts layoffs (yeah, more). I am sure there's a bunch of other stuff going on, as the typical summer malaise kicks into videogameland (with no big releases planned for some time). Otherwise, the pre-E3 hysteria sort of generally takes hold and everyone gets ready to be wowed and confused and all fo that, really.

So, Mega Man 9. This certainly looks interesting - can I say that "I called it?" Well maybe I didn't mention it, or figure on this particular instance, but it certainly was the type of very-specific idea I have had going on in myhead for some time, to be honest. I am just a little surprised Capcom was the one to go ahead and bite this time, though I can't say it should come as the hugest of shocks - that would be reserved for a follow-up 8-Bit Castlevania or Ninja Gaiden. Anyway I haven't seen more than the most momentary of screenshots of this thing, but the mind races with possibility. It should be interesting to see how it turns out and all of that, and what the fallout is that ensues. Anyway, lest the world should forget how well New Super Mario Bros. performed on the DS..

In honor of this, I booted up a couple of older MM games. Back in the day, I played (a LOT) through the first 4, by that point I had pretty much had enough. So the last couple of days I checked out 5 and 6 (NES) for the first time in ages and started trying to play through them in earnest, a little. Man. Those games are hard. Not super-duper hard, but they are a bit punishing compared to the ease with which I remember having swept through the earlier ones. Nice looking, each one gets progressively more technically inspiring - though honestly, I will always maintain that Mega Man peaked, for me, with Number Two. It was one of those cases where the game truly oozed with love and devotion, and all the parts gelled. The later ones were certainly cool but it was really getting to feel like a paint-by-the-numbers affair and "enough already," and just not anywhere near as captivating. I mean, if nothing else, none of them just sounded as AWESOME as Two...

-- on vacation in China! --

2008-06-27T16:58:00.000-07:00

yeah. the past week i have been touring through china with my girlfriend (and a tour group). I have been keeping a journal on my personal blog:

http://ralp99.blogspot.com/

I'l be back early July, when we get thru with this i will return to business and put my microscope back on the gaming world - i have been out of touch, but so much can happen in a short amount of time!

in the belfry

2008-06-16T19:58:00.000-07:00

yeah, as usual, "no time to type," and that is officially my calling card for how I'll start ALL blogs. About EVERYTHING, mateys.

Lots going on in the game world, of course Metal Gear Pizza released some days ago, and it's captivating the scene right now. I've not yet played it, of course, and in fact I have barely made much headway thru even the first MGS on PSone.. but I have respect for a venerated franchise. Anyway it's cleaning up in the ratings dep't, looking at it real quick it doesn't really excite me but it looks all well and good. I am interested in messing around with the last-gen versions at some point (perhaps that should've been in quotes). Something about the slow sneakiness of it all has never been too endearing for me. I did mess around with the old GBC reissue of it years ago, never got too far into that either but I had fun for what it was worth. That's worth throwing on a flashcart, I'll admit..

I did finally pick up a couple of other titles which need examination, considering what i am up to these days - Mass Effect (the Force, indeed) and yes, Gears of War. Neither have I gt thru very far at all (under an hour with each - it's been busy times!) but I intend to at least get some notable headway long enough to see what the fuss was about. In GOW's case, well, as we are using the Unreal engine, I would say it's fairly necessary to see how it performs in the hands of it's creators..

We had a party this weekend at the ol' homestead, busted out the Rock Band for the usual goodtimes - I am quite sick of the setlist, singing-wise, it would be nice to see a good 80 or so new tracks dumped en masse. I can wait! I still am a novice (to put it lightly) on the drums, and haven't even touched the axe, so no hurry, really. I did shell out for a second guitar, perhaps foolishly i stuck with the RB model rather then pick up Guitar Hero 3, my girlfriend would probably have preferred that. But all the compatibility notes have left my head spinning of late, so whatever! Anyway, at least we hve the full setup accessible at this point, so no more asking the buddies 'could ya please bring your guitar over tonight!" Also on deck was Boom Blox, my new favorite game on Wii, maybe new favorite game on anything for a few minutes, actually - I might've mentioned it in passing recently, I heard about it and tracked it slightly as it neared release, but upon hearing much praise for the thing I decided to shell out and see for myself. QUITE WORTH the 50 clams. I would recommend this title to anyone who actually owns a Wii, and has friends. So worth the money! In fact, just due to this game, I coughed up an extra $90 for two more Wiimotes to make sure the game could go as smooth as possible. Ough, my ass, but worth it. Very very fun. Sad to hear it's not selling well at all, this thing deserves praise in heaps.

the hell with this.

2008-06-04T00:33:00.000-07:00

what's up, dramamine drinkers? taking a break from your favorite drug to read my writings on 'em? pull up a chair and chug-a-lug!

things are oh-so-busy in gamerland. work has been continuing to pound the crap out of me lately. i have been putting in some extra late hours lately, got lucky to actually be working on some stuff thematically that's a little nearer and dearer to my heart than usual, so when those moments arrive one does his best to take advantage of them.. anyway i am happy with the stuff i have been working on, of course i can't really post it right now but when the dust clears, i'd sure love to..!

Speaking of, there went up a new batch of Alpha Protocol pics up the other day, slowly they are disseminating. I look forward to see what gets released next. I wish I was in charge of helping to choose what was shown, eh?

A bunch of shots of the Gearbox Alien title got published as well, recently - our studio hasn't got anything to do with that of course (Gearbox is doing the FPS, whereas we are doing the RPG = 2 separate games). Their game wasn't looking too stellar when I'd first seen the images, but the new batch has me thinking strongly otherwise - it looks great! I grabbed a bunch of the images for my personal reference, actually - I am not on Obsidian's version that project, but I'd sure like to be at some point!

A lot of things have happened since I wrote the above paragraphs, but as usual I have been too busy with work and life (but mostly work) to pay much attention to my own blog. A few interesting games have passed my hands lately (boom blox), I have much to say about a few key things going on right now. I will get to it shortly!

damn you, rotten blog! Out! Out I say!

2008-05-29T01:09:00.000-07:00

Phewwwww, but it has certainly been a long long time since I have written in this thing, wouldn't you say? As usual, the culprit is honestly just OT - lots and lots of OT. I have been banging the crap out of the neurons and dodecahedrons in the back part of my brain, as I have been overloaded with orders to "produce -- produce -- produce." I am really well exhausted these days, staying late at work night after night after night (weekends too). Ah, but so it goes, such is the lamentable life of the exhausted level artist. Hey, someone's got to build the world! Anyway, this is not new, it just ebbs and flows. Hopefully it will cool off sometime soon (in a postive way!) It's a double-edged sword - working like crazy gets some of the best work out of me, especially when I get into that groove - but it also makes me sort of miserable since I devolve into a kind of subhuman, incapable of complete thoughts, and regularly entertain fantasies of tossing myself over a bridge or something, ah well.

Anyway, in spite of my whining I am proud of the caliber of work I have been putting out lately, I sort of wish I could post it in here. It'll have to wait, though I hope we will have some more screenshots to show in the near future..

Other than work draining my vitals, absolutely, things are alright. Kind of a quiet pre-summer for games, in a way. GTA has been out for a bit now, and really dominating of course, but -- maybe it's just me, it feels like people aren't quite so sucked up into the whole hype megamachine for it like they were the last few go-rounds. Sure, it's making uber-bucketfuls of cash the world over, but it's sort of.. calm, for lack of a better descriptor. It landed and that's that, people are playing it but that's just it, they are playing "another sequel to a game that changed everything, some years ago." And the media is taking it easy on them, all we hear about is how the voice actor for the lead is pissed about lack of royalties (it's going to be hard for guys like him to get sympathy from dudes like ME, alright?) but that seems to be the worst of it. No hot coffee, no sexytime minigames, what-have-you. Put it out to pasture already. Actually, the game seems to be frying several people's consoles, that's SOMETHING, right?

Haze came out, plopped out rather, yeah this from the Goldeneye boys.. well, a lot of time has passed! I watched the dudes at work demoing it, it looked all well and good.. a little silly.. but competent. Not my thing, but then, WHAT IS, har har har? Seriously, the game is getting a lot of flack, and looking at the thing (from my admittedly limited P.O.V.) it's hard to wanna come down on those guys. In thiese post-Halo3, post-Gears days, it's just damned hard to put out an FPS by honesstly ANY company and not feel like sort of a weiner compared to the mega-powerhouses. I mean, you've got games like Unreal III, Crysis, things with serious 'recent' pedigree (not to take away from the Haze guys) and even THEY'RE sort of coming out with little more than a wink and a nod to show for it. Well, competition is good of course, and it's good to see standards are high - but at the same time, games are still early enough that it makes sense to expect these relatively B and C level contenders will have their place in the world as well. Do I encourage their persistence? Well, they need to make money if they wanna try to do different projects, I understand the business end of it. Anyway, if you can't really get something released that's at least feeling on a level of competency with Resistance, then you are probably bound for the bargin bin..

A strange season this time, the doldrums of summer usually but there's a little product this time, Coming of a ridiculously busy holiday season and a quite crowded spring, there seems to be a bit of hubbub to go on about in the coming schedule. Wii fit has just launched, of course, and true to it's heritage the thing is already sold out everywhere, and likely the case to be for sometime. I wanna buy one for my girl, also my parents.. looks like everyone's gonna be having to wait for a tad.

Of course the gorilla in the room is MGS4, which is out in.. what, 2 weeks, is it even that far off? That thing's been years in the making, I am sure it will make for some interesting times. Unlike the review bloats of GTA, I predict mid-to-high 8s. I think the thing will be fine, but it's getting old. We'll see.

Wow. Tired.. I must wrap this up, I have lots more to sya but it'll have to wait till next time. I need to talk about Boom Blox (which I picked up, haven't played yet - but looking forward tt it, sounds pretty fun!

buzz binz

2008-05-06T22:41:00.000-07:00

sigh, so much to say, so little time. as usual right now, i whine "sorrrry guys i haven't been keeping up with my game blog!" What can I say. It's 10:42 on tuesday evening and I am still at the office, that should give one an idea of the shape of things. So I am a workaholic, what else is new, so long as i apparently have picked the right career, eh?

Well, as noted, a lot is going on. All over the place, really. Rahter than try to sum it up and extrapolate it all down, I'll just binge and purge, so to speak. Work is very busy, our project is moving forward as usual. I have my hands in several things right now, with more coming. As usual, trying my damnedest to do a good job while still applying the L-O-V-E wherever and whenever possible. Next gen is gorgeous but such a pain in the ass, this spells so much headache for the future! In some ways, I miss the low-tech days, damn it..

A friend of mine got fired recently, I am sad to see him go. While I don't completely agree with the circumstances of his termination, I can't say I don't see where his superiors are coming from. Like they always say "it takes two to tango," and they are often right. So that sucks, but then, this is not the most unusual thing in this industry (take it from a fella who's been fired a good few times his own damned self..!)

On the other side of that, the bosses at this place are generally being pretty cool lately, as I have stated before (trying to not sound like a suck-up, but then, I am sure NONE of them read this blog - trust me, I watch the numbers, I know of what I speak!). Yeah, this place has it's issues and problems, like ANY company in this wretched godforsaken industry, but I still hold it to be true that the people in charge of this place, they are actually nice people, they make you feel like you are appreciated, if you are workin' hard for them.. that's more than I can say for some other places I have been at.

Listening to gaming industry podcasts all day long (surely it has contributed to my general floaty headache I have got goin' on!), I try to use those things to keep up with the trends, and generally very helpful (and entertaining) - though too much of it can be overstimulating/bulldozing, certainly. Listening to them talk about an online mod for the PC version of GTA San Andreas, very interesting - sort of a hint at what the coming future would be like when we finally are graced with a full on GTA-style MMO. As I write this, it makes me consider "I should drop what I am doing and get myself hired at Rockstar!!!" if for no other reason than to get myself in on the NEXT BIG THING. Yeah, we all want to get in there, don't we. Anyway, the point of bringing this up, it highlights my general disdain/disinterest in such things, that being MMOs, or honestly online co-op play in general (call it what you want). I enjoy playing videogames with other people, but I feel like I don't care if they are not actually in the same room, physically, with me. Something about chemistry, or something.. I just enjoy that social aspect of it. Yeah, I am a dinosaur.. Anyway, in spite of my lack of interest in that arena, I maintain that it's deserving of (a great deal of) attention as it is obviously quite a powerhouse force in gaming - and it makes me realize, actually, how out of touch I am with my fellow man. I mean this - people are BORED!!! I tend to forget this, as I have an extremely active and busy life, (though not necessarily of the sort that "most would be envious of,") but i mean - I have my career, I have my social life, I have my relationship, and to whatever other extent I have my hobbies (such as they are). All these things eat up so much time, that there's not a lot of time for me to really sit around and ponder how "tiiiiime is a-waaaaaastin'" But, yeah, the more I talk to people/pay attention to the world around me, I get the sense that so many people are just honest-to-goodness freakin' bored a good deal of the time. They have hours and hours of their lives that they just need to kill. Now it makes a little more sense to me how people can get so fixated on BS like World of Warcraft.. it's insta-gratifying substitute social life that leads you by the hand, plug-in-and-play, that doesn't require more than sitting down at one's desk, tokin' up or what have you, and just turning down the lights and clickety clackety the keyboard for a bunch of hours. Yeah. This stuff is just getting started, folks.. yeeeesshhh..

Lots of other stuff to say, Played the Bourne and Iron Man demos. One good, one bad, I will let you figure out which is which. Right now, I gotta get back to work. Also I would like to bang the chick in the new Mirror's Edge game. See you on the flip side...

couple days, couple days

2008-04-23T19:22:00.000-07:00

hello RABID FANBASE, what is up with you all? Friday night (not really - i just honestly wish it was!!) Busy times at the office, some press has been about, games radar put up a new look at our game, a little yammering on the forums about the studio.. all good things. A bad thing is that a fellow got let go yesterday, which makes me sad. Hopefully he will be back on his feet ASAP, I will do all that I can to try and see if I can be of any service. Getting fired, well, that's a long blog post which I haven't written on in awhile (though there's a lot to say on the matter, to be sure).

Lots on my mind, business-wise. A bunch of fools are playing Smash in the other room - my buddy expressed his undying love for Call of Duty 4 the other day, I keep keep keep hearing how awesome awesome awesome this game is (hell I have wanted to work for that studio in the past, my friend Todd is there). I guess I will have to give in and PLAY AN FPS (shudder). Must be like everyone else. Must! The world waits with baited breath as GTA 4 ekes ever closer to it's ship date.. it's like.. a few days? A week? Something? I remember seeing ads for that thing like.. years ago, in the sides of fences, then they pulled them and cooled off as the release date got delayed. Another game I'm indifferent about, but of course I cannot deny it's significance.

Bad news in Activision-land, I dunno how many folks remember the dev house Z-Axis - they were an indie studio of no small degree of significance back in the day. ROckstar published their Thrasher for PS1 (either right before or immediately after Tony Hawk 1, either way being eclipsed by that title - but being just as good/noteworthy of a game, in many ways. At least critically!) When the Tony Hawk clones hit, they put out some good ones (Acclaim's Dave Mirra BMX, PS2 versions I am aware of - I would suspect PS1 as well). Their crowning achievement would likely have been Aggresive Inline, a game which very obviously copped BLATANTLY from the Tony Hawk mode and method, but in a very complementary/quality way (for a change!).The game scored excellently, I doubt it sold too too well (inline skates vs skateboards, that's a little rough) but yeah the thing was not bad. Anyway thy followed that up with the notoriously--- NOTORIOUS title BMX XXX, best remembered for it's topless chicks on BMX bikes and videos of strippers. Oh, Zed Axis. Sigh. The thing plunked (I think PS2 censored it, ruining the point) as Walmart or whoever (at LEAST) wasn't too psyched. Xbox and Gamecube versions were released as planned, but no matter. Anyway, after that travesty they were strangely picked up by Acti (I guess, hoping to elminate their competition by consuming them.. or putting them to work doing THPS ports.. or they recognized a capable dev when they saw them). Anyway something happened after the acquisition (something always happens folks!) and they kinda dropped off the map. A couple years passed and we heard of "the Iron Man game," I think they did one of the Xmen games as well.. not sure about that. Iron Man never materialized (there's one coming out shortly to tie in with the movie, but it's by Secret Level/Sega, so that would be unrelated). Then, they popped up barely a couple of months ago "Z-Axis being renamed to Underground" and now, a couple minutes later, "Underground studio will be closed in May.. after they finish up their Quake Wars port to 360 (or Ps3, forget which.. either way, they were only handling one). Supposedly they were gonna do one of the next Call of Duty's, obviously that's not happening as they'll not ever be doing anything again. Weird! Sad when things go down that way, especially with a place that actualy made some decent products. Hard to feel "totally bad" when any number of things could have transpired over the course of years, though. After the heads sold out, they could have took their fat paychecks and split.. hated working for their new bosses (hey Activision was certainly a rival of Rockstar and Acclaim, no doubt), maybe they got the boot.. The studio moved and hired a TON of people, a little mismanagement could go a long long way. Hard to tell, one can only speculate. Anyway, the saddest part is that Underground is closing and no one knows or cares what that means, everyone just says "good, so some shitty other ACTI house won't be tarnishing the COD name, and maybe Infinity Ward can stick with it instead." Sad, but also I guess, somewhat irrelevant at this point. Hopefully the HR folks will help place the to-be-unemployed with some new digs.

Also of note, 3 studio high-up guys from Retro Studios (the guy who rebuilt the classic Metroid franchise for the current generation) have reportedly left the studio and were "escorted from the grounds," take that as you will. Retro, not many know, had a little of a weirdo history as well (sigh, who doesn't, dammit?) and I am sure there's a little bit of that lingering. Good luck to all involved over there, anyway! Having worked at Left Field, and knowing folks from SIlicon Knights (previously, they did a lot of high-level Nintendo Exclusives several years ago) I can appreciate the especial difficulty therein.

Alright. My lights are baked. I am hitting the road. The night awaits.

this is vegas

2008-04-20T22:51:00.000-07:00

what did i say last time? "got back from las vegas, that place remins me of a videogame..."
http://www.gametrailers.com/player/33060.html
yeah so midway are putting out "this is vegas" GTA-style game. Here's the first I've seen of it beyond a couple of GTA-inspired screens. This one (and it's ilk) have folks skeptical, and not needlessly so - but I think someone is on the ball with this style of game. As is obvious, one would hope there's "more to it than this" but honestly, take a everyman character and stick him in an unusual and colorful setting, and you do have the possibility of making a very cool game out of it. For instance, using this as a springboard I could think of TONS of ways to make an amazing RPG... I will keep it to myself for the time being.. Let's just say it doesn't necessarily involve running around and kicking guy's asses (well.. not without realistic consequences!) and not just shooting people either, stealing cars, all that tired stuff..

does.not.compute

2008-04-14T01:27:00.000-07:00

..i probably just read that somewhere. what's up, User created Community, another week of work has passed and i am checking in. no big big news out of me for the moment - just doing a bit of research with the 2D sprite related genre, trying to pick up old sidescroller NES titles, there's a lot of underappreciated oldies that never got a real shot - for various reasons, in some cases you can see that there was some heart in their creation but they never really had it together in the vein of, say, a mega man or something. too bad for them. it's hard to pick up a game like the Krion Conquest and NOT ogle the graphics, in spite of the ugly-ass main character and not-so-fun design. These games were being pooped out relatively regularly, at some point, and a few of them may've been worthy... lost to the ages, by now. Some titles i intend to unearth, shortly.. 8 Eyes, Monster Party, Dr Chaos (whyyy?), Goonies II (ohh.. so brown!), Holy Diver (pretty weird pedigree on that one!), of course the Power Blade and Shatter Fists.. Kick Master (that prospect always kinda made me laugh). If you look back, there's alot more love lavished towards the 16-bit titles than these eight-bitters, but honestly, when the time and effort (and love) was put into the eight-bit games, you'd see a lot more delicate pixel work, attention to milking all that an artist could out of those severe palette restrictions. It makes the 16bit style seem a bit exhorbitant and lazy by comparison (a trend that continues to this very day, honestly!) This is how some PSOne games can still look well-put together (in spite of their criplling ugliness, relatively) compared to the onslaught of Gunmetal Unreal Engine titles which are flooding the landscape.

In the news, Dan Hsu has stepped down as the head of EGM/1Up/etc (I guess that's all-encompassing, anyway). This might seem useless to many on the actual dev side of things, but to someone like me it's notable - I grew up a huge EGM fanboy (it sure helped get me feeling "connected to games" in a lot of ways when i was a kid) and though he was not ed-in-chief in those days, he's since kept Electronic Gaming Monthly ina lofty status since. I have listened to the guy speak in many podcasts, heard him break down many thins during interviews, and so forth. Definitely one of the most influential people on the media side of things. It is so weird, lately, how game journalism is sort of suffering in many ways due to the nature of things (print is wrapping up, as online takes over in a big way.. witness the demise of games for Widnows mag, almost as recently)

It's 2am, my foot is asleep, perhaps time for the rest of me to follow suit then.

unvirtual nonreality

2008-04-06T18:23:00.000-07:00

Greetings from Videogameland! Lots going on lately. As mentioned in my "real life blog" some screenshots from Alpha Protocol got posted to the internet, one of them was a shot of a level of mine. It's been a little while..

I have been enjoying my GP32 lately, eveyr so often I will dig it out of the depth of my backpack "oh yeah, i have this thing still" and get sucked in to like 45 games on it. It is front lit (like the old Gameboy SP) so in my memory it is barely legible - obviously that isn't the case! The screen has an annoying smudge under the surface, but if i open it up i will likely mess it up worse in trying to clean it, so.. c'est la vie. Anyway it's not perfect but it is really nice, smudges and all, and the nice big screen kills the crap out of my otherwise singularly-used Gameboy Micro (still the champ, since it's so small and nigh-invulnerable). Oh well, they can coexist. The GP32 plays WAY more games, overall (excepting, of course, actual GBA ones) and I can fit more games on the switchable card than the single GBA flashcart. But like I said, I am able to enjoy them both. On a related note, I saw my friend's new PSP 2000 or Slimline or whatever the hell it is called - the Mark II - first time a week ago. I haven't touched a PSP in ages, one forgets how gorgeous the screen is! Anyway it's (slightly) more compacts, and way lighter. Still not for me, but impressive regardless. Anyway, I'd still more likely buy a DS Lite at this point if I was in the market for a portable, but PSP obviously isn't like.. TERRIBLE. Just kind of useless. haha.

Went to Vegas over the weekend. Vegas is like... a big videogame, in so many ways. It's such a weird, unruly place. It's just not like anywhere else in the world (and I say this, living as i do smack-dab in Hollywood!) All the different locales, the casinos - each one like a different themed level, different background graphics (haha), all of them representative metaphors of real places, ideas, portrayed in gimmick, cheap, cartoon form, all bunched up agaist each other. Treasure Island next to Eiffel Tower beside Miniature New York City, and so on and so forth.. the contents of each properly espousing each theme. Ad never mind the whole actual gaming aspect contained within - well, there are games, contests of skill (to a degree), winning and losing, extra chances, bonus levels, stages of advancement. In videogames, there is a defined path, to whatever degree, an outline, a beginning and end. In vegas games, they are a cheat really, a trick - they operate on a twisted system of greed, of lies (thinly-veiled, but even so). Repetitious in nature (well.. that's similar to videogames, i will give them that.. but in a different manner). Yeah it's interesting to draw some parallels.

oh dear

2008-03-25T13:18:00.000-07:00

man, it is a slow day. Perforce is crawwwwwwling since I have walked in (hours ago!) and until it finishes updating, I can't really get much done. This is unusual, but after last week's crunch, it fuels my lethargy..

Things are alright, our game has been on the public's tongue for a bit over a week (and change?) now, since there's not been quite so much of a media blitz it is sort of quiet mostly - I would imagine that will be different down the road, as usual. Anyway it is certainly interesting (in both good and bad ways) to watch the public reception to the announcement, and the initial articles.. too bad no one leaked any information about the PIRATE NINJA SPACE VIXEN levels in our game yet, oh well.

In the meantime, as usual I have loads and loads of things to say about game development (specifically, about finagling management of the unreal engine) but of course I will keep my cards close to my chest. Needless to say, I am sure I am thinking many of the same things that my counterparts in other companies would. It's very interesting, this development cycle, to see how things are handled "for next gen" (i know, can't really call it that anymore!) compared to the PS2 days. So much more overhead, to say the least. Sigh, I remember the times when I'd be meticulously cutting out shadow geometry all over the terrain "oh my GOD when will these times be past us! All will be valhalla!" Oh but y'know. It's always something, it really is.

I have had a slow trickle of game purchases lately, actually picked up a couple of Sega 32X games if you can believe that (hey, I acquired a unit for free, alright?) There were literally like 2 games for it that I was somewhat interested in looking at, I found them for a song so why not (no haven't even hooked the thing up yet anyway). I still have Bioshock sitting in my bag, as it's been for.. a long time, I really need to play through some more of it but in these times of wayyyyy too many good games, it's hard ot keep one's momentum with nearly anything, at times.

I got a couple big scores, relatively - mentioned previously, of course. First up at bat would be the Vectrex, old console (with built-in monitor) circa 1983, came out juuuust before the Video Game Crash. An impressive little device, I picked up a multicart for it as well (hey man, I just wanna play the games!) It's pretty sweet! I guess I did not know totally what to expect - I do remember the Atari 2600 era fairly well, and what kinds of games it inspired, so with that all in mind the uniqueness of the Vectrex is quite a treat. Disappointed not to see a straight-up Tempest clone amongst the titles there, but what's included is certainly worth the cash I spent on the whole kit (not too much, anyway...) Yeah, the thing looks neat. The controls feel a little touchy, you can tell this controller was designed in the days before hardcore ergonomic testing - as a result there's certainly a much more raw and pure feeling about the whole ordeal. When I ran it the first time, hearning the strange old-fashioned calliope/carnival music sort of made my heart warm a little (as dorky as that sounds!) The games look cool! They look weird, abstract, Janky. The pacman clone makes you laugh. The.. character game makes you.. scratch your head (game design was just in different places in those days). Scramble is as cool as ever. The little space invaders, Asteroids, and Missile Command knockoffs all look, sound, and play great. The pole position game is just like too cute for words, I guess. (trust me, it's cute with the little powerlines and trees and crape). Okay maybe that was Hyper Chase. You get the picture.

The Vector display is something else - you turn the thing on (it's a circular knob, how is that for quaint?)and the thing hums at you. The tube glows strangely, like a great-grandparents' TV would.. it looks odd, but still very neat. A lot of games use these small tiny specks (for stars, bullets, whatever) that just look like glowing bits of too-bright magnesium. It really looks unlike anything else you see in gaming, that's for sure...

Overall the thing is supercool. I wouldn't say I was "glued to it," it's nice to have it here (though it is really just more clutter) but the design and aesthetic from the top-down just makes me feel at home with my roots (my roots-roots!) you know? If anything, it frustrates me because now I want someone to make a similar little desktop MAME cabinet, or something, so I can go even further with it. Wait don't I have a GP32 alrready?

the news is what's news

2008-03-14T03:04:00.000-07:00

Lots going on in the world right now.

1. Alpha Protocol, Obsidian's latest project, was announced in the current Game Informer Issue. I guess I can finally update my resume. That's what I have been working on for awhile..

2. Frontlines: Fuel of War released (at last!), the game I turned down for AP. Watching it like a hawk, and I replayed the SP demo, it's fun!

3. Ebay has been xmas for me lately. I have got a lot of goods out of there lately - a couple of Sega 32X games (yeah, really!), a Vectrex circa 1983, a Turbografx-16 CDRom unit (one that works, actually) and an upgraded system card for the unit ("to play Dracula-X"). I will write about these things in short order, haven't spent much (or any) time with any of this stuff since work's been rather hectic. In light of the vectrex, I'll say this - it's weird, which is cool! I set it up next to my monitor at the office, so I get a lot of confused stares these days (more so than usual). Anyway, all I need otherwise is a Gamecube Pad and then I am done shopping online for awhile, I believe.. something tells me that those cannot be too hard to find..

Short entry, but things are quiet right now. More to come soon - I am anxious for the weekend!

games are boring

2008-03-09T20:13:00.000-07:00

.. just like the title says. Post-Holiday season means cooling down, and overall I gotta say it feels pretty "blah" overall in videogameland. Smash Bros is just out, and yeah there's the usual expectations of good times from the new Metal Gear and GTA installments due soon.. but man, if you're me, not any of those does much to tickle the pickle. Where's the new, unheard-of experiences in gaming which are alas being heralded about, then? Trapped in a time capsule or wha? Well, far be it from me to dip into that well, so I might as well tread laterally..

I have a nice backlog of games to work through, though by my mood you can tell I am not too terribly psyched to work my way through them. I think it's time for a vacation from videogaming, or something. On the other end of the world, I booted up RC Pro-Am for the NES in what must have been the first time in at least half-a-decade, memories of struggle rushed forward but that game is still a pleasure, I got to say. I am turning into my Dad "everything from the past is better than anything made since!" Ok it isn't that bad (feels like it sometimes!) I am just a fuddy-duddy I guess.

I am waiting for my vectrex to show up in the mail still, likewise Turbografx CD Rom (man, can you believe I actually write about this stuff AND have a girlfriend.. and she isn't even fat or gross? Well maybe as she gets older, I suppose.) I feel like I have been on an ebay shopping spree lately, as one gets older and has slightly more disposable income, online auctions are definitely a dangerous place to hang out. Anyway that's pretty much all that's got my eye right now. I've a mind to throw some roms on the GP32 and give them a spin, but that thing's aged and it's experience sits not too wonderfully in my memory (this is a very spoiled brat gamer typing here, damn you gameboy micro). They were on route to put out a very gameboy-micro-looking device, those GP32 people, but as with many of their projects it seems to have got sucked up into a fuselage somewhere along the line. This is the part where I waste 20 minutes and look around, fruitlessly, for any more info on the thing (I would still buy one of those in a heartbeat, mind you!) My gameboy micro is easily the most used/most enjoyed gaming platform I own, for a few obvious reasons - most people would like to slap me upside the head and tell me to get a goddamned DS, I am sure. Buy me one if you like, I still won't play it that much I am sure (though I can't argue there's tons of great games on it).

Anyway, enough about my nerdish habits, it's time to rant about my nerdish job. Things are going along alright at work, at this point I am a year in with comfortably intimatizing myself with the unreal 3 editor. It's got some awful sticking points that, I guess, I have gotten pretty used to by now (but why, oh WHY?) - though so long as one is coordinated/thoughtful enough, it's more than useful and powerful. I think I would enjoy taking some downtime to mess with it, at this stage - and likewise, to get way familiar with a lot of other apps/tools that I "should" be more proficient with, 'cause sometimes I just feel like a damned dinosaur. I watch my coworkers bat stuff out, and the way the work - it makes me scratch my head a little "why don't I use those methods?" At this point it's easier to work in my old-fashoned ways to properly get things done, than to try and learn all these weird different abstract approaches to get to the same place (although, they seem much more efficient and faster). At least I don't feel like my eye has suffered much (well.. except perhaps becoming a bit too exacting for my own good).

I am coming up quickly on my one-year anniversary of employment with the curret studio. One year already! Doens't sound like much, but if one looks at my resume, they'll see that one year is by no means not a SHORT duration for me, historically and relatively, to be with a single company. I guess, roughly, the average length of time I've got by now, overall, is something like 1.35 yrs/job. Something like that - doesn't sound too good. But again, considering this industry, and the track record of so many of my peers, I would venture to guess that it's not too far away from the normal. Ah well, so long as I kkeep doing something, then c'est la vie.

hate you xbox.

2008-03-04T04:08:00.000-08:00

DISC ERROR. DISC ERROR.
my girlfriend bought me rockband for my b-day last month. seriouslythat box is bigger (and heavier) than she is. anyway easily it's the most-played game on my xobx (aside from Pacman, but that's a DL). Anyway not even a month in and the thing won't read. Will not read! "wipe the disc with a damp cloth" it tells me. I take it out and look at it - a little scratched, like these little circular scrapey-scratches as if a certain xbox tray busted it up a little. i wiped and wiped some more but the thing is mostly more and more useless. sigh. I know, i know.. life is tough. homeless people are dying in the street, starving.. little kittens are being raped by the millions every day, I know I know. I just want to hit my drums. i am just whinin'. Xbox is a big piece of malware alright? Hopefully I will not have to replace more than once (rockband), and hopefully no other games will get eaten. Otherwise I am going to make some homeless guy happy with his own brand new slightly busted xbox 360.

shoot. PS3 works.

all kinds of alcohol

2008-02-26T03:31:00.000-08:00

the wee hours are what they are now, but i seem to not feel very tired, so a brief donation to the blog fund before i try to hit the hay for some brief, although welcome, sleep...

quiet in videogame land, I took a look at our company's other big project the other day (if you're paying any kind of attention, you know what it is) - I hadn't looked at the thin in a good several months. let me just say = very impressed! Coming along nicely, as mentioned earlier I'd love to get on that team - time will tell. As for my own project, it is coming along. I have been making things shiny, lately..

I played through the rest of Uncharted:Drake's Fortune over the weekend (yes Normal difficulty, I am not a bad-ass!). In conclusion,t he game was very good - I am glad I played! I have a lot of respect for the folks who put that project together, it was an excellent job. I have to say my least favorite parts were the quick-time bullshit (it's been belittled by me before) - thankfully there was not an abundance of it. Still it did kind of take a good bit away from what would otherwise have been a more enjoyable final scene. Too bad! Anyway if you've a PS3, I heartily recommend the game - though you should rent it, it's not worth owning (unless you want to support the publisher, of course). It brings up something worth mentioning - games like this, they have little replay value if you're me. I mean, they spend all this time and energy and cash developing this wonderfully linear experience, after which I've no inclination to play through on a harder difficulty. There's extra treasures to find, but so what - collectathons are the bane of gaming's existence, well one of 'em. And of course the game doesn't feature any kind of branching storylines, so what else is left? All fo that is fine, but it hits me over the head - stick in some kind of multiplayer mode! Even if it is local, just do something. You've got this great engine, multi-purpose (adventure platforming, shooting w/ cover, and of course the drving/ski-doo sections) --> I wish they could have taken at least an extra six months and thrown some backend onto the thing. Or at least thrown another level of manpower at it. I know, being on the inside "that's a HUGE pain inthe ass, start of a new generation," etc etc - but it's something that's kind of taken for granted with all your Halos and Gears of Warses out there. If anything, it will make the game much more of a must-buy, instead of a might-rent. I suppose it will be sometime before that becomes more of the norm, yet - wait for your honest-to-godness multiplayer Mario and Zelda, you know? (Keep waiting)

Yeah, listen up Sony, I have a head full of half-decent ideas for you folks. Don't get me started on the Youtube thing, that could be PERFECT!

Anyway, I have a decent backlog of games to get to. Bioshock is sitting in my bag, I have played through a bit of it (I forget where i left off, I think the first big daddy sort of kicked my ass - or close to it). I haven't really played enough of the game to feel a huge pull from it. It is intriguing, but as I have mentioned earlier "I get the point." I guess I am kinda tired of hearing about it in the media though (enough already!) I mean, good to know they are making games like that, but still, go a little further, c'mon. Yeah, I say this in the same breath as championing Uncharted, which is about as cliche as one can get (did i mention, kinda too easy?), but in some ways that's really apples and oranges.

Busy times in Industry News, what with the latest madness being EA trying to gobble up Take2 (including Rockstar, of course). Sigh. Dominance War. This stuff perturbs me, I would already have gone on a decent rant about the Microsoft/Yahoo thing but this hits slightly closer to home. I don't know what to say, other than I am sort of apathetic about it. But mostly I dread the eventual "one console future" which is accelerating from the moves of these behemoths. Where does this leave the little guys, like.. me?

My next expectation, someone will make a grand bid for Bethesda. Maybe Epic or Valve as well. Next 12 months? 24?

Frontlines:Fuel of War released for 360 (and PC?) this past Monday. This was a title I came close to working on, but I turned it down for Project:Georgia instead. Of course with my morbid curiosity I have been keeping an eye on it, it looks like Call Of Duty did a sizable job of rewriting the FPS book as this game's out of the gate and looks a little weary - let's see how it handles. I am thinking another casualty of Unreal, for starters, but let's see if it picks up (hey, all is fair game until GTA IV hits the streets...soon). Good luck guys!

I have a weird feeling like I sort of hope GTA IV doesn't end up kicking too much ass - like, that it feels tired by now. Not my type of game, but the sandboxes never have been really.. and it's a genre I'd love to see get a major kicking-and-screaming overhaul, not just an aesthetic upgrade. I can't fault those guys too much, I mean Rockstar takes first place when it comes to following those games up with guaranteed quality. I just want to see the audience demand more. Something different, something interesting. I guess we have enough time in this whole generation to still be graphics whores, though..

Waiting on the mail. I have a Vectrex out there, also the Turbografx-CD (I believe the sought-after system card finally arrived, cost me a hundred clams plus shippin, owww!) Yeah and I don't even know if this thing will work properly. If it's not what I expect, i will sell it back and just go through the Xbox (hey, it's good for somethin').. but it'd be neat if it just worked the way I WANTED it to. Sometimes that actualy happens, somehow...

off the charts

2008-02-21T01:12:00.001-08:00

yeah, cheesy i know. So i have been playing Uncharted (PS3) the past few days. My initial impression of it (boring, me-too game) was a little raised higher after looking at the demo, as noted - anyway I borrowed the disc from work and have been playing thru it. i am not sure how far I am into the game (a couple of hours?), but I am definitely enjoying it - it is addicting! Certainly not what you'd call a groundbreaking game, by any stretch, but it is fun, the story is enjoyable to witness as it unfolds - and the graphics are downright GORGEOUS, man. I am sad to see that the title came out during such a busy season, and seems to have got lost in the hoopla. It's absolutely a deserving game. Sigh, if it had only released a whole year earlier, right?

I managed to finish off Portal over the weekend. Such an impressive game! Not usually my cup of tea, but this one hit the spot, that's for sure (there's a joke in there somewhere). Those folks did a marvelous job, I am tempted to download the primitive predecessor (Narbacular Drop - or whatever it is called!) I played around with the 2D flash version of the game today, it was an entertaining diversion as well.

Lots of games have come into my life lately, I have been on a massive ebay kick. I will list them as I go through them I suppose, but I am particularly interested in checking out the old Yakuza PS2 game that arrived a few days ago. Oh well, after Uncharted, I suppose. Of more important note, I tracked down a working (so they say!) Turbografx-CD player. It's in the mail, eventually. I payed more for it than I'd have liked, not too terribly much more but even so.. and I still need to get the proper system card (I have 2.0, but need 3.0 to play castlevania + etc). Those look a little pricey as well. We'll see. The good part is, i can likely sell it back for close to what I paid for it, if I ever decide to (well.. to a point? Maybe?) Also I finally caved and ponied up for a vectrex (hint: don't ebay while drunk!) Provided it's in good shape, I think that'll definitely be worth it. I like unique/weird things. One thing is for sure, my spree is over after that!

all is quiet

2008-02-08T01:38:00.000-08:00

..on the videogame front. As it is a new year (well, just a little bit past...) I think i am going to try out a different format with this blog. I prefer to write only occasionally, and so when I do it turns into a long drawn-out semi-readable ramble. I think I will switch to shorter bursts of higher frequency. Let's see how it goes.

Not much is up in my Gaming Life.. is that an oxymoron? I somewhat regularly scour ebay for interesting deals, there's plenty of games out there that I wish to get my hands on (and so many of them are practically pennies cheap). Today I won an auction for Oddworld:Stranger's Wrath on Xbox for less than $10. Probably could have found it for half that price, I know! The series has never really tempted me too much (though it's got much acclaim), but I've heard much good spoken of this and as it's the studios' swan-song, I figured it could not hurt to have a look. Also I am stalking Metal Arms for Xbox (I have the PS2 port, but the "real" version feels much more worthy of a look) - I worked on that title, albeit very briefly. I want to pick up PS2 Yakuza as well, perhaps Xbox Dragon's Lair (I know, "whyyyyy?") Those Taito Memories discs would be cool too, I've not really looked for them yet. As there's a Wii in the house, there's plenty of Gamecube titles I would like to pursue. I could probably spend a lot less than $100 and get a nice haul and be done with it (I barely every played any Gamecube games - at all!), importantly I need to find that wireless Wavebird Controller. Those are tough to find, cheap - I might just chill out and get a regular GC wired controller to pass the time, until then I can't really play most GC games at all (not compatible with the Wiimote, and I haven't a classic controller - nor plans to buy one). High on my list is a Turbografx-CD, the actual player itself - the one I have is busted useless, and I'd love to be gaming with that thing! I love the Japanese CD-Rom games from that period, much more so than what we have now, really..

Not playing too much lately. We plugged in No More Heroes at the office, I might have to pick it up (to be supportive at least - that, and the game is hilarious and well-stylish). Still looks kind of boring though, where are the FUN games man? I am tempted to get my hands on Uncharted as well, I have spoke of it before and I think it's likely worthwhile - not really wanting to shell out for it, I think we have an office copy that I could sign up for. Still want to play Portal at some point..

Otherwise, it's just Rock Band. My girlfriend picked it up for me for my birthday (yah, I am spoiled!) It's just a fun party game, really. Usually only a singer, I have finally started messing with the drums (still haven't touched the guitar yet). It's fun, takes getting used to. It is fun to hit stuff, what can I say. Beyond playing the easy level, I can't hold my own - it still feels kind of weird. This game is amazing with the downloadable content, those guys are sitting on a goldmine and they know it. I am interested to see what else will come down the pipe. It is so funny to me how this has become some kind of a big cultural landmark, in some ways. Really funny... Otherwise, I downloaded Pixeljunk Monsters over on PS3. After looking at the demo of Pixeljunk Racers, I was pretty sure anything with that name attached to it would be horrid - but this game has got a lot of nice press, and they had it on a special sale (8 bucks I think) so, why not. Messed with it for a little while, I guess not long enough for it to "grab" me, but it wasn't horrid.. not yet.. I will give it some more time. My fave DL is still Pacman...!

Work is going alright, I told my boss I want to move over to the Aliens project when it's appropriate. I am still pretty psyched to get over there.. I have much to say about my current project as well (ohh.. I could start a separate blog all about that!) but as usual, NDA so I must keep my mouth shut.

The game scene is so mellow these days, quiet after the holidays. The world eagerly anticipates Smash Bros. and Wii Fit, at least - not much else on the horizon. PS3 Home? Does anybody care? I hear murmurs of 2008 being even wilder than 2007, but I would not believe that could be possible, no matter what! Last year was craziness. There's definitely more crazy times ahead, but I think we have a lot of room until it picks up. I say at least 2 years until things start truly lighting up again, but hey - prove me wrong!

tentativeness..

2008-01-24T09:47:00.000-08:00

what's up community, long long time. As usual, much business has kept me from appearing in here. As I build some lights, I'll take a couple moments to contribute, then.

Very busy for me lately, work-wise. As usual I can't get into the specifics in this rather public area, but a lot of ups and downs for me professionally, lately. Things are pretty quiet with our studio publicly, but I'll say this much - we're very busy on all fronts. I checked out the "other game" (Aliens) a little -- well, from a distance -- and it's still got my eye.. very interesting.

SO, what's up in gaming for me... well, I guess I have a lot to say. I will write on it later, but here's a quick rundown - I got my hands on Mario Galaxy, which everyone lOOooOOooOOoves, I admit it's fun (though I get tired of that stuff!). I downloaded Sega/Bizarre's demo for "The Club" shooter the other night, anxious to go home and give it a spin. Also I hear the demo for Devil May Cry 4 is supposed to be out as well. Last night the office picked up a copy of No More Heroes, a title I have been looking very forward to.. I might pick it up! As expected, it's got some nice style. There's some things I would love to change about it - I hope it does well, they need to make more games in that vein. Give me more Godhand!

Mostly I have been playing an abundance of Pacman:Championship Edition on Xbox Live. This game is completely addicting! I was a Pacman freak when I was a little kid, but that was ohh.. so many years ago (like, more than twenty!) I enjoyed a resurgence with a serious Ms. Pacman kick shortly after moving to Los Angeles, my girlfriend at the time and I would often go to the local watering hole and sit down in front of the cocktail machine and just live in front of it for a couple of hours. So when I heard of this new version I was quite skeptical, as many were. Even playing the demo, I didn't really get "the point." For whatever reason, I took the plunge and dropped my ten bucks for the full version, and yeah, NOW I see the point! It's so amazing to me how they could take such a tired, old theme and completely reinvigorate it like this, the same old game feels so fresh and new. I would love to see more old titles mined in such a way for fresh gameplay. It kind of supports my general gaming philosophy, which I have trumpted for awhile - there's lots of wonderful gameplay conventions, already established, which have been sitting around completely ignored for too long - while the general gaming scene continues to get further cluttered with countless me-too rehashes with upgraded graphics. B A H ! ! !

Anyway, yah. The game is fun. I keep looking on Live to see what else will come down the pipe in my new favorite delivery method for burst gaming - so far, too much of it seems littered with blatant Geometry Wars ripoffs (yeah the game is good but come on, do we really need eight thousand of them?) I am hoping to see more 2D-style shooters. Omega Five was an interesting Forgotten Worlds style title (though it did not feel too fun, still I appreciate the principle). Rez HD, of course, is being prepped for release (though I doubt I need it, as I have the quite-capable DC version already - and no HD system to need to punch it through). Interested in Capcom's upcoming Commando 3, and of course Bionic Commando (we'll talk on that one later!)

nummy nummy

2008-01-09T12:00:00.001-08:00

year 2007 almost all done!

2007-12-27T23:46:00.000-08:00

so of course.. what did 2007 bring, to the world of videogames? Certainly.. wayyy too much for a gent like me to recall. So here, then, is a smattering of what comes readily to mind. Then, as now..

-This marks the First year I've heavily become a NeoGAF-Addict. So help me. I guess I started last year, but the past 12 are where the addiction really took hold. Mind you.. I registered this past April, STILL waiting to get Jr Member status ('til then. I still can not even make a single reply, let alone a post!)

-I interviewed for a few jobs (Technicolor, Kaos, Obsidian) - also completed a 2nd round of an Art Test for Naughty Dog (Uncharted) - which obviously didn't get me in over there, but I still think it came off rather well.

-Started working for Obsidian this past March, "Project Georgia" --> 'nuff said. Still employed there as of this writing.

-Console Acquisitions - I got a Wii (for my girlfriend - another for my parents, as well!). Personally I acquired a 360 Refurbished, and got into Xbox Live of course. I am a week into ownership of a PS3.. also recently acquired an aged Turbografx-16, and I am still hunting down a CD-Rom that WORKS! Also I finally landed a Test PS2 (plays burns, JPN titles)

-Games - picked up a lot of games this year. What was the most memorable? Uhm.. geez.. A lot of good ones came out, but nothing that really blew me away personally (sigh, I probably had the most fun with "new games" that were in Wii Sports... well that and I guess Rock Band, but does that technically count? I just sing Karaoke on it..) Memorable moments were Hulk 2, Skate, Flipnic Ultimate Pinball, Psychonauts.. umm. I will add to the list when I get home and look at the actual shelf, haha.

-Games I actually enjoyed (oldies as usual) - SMS Choplifter, PCE Columns (oh God it was bad for awhile. I mean GOOD bad). Those were emulated on GBA of course.

-Haha, I picked up the Tabletop Coleco Games from Ebay - Pacman, Galaxian, Frogger. Zaxxon also but rerturned it (the guy sold me a busted one!)

-Sony's PS3 suffered. BADLY. No release yet for Home.. no LittleBigPlanet.. No MGS.. No exclusive for GTA VI, lost it for Devil May Cry 4. It's coming along, but it's limping. Ummm.. Kutaragi gets kicked to the curb (he essentially INVENTED Playstation, PS2, PSP also I guess, and yes the PS3 was his freakiest Frankenstein yet) but I guess someone had to "get to retire" for this Top-Heavy Tragedy.

-Sony did get a release for Ratchet and Clank, likewise Uncharted. Also squeezed out Unreal Tournament 3, or so they say (I've yet to see it). I heard the 1st two didn't sell wonderfully though.. dunno about UT3. The games were cool but not system-buy-worthy (like, say.. Mario Galaxy).

-Sony got a little hurt with Heavenly Sword (not bad), bludgeoned with Lair (what.. what happened?), surprised with a good show for Warhawk (whew!) On that note..

-Warhawk becomes 1st Playstation network full-downloadable game (as opposed to a "Jr level game"). Which it still sort-of is, but it sounds like it's pretty much there. Releases in-store as well with a headset. Gets the Walmart's of the world a little pissed off - sign of things to come, for sure. Um.. watch this space! (Shudder)

-God of War II release party, with dead animals. The press goes mad. Wow.

-Sellouts galore! I mean -- Sony buys Evolution (Motorstorm). Activision Buys Bizarre Creations (Project Gotham Racing). EA buys Bioware and Pandemic (for nearly a BILLION $$$). Activision and Vivendi combine to form Devastator. Meanwhile Halo dev bungie slinks away from Microsoft, strangely (but honorably) - immediately after releasing their latest system-seller.

-E3 comes back as a boring Marketing and Business-event only that no one attends. As gaming gets more and more exciting, buzz falls flat into the middle of the netherword. Thousands mourn. E for All rises to take the place of E3 as a "spiritual successor," but of course no one cares as it's not quite-so-special anymore. Besides, you have to pay. Whatever.

-Neversoft inherits Guitar Hero from previous dev Harmonix and churn out installation number Three. Harmonix powers up with EA and spits out the logical evolution, Rock Band. Both are great, all things considered - I will just say I think Rock Band changed the world a little more and Guitar Hero better pull something fancy out of it's next iteration to continue to be relevant. Or at least, do something dirty and downright mean. Sigh - Clash of the Titans, at this point.

-Madden released again. But it sold poorly, considering that this is one of the most profitable institutions in the history of anything, ever..

-Generally, EA is cleaning up it's rep as a horrible place with horrible games, in it's post EA_Spouse model, by being slightly less horrible to work at with decent (I mean, actually GOOD) games releasing. The Simpsons Game, while not wonderful, is good for what it is (all things considered). I was a naysayer of skate and now I complain it absolutely worthy of purchase, talk about loving your game. MySims, or whatever they call it, for Wii - not for most, but for who it is for, they know what they are doing (if you can make heads or tails of that sentance, I commend you!) I still don't like the Evil Empire, but EA is making some overall elegant moves as the business industry fluctuates drastically around them. At least they look a little less sloppy than Activision. In some ways, sigh, it's all so blurry and pointless now isn't it.

-Jeff Gertsmann (name probably misspelled, my apologies) fired from gamespot after like 11 years 'cause of Kane and Lynch. Yeah, maybe the nail in the coffin, but still that was weird and ugly. Yeah stuff goes on behind the scenes that none of us know about. Hopefully, if the guy isn't a huge jerk or something, this is actually a huge boost in his career in the end. I know so little about this stuff (other than what everyone else can also see) so I will refrain from hypothosizing - all I know is that sometimes, life is not fair and good people get robbed. Here is hoping that the wide audience of this story is useful more than useless - though it can always go either way, I suppose.

-360's red ringing (that is, fatal error) all across Mother Nature. Come ON. I am tired of putting up with horroriffic technology that people tolerate to such a degree. It's only the beginning (but man, this stuff is EXPENSIVE.)

-the Wii. 2 gamecubes duct-taped together, to be sure. With a waggle-wand to boot. And yet - SO HARD TO ACTUALLY BUY, even one year hence. Nintendo, my friends, you have changed the world so many times I have lost count. Who knows what weirdness you will cook up next. So long as it keeps being weird in a cool way, then I say, have at you.

-delays: Spore (um.. it looks gross now? Well, it's been a few years, but it's Will Wright, so who knows) MGS 4 (that panther has a Hot Ass. Oh my!) Devil May Cry 4 (not really exclusive anymore I guess - PS3 coughs a little). GTA IV gets setback (at least) a season. Also M$ pays megabucks for exclusive GTA IV DLC. Does this matter? Sure, in some ways.. I guess. Too Human also fails to appear, with a bit of weird rambling by Silicon Knights (the game's dev) president Denis Dyack popping around here and there to spout off of love of the game and hate of the games press.. or love of the press but hate of the way the press works.. or.. something. oh it was confusing, but at least it was interesting to follow. Anyway the guy has heart, which is encouraging. Oh yeah, don't forget the delay for Wii Smash Bros Brawl!

-Also Dyack started a big crazy lawsuit against Unreal Editor (this gen's industry-wise answer to Renderware - that is, the Next Gen Engine of Choice by most folks, as it made history with Gears of War last year!) developer Epic MegaGames, who have their hands full with tons of craziness all across the world all the time anyway, for reasons you can expect (mostly). Anyway suits and countersuits followed, some people whined, now it's sitting in a big legal mess somewhere up on a big mountain of money and no one really wants to pay attention to it at the moment. Don't worry, it will come back.

-A Shadowrun update came out, I think it was by FASA (who shortly closed thereafter). Shadowrun - big cyberpunky-sorta PG back in 16bit days, though it was sorta low-profile. Anyway some people loved it, some hated it. I couldn't tell ya.

-Oblivion mega-dev's say that they're making the next Fallout. Some people are pissed, but most folks seem to think it's in good hands. Meanwhile Interplay exists somewhere in between this existence and the next, SOMEHOW, and say that there's a Fallout MMO.. or something.. in development. But not really. But they are employing people, technically. Sort of. It's sketchy, right?

-Meanwhile, WOW continues to own people's souls. Yes - their SOULS, man. I mean, Blizzard finally moves into a new campus and hires more crazy people and announces more craziness (a new Starcraft 2 game, shows it off- apparently, very similar to the already-works formula but in THREE DEE). also another non-WOW MMO is coming (Diablo?) Starcraft Ghost still seems dead, but there's another WOW expansion coming (Lich King I think). But whatever. WOW is amazing for what they've done (it's bigger than ANYTHING - and besides, it owns all those souls!) And I still don't care personally, but hey. You've got to recognize.

-Assassin's Creed. Another victim of good pedigree and hot producer, failing to live up to the hype. is this really anyone's fault? It looked good enough to me, but seemed to be the victim of "too little too late." Gorgeous game and interesting ideas, might've stayed in the oven another 6 months. Maybe the sequel will do better.

-Transformers Movie Game. yeah, who cares, but with one of the best possible licenses around, it could have been sooo good. I know, history proves time and again there'll never actually be a REALLY COOL Transformers game, but man.. what a waste. Damn, let ME make the game. I promise it will be fun.

-Rockstar makes headlines with controversy. What a surprise! How unusual, right? Biggest shocker was the Manhunt 2 debacle "tooo violent, we want to label it adults only!" Bah... they crank it down and some kids crack the code for the PSP version anyway, but it's too muddled to deserve any actual Hot Coffee-style lawsuits/hurtful media at that point. Further salt is poured on the wounds when original dev Rockstar Vienna receives NO CREDIT for their work on the game, though the studio's been closed for some time (supposedly it's "an embarrasment") and Rockstar Toronto (I guess) gets all the credit. Though still kinda who cares/whatever, as the game rates miserably. Just another day in the life, I guess. Um.. geez, these guys are attention whores. At least they still manage to get industry-changing games out in spite of this weird confused drivel.

-Huge historic releases across the board, all things considered. Current-gen consoles begin swinging with their first-wave of post-launch titles, in the case of Wii and PS3. Xbox 360 gets it's second-wave of releases (it's got a year on the other two systems). Wii counts sort of half-way between the two, as it is honestly older-hardware coupled with newer design philosophy (motion control, accessibility to nongamers). Generalizing, we have;
Wii: Super Mario Galaxy - huge setup for what many expected to possibly fall flat (following the not-stellar Super Mario Sunshine of Gamecube). Apparently the most-loved-game by everyone in recent memory. Though I have not played it, everywhere it's name is spoken you hear LOVE, LOVE, LOVE. For some reasons, this MIGHT be GOTY, all across the board. Like in a Scorcese kind of way.
Metroid 3 - Motion controlled, I hear lots good about it, expect it to fade with the rest but sounds like "if you liked before, you will still like now" - they keep their franchises well-stocked, what can I say.
Wii Play - I think that released 2007. Not sure! A huge seller, since it packs in a 2nd Wiimote (no nunchuk though). By itself kinda meh, but definitely worth it for obvious reasons and still stupid-fun enough to warrant being mentioned here. I mean, anyway, EVERYONE owns it at this point..
Mario Party 8 - why do I mention this here? Actually it's probably BS, but something about a game with the moniker "Mario Party" showing up within the fist year of the Wii's existence just seems telling. I haven't touched it yet, but I am glad it's there (and what I have seen of it, looked noteworthy). Probably useless if you played the other, um SEVEN MP's, but if you're a Wii newcomer (as many are) this is probably deserving of a spot on your shelf.
Super Mario RPG - I mean.. Super Paper Mario - Uh, hell this game looked cool, and it had a good gimmick, and everyone was clamoring for it. So why did it fall apart? The shots and lead-in still look right-on. Too bad they blew it. Worth a mention as a disappointment, in a big way. Maybe not a bad game, but certainly a waste of a golden opportunity from a place you might not expect. Then again..
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XBox 360: Halo - release of the year, whether or not you care (I don't). Years in the making, and it sounds like they fulfilled expectations. Built to last for fun, though I am sure at this point "the party is over."
Bioshock - Destined to become Sleeper of the year, it surprised everyone by being a good time with a cool aesthetic, rating REALLY well, and selling wonderfully to boot. Possibly a bit overrated (I think it won't last, for some reasons) but it did a great job of making a standout name for itself during a ridiculously crowded year, sounds like it was substantial enough to boot. Though, ultimately forgettable, alongside everything else - what can be considered classic, these days? Time (and use/abuse of a franchise) will tell.
Crackdown - low expectations, seemed like a cheesy cop-out "buy this to get Halo 3 beta!"and it actually had some staying power as a fun game, to boot! I expect more good things from these devs. Of course, by the end of the year, it is pretty forgotten as well.
The Darkness - Starbreeze made a huge splash last gen with Xbox Riddick - apparently they suffered the usual sophomore syndrome with this title, then. Not bad, but again, so what? We can't help but expect games like these at this stage, good-but-ultimately-filler.. it's hard to say they are BAD, per se, since they are not, but in the company of the other releases of the days (and with such a powerful pedigree) one would hope for something stronger. We'll see what follows, eh.
Orange Box - yeah, the name, the name. Who cares, sometimes weird stuff works, so dig it! Anyway, no matter how you look at it, if you are a gamer this is the deal of the year for several reasons! Just another excuse to cement valve as one of the most important devs of the day, and with expectations through the roof for their future. Well.. probably. Meanwhile, I am anxious to play Portal at some point.
Mass Effect - Oh. you know. Bioware. Go, Doctors!
Pac-Man Championship Edition: The joke release that had the last laugh on everyone, in reverse (meaning.. it was actually really a good game!) Downloadable of the year, I'd say so.
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PS3: Lair - Should have been good. What a mess. The game reviewers guide. julian Egglebrecht, or whatever his name is, with horrible damage control. What should have been at least competent ended up being "a big waste of everyone's time." I haven't played it, strangely I am tempted to rent it - except I know I'd regret it in like 15 seconds after booting. How do people let those things happen in this day and age of multi-million dollar game project investments?
Uncharted and Ratchet and Clank - mentioned above by loved veteran Sony dev's, "it's up to them to save the day!" Well, consider this your next iteration. But so what - it's just another brick in the wall. These games are good, but are they really half a bill good, even together? I won't knock them 'cause they are capable, reviewed well, and people say they are fun and good-looking. But still game like UR MR GAY (super mario galaxy) and UR MR GAY HALO will sweep them, at the end of the day. I am being unfairly harsh, but come on, it's Playstation THREE, it's the Second Coming of the Second Coming. If anything, they can be considered good harbingers of what is to come, but a solid note that things must be stepped up. We will see in 08 if there's the needed follow-up, eh?
God of War II - another amazing game into this kinda late-debuting franchise, but wait - this is a PS2 title, wrong list huh? Okay, well, it's forgotten this late in the year, and bitched about by some, but the fact stands that Sony can blast an unforgettable and powerful franchise out of literally nowhere, just by blasting enough time/money/capable manpower when it wants to. If this released on PS3 this Xmas, with appropriate visuals, no doubt it would have swept Game of the Year for the system and got a lot more resoect for all parties considering. Instead it makes Sony look kind of headstrong and stubborn, while sort of noble in trying to support their gazillion install base. But - blah to nobility, at least this way. We want our next gen sequel - it will come, and it will come properly!
Warhawk - mentioned earlier, for obvious reasons.
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Nintendo DS: Okay, it's not Next-gen per se, but it's next-gen handheld (close enough) and honestly the best system if you're a gamer these days so definitely belongs here with it's bretheren. What have we got for the old boy?
Pokemon DS - a summer 2007 release, already completely forgotten by EVERYONE. But it came out at a time when there was nothing to play anywhere, and it was a freakin' Pokemon Baby-game, and all the RPGheads who gave it the time of day made much love to it. And apparently it deserved it. Nintendo could poop these out with relative frequency at this point, and in some ways it does - but they do it in a way that's to their credit, and they make incredible money off it respectfully. Pokemon = not for me, but could have been beyond-shriveled up by now, it's served it's purpose - and still they build it with quality.
Puzzle Quest - I think it started on DS. this particular craze. I am all good for promoting decent Puzzle games in this day and age, it may well be my favorite genre. This sounds like a strange mix of ideas, but kudos for being relevant. Maybe a little sloppy, but all things considered, it's heartening to hear things like this.
Drawn to Life - another "weird" game, definitely a "baby game," like they say, but still honest and interesting in concept. As long as they keep making weird-idea DS games coming that aren't just shoveled out completely, it retains it's pertinence - make the games really good with follow-through, and then it becomes valuable. This might lack in that department, but for noob studios to do stuff like this, they get credit these days, from me.
Contra 4 - Okay, Ping Pals made this. It's CONTRA. Too many frames of animation for me, but this was made by contra lovers FOR contra lovers (esp. after too many years of franchise defecation). Cheers to see that they still have people who care enough to do the RIGHT thing. If it was more eight-bitty then I might go out and actually buy a DS for this, as it is I still kinda should.
Planet Puzzle League - which I think is the name - Tetris Attack remains one of the best, BEST BEST BEST, most-fun games I have ever played in all my years of living, and sad to see I discovered it way too much later than the rest of the world. that they can get a game like this out makes me retardedly happy, even if I am still playing the fossilized version. Hell I logged in too many hours of the B/W Gameboy version recently. This game deserves acclaim - DO it.
Zelda:Phantom Hourglass - they did not need to release another quality Zelda title this year, and time will likely not be too kind to it, (or.. will it?) But that's fine, because no matter what - if you like good games, then it is at your service.
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PSP - might as well, right?
Crush - The coolest game no one played. It's a lot of people's fault, and it's a shame.
Ultimate Ghosts and Goblins - not sure but I think was actually a 2006 release. Still I will throw it in 'cause The franchise needs some notice, it used to be alongside Mario for crying out loud. I don't think I heard this game was even too great, but still I want it to be remembered. But man.. fix the name!
Dracula X: Rondo of Blood.. err. Chronicles.. um. I don't know the official name of this game, and I don't care I guess. I would have picked it up had I owned a PSP. I still don't own (or want) a PSP for a variety of reasons. This game is very noteworthy as it's an (admittedly ugly) remake of one of the hardest-to-locate games in the history of popular franchises, somewhere up there with the JPN Super Mario 2 (though in a completely different way). This game gets bonus points for value, with a (gross-looking) 3D remake of the original game, plus the original 2D version in there with the first Metroidvania thrown in for good measure. You can't argue with that logic.
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that's my list for now (of noteworthy titles of 2007). Likely to add to it in the future. Anyway I think I have typed enough for one session, pardon the notable absences..

PS3 GET

2007-12-25T12:48:00.000-08:00

Whoa, whoa. So much info to dump, so little time. The truth is, between work and life, I have not found time to blog much - and so again we have an apologetically-beginning blog. Such is life, friends. Anyway, there's much to say, and I don't want to spend to much time beating around the bush, so I will try to be clear and concise when possible. Here goes!

Things are alright at work - it's wound pretty far down, as one would imagine, given the time of year. I have been out since last Thursday night (it's Tuesday now) and another week to go until I return, I suppose... Anyway, things over there are moving along at an appreciable pace. It will be interesting to see what is the lay of the land once we get back to business as usual - but in the meantime, it's nice to be out of that element for a breather.

So the fine bosses over at the Big O hooked us up with our choice on next-gen (new-gen? current gen.. um.. y'know) at work for the holiday. Um.. excluding El Senor Wii for obvious reasons. Anyway as I've recently acquired a 360 by my own hand, I signed on for a PS3 - it arrived last Thursday. I got the 80GB system, extra controller (no rumble yet), and a Media Remote - um - whatever you wanna call it. It also comes with Motorstorm (motocross racing game) and of course the free online service. I brought the sucker home and squeezed it into my Uber-Massively Overbloated Media Congolomeration Entertainment Extravaganza Super-Deluxx Especiale System Grapevine Cheeseburger with Extra Cheese and Pickles. For those curious, here's how my home theater debacle looks at the moment (with Pickles):

PS2
Test PS2 (plays Japan/Burned games)
Sega Dreamcast
Sega Saturn
Modded Xbox (mame)
Xbox 360
PS3
SNES
Turbografx-16 (with busted CD-Rom - cards work though)
and my girlfriend's Wii is hooked up there as well. "What no NES?" I am pretty satisfied how the DC handles NES actually. Also I have a Sega Genesis boxed up in the closet as well, I suppose it will come out at some point. Not that there's really any room left for it.. So, yeah, it's a pretty crowded, potential firehazard I have set up there. What else is new.

Anyway, back to PS3. Since I am a relative n00b to the whole online console experience, and having recently got my feet wet with Xbox Live, it's very interesting to see what they've cooked up over at the PS3 camp - and granted it's a year in for them as well, so I know it must be hugely improved over the likely-lacking experience that must have previously been the case. Anyway, all tings considered, Playstation Network looks and runs fairly well. It's going for a more straightforward, adult look (that is, neutral colors, less "friendly") than Live. Also a litle less "user friendly," as Live will always prompt you to "go there" when you need to go to a different area to install something, run a completed download, perform a test, etc. It's a little niggling, but certainly things like that are the grease that makes the whole thing less of a pain to navigate. You can hop online fairly easily, and though it's a little clunky (for a moment), the browser-on-TV actually does work fairly well. I am sure you can plug a standard issue keyboard/mouse into the USB ports of the system and go right to town with it - I don't think I will get much use of it in the long run (why would I, when a PC is right beside it?) but it's nice to have.. also if you are gonna watch something on Youtube or whatever, I suppose.

As for online content, it looks fairly similar to how Live is setup, what with the demos and downloadable games and all of that. Live still kills it all over the place in this regard, between how it's setup, navigability, and just overall legibility.. but it's usable, and it is getting there. Just very sloppy still. You can tell they want to ripoff Live without being terribly direct about it, anyway. It's nice to think that they have downloadable PS1 titles on there (not that I have yet perused, really) and it's worth mentioning that I have not seen any "movie download service" akin to Live's, yet. Whichever of the two consoles figures that out, for REAL, will be a big contender for me. Also worth mentioning, is the Playstation "Wallet" system - you link up your credit card, etc. to deal with downloading non-demo titles at the store. I like this over anyting else (N or M$) in that instead of the Points BS, you're dealing with everything as actual for-real US Dollars, up front. No confusion or "perceived value.." that certainly endears me to them quite a bit. For whatever that is worth.

What have I downloaded? As usual, I try to load up my HD with demos of anything remotely interesting. DLing on my DSL account is slow as hell (???) but I set it up to go all night, then head out for the evening, so no matter (hey I have got other stuff to do, alright!) Here's a quick rundown, just to cover the bases:

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Uncharted:Drake's Fortune (demo) - big xmas Naughty Dog exclusive for the system, and one of the most anticipated. I was trying to get a position working on this, actually - Anyway, we got the disc in at the office a few weeks ago, watching them play the early parts left me kind of uninterested. Regardless I DL'd the demo (I knew it was showing off a different section of the game) and liked it much, much better (to the point where I'd like to bring it home and give it a few spins). Very lush, very gorgeous - fun to tool around with, and the shooting action (for what it is worth) was enjoyable enough. Raised my interest quite a bit. Beautiful graphics - shows of PS3's power!

Insomniac's Ratchet and Clank Future : Tools of Destruction (demo). I've never been an RC player (I do have the 1st one, of which I have played maybe 10 minutes' worth) but I can appreciate what they have done with this title. It's looking GOOOOood. They are really pushing some geo and textures here, and it all flows smoothly, perfectly - it's not quite a real "living city" for real quite yet, but you get the feeling that there's always a lot of hectic excitement going on all over the place - it feels pretty intense. Play-wise, this thing is stuck in the dark ages, though. I don't need to jump and hack pointlessly anymore. Platformers can be fun, but this play style does not suit me, it feels so tired and done-over-and-over that I don't care HOW good it looks, it I doesn't inspire me to invest time or money. But I know this is a very successful franchise, it would be sort of risky to change all of that just for my sake. Well, maybe I will take home the office copy if I get bored.

Heavenly Sword (demo) - another anticipated title, I am not too terribly sure how well it was received - lukewarm perhaps, certainly not bad. I was expecting God of War smoothness, not that I am too adept with that game, this one just felt a little clunkier. It gave you some very satisfying action-killing-closeups, maybe if there was a little less constant-bombardment from the same enemies coming from everywhere to vary things up a bit, it would be more enticing. Just a demo of course - as usual, lush/perfect graphics, though a little chuttery on the framerate (and a little of the nonsense Quicktime events which I strongly detest). This game looks nice, the hero and action "feel right," and I am inclined to investigate more - could be some satisfying hack-n-slash. Nothing I would investigate if there was more on the shelf though.

Everyday Shooter - the first thing I loaded up on my PS3, before ANYTHING else (including the pack-in). I have been rather interested in this title, after hearing a bit about it's genesis. Yeah, a stylish (in a way) one-man-show, and for all intents and purposes it's just a freakin' Flash game, but it is fun and I like that they are promoting stuff like this. This is where gaming needs to go, in my opinion. I love REZ, and I want to see more like-minded stuff (ripoffs not so much, but inspired-by is certainly the way to go). For crying out loud, tis makes me want to buy Fantavision, there I said it...! Anyway I had to straight-up buy this thing right away.

Ridge Racer (yawn!), Formula One something-or-other (yuck.. yuck!), a couple of other games that I don't recall. I haven't played them all yet. The Rub-a-Dub game (Flicky crossed with controller gimmick) felt thin at first but has grown on me, I might throw 10 bones at it. Toy Home is a Toy-Story feeling racer, it's got motion-controlled steering. VERY Japanese-kiddy, my girlfriend likes it so we scooped it up. I was unhappy to learn that there's not a straight "race battle" mode in there, but for what it is, it's not bad for $10. Pixeljunk racers sounded cool, but felt uckkk awful (this is a game.. really?)

Otherwise, I played with Motorstorm a little bit. After working on a similar-styled game some years back, I can appreciate the fun in such a game. It's not drawing me back too terribly, but as it's the only on-disc PS3 title I have got currently, I want to spend a few minutes with it. It DOES LOOK nice, I will say, and the prospect of eventually running a big rig through the bud sounds fun. I was a fan of the early ATV PS2 games back in the day (long on looks, but they sufficed - and the handling was so perfectly satisfying!) Honestly if they made a proper, arcadey-follow up to those games, I'd sign right up. I investigated MTX vs ATV on 360 (recent demo) and though it had some relation (also, it looked pretty nice), that spot-on feeling was just ripped away. You've lost that lovin' feelin'.

I guess that nearly wraps up my original PS3 impressions. The interface is not too bad, just keep ripping off Live and it'll be better I say. The system runs relatively quiet as HELL, which I love. I have yet to investigate Blu-ray (don't really care, and as I have a CRT, does it matter so much?) Someday perhaps I will upgrade to HDTV but that's a ways off, and not something that's a priority for me. I have yet to try the backwards compatibility, but I would happily remove my PS2 from my game shelf in order to clear up some clutter/danger. I will check that out later (in my mind I will still say PS2 is the most comprehensive system to beat, out there.. for the time being). So in essence - PS3 - nice to have, future games will be interesting, glad I got it as a gift. Would not buy, for now or for a lonnng time.

Over in Other-video-game-system land, I have been neglecting my recently-re-acquired 360 what with the new gadgets to play with. I intend to get through Bioshock however, and I would like to pick up Orange Box (I wanna play Portal). And just generally mess around with demos as I see fit. As for games I would actually buy, skate seems fun (I will wait till it goes down in price!) and maybe Amped 3 if I can find it cheap. As mentioned earlier, I DL'd the Frontlines demo (THQ/Kaos) and did manage to play through it. It is getting some scratchy reception on the message boards, I must say it's a nice experience though. Looks and plays well - I hope it does well for them! I can see why people complain, they want it to be exactly like the other games they love - which it isn't. There's a lot of love in there, I hope they fleshed it out properly. We'll see soon enough. Otherwise, Rock Band dominates - still! You can't touch this game, man. I know it sounds cheesy and cliche, but these guys really rule the world. It's the perfect mesh of man, music, and game, party game at that. I hope to see them take it further and make it more fun - hell! I wanna play this game at bars with strangers, I know it would just be a blast! Even my non-gamer girlfriend is getting into it. Who would have thunk - someone out there can make games with the priority of just causing people to feel good, and have a good time. I have half a mind to pick it up myself, but geez - I think I have spent enough $$$ this season.

In Wii-ville, it's business as usual. Pretty much all that gets played around here is Wii Play and Wii Sports - and they are still fun! We've had it set up nearly a month, mind you - and not all the game hold up - but tennis, bowling -- great for unwinding. I got into boxing as well. It's just fun with a bunch of people, again "great for nongamers" of course. The ultimate test will be in a couple of days, to see if my parents can actually get into it (I got them one for the holidays, I may have mentioned it in here - they haven't played any games since, oh, pacman and centipede...haha). I got some games for my girlfriend for the holidays as well, Wario Ware Smooth Moves and Cooking Mama Cookoff (you would not believe how difficult it was to find a game called Cooking Mama!) We only checked out the former so far, but I must say it's done as well as I could have hoped - those guys are nuts! Intelligent Systems has to be one of the better devs out there, for real - I love wacky, weird, abstract stuff that makes you scratch your head and say "wha?" If the game doesn't fall short then I will say it's worth the money. Check back with that in a few days - anyway it's nice to see someone take the Wiimote at face value and make stupid simple little minigames out of it. I hope the multiplayer translates properly, it could be another rocking party game.

Whew! So there's what has got to be one of my longer entries, in a while - I had a lot of lost time to make up for, so slobby pseudo-journalism is what will result. I haven't really even touched on politics this time, or end-of-year wrap-up stuff.. maybe later.

party on, wayne!

2007-12-17T19:53:00.000-08:00

So, last Thursday evening was the Pandemic Holiday party at the Natural History Museum in LA. Like so many other hangers-on in the gaming industry, I crashed it once again (actually I legitamitely got my name on the guest list this time, which was not too hard to do as they'd opened the party up to the industry at large.. to a point, anyway). Exhausted from an already wild night the preceding Tuesday, I wentured out into the chill of the evening and dragged myself out to enjoy some free drinks and catch up with my ol' pals. I have to say, the night started off kind of rough but a few drinks in (and a few hours to dilute the crowd, some) and my mood lightened considerably - it was a fun time! Not quite the "blast" their last party (that I'd attended anyway, in 2005) was - still it was very satisfying and I was sad it wrapped up so quickly. Here's some random bald guy dancing while I am merrily stomping away in the background:

(too bad I didn't get more appropriate pictures - what'd'ya want)

Our own Xmas party looms this Wednesday night, I suspect it will not be quite so ridiculous.. but that's fine (I have partied a bit lately, I can take a breather).

This brings me to today's topic, camraderie in the games industry. I suspect I have written about it before here, if not certainly elsewhere - yes, though there is (of course) much competition between companies in the game industry, and I guess between job applicants, it's generally a very friendly place. Especially on my end (artists and designers), we typically seem to get along quite well with one another, and respect one another's positions. Sure, there's times when you might wanna wring a particular co-worker's neck (we're only human, right?) but generally I get the sense that in many studios there's a strong notion of team and togetherness, overall - we are working together on this production, and the majority of us strive to put our best efforts (and sometimes, our latest nights) to task in order to make one another proud - to keep up our ends and match the work of those toiling alongside us.

Likewise, when we pick up a competing studio's game, we look at it as something deserving of respect (when that is the case) - as opposed to just "we must crush them, all comers, for all that they are worth.. we will hear the lamentations of their women," and so forth. Generally, game developers are honestly the biggest game-fan geeks you're likely to meet, I would say. And I would say this is the case even in the situation of a competing title in the same genre, usually. The bosses may not be so likely to second that, but as far as we grunts go --grunt--. At any rate we can pick up a title and appreciate it from a particular point of view, as far as what kind of work has gone into it, the little bells and whistles, etc.

Frontlines Demo is out

2007-12-13T04:10:00.000-08:00

So yesterday Frontlines (demo) was released on Xbox live. Eager to see this as I nearly took a job working for these guys, last March (decided to stay in LA instead). It' s been downloading all evening to my machine (yup, I got my Xbox replaced - FINALLY!) but I guess I'll have to wait until tomorow to finally check it out, it's going s-l-o-w. Also in the queue is Burnout Paradise, which will be interesting to see..

Tonight will be the Pandemic company Xmas party in Los Angeles, this should be a night of madness to be (somewhat) remembered. I went two years ago to their house of blues party, which was rather crazy - this one should top it, easily! The Crystal Method will be performing, and I suspect the booze will be free once again - Supposedly they are anticipating over 2000 guests - I have an RSVP, but geez...

I received Donkey Kong:Jungle Beat in the mail the other day, cool game! This is the one you operate with bongos - man, my hands HURT after playing that thing! Cool idea though! I need ot get a memory card, and then I will play thru it some more. Wario Ware twisted also arrived, I put it in for a moment - weird as ever, but that's good. Also, I am sad, the TurboGrafx CD Player I bought seems irrepairably busted - what a waste! Time to scour eBay some more, then (probably better to wait after Xmas, though). I plugged the unit into my TV and at least got the HuCards to run, it looked GOOD to see that running on the big screen once again - properly - after all these years!

wii did it

2007-12-10T01:19:00.000-08:00

Yup, so last weekend was my girlfriend's birthday, she was asking me endlessly for Wii "I want wii, i want wii!!" -- of course, I broke down and succumbed, sigh. I got her the system with an extra controller (with wii play) and the extra nunchuk controller as well (as most know, it comes with a single remote and nunchuk - but this system is designed to be enjoyed by two, at least). I must admit i have not previously played wii at all, except for perhaps an evening about year ago at a friend's place. Not too terribly impressed with it at the time, but i could appreciate what it was good for either way. Anyway, we opened it up last night and played thru the two game collections - I have to say, it is definitely impressive! Long on looks, but satisfying enough for what they are trying to do, this is definitely a system that is friendly to non-gamers. My girlfriend has little to no interest in games, but she definitely has been getting addicted to the wii ones. She begrudgingly picked up golf and couldn't put it down, for a couple of hours! She and her friends were yelling and screaming as they were competing with one another - I guess it was a good idea, eh? I guess i will pick up a party game like Mario Party or Smooth Moves or something for her, next..

Weirder, I bought the same setup for my PARENTS for te holiday. My parents who've not played any kind of video games since the early 80s, they would play pac-man and centipede with me when I was a little kid. They have NO interest in videogames, whatsoever (well, my dad will try to pick up Pac-man now and again, my mother bought him a little TV Plug-in unit a year ago). So this will be the ultimate test to see if all the wii marketing is for real! Actually, I wouldn't have laid out the money if i thought it would be a waste of time, i do think they'd get a kick out of it (at least the bowling and stuff like that). I'll have to twist their arms to get started with it - we'll see how it goes.

Not much game news on my end, I guess. Another week of working hard, and waiting for my 360 to get replaced. The store I bought it from has a replacement policy, but at this rate I should probably send it to M$ and deal with them. Sigh.. pain in the ass!! At the end of the week, I may be the owner of a PS3, if not the week afterwards.. Otherwise, not playing much - just Gameboy B/W version of Tetris Attack, the puzzle mode. Thinking man's game.. "clear the level in 2 or 3 moves," sounds boring but it's well-put together and endlessly captivating. I have stared at it for a long time.. it makes me feel really stupid though. If I don't get on too late with writing this blog, I will likely refresh my Micro with some new games (at last!) It's been like 2 years since I have done that, and I still don't "need" to.. I stand by what I have said before, if all my other systems had to go, so long as I could hold onto my Micro then it would not be awful (I will be sad the day the special battery dies, though!!!)

Ebay-wise, I ordered Donkey Kong:Jungle beat for Gamecube (play it on the wii), it is a platformer that you control with bongos (!). I guess it was made by the same team that made Super Mario Galaxy (though, a couple of years earlier). It's got a lot of praise, and with the bongos it was pretty cheap - I look forward to firing up this particularly weird sounding game! I also ordered a copy of Wario Ware twsited for GBA (the one you have to twist the GBA around with - obviously). I enjoyed the very first Wario Ware GBA game, and this one is supposed to be the "best" one. Note that I borrowed the same from a friend, about a year ago - I had it for maybe six months, never even touched it even one time! But hey. I love weird, off-the-path games like that, and I was able to find it for about 10 bones.. why not.

I have Space Raiders and Mega Man:Network Transmission sitting in my cabinet, I was hoping to finally get some mileage out of them on the wii - no such luck, i need a non-wii-remote to play them apparently! I will have to dig one up, somewhere.. No hurry.

Recently I mentioned that I have acquired a TG-16, I brought it home but as it's lacking a proper controller, it sits waitin in abox. I found a direct-sales company that will let some new controllers go relatively cheap (cheaper than used versions on ebay!) so i will get one shortly. I have a CD unit with it as well, which I still have to check to see if it works !! I have been leeching old PCE ISOs off the net in anticipation, and found a guy who is selling a system upgrade card (to play Dracula X). Yeah, so nerdy, but it's cool - I always wanted one of these! I will be sort of surprised if it all loads, of course.

Work-wise, not much I can say (as usual). Lots of interesting times going on over at Obsidian, our Xmas party is a week away. Late this week will be the Pandemic party, which I'll likely show up at (along with abut a trillion other drunken marauding folks). Yeah, good to schmooze, esp. since no E3 this year, boo! I went to a Pandemic party 2 years ago, it was a wild mess - I expect this one will be along those lines, we will see. A bunch of late nights behind me from last week, hopefully the load will be a little easier in this coming one. Technical times too, might I add.

Alright! It is late. i wanna mess with GBA before passing out. Until next time..

for crying out loud

2007-12-02T19:31:00.000-08:00

yeah, well, isn't htis technically one of the Four Signs of the Apocalypse? Wait, I forgot.. the world actually ended sometime in the mid-eighties. I think when Knight Rider got signed for a fourth season or something. Most would say it was the seventies, but in all honesty I do believe it coasting on fumes for a good several years. Good for them!

No, but really, this is madness. Well, not really. This is just.. self-fulfillment of prophecies, really. The entire industry is slowly turning into a High School Statistics class equation, from here on out. Put all the big (and mid-) leaguers into an array and squish them through the sausage machine. If P then Q, if not P then not Q. If A and B buy C then D will merge with E while F gets extremely white-trash rich. And that, my friends, is why I work in the videogame industry, as well. Usually when I wanna write a reactionary post to something as bamboozling as this, I get all rambly and postulate-y. But at this point I am getting tired, as the fantastic becomes normal - I will wait and read about it on the forums along with everybody else.

Though I must admit, it does hit rather close to home in some ways. Consider this - I used to work at Swingin' Ape, when it was a tiny dev (@15 people?) which was down-the-road acquired by Blizzard and turned into Blizzard Console (Starcraft Ghost, version 2.0.. roughly). After my departure from SA (a brief tenure, mind-you) I got an art test from Tha Blizz while WOW was in production - they sent me a Tree to make ("oh whee, here's a tree"). I had just departed from OC, having sworn never to set foot on it's wretched soil again, and as I'd just settled on trying for work with either Treyarch or Left Field, the Blizzard tree was left out.. in the cold (you see what I did there?) A couple years down the road, I had left Left (working for Activision, Actually) and another year later I was makin' skatey games at Neversoft. Gun was wrapping up, and Tony Hawk 7 was in full swing - Neversoft's glory days as "Activision's Golden Dev" were pretty done, but they were still pretty popular as those things go. A couple of years at NS and then outta there too, and six months hence - guess what? I am working at Obsidian in OC, just a couple miles up the street from Nobody Beats the Blizz (clearly.) In fact my girlfriend, last year, lived on the same camps in which they were stationed (I heard they just moved this weekend). Point being, I work in OC, which is videogame-wise steeped in Blizzard's shadow. Everybody here plays that game. Dudes here have worked there, some have left this place for that one. Why haven't I tried to get back there? Oh. I have my reasons. More than ever, I resist the great conglomeration, but I know that my days, too, are numbered, the way things are going. Not necessarily working at the newly-crowned AB, but at some place which'll get snapped up again by some big-ass megacorporation. Anyway, best not to think about how much money my alternate-universe doppelganger is belly-flopping into, because it's no all about the money anyway (though stability and respect, those are other issues altogether). I guess many people are excited about these things, well.. so many are nervous and anxious about what it all means. Me, I get a chilly feeling "it is all too soon, it goes too fast.." I try to keep tabs on as much as I can, in my tiny speck-like state in this all - as ever, I wonder where I will end up and if when the time comes (if I've not fallen overboard) whether I will be happy or unhappy to get sucked up by whatever overbloated monolith. Yeah don't forget, I have had checks signed by Activision before. Hell even Vivendi, a couple of times.. right now, technically, it's Sega.. but it's always a different degree, what is all means.

turbo-power!!

2007-11-27T21:25:00.000-08:00

yeah so some dude at work put his Turbografx-16 console and collection up on the for sale spam-list. I shelled out $75 and got a console, CDrom, (broken-ended) joystick, and @40 games. FORTY GAMES! Only like 3 or 4 CDroms but hell, 40 game cards!! That's rad.. he threw in a sega 32X (with Star Wars) to even it out. But.. hell!! I always have wanted to get my hands on a genuine Turbografx-16.. I know, the emulation is pretty well covered at this stage (and of course they support a lot of the good games on the Wii Virtual Console) but there's always something about getting your hands on "the real deal" that's just a little more special. I have always admired the system, I borrowed one from a friend sooo many years ago (sigh.. like.. 20 years ago. You do not know how much it pains me to type things like that...) and would have bought one if the Sega Genesis didn't edge it out in the Race of Awesome Things, at the time. Hey, the Genesis was TRUE 16-Bit, what's a kid to do? I remember those days, the early 16-Bit wars.. the TG-16 (PC-Engine in Jamaica, errr, Japan) was actually 8-Bit with a custom 16-Bit processor. Sega's device was actual full-on 16-Bit hardware, with the promise of games "direct from the arcade to your living room," and they had the machines out at the arcade (and translations coming home) to prove it. Obviously Turbo was no slouch either, with some very nice-looking titles to pick up - though they were more colorful, they still lacked that certain je' ne' se quois that Sega had. It was a tough choice but one that I never regretted.

This stack is worth it for the $$$ alone. Blazing Lazers. R-Type. Star Soldier. Legendary Axe. Galaga '90. Ninja Spirit. Fantasy Zone. Klax. Splatterhouse. Sinistron. DUngeon Explorer. Neutopia. Victory Run. Bonk. Drgaon's Curse. Where the hell is Devil's Crush? Oh well, can't have them all. There's a bunch of other 2nd and third rate crap in there also... but hey. Close enough. Xmas came early! To top it off I scored a NES Bubble Bobble (though I will rather prefer to play Parasol Stars on the TG-16.. I am covered!) Man, old games rock. Now I need to find a dude who will sell me a Turbopad for under $25.. (and yet.. I would still prefer that my $X*@ 360 would just get freakin' fixed.. maybe next week!) I take it back, these games are still more fun!

I have a little list going of retro stuff I'd love to get my hands on.. a Turboduo (still, though not for what they ask for it.. bah!) A Colecovision would be rad, with a load of games.. I would never say no to a 2600 (though honestly, the whole setup would be quite an eyesore and surely end up in the back of my closet).. A Virtual Boy would still be cool (though i DO have a busted on in the back of my closet!) And I guess above all else, I'd like a Vectrex setup. Most coveted, however, would be a Mame Cab.. done right. One day I will shell out the necessary cash, but I can wait 'till I am able to afford such things. Mame's not going anywhere.. right?

party on!!

2007-11-25T15:24:00.000-08:00

whew, yah, time to fill into my neglectef video-gameo-lame-o blog once again. man. i just don't have TIIIIIME to write in this thing anymore. which is a shame since there's lots and lots to say, especially lately.

anyway, first order of business:

My officemates picked this $170 monstrosity up early last week and I would hear them wailing it down the hall while i was trying to work (hence why I have come in to put in some weekend hours, since it's nice and calm and peacefully quite at the moment). But yeah we all knew this would be interesting, for sure. My buddy in Hollywood picked it up as well and we gave it the once-over on Friday night - this game is fun! Not much for Guitar Heroics, I screamed and shrieked into the microphone till my voice was getting hoarse. Our band "Slutty Balls" kicked all kinds of ass. I can't wait to play some more! Drums looks fun also, I tried for a moment but thrown in mid-game with no warm-up and I completely fell apart. I can think fo some design choices (Simon Says-inspired) which might make that a little easier to swallow. Rock Band - party game of the year!

We went to some Neversoft friends' place for Turkey Day and powered up with the Wii. I have to say I have not really touched/seen a Wii (hold those jokes please.. aww) for just about a year. We were messing around with Mario Galaxy, a good looking, likeable-seeming game. It struck me how simple, easy the graphics are. They come across as solid, but that stuff is like .. BABY solid. I could whip out some levels for a product like that in no time flat. They are pretty long on details. It works though. I will always speak in favor of style. Also played some Wario's Woods (NES Flavor) on the Virtual Console. Never played it before, though the game (SNES version) has sat on my shelf for at least a year and change. Weird game.. it's got much praise. I can't say I enjoy it yet, but I will give it some time to grow on me (it's got a notable pedigree).

My Xbox 360 is sitting boxed up in a pile beside me. This sucks!! I had the thing running for barely 3 weeks with nearly no play on it.. all demos, really. I have to say, the demos have been great, for the most part - completely worth the investment. I could just kick back and play Geometry Wars, Lumines, Pacman CE, etc. At least! Hell the Skate demo was terrific, even the new Tony Hawk demo (in spite of popular opinion) is well worth it, I would say. Now.. ASIDE from demos.. I took home the office copy of the much-lauded Bioshock, and checked that thing out for a couple of hours. 1st time since I have had a 360 that I have truly played a game from a disc that wasn't a demo or a.. Yaris (don't get me started. GOTYaris!). But yeah. I got a little ways in. I was looking for Telekenesis.. however you spell it. Then BLAM the thing just froze up.. what.. whatever. Reboot. Play again and five minutes in FREEZE-UP AGAIN!!! This is bullshit now. Okay, reboot. Uhm. Reboot? Please? Where is the picture? Is my switchbox f'd? I plug directly into the side of the TV. I am hearing the normal boot audio for the system.. but no video. NO SIGNAL. NO SIGNAL. You wasted your money, lame-ass. Screw you, TV, I say. I pakced up the system and brought to the office with me on Monday. Tried different cables. Nothing. So it's dead. I got a 1-year warranty through the reseller. I come in and wait in line "we ain't got any replacements, too bad it's almost XMastime! Come back tomorrow" Yeah so I come back tomorrow "Come back next week, we got nuthin' for ya" So I come back (well, call) "We got nuthin' till middle of NEXT WEEK." Screw you guys. No, really.. Actually, screw me. I should have known better. You get what you pay for, and M$ already has their reputation stable-360-wise. That was ridiculous. Anyway, hopefully I will have a new working one beofre the New Year. Hopefully they will let me transfer over my Live account without any more migraines. Yes, now I am just bitching endlessly, but why shouldn't I? They charge hundreds of dollars for this stuff, and then I gotta run all over the place for it to just do what it is supposed to anyway? Well. like I said.. not a huge surprise. Yeah, well, I look forward to someday seeing more of Bioshock, that much I will say. For now.

return to the garden of your nightmares

2007-11-04T18:57:00.000-08:00

well, got my xbox live account activated, the router didn't die (am-aaaaa-zing) and better yet, as of this writing, my apartment hasn't caught fire due to the hazardous layout of cables smershed behind my television (could have happened, since I am not home yet I don't know about it). Seriously. I have my doubts about this whole "power brick" thing, and to say it was perniciously placed would be putting it♦ modestly. I am having flashbacks to being 10 years old and watching that episode of "Webster" where their apartment burns down. That one did a number on my soft innocent little mind..

but i digress..

anyway if you want to add me, or some such, to your (appropriately-named) "friend list" for Xbox live, go for it, my handle is ralp99. I can't say that i expect to be a good videogame-friend, since i will likely only pick up cheap/obscure/older games (as is my wont), but hey, maybe we can chat or cyber or something. that'd be hot.

Knowing the potential of Xbox live, and then seeing it with one's own eyes, it is something to behold. Sure I have seen the layout of all that crap before, and I am no stranger to the internet of course (da-da-DUMMMmmm) but knowing it and actually HAVING IT hooked up to your own television where the business takes place is a little bit of a jolt. I must say it's a kick to look at all the insta-available movie titles I could oh-so-readily download at a button's press to view on my Deluxe Entertainment Home Media Centre Theater, mind you DLing and watching crap is nothing new to me (hey i ain't no noob) but with the PS2 Media Thingie it's usually a bit of a song and dance involved, and it is all oh-so-dubious to say the least - that is if the damned DIVX file is encoded properly and doesn't skip all over the place (or just crash out). I am being a little heavy handed, the PS2 solution was super rad for the years I have had it (and yes, it's fun to nerd-out with that stuff) but i will happily move into the future with the rest of you for a less accident-prone solution. In the meantime, I haven't exactly unhooked the PS2 device from my setup ('cause we all know that it's a matter of time until the damned 360 RROD's anyway. So much for accident-proofing). Yeah I am not kidding. I have no faith in that piece 'a crap. It's nice and I hope it lasts me (at least) a year, if I am lucky. But damn those things get hot, as mentioned in the previous entry. I fully expect it nothing short of China Syndrome with this baby. You'll see. You'll ALL SEE.

Xbox demos, the reason I bought this damn thing really, this is definitely sizing up to feeling worth my investment. I don't have time/inclination/attention span to play through whole games as it is, and shelling out a paltry couple bucks for live to get virtually unlimited access to 2 zillion demos is a Hog's Dream Come True. I knew it would be pretty good but this is even more impressive than I would've expected (pessimist that I am). Most likely all who read this are jaded, by now, but I for one am very appreciative of this service they've provided. Free shit. FREE. Did you hear that? It's FREE. Yeah "late to the party" and all of that, but the fact is it's remarkable how (relatively) well-organized all the game demos are, and the fact that they all stay up there! It's like this crazy virtual library, and all you have to do is shuffle some space, and be patient for stuff to come down the pipe. Suddenly I am realizing that 20 GB is just not enough space.. but then, they have it all up on their servers permanently (-enough) that it's inconvenient but not anywhere near awful. That's great. I'll probably tool around with most of these demos the same amount as I have with whole games I have actually bought in the past few years.

Mind you, I am definitely far from "the typical player" for a good few reasons.. but this all fits the bill rather nicely. So long as my house doesn't burn down.

Anyway I DLd about 7-10 demos today and fooled around with a couple so far (Superman Returns, Stranglehold). When work lays off a little I'll put in a little time for some lovin'. More ot come...

so.. i have Jumped In

2007-11-03T20:35:00.000-07:00

sigh, that's right, i finally sold out and bought a &*^#@*(&$^ 360. it only took me two years to catch up with the rest of the Modern World of Gaming. I picked it up last night at the Microcenter up the street from my office, forked over my $230 (it's a refurbished unit) and they handed me a deck with 20GB HD, headset (won't be using that one too much), wireless controller (nice touch) and all the necessary cables and doodads to plug the thing into the Internowhere. All wrapped up nice and tight in a mostly-unmarked, unassuming brown box-shaped box. Fresh from a coffin, I am sure. I fought (valiantly) with the jungle of wires and dead crickets behind my Low Defiition Television and Entertainment Unit to hook the thing into the tangly nightmare, turned it on and stuck in a copy of Tony Hawk 2007 Ex-travaganza to make sure it ran. Sure enough, she lit up and ran like a charm, and sure enough there was a problem (the "wireless connect" button on the faceplate was busted). I got in there with a pen and finagled it. Haven't got on Live yet (I won an auction for a membership, waiting patiently for them to email it over to me.. tap, tap, tap) so until then I will leave the thing resting idly in the "off" position 'neath my TV. Sadly, I tried to put the unit into one of the close-able areas of the cabinet, though I noted that the thing gets HOTTTTT when it's on for more than 14 seconds... and so it must sit out front, proudly displaying it's ugly, ugly design for all who enter my living room to gawk at in disgust. Have I mentioned how unattractive I think the unit is?

Anyway, it detected the network connection through my router (and my internet connection from my PC seems to be working at the moment, obviously) so I am happy to report that stuff is all set up. I am sure the unit will fail (crappy odds) sometime in the next 3-6 months.. hopefully before my 1-Yr warranty expires. Let's see.

After I get on Live I will start plodding through to see what demos I can get my hands on.. the main point of my purchasing this thing. Stay tuned.

bees aight

2007-10-30T00:30:00.000-07:00

hello bloggerlads and bloggina lasses. yes i have been neglectful of my game-industry-blogging duties, lately. again. This is what happens when real life (well, real work life) breathes down one's neck.. still i had ought to make a more dedicated effort to maintain this thing in a better fashion than merely once a week! Well, keep checking back to see whether or not i am a liar..

lots of news in the games industry lately, if also sort of quiet. As the xmas season dutifully approaches, the giants descend with their high-profile software releases continuously, and uncle sam (and auntie japan) continue to reap the rewards. So then, Super Mario Galaxy is less than a world away (I've seen the demo at EB) just in time to celebrate the Wii's one-year anniversary party. Ratchet and Clank do the same likewise for Playstation, finally giving a good reason (although a familiar one) to actually want to own one over a 360. Of course, Guitar Hero III finally rears it's ugly metal head, merely weeks after it's brother title Tony Hawk Ninety-Three (yeah, say what you want, but cheers to those guys for getting such major releases out the door nearly simultaneously!) Rock Band, on the other hand, I am not sure of it's date but it'll likely be soon.. Surprisingly, I have just learned that Wii Fit is not releasing on these shores in time for Xmas, and I sense many fat gamers are (not really) groaning, though the game's publisher will have a little to be sorry for as a result (yes.. just a little. Don't feel too bad for them). I am a little out of the loop - what the heck is out for DS, besides Zelda Phantom Hourglass? And what, pray tell, for the shiny new PSP 2000 or whatever they are calling that thing? (I want to get my hands on one and see if it's as gross-feeling to hold as it's predecessor) Yeah I am a little guilty for not paying attention, but is it my fault or is it because there's just actually not much to DEMAND my attention, rather..

The Simpsons game has released from EA. Say what you will, and I am sure you will, but I like the directions being put forth by "the New EA." No, I still don't wanna work there, but you have to hand it to them, they have been putting out some noteworthy quality titles of late. Skate, of course, comes to mind.. and I've already mentioned Rock Band.. never mind their always-competent sports lineup/onslaught. They get a lot of gripes but EA is making some good moves. Now I wanna see them release a console (3DEA0!) and truly disturb the crap outta the industry. Oh, and while I am on topic, I heard they laid off after their shareholders weren't too brilliantly happy with the mega-expensive buyout of Pandemic/Bioware. boo. I take back all the nice things I said.

Not much to report on my own game front. I am still waiting to reflash my Game Boy card.. it never feels too imperative, though I should get to it shortly. I think there's a decent colecovision emulator I could put on there too, that would be fun. Hrmph, I need to make a list of things to squeeze in there.. Anyway I sat down on the couch and played some games last night. Latest acquisition is Burnout #2, I think it's about 4 years old - xbox title. It's not aged too terribly well, but I remember my friends being into it a few years ago and it caught my eye so I snagged it. yeah, kinda renderware ugly, but a nice groovy little game.. I am no stranger to what it's story is, but getting my hands on it I can appreciate what it's worth. This is what I am usually preaching, makes games that don't necessarily emulate what you do in real life! Driving is certainly enjoyale in the day-to-day, and racing games with tricked-out wheels are always fun (well.. fun-ish) but these days they're really a dime a dozen. But now who DOESN'T fantasize about car accidents? Okay well, maybe most folks don't but honestly I do. And a game about setting up huge destructive car accidents is just what the doctor ordered, I gotta say. Now, this title doesn't really do muchmore than hint at the possibilities, as it is.. and I suspect the new generation of Burnout titles is still gonna remain pretty tame as compared to what it could ultimately transmogrify into - but that's a game I would line up to buy, if and when they unlock it's potential. That's genius.

I plugged in Strider 2 for PSX, I mention it now and again in this blog - I still hae yet to play through it, as it's a clumsy and somewhat boring game. But oh, the style.. talk about your potential! Why Capcom sits on properties like this, I will never know. It's dripping with love and excitement, and I am sure it's sitting there waiting to get picked up down the road. Screw Bionic Commando, we need more Strider! I play this game, and I know it's something of the sort I would love to be a part of, development-wise. Ah well, stranger things have happened I suppose.

Also sitting in my shelf is Gunner's Heaven, as mentioned previously likewise - and also likewise, not much playtime had been given to it yet. I guess I made it a level or two in last night, and I have to say that even i am astonished to the degree in which they directly ripped off Gunstar Heroes.. bu, that's cool! RIP OFF GUNSTAR HEROES!! If there's a freakin' game which needs to be shamelessly, brutally ripped off. Yeah, they lose points for originality, but they show that thy have good taste.. I hae some problems with the title, even so.. some charaters (namely the player sprites) are bland/boring/dullsville, and a lot of the general design is uninspired and blase'. Not that it's bad, by a long shot, but considering the hardware (and what's been done with less) it's just kind of a waste of time in the aesthetic department. Likewise the soundtrack
, from what I have heard, is essentially turn-off-able. Again, not quite offensive, but such a letdown when you consider what could (should) be there in it's place. But that stuff is forgivable - the cardinal sin here is the omission of a 2-player simultaneous mode. Come on! How much harder is it to implement? Even if it would cheese the design a little, games like this (Contra-style) are made for two people to enjoy together. Sigh. Maybe there's a hidden mode buried in there somewhere.. who knows. Ah well, it sucks but not enough to take away from the coolness that is this game's very existence, at all. I don't regret picking it up.

I have laid off on my other two planned PSX acquisitions, maybe when the prices fall some more..

shutdown the reuptake inhibitor

2007-10-22T19:15:00.000-07:00

what's up videogame industry insider need-to-know-er's, what is shakin' in all y'all boots. God, I hate typing stuff like that. Neglect abounds in this section of the blogosphere lately, but it's alright because I am getting slammed with work lately. Wish I could write about the details, I will have to save it for my futuristic memoirs. I will just write about things that happened in previous jobs that I have held in years past. To my imaginary alter-ego. There, have I covered enough bases yet?

Our studio released a new NWN expansion recently, it is getting reviewed well - that's good news! My old studio released their new skateboarding game last week, it's getting crummy reviews from the big sites (err the jaded sites) but overall on gamerankings they're staying formidable. That, my friends, is the difference between the whiny few and the wallets of the hungry. I wonder how they will sell this season, anyway.. "it's up to the gods of merchandising, really.."

Quiet news in gameland recently, overall. Nothing terribly hectic, just a little fallout here and there as the industry gears up to dump loads of big-deal software out the door for the fierce wave of seasonal releases. We got the primers out the door already (Metroid 3, Halo 3, ahem) and the Wii barrage is under way shortly (though, no smash bros' brawl... boo!). Sony's kinda blown thier load a little early, though they needed to pump something out to the hungry masses (and nothing that's worth mentioning anymore than has been said). Ratchet and Clank is out the door I guess, which should make people happy enough - I believe Uncharted is due to hit the shelves shortly as well. But, yeah, short of Wii, nothing seems to be too spectacular on the fronts. Maybe I have let my attentions wander, though.

Bionic Commando announcement, hmm? Something of the sort has been on a lot of people's minds, and it's interesting to see this title pop up outta nowhere. I give them the benefit of the doubt, it could be a cool little "freak game" from some up and coming devs - we'll see. Most are skeptical about this, though I maintain that the style is growing on me. Honestly, more than anything else it REALLY makes me wanna head home and plug in the old NES adventure for a rush of nostalgia. I never beat that thing (halfway I guess), and that was actually the original GB version. Yeah, for shame, I know... So what's next, Section Z?

Not much else to report. Everyone is loving Portal. Maybe even I should look at the thing. I am waiting anxiously to see how Wii holds up (hardware-wise) for Xmas, supposedly sales are slowing down in Japan at last. We'll see. Nintendo's still dominating across their two platforms, fiercely - I see some interesting stuff going over on their Virtual Console service as well. Interesting, interesting times..

sell out!

2007-10-14T14:17:00.000-07:00

Strange times indeed. This console generation is a constant flow of "what the hell, where did THAT come from?" madness left and right out of the great blue yonder. At this point, what the future holds in anyone's guess. I feel bad for those whose jobs it is to survey the landscape of this business, and try to make bold predictions of what the holiday seasons will be like. In recent weeks, we've seen Activision buy up PGR developer Bizarre Creations from under Microsoft's "nose," for an undisclosed sum - though I am sure it was a bit expensive. Note that they have JUST released the 4th iteration of that series. Likewise, the mammoth Halo 3 has just been out (it's been not even a month, I believe!) and the cement's not even set when it's announced that their developer (Bungie), a studio whose name is more-or-less synonomous with "Xbox First Party," is going back to independant (again, for who knows how much money). Between those two annoncements, it's been so dusty I can't recall which was first! The other week, Sony snatched up UK-based developer Evolution Studios, who produced their Motorstorm game for PS3 (and regardless of what the critics say, remains one of the most popular titles for the suffering console, sales and otherwise). 32 Million. That's a lot of moolah... though when you realize it costs around half of that to develop a title anyway, then it doesn't sound so ridiculous. Also considering that Sony gets the tech and all of that with the deal, it beings to make a bit more sense. Sure, not as crazy and groundbreaking as either of the two preceding news items, but certainly eyebrow-raising.

And then the big double-whammy of this all went down a couple of days ago, mega-congolomerate EA added several more heads to it's Game Development Hydra with the Elevation purchase (Noted/Successful developer-partners, Bioware and Pandemic). 860 million clams. That's so much money that I can't even fathom what that means. How many Aircraft Carriers is that worth? How many Third World Countries could it feed? None, 'cause it's all getting shuttled back into making more FPS and Sims titles, apparently. I am not sure how many teams of development that adds up to (just the ones being absorbed, never mind how large the EA ranks were to begin with). Good? Bad? I say bad - though I wouldn't be saying that if I were working for one of those studios, not this moment. Actually I would likely be strolling across the street to check out which Lamborghini I would like to pick up.

Anyway you hear about stuff like this, and you consider what companies have "sold out" and which haven't, and why. You take a place like Insomniac - technically, an indie studio, but for all intents and purposes they are Sony 1st party at this point. Heh - do they NEED to get beneath that umbrella? They've got their name solid, they can make "games they want to make," pretty much (or, can they? I notice they've churned out plenty of sequels, regularly). I am curious if Naughty Dog has got the same situation (and also, what that matters). I have worked at several studios, all with their own unique relationships with their respective publishers. I have had the "if we work hard, we could get bought" carrot dangled in front of my face before. Likewise I have had the "we have a publisher who owns us, and so we are stable enough to last through the 'hard times...'" Both circumstances have worked out unfavorably for me, if you get what I am saying. Does it matter? Should I be happy or sad that I've no stake in anything, that no matter where I am employed, I am only tied to the whim of Fate?

Well.. it has been several years now. My judgement's a little skewed, and I can say this much, it's not "just about the money.." it's about the stability, the environment, the project. Getting along with your team, working with an engine that you can co-exist with. Loving the minute details of everything your hand touches. But, it's also about balance. Business savvy.. getting along politically, and having some foresight when weird times like this happen, and being able to look down the road to see what's next and where you will be when the dust settles..

Anyway, I can speak in vagueries about this all day, but those like me know my point. We look at these mega-sales where retarded amounts of money are thrown around with seemingly incredible disregard, and we nuts and bolts of these machines look up and cry out "mine, mine!" And we wonder when we'll be able to understand the perspective of those money-tossers. Or, if we would really want to.

Alright. It's Sunday afternoon, I have work to do. I work for an independant.

clearly, i have a distaste for typing titles.

2007-10-09T01:22:00.000-07:00

all is quiet on the front. busy with work and feeling a bit rusty with regard to my muse, so i think i will rifle out a few pieces of my own during the mellower period. i am happy withthe latest level i have spat out at work, anyway.

not much game news, i am still wanting to pick up a next-gen system, (does 360 count as that anymore, given that it's going on a couple years of age at this point?) PS3 is always (slowwwwly) looking more desirable, though obviously it's got a year or so before it can genuinely ratchet up a full notch.. 360 still looks appropriate enough, but yes, I need to sit on my bills for the time being, so no new toys for me. Which is fine, since all the titles I REALLY want are from PS1 period anyway.

Bought some new doorknobs for my apartment this weekend, which meant that I stopped by my friendly neighborhood Orchard Supply Hardware, conveniently located right next to Gamestop. Not a regular haunt of mine, but I'll poke around if I am actually hoofin' around the neighborhood and see what goodies I can pick up on the cheap. Yesterday's score was PS2 Gungrave, a title I recall seeing years ago at E3 (alongside Shinobi and.. Jet Set Radio? Was it that long ago??? Well maybe it was the following year...) Regardless, I remembered hearing less-than-impressive reviews of the game, if only in passing, but it's certainly stylish enough to warrant a look when it pops up in the bargain bin. I forked over my eight bucks and took it home, and tonight put in a session with it. Good game! I can see why it would't go over well with the mainstream, as it is kind of the videogame equivalent of a migraine in some ways.. conctant blaring gunfire, constant slow trudging gameplay, and not really a game where you can stop and smell the roses, so much. Still, it bleeds with loving style, a possibly cool blueprint for more inspired things to come - and on it's own merit, not a bad diversion. It belongs on my shelf beside Godhand (which is far superior, if uglier). I'd consider picking up the sequel if it was about the same price, I suppose.

I received a couple JPN Saturn games in the mail recently, finally loaded them up this weekend as well. GunGriffon and Baku Baku Animal. Let's see.. GunGriffon came vaguely recommended from a web-board Saurn Reminiscience post, I am not sure if there was a domestic release but i saw the JPN version on ebay for like.. a cent, so what the hell. I loaded it up and it has that feeling "ohhh!! We can do 3D now, how cool are we!" It's short sighted and gnarly, and definitely dated and "me-too". Fun to tool around with for a few minutes, I may mess with it some more (doubtful!) Some games obviously do not age well.

Baku Baku Animal, on the other hand - this title DID recieve a domestic release, I believe, but again I found the JPN version on EBay for next to nuthin' and so I snapped it up. Those who know me, know I can have a fondness for good puzzle games, so after doing some Saturn research I had seen this name dropped a couple of times as a "must-have." I already have Magical Drop 3 (supposedly, another one of "the best..") so this seemed interesting to me - mind you, I could sit for a session of Puzzloop or Tetris Attack for hours.. Anyway this game was nearly worth it for the case art alone. My GOD. So ugly. It's like they gave an 11 year old a 3D program for the first time ("here make a cover for us!") It's ridiculously ugly... but somehow, disgustingly endearing. Almost. Anyway, as for the game itself - it's not bad! It made me laugh. Usual Tetris-inspired drivel, stuff drops and you've gotta match it up to clear lines before your screen fills up with blocks. The catch here is that the blocks are made up of two different things.. different types of food, or animal heads. Naturally, you must put the food next to the head of the animal which would eat that to clear lines. Monkey eats banana, dog eats bone, panda eats bamboo, that sort of thing. Yes it's goofy as hell, but it is kinda funny and one wonders how exactly someone was inspired to make this leap in concept. I will mess with it some more, it seems like there's some cool possibility for chain mechanic in there.

For the hell of it I threw in Radiant Silvergun for the first time since trying it out after I'd first got my JPN adaptor. Whew! That's a hell of a game, and I do mean.. HELL. It's a top-down shooter, much like the other bullet hell shooters, where you get tons of all manner of firepower with which to demolish your enemies. This game is unique in that you never need to power-up, you possess your weapons 100% of the time - but each weapon is fired by a different button on the game controller. And of course the game is designed around the player properly strategizing when to fire which weapon. So yeah, unlike many games of this sort, it's not "plow-ahead fun," but rather more of a thinkin' mans game in that vein. It's a little crude looking as well - but certainly deserving of it's place in history (though it's not gonna make any top-ten shooter lists for me, who knows maybe one day I will become "enlightened")

Anyway, so yeah, old games rock.

informer.

2007-10-03T21:42:00.000-07:00

another late night at Obsidian. I am sitting here at my desk, listening to the janitor vacuum in the hallway, patiently waiting for my girlfriend to swing by and pick me up so i can go home and sleep (and return the next day). 9:43PM. I think it will be awhile 'till she gets here..

I finished up my latest level today. It took me no time to light, actually it was enjoyable to do that. I am getting pretty good with that (not great, but alright). Lighting was always something that I'd kind of did as an afterthought, and with good reason (the tech's not typically rewarded high-quality lighting in video games!) Not that it is quite there, yet, but it's improving. Anyway I consider myself fairly handy with the modeling and texturing end of things, I'd enjoy spending more time on making things light pretty as well. For this reason I intend to spend more of my own time building and lighting high-quality still imagery, go a few rounds with that and I should feel pretty competent. Mind you, I've spent more than my share of time figuring out how to make things look interesting, anyway..

I was keeping an eye on Zanac X Zanac on eBay but that thing went out today. $200+ !! Man. I want the game but.. not THAT bad. That's crappy when it's a game which is obviously only selling for it's rarity/collectibility. I just want to play the actual GAME. I might see if I can dig up an ISO somewhere. If my pocketbook was a little easier I wouldn't sweat the cash so much. Pretty hard to justify spending such money on a freakin' single game right now (ANY single game!) I was also watching Thunder Force Special Pack for Saturn. I am a HUGE Thunder Force fan, but again I don't wanna shell out upwards of $100 for a port of a game I already have (and beat dozens of times!) Whatever, watching eBay is fun.. just so long as you don't get too carried away spending money on crap you don't really need.

I stumbled across the webiite of this dude YOSHIKI OKAMOTO. He is one of the unsung old-timer heroes of videogames. He created Time Pilot at Konami, 1942 and the original Street FIghter while at Capcom.. among plenty of other things. He seems like a happy guy, one who's name most people won't recall (though I do remember seeing his "trademark" in many Capcom games, as a kid). He's since started his own company, Game Republic (not the magazine). I have no idea what they are up to or what they have released- he's got a pretty intensively detailed blog, i haven't really perused it too much yet but I want to dig in a bit w/ the Google Translator - this stuff kinda fascinates me (though as any blog-ready can tell you, that stuff can be sort of top-heavy at times).

Headache, just popped a couple Advil - it's been a long day and a long week. I look forward to getting home and being AFK for a couple of days.. rest my neurons.

straaaaange days not like before....

2007-10-01T19:41:00.000-07:00

Man, you sleep on the news for one fing day and the world changes again, such is the beauty of the videogame industry. So the latest buzz is that the boom is off the rose (or whatever the saying is) between the love affair of M$ and Bungie. It's fun to watch the forum freak out between (lies lies lies) and rationalizing how it could be, well, true true true. Anyway the way things go these days, I would have to say this sounds weird enough to possibly have some truth to it. I guess we'll know more in coming days - it's made the rounds to IGN news. I see no mention yet on gama. So, we will see, folks.

I haven't been a good faux-journalist (when have I EVER?) and done my homework about the ins and outs of what, why and how. Honestly i don't need to, if there's any veracity to this story it will be spelled out in short order (hell even just the possibility is enough to get several notable people to put their two cents in on the hows and ways). As usual I sit back and watch, and note how it is funny how everyone is quick to spell out "it's gloom and doom for MS!" just as "it's gloom and doom for SONY" (the other day) and everyone else says "yeah but don't forget, it's still gloom and doom for Ninty." So uh, basically - nothing much has changed, really. Nothing of heavy note to mention. Except what I think because I'm always right.. right?

Had the day off today. It was a bad car day to the point where I couldn't get my ass forty miles down the road to my office, so I stayed in and hung out and did.. no work. And it was NICE! I think today = first time I have relaxed, a bit, in like 6 months. There's something to that. And that was on top of being stressed about the car problems. And cracking the crud out of my side view mirror this morning on the way to the mechanic. Go figure. Anyway I walked to Tommyburger to celebrate. I may continue the tradition with a pizza. Screw you, health!

Tonight I want to flash my GBA cartridge. I finally started compiling a list of crap to put into it, its taken me long enough. The games are generally flowing thru my head, but there's so may odds and ends that it's tough to remember over the course of several months which ones I want to actually commit to leaving on there for the yeat or two it takes me to do something as simple as re-flash. And of course just when I decide to get a move on with the thing, I realize maybe I wanna start with Advance Wars 2 which has been sitting there already on the damned card, untouched, all this while. Oh well, what're you gonna do. I don't recall anyone ever trying ot say that this life was EASY.

For a time I was entertaining the possibility of investing in a GP2x. It's still in myhead, slightly.. it looks nice enough, minus a few warts. Biggest problem I've got is the same reason I've not bought a DS yet either, I just.. don't NEED more stuff! I have a GP32 which I seldom touch these days and a Gameboy Micro which I refer to wayyy too much on these boards as it is, never mind the little collection of consoles I have goin' here at home to begin with. If GP2x was a similar enogh deal to micro I would have snapped it up already - they were hinting at something along those lines but it seems never to have seen the light of day. Fair enough.. I have so much to say about these korean handhelds but that's a whole 'nother post, suffice it to say i've been a big fan and certainly got my money's worth. Thank you Gamepark.

--super mario bros 2 tune--

2007-09-30T12:26:00.000-07:00

how the hell would they get such addictive music out of crappy 8bit sound chip?

so last night i had a game dev dream. this actually doesn't happen very much (well, unless it's welding vertices, or being fired). I was playing God of War mixed with Tony Hawk and Mototrax. I am not sure if they were always the same game.. anyway it wet from alternately awesome to completely unfinished and terrible. I'd be vrooming around in a sloppy dirtbike or jeep and there would be lowpoly cabins without backsides ad flipped normals. everything was blurry, unlit,
and crappy looking.. lots of bright reds and yellows. then another level would load up and just be fun. Then my dream ceased to be about videogames, and I was just able to get up a good deal of speed running on my own two feet and take enormous, superhero-sized leaps into the sky. I would jump around inside Hangers and slap the ceiling every time, amazed that I would plummet back to earth everytime and NEVER hurt my feet. It was weird. Felt very cool though.

So I am thinking about PS3 Home lately. I read a little update on the thing in a recent EGM rag and it got my brain turning on it some more. It was due this fall (which is NOW) and got postponed till sometime in 08, Spring I guess? Anyway.. man. Dullsville. Since I had first lain eyes on the thing, it's not impressed me. I can appreciate what they are doing, and competing with things like Second Life, WOW, and the Mii's all rolled into one.. never mind Xbox Live. But this looks kind of pathetic by comparison. I can completely understand what thy are going for here and why they are doing this, in this fashion, but it's just pointed totally down the wrong path. Take it from a guy who's not actually really laid eyes on Xbox Live himself (and so not qualified to speak on the matter, but "I get the gist...") If it ain't broke, don't fix it! Sometimes a direct interface without an avatar is honestly a better way to approach things. in the matter of setting up live games online, an all of that, it does' "need" this kind of virtual representation. Much less for playing online minigames and crap like that. I mean, so long as they support a more traditional "browser formula" as well and make this stuff optional, then it can't hurt, I suppose. Honestly, there are things they could do to make a prospect like home very cool, but they don't seem like they have their S together enough to do this (well, at least the politics-that-be would prevent it from getting there). You can sort of tell what kind of people are in charge of this project just by looking at the media presented thus far. They want it to be al classy, IKEA, Metrosexual.. Sims. Man. Boring. I guess I am the same kind of guy who would poo-poo the idea of Sims in the first place (though at the time when it was fresh, i appreciated it's relative "originality"). Seriously the biggest problem with Home is this: what is the point, what do you DO? It's not a game, it's just... hanging out. Eh, I guess the no-lifer's will dig on it. If they get some kind of ingame achievements going, goals and tasks ad crap, then it could work. Make it a little wackier and Animal Crossing-y instead of Glorious Ugly Realism Boringness, it might get something. Half-assed pool and bowling don't seem too exiting. get some Poker and Mahjong and stuff in there. Hell, make a Magic the Gathering ripoff... things like Uno wet over well, get a whole card-playing community going, make it free, and make it a little atmospheric (dark and dank and sketchy, "underground feeling." Make old-fashioned 80s arcades with relevant emulated games instead of "insta copter" or whatever. Make people feel like they have to earn this stuff, discover it, instead of laying it all out there.

Whatever. I have tons of ideas, I am sure many do. Ultimately it wall be another gaffe that they throw tons of money at to result in another overbudget half-assed project that makes them look kind of clueless and lame. It will possibly get refined into something cooler in some time. Hey if they could make 8bit skins for everything, that would be sweet. Tron skins.. even WOW sins for those who like that sort of thing. Overall I just prefer my real life as my REAL life and hanging out online to be something that remains a novelty, not the point of my life. Ohhh I should watch my tone. Anyway like everyone else, I watch this with interest to see what shape it takes. Gross or not, it's still pretty important and weighty.

typical..

2007-09-27T23:51:00.000-07:00

Well, let's see how well I can do typing in this thing will my girlfriend is watching sex and the city on the other side of the room..

another day in the trenches, the past couple of weeks have been all about "repair the bugs, fix the errors..." y'know how it goes. It's not the most glamorous part of the job, surely, but hey, someone's gotta do the dirty work. Today was skybox repair... I'll say this much, you work in a business with certain tools for an amount of time, and you get used to doing things a certain way. You pick up after and some years settle down with a different toolset, then you have to re-apply all the techniques that worked in one way and turn them on their ear "let's see.. how do they handle it in here?" It's not bad, and it's satisfying to figure out how to do the, erm, translation - but yeah, at the 11th hour it's nice to have the fallback of "I know how to do this simple basic thing" and have it work like you usually expect. Well, when that doesn't quite happen, it's at least satisfying to discover a new way of doing things..

I was listening to the latest Games for Windows podcast today (well okay it was day old, but they released two this week, apparently) and it got me thinking. They were going off about how excited they were to be wrapped up with the new Team Fortress 2 (and associated titles), and remarking about how it really is such a great time in history to be a gamer, right now. So many big titles are being released during this period, in the wake of a pretty solid couple of years of steady releases (I think I was mentioning lately about the relative quality of "the big franchises"). It's true! Look at any release list between now and the coming holiday season and thing is just packed. Metroid just released recently, we got Halo 3, a new Madden just came out, Skate is reviewing well, the anticipated PS3 titles are on the horizon (Uncharted, Ratchet and Clank), I believe Ninja Gaiden just released on PS3 (yeah another rehash, but it's got it's fans) - Mario Galaxy and Smash Bros. are due shortly for Wii (as is wii fit.. hahahaha). Zelda Phantom Hourglass.. Bioshock, of course.. You already forgot but a new Pokemon swept the world a few months back, as did a Final Fantasy. Okay there were like 10 other big titles on my mind but I am having trouble dredging them up at the minute, but you get the point. Barely a year ago a new Zelda was released, and after the new year (spring?) it's expected we'll see the new installments in the GTA and Metal gear series. So, yeah, there's a lot going on, no surprise there. "It's a good time to be a gamer.." indeed.

But you know what? Listening to the enthusiasm of the crew of that podcast, it made me sort of sad. I used to be a huge fan of games... when I was a kid, that's what my life revolved around! I couldn't get my hands on enough gaming literature, never mind the actual games themselves! But things are different now. I am on the other end of things, and due to that, I see how it's all put together, bit by bit, byte by byte. I have seen countless games in various states of development, to the level now that when I look at any game, it is often the case that I see it as the sum of it's parts. The interface, the animation system, the recycled textures.. the tacked-on tutorials. The knocked-off features. The half-assed added on "bonus materials.." The road to hell is paved with the best of intentions, eh? Alright, I sound a little jaded, I have just seen a little too many projects for my years (yeah 'cause I am so OLD!) but more than that, I guess as games got more advanced, and numerous ---- it's been easier for them to fall into their cliche's. Which is fine, as I've noted above they are usually satisfying affairs for their audiences. I can't honestly look back at the games of years ago and say "oh yeah the games where you flew from the left side of the screen to the right side, and pressed a fire button? THOSE were so distinctive from one another!" It's true, there's leagues more depth now (though I will still argue, "not necessarily better..") But anyway, that's how it is - I am not easily swayed by games anymore. I used to race to the store to get my hands on the latest Sega Genesis title, I would stalk the SNES release lists.. I would nag the crap outta my folks for the newest SMB or Castlevania or ghouls n Ghosts or Thunder Force for whatever holiday was coming up. I NEEDED that stuff! But I guess I have played "enough" games, I have jumped through "enough hoops." Recently I have picked up some of the titles that I never got around to playing during my childhood, out of curiousity.. yeah, some were fun, but my burning desire to wrap my hands around that controller is long gone, man. I won't lie, there's still games I have my eye on and stuff I want to pick up, but that "life or death" feeling has long since passed. If i had to give up my inventory tomorrow, I don't think I'd shed a tear (but to be honest, I think I would miss my gameboy Micro, a liiiiiiitle)

So then.. is that it? I am dedicated to my profession, my career.. and working in games still excites me, makes me happy. But are my days as a modern gaming consumer gone for good, for the most part? Yeah, possibly.. probably. Who knows, things could swing around and go in a different direction, but I think they've already started to in some ways (casual gaming, Nintendo DS, the surge in retro-gaming interest in the mainstream) and though it's all novel and interesting to me, I seem to notice I am still not spending any money on this kind of entertainment (and no, not pirating, either!) Nah, I think it's me.. my passion for that stuff has given way to my passion for the business end of it, the bigger picture.. the actual production end of things. Keeping tabs on the scene, the industry, the politics of it. I am not a suit or a BS'r, as those things go, but the real world weirdness of it all, the nuts-and-bolts seem so much more enthralling to me, so much more enticing.

Anyway, I guess we'll see. In the meantime I have the spirit of the previous age to keep me going, and plenty of backlog to enjoy in the meantime.. in my way. If Blaster Master 2 was properly produced, I'd be singing a COMPLETELY different tune, I am sure of it.

finnish? the fyte?

2007-09-24T19:34:00.000-07:00

yerrrrah so i am reburning my lights. AGAIN. alright well unreal engine is, well.. it's a weird thing alright. it's about 6 months in and i am pretty accustomed to working with this engine these days (though there's still mountains of information that I have yet to learn about it).. i can honestly say that, although it's very powerful, it's definitely not without it's share of "eccentricities." Yeah, any engine would have the same gripes, so i won't go off too much (but oh! how I LOVE to!) I mean, the ones I have worked with in the past had some pretty annoying issues - but over time, after dealing with something for a couple of years, you get used to it's idiosyncracies. And of course we can all understand how things like "legacy code" sort of get built up and over, however inefficiently.. and "feature creep" and whatever other buzzwords you'd like. But MAN. When you move to a new neighborhood, you're always gonna see some things that just sort of make your jaw drop and go "why. WHY. WHY does it have to work like this.. it's so stupid!" And so it goes, yeah....

So Halo 3 eve or whatever you wanna call it. A million nerds rejoice. IGN gave it a pretty spiffy review. I am glad to see that something like Bioshock can still edge it out a little (yeah, a LITTLE).. so say what you want about the games industry of today, and the "generification" of product, but it's nice to see something like this released with a bunch of hype and STILL deliver on what is expected. Yeah, perhaps there's a bunch of shoulder-rubbing going on between reviewers and moneybags, but when they go on about how certain features and things are handled well in a game, you kinda know what you are dealing with. I am just saying, it's nice to see that they are not gonna let their product descend into disarrary quite yet. That's gonna come after about 6 more iterations...

Honestly, I have worked for some sequel-happy companies, say what you will of them - and I have seen them take "the easy way out" more times than I'd've like (good reasons notwithstanding), so I can feel proud of a large company that is willing to put reputation and customer satisfaction above (ever-so-slightly) ripping the willing customer off at every chance they can get. I mean let's face it, guys like Bungie, Epic - they could release tons of DLC for their titles and charge a little here, a little there. They could do annual updates with new maps and slightly upgraded feature sets. They could dilute their brands, pretty significantly, and get away with it. They could, but they don't, and from this side I do sort of wonder why. I guess overall, games are still not quite like movies - not yet! You still see a lot of good intentions rounded out with honest-to-goodness followups. Yeah games are always gonna be buggy, late, etc. etc. But they are going to provide a meaty package and fulfill expectations, maybe not "more times than not," but certainly ENOUGH times for me to even be typing this paragraph. There's never been an honestly "BAD" Metal Gear. There's never been a "horrible" Zelda, Super Mario, Final Fantasy, Pokemon, GTA, etc. Okay, once in awhile you'll get subpar spin-offs that are taking away the integrity of the license, but even then it's not often that terrible (I am talking game-to-game license, not like... movie-to-game, of course). It honestly seems that everyone is concerned with getting that golden "special IP" and then mining it for all it's worth, but.. carefully. Again, not always the case... and companies like Activision, Ubi and EA are certainly guilty of crimes in this area.. but even for those guys, when they do take advantage of a brand, they'll (usually) at least turn out decent product (level 7 or thereabouts), which is more than satisfactory for the casual audience - the casual audience being their most important one.

I am not sure what the future holds in this regard, and it's true "everything is coming to a head.." it's all gonna go haywire in a few years, business wise. I always whine that "the Golden Days are Over" but truth be told, it's a NEW Golden Age, if anything. Yeah the bloom is off the rose but the forest is just starting to sprout. Hard to imagine but someday, 5 or 10 or 15 years from now, I will look back at these (relatively easy) days and just miss this stuff. Sigh, I wanna go home and play Advance Wars 2 (finally).

at last!

2007-09-23T23:29:00.000-07:00

yup, i am horrible about updating this thing in a timely manner, what else is new? I have to say, I've been bowled over with work these days.. it's super-busy at the office and I really haven't found much time to support this thing. I plan to keep it going though, SO HELP ME ----

Things are alright in videogameland. Pretty quiet as the world prepares to be taken over by Halo once again, especially of note since it's the first nextgen incarnation since the original one released lo those many years ago (what was it - 2001?) Yeah Halo 2 doesn't feel like "that" long ago but it has never really made a huge marked imprint on the gaming culture as I feel the new one will. Anyway, I guess we will see - I think it's due Tuesday or thereabouts. Personally, I have never played any of the Halo series, though I do think I have an ISO floating around of the PC version, somewhere. I might pick up the old Xbox original for the hell of it (it can't cost more than a couple bucks at this point!) I am certainly not a FPS player by any means, but I guess I should familiarize myself with some of those conventions... well, maybe. Somehow I feel like it's something I "may not quite get around to..."

Midway is releasing Area 51 Blackside, or something like that, to coincide with the Halo release.. which is sort of retarded, if you ask ANYbody. No matter how good it winds up - but I am interested to see how a like-genre can stand going up against the "king," I mean will some people pick it up for the hell of it? Not everyone's got a 360, after all. It should be interesting to see what happens.

I strapped into "The Hulk Ultimae Destruction" last week, for the first time.. a couple of years old, but I can see way it was well-received. It was easy and quick to get into, and it's a game where they've truly captured the feeling of being a superhero (well, superhuman character, but you get my drift) and an adaptation of a comic-book character, no less. It's easy to see how it was inspired by the movie, and I have to say it just "feels right" --- though it did get boring for me after messing with it for awhile. I didn't venture too terribly far into the game, but already they load up on the "boring sandbox missions." Most people love that stuff but it's always gonna feel awfully tacked-on for me. Do this! Carry that! Mess with the environment which is shallow and limiting! I know, I expect too much - I guess it IS just a videogame, and therefore "it's gotta make money" but when you are controlling a guy like the hulk, it's sooo much fun already to pick cars up and throw them at helicopters and stuff like that - it really is - but rather than smash up the sides of buildings, I wanna be able t0o smash into and through the buildings. I know it's kinda asking a bit much for that level of depth, but come on it would be VERY cool! When I think in those terms I am reminded of the feeling of playing Katamari Damacy the first time, as you grow your Katamari larger and larger and you suddenly feel this wonderful feeling of how far they actually would support this concept (you get large enough to pick up EVERYTHING). That's such a great feeling from a videogame. Anyway I won't close the book on Hulk yet, I will dig a little more to see some of the meat of the game. I think it's a good job, considering.

I am surprised there've not been more successful superhero games. Well scratch that, I am NOT surprised, for obvious reasons - but I am sort of shocked there's not more in that vein, if even unlicensed stuff. Superheroes seem like half the job of design is figured out already - you could make some crazy unbelievable game with a guy like Superman for crying out loud! Any of these guys.. of course the biggest recent travesty is the Transformers game, but like anyone will say "you can't expect much from licensed titles," it's almost pointless to go above and beyond and churn out a powerful game. Though if you do, it can bring your studio some serious kudos...

I got a couple Saturn games in the mail this week, I haven't plugged them in yet (maybe later this evening, if I am not too terribly beat!) There's still a handful I want to track down, slowly but surely. Also I am still stalking a JPN PSX game "Umihara Kawase," it's just sort of sitting there on this guy's auction looking at me innocently. "No one wants me! I could shoot up very expensive though!!" Yeah and your reserve hasn't been met either. We'll see. i'd love to pick it up for peanuts, I don't really wanna think about having to shovel over upwards of $50 for a title like that (though stranger things have happened). I have pretty much given my grim acceptance to the fact that if I want to land Zanac PSX I'll have to shovel over some pretty pennies for that thing.. sucks.. but I love those compile games, and that's the swan song!

Work is going alright. As usual "I can't really talk about my project" which is too bad, but of course - makes sense. I did a little round this week looking over all of the levels (it's got LEVELS - I've said too much!) and it feels good to have an overall gander of the game. I have been doing a lot of last-minute "band aid work" this past week, getting pulled off the current level that I have been trying to wrap up - hopefully in these next couple of days, I will be able to concentrate on doing that and moving onto the next one. I am getting to help out with a little more hands-on design stuff than I've done in the past, which is definitely a good thing (difficult in this case, but enjoyable). It's something that kind of gets my goat, though - I start to feel like "oh why can't we change these gameplay systems to more appropriately work in X way?" and I can quickly see how those guys can get pretty frustrated. art, design.. it's all about compromise, really... That's where style saves you, I suppose...

getting a job?

2007-09-17T02:37:00.001-07:00

(an email i wrote to a guy who i was trying to help get a start in games - i eventually helped him get hired as an intern at Obsidian, after a period they hired him on fulltime)

hey what's up kevin, this is ron - i met you at kurt's bday last weekend.
sorry for the delay in emailing you, it's been a busy week! and another one coming up.. dammit time to go back to it already! whew, anyway... BTW i apologize in advance for a super-long email, here goes.

so i checked out your website, i wanted to drop you a note real quick. we talked briefly about how it can be rough to get a foothold in the industry, so i wanted to pass on a couple of links and info that might be useful to you. take as much (or as little) from it as you feel is necessary - i can only give you my perspective from what i have seen and dealt with in my own endeavors..

first things first, if you are looking for jobs you need ot hit som websites pretty steadily. VFXpro.com is the first one i was telling you about, on their main page there's a sidebar with a link to a jobs forum. know this link, make it your best friend!!
just opening it up you'll see tons of openings for all manner of positions, in all areas of the world.. long term stuff, short term, you name it. even looking for a second i see plenty of interesting opportunities across the board, though of course as i sad they are for different disciples of varying levels of experience. At this point i say dig through the listings of the past month (and then some), see which look like they are on your mark or even near to it - the first step is to make some contact, even if the job could be something out of your range you could still get a good contact out of it (and who knows, they might have another position open that is more relevant to what you are specialized in). Anyway, that's the first step...

the other site you should check for jobs is gamasutra, i think you need to register with them (it's free, no matter) to view the detailed listings/contact info. everyone in the industry should be pretty familiar with gamasutra anyway, it's pretty muh one of te number one sites for all general game industry news without much fanfare or fluff. not prety but easy to digest and you can keep up to date with who is important, and why. Also, just "living" on their job boards is a good way to learn what companies are located where, what types of jobs they "usually" hire for, stuff like that. it sounds kind of petty/secondary but it's a really good way to learn a lot of the "backed" that you need for looking for work (and being able to properly represent yourself when dealing with the business guys, etc). mind you applying to jobs on these sites is no guarantee that you'll even get a response, unless you've got a sharp resume - TONS of people read the gamasutra listings everyday, probably thousands of folks i'd wager... still, "anything is worth an email," you never know who it will end up with.

other than that.. i have seen a few other sites with job listings of various quality, nothing i have looked back at in recent times though (but it's always good to do research and keep a lookout for the dark corners of the internet, if you get my drift). i have known people who have found work on craigslist, stuff like that.

there's a couple other websites i must plug as well. you don't wanna approach these as job-source, but thy are invaluable regardless (if you're super-lucky you might get job leads to whatever degree, but that's not the point). maxforums.org is one of the most useful sites i have found on the internet.. it's just a big forum where people hang out and yakk about 3ds max all day long. users of various skill levels, hobbyists and industry people.. yeah, it's pretty nerdy, but honestly i have learned so much by hanging around on that board. there's such a great community, loads of talented and smart people, everyone's always posting works-in-progress and doing critiques and all of that. it's daunting (a lot of it is WAYYY better than anything i will ever make!) and therefore humbling, but the people are friendly and helpful. if you need help with something, and you are polite and patient, you can usually get some kinda help with anything obscure you throw at them, tech-wise.. or a least pointed in the right direction of where you should look. Seriously, my education in 3ds max pretty much came out of spending a solid year buzzing around that website. so many of those people will take the time to write super-detailed tutorials on how to do.. EVERYTHING. the point is, it's a strong community witha lot of people who are eager to help each other, share the wealth. i possibly wouldn't be working today if not for that website.

another good site that is pretty important is neogaf.com, their forum is one of the most popular "game discussion websites" in the whole world. if maxforums was kinda dorky, THIS site is 110 percent off the charts fucking supreme dorkiness.. but again.. it's sort of the first line for a lot of important information in "what's going on in the industry." You get a lot of mega-game nerd fanboys on there (most of it, actually) but there's a healthy representation of game developers who post on there as well (usually under anonymity, but if you stick around and pay attention you can weed them out). this site has gotten some heavy notoriety lately as some higher-level project leads (and studio heads) have been posting pretty high-profile shit in here in the past year and change.. which is pretty remarkable. at the same time they are starting to let too many people into the membership, so it's getting kinda diluted... but still it's worth sticking to, you'll find all game industry news pretty well covered in here. yeah i know i keep saying it, "this all sounds pretty dorky" to be hanging around all these gaming messageboards and stuff... but it is vital, this is where the business happens ad is reported these days, for obvious reasons. it's messy and kinda cryptic, but if you want to know what's going on you sort of have to give a good shit about it. Even if you have the attitude "hey i just wanna work in production, i don't care about the politics of it all, leave that for the suits to worry about.." that's small thinking, because the business and politics of it colors everything. it's been the beginning and end of careers for all of us, really, like it or not. if you really can't care about it, then it will probably bite you in the ass sooner or later.

so there's my website info crap, that's the beginning of it anyway. there's a little more, but no sense heaping on all the secondary shit at this point - if you can get into this much, and go with the flow, then you are on a good roll for damn sure, ad you won't have much trouble finding your own way where to go next..

now-- as for your website. i checked it out, i looked at your demo reel, your resume, etc. this is one area that i take very seriously, because at the end of the day this is all you got, man. your website will pretty much represent all that you are, in the world, to your potential clients - so you better do a damn fine job of conveying to them what you are about and why they should hire you. websites and portfolios are difficult, for obvious reasons.. not only do you have HUGE competition (so many shmoes out there have half-decent websites), but at this point the people you want to view your website are so burned out on looking at that shit that it's gonna take something done -just so- for them to even register a blip on their radar. for this reason, you really need to follow the program and learn how to develop a perfectly polished, well-representational website. this extends to all aspects of it, from the user interface, to the way you lay out your resume, to the way you setup your demo reel video. it's a little maddening and obnoxious to have to deal with this - not only doing your work, but the complete other world of how ot present every little detail of it.. but like i said, we live in a world where there's so much competition on the middle ground that it's really the only way to be considered on a professional level.

Fortunately, making a decent website and portfolio presentation is pretty far from a shot in he dark. Because there are tons of really well-put together sites out there, it's pretty easy to fish through a handful of them and figure out what to do (and what not to do). Off the bat you can see some basic design principles going on - simple design, super easy to navigate, "less is more.." Really the people who look at your stuff don't want to deal with animated menus, exotic fonts, slow-downloading animated GIFs, pages and pages of info to delve thru, stuff like that. just easy and to the point, letting the work speak for itself. that's not to say that style should be ignored, just downplayed, simplified.

in my website, i wanted the main page to be the main interface - all of the images are available as the first thing you
see, you can tell what i have worked on/who i have worked for right away, what type of stuff i specialize in. i tried to trim it down as best i cold (i probably am still showing more than I need to), but hey you don't wanna spend forever criticizing the shit out of it. it's always easy to get back to the main page, the email button actually launches into an email, blah blah. it's stupid and simple. i started a website probably seven years ago, which looked horrible but i have revamped it and made it better every couple of years since (maybe 3 or 4 big overhauls) - but always the same general principles which i have seen on lots of other peoples websites. the best thing to do is get a working version, then send it out to all your buddies and tell them to critique the hell out of it. you'll hear plenty of half-assed advice, but always some great ideas too.

when i apply for a job -- depending on how interested i am in the job - i will email them to see what's up, and send a little paragraph about myself (what i do, where i live, who i have worked for, what projects, what software, my specialty.. brief and to the point). this is usually going to some HR person.. but if i know they are looking for an artist, i will do some digging and find out the art directors email address (usually not very hard, just do a little research online - pretty fucking easy). i'll email that person too, and then i will also send a physical package to the art director in the mail with a CDRom with like 10-15 jpegs on it (stuff from my website, plus maybe some more delicate stuff that i don't wanna post publicly for whatever reason), and a copy of the cover letter w/ all my contact info on it too. not hard to find the mailing address of any company, and just send it to art director's name c/o that company.. it will definitely wind up on their desk, at least. After being laid off from neversoft last fall, i went a step further and dd something new for the 1st time in years, i made an actual video DVD to show off my reel. probably super simple, but i neer did that before (that you could stick in a regular standard DVD player) all nicely edited and etc. i had an editor buddy who helped me out, there's tons of people in town who will help you put that shit together if you're not able for relatively cheap.. again, just gotta do some research, ask around, etc. If you are applying to some bigger houses (FX and stuff) they refuse to look at jpegs and websites, they are kinda arrogant.. they only want "video DVDs or nuthin'"

so, yeah, there's my piece for ya, do with it what you want. i know getting a job in this industry is tough, like any industry where there is a decent level of competition - and that sucks, but really it's not THAT bad that it's "almost impossible" or something. it just requires a lot of love and a lot of dedication and honestly being the guy who's gonna dig under rocks for a little while to cover all the bases. none of this stuf is even THAT hard, it's just sense.. and time, really. it sucks to have gone thru school, to have even had some work experience, and then after that, you sort of feel like "you've pad your dues" already and desere some job stability, on-the-job-training, something.. well, you don't really get that stuff in the entertainment industries. basically you either get lucky, or you're naturally crazy talented, or you're the guy who has the effort and the motivation to say "fuck it, i will take however long it will take to get myself established, and when it kicks my ass out a few times, i will keep crawling back." Of course, it DOES get easier, as you do learn shit on the job, and make contacts, and build up your reel, and your rep. But it takes time. A couple years sounds like a pain in the ass, but considering how many of the years of your life you will actually WORK, a couple years is nothing, just a blip on the radar...

so yeah, i know this was an absurdly long email, and it's probably a little crazy "why the hell does a guy i don't know write all of this stuff?" Honestly, I have been there, and it's only 'cause there have been other people (on those forums, who i have met, worked with, etc) who have done the same for me, clued me in on where to look, what to do with my work, etc. What comes around, goes around.. kind of.

lastly, after all of that, i didn't even get to critiquing your actual work.. ha! but the same rules apply, you have heard all that before anyway. i offer my friend jim's website as a great inspiration for what a great anim portfolio looks like.. i have seen this guy rise from humble origins, he is super-successful and a great guy also - jimjagger.com

alright man. good luck!

-Ron Alpert
2D/3D Environment artist

http://www.texturemonkey.com
- - - - - - - - - - -

take out the trashes

2007-09-16T16:57:00.000-07:00

Ahh, it is my neglected videogame blog. How am i ever gonna get rich ad famous off of this thing if i don't update it nineteen times a week, i wonder..?

That, my friends, is up to the courts to decide. Anyway, it's the weekend, and i am away from the office. It was a busy week with some late nights of wrapping up certain unfinished business and performing some edits on some levels that needed to be taken care of. I look forward to see how the next phase of the assembly line cleaned up where I left off, come Monday (though to be honest a couple more days out of the office wouldn't be upsetting..) Not much gaming recently, though I did make a couple of eBay purchases (such a wonderful thing!) I received the 2nd Hulk game "Ultimate Destruction," which enjoyed a very positive critical response as I recall.. also out inthe post somewhere are a couple more Saturn games, Baku Baku Animal (supposed to be a good puzzler) and a game called, I think, Gun Griffon. Ah well. It was only a cent for that, why not eh?

No gaming this weekend (yet,) though perhaps tonight I will load up Hulk and see what all the fuss is about. Last night after we returned from the bar, a spirited game of Tetris Attack (the best!) though my drunkeness was severley disabling my skills... Disturbingly, the SNES video cable seemed to peter out and so rather tan enjoying some SF2 we hadda retreat to PS2ville and plugged in some good old Bust-a-Move (is that what it's called? Shouldn't I be ashamed not to know this?) It made for some fun times though. Actually almost made me want to shell out for a Wii.

It's coming, maybe.. they are going to support the Japanese PC-Engine Super CDRom2 games, i guess (try saying that a few times!) and that's something that has raised my eyebrows. Tons of great shooters on that system! It sounds like they will only trickle software out for tat system though, so I am not all gung-ho. I recently bid some hefty $$$ on a modded TurboDuo (it had a region switch on it) but of course I had to draw the line.. I can't justify spending megabucks on that kind of stuff at this stage of the game! Tempting, though, when you see rare + weird stuff like that come down the pipe. I have my eye on a few weird "curiosities" lately, I would like to pick up a Virtual Boy someday (wait, that doesn't sound so appropriate) - it's got some interesting looking games, Red Alarm (like Star Fox, or so i have heard) - the mario clash game, pinball, 3D tetris.. yeah that all sounds rather gimmicky, but hey videogames are all about gimmicks, right? Seriously, I do remember the old Master System 3D glasses and being very impressed by how they operated - I think "true" 3D in gaming is something that deserves way more inspection than it has been given.

Lately I have been playing the old TG16 title "Blazing Lazers" (love that cheesy name!) AKA Gunhed, emulated on my GBA. That was a sweet spot of game history for me, when the vert shooters just started to get really, really fun. Compile - EXCELLENT company for that sort of stuff, Puyo Puyo be damned... I can still get quite a charge out of it, though I do need to recall the trick to amp up the difficulty (it's a bit too easy when you boost the weapons up). A spiritual sequel "Space Megaforce" (yah, more cheesy I know) AKA Super Aleste wound up being one of my very favorite SNES games, ever - the the degree that I'd be surprised if I haven't mentioned it elsewhere in this blog already (and surely it will come up again!) Now that I have that Test PS2 I am eager to pick up Zanac X Zanac, though I am hoping not to have to shell out the $150+ asking price for the new one - hopefully a cheaper used copy will show up on eBay at some point (either that or I will get rid of Radiant Silvergun and see if i can break even).

Other games I have on my mind - my friend got my interest picked in a title called Indigo Prophecy, also the Suda 51 game (Killer 7) might be worth a look (again, I think I have mentioned that title already). I guess that's all that's on my mental plate at the moment.. I downloaded Under Defeat for DC (naughty, naughty) but hae yet to burn it (i gotta remember how to do that stuff)

--------------------------------

Of course I can't end this blog without giving a mention to "The King of Kong," the decidedly biased videogame documentary that is enjoying some alternative success lately. good film, I enjoyed it very much - some good laughs, it's less a documentary about old quarter-munchers than it is an interesting look at human nature. While I can understand that some truth might have definitely been sacrificed to "create a better story," it's a good film and I am glad to see this theme getting some play in the big leagues, however relative. For those not in the know, here's a quick summary - "competitive video game playing" rose in the early 80s as "super-players" would spend marathon sessions in front of arcade cabinets to attain astronomical scores. These games were designed to hand you your ass after a quick burst of gameplaying enjoyment, but of course a particular niche of players would wrap themselves around these "simple but difficult" games and dedicate themselves to conquering them - of course, the list of people in the world who could actually do this is quite short. It's faded from something that's never been quite in the limelight, but the scene still exists among a very small (and specific) group of people who maintain their little society today. The film tells the story of an underdog who goes on to achieve videogaming greatness with the 25+ year old Donkey Kong machine, as he goes thru all sorts of hoops to prove his worth in The Hall of Esteemed Gamers - and must face much challenge as some good ol' boys aren't so quick to relinquish their thone quite so easily.

This has been a scene which, although it's been completely off the pop culture radar. retrogamers such as myself have long had some degree of interest in - it's very interesting to see it gaining any kind of attention in this day and age. There's another documentary out there in the ether as well "Chasing Ghosts" looking back at the whole Golden Age of Arcade Gaming, I haven't seen it (can't even find it!) but I'd love to get a chance to view it..

dash, bored...

2007-09-08T19:58:00.000-07:00

yeah, so.. no game posts from me this week. well, i was busy workin', whattaya want!! Quiet week in the news, too.. Factor 5 is the new whipping boy of the moment (shame, shame) and nothing else really going on. Lots of people are probably wrapping up Bioshock and Metroid 3, in 6 months no one will remember either as these things go. I wanna butt in and say this much, though - it was important that Nintendo still put out a game like Metroid, which - though I have not played - still caters to a particular market. Everyone's up in arms "is The Big N gonna abandon it's hardcore players?" Maybe not, at least not with lightning speed. They throw some curveballs here and there - I am glad to see they can still put out quality games like this which won't poop al over the franchise (even though a lot of signs point to them eventually phasing out that market, possibly). Yeah, I a doomsayer sometimes..

Anyway of course Halo is the next Bog One on the horizon, I am not sure but isn't it out the end of the month or something? That will take over the world for a little while. Sony's pants are down with nothing to counter, so far as I can tell. There's some decent competition for Halo (relatively) due out next quarter, and thereabouts... I kind of wish someone would stand up and fight them though (isn't the Team Fortress due out for Xmas?) That's Cel-da for that community though, so it's a little up in the air (though it will make a mark, and I say more power to 'em). Of course Nintendo is looking at a good season with the next big Mario installment due shortly as well, as everybody knows - though after Sunshine people are sort of waiting to see how it actually feels to get hands-on with it (I mean, New SMB was a precursor to some degree, but it's apples and oranges - really). Platformers just don't have the same world-bending power they used to, even with the Top Dogs like that. Mario will do as well as it could, and I am sure everyone who bought Twilight Princess will pick it up, plus maybe a few more (hell, their installed back is.. remarkable!) But I am sure it'll never live up to the legacy set back at the dawn of N64, for obvious reasons.

And then there's Wii Fit, of course. Yeah, so this will be an interesting holiday season to watch, but not as weird as last year.

-------------------------

So I was at a Labor Day BBQ last weekend, in Santa Monica - a good time, but certainly a little thought provoking. My buddy who works at Sony Imageworks was throwing the shindig, and so there was an excess of visual FX folks there. Now, this is interesting, as VFX for TV/Film is definitely a different scene than what goes on in the games industry. It's generally considered that VFX>Games a lot of time, and "moving to film is the natural progression of the Games Artist.." Quite a few of my friends have made the transition, others have mentioned it. Talking to the people at this party, I could sense a little bit of people looking down their noses at me "oh, so you just wanna stay in games. don't wanna make more money, huh?" It's interesting. You see, I have done a tiny stint in the so-called "big leagues," and I won't lie - it was a thrill, and I truly enjoyed it - and would love to again - but games are my thing. I have my reasons, and I am not shy about calling them out. Games are smaller, more intimate affairs - I work with 60 people on a whole game staff, or just for a single SHOT in a film! I like working with small groups, and also you get "flex room" in games - you can move around a little more, wear different hats so to speak. Help out on design, UI, story, etc etc. Hell even suggest an IP if you know what you are talking about. Films are wayyyy more constrictive.. you're part of a department, you're pigeonholed into doing a specific thing, you just keep pumping that stuff out. That's not to say it's not glamorous, it's just not gratifying for me in that I want to do all sorts of stuff, rather then specialize in one area forever. As usual, I exaggerate, but there's truth in it.

The ideal situation for a guy like me is to go back and forth, experience the variety of the different mediums.. bring things I learn from one area to another one. I will never forget the thrill of sitting in the screening room of an FX house and watching with pride as my WIP shots were playing over and over on the big screen. I could do that again!

Games I want to play

2007-09-01T16:41:00.000-07:00

Alright, I just fiished an entry not 20 minutes ago, but I just was struck by inspiration for a quick follow-up.. rather than edit it in, I decided to post it separately, here are som,e games I would like to play (these games already exist.. some of which I even own!)

In no particular order--

Umihara Kawase (any version) - I have tinkered with it for a few moments on the SFC version, but it's not got a proper playthrough yet. It was enough to get me interested - they need to make more weird games like that! I recently lost an auction for the PSone version, and the curret one is kinda pricey.

Thunder Force IV, Elemental Master - Sega Genesis shooters, I actually bought both back in the
day. I gave them about 15 minutes of playtime though, for some reason they never captivated me in the way their predecessors have, but they are still very much worth looking into (especially the former). To this day Thunder Force II and III (II especially) remain some of my favorite moments in gaming.

Hyperduel - same dev as above, and I've played through the MAME bversion of the lackluster PCB. The Sega Saturn version is supposed to be a worthwhile enhancement however, if I ever see it floating around for reasonable $$ then I will snap this up.

Gunstar Super Heroes - I loved the old Genesis title, and played this one for a moment.. it didn't grab me. But it's legacy (and the weirdness I have heard about it) definitely intrigues me. Treasure's an honest dev!

Killer 7 - Suda 51 is growing on me. As always I like weird, stylized games, so long as they have substance to them. This one sounds uberweird, but it's got enough of an underground following that it could be worth dropping a couple quid for. I'm interested to see where his new title "no More Heroes" for Wii goes, though I am not impressed with the tech of the screens I have seen. If I get a Wii I will certainly check these titles out. This guy reminds me of Clover Studios, for obvious reasons.

Space Raiders, Megaman Network Transmission - I recently scored both of these Gamecube titles for peanuts on eBay. Something I never do (buy game for a system I don't own?) but the system is cheap enough I could get it for peanuts as well. I may eventually, but more likely I may just buy a wii someday. Space Raiders is an odd-sounding descendant of Space Invaders.. it got skeptical press, but always sounded worth checking out to me. For some reason SI is still --hard-- to play!!! In fact the 1991 update is still quite fun, and yes even the original can be addictive as well. As for Megaman, it's a throwback to the sidescroller days using the "ick" new incarnation.. but I remember playing a build at E3 some years ago and being interested. Hey we don't see many side scroller platformers at all these days, and with a pedigree like this, it's bound to be worth a look (especially as the reviews were't awful)

Guardian Heroes, Burning Rangers - I am on some kinda vintage Sega Saturn kick lately. both of these were standout titles back in the day, I don't know how well they've aged but they are still referred back to even now. If i can find them cheap I'll jump on them. I have the GBA rom of the former but never felt tempted to boot it up, it didn't review too well anyway.

Wario Ware Twisted - the 2nd one in the series. I was a big fan of the first Wario Ware, and this one is often referred to as the "peak." Stupidly, I borrowed the game from a friend for >6 months but never looked at it once before returning it. I should just pick it up though. It's lik only 10-15 bucks!! If I do ever get a wii I'll likely get their Smooth Moves game as well, it's supposed to be alright. I am sure it's not great, but I get the feeling I would dig it.

Donkey Kong: King of Swing - this game always sounded appealing to me. old school gameplay (you just use the shoulder buttons and that's it). It's got a little bit of a following, supposedly it's a descendant of the old-old-HOLYCRAPold NES title Clu Clu Land. I should just flash it sometime. There's a DS followup in production as well, I wonder if it released yet though?

Drill Dozer - similar to above, a Game Freak-produced title (yeah, they make Pokemon besides.. and nothing else apparently!) for GBA. Noted as "the last cool GBA sidescroller," it was originally released in Japan as "Screw Breaker" which sounds cooler (and well yeah, sexier). It just sounds like it's easy and fun and good technique.

That's it off the top of my head. I could go on with my 2nd tiers but i'll let it chill out for now. Suffce it to say I have a ton of oldschool PCE CD-ROm games I'd love to check out, plus about 20 games on Nintendo DS which would probably suck me away for a good several weekends (if I ever caved in and bought a DS). Fodder for future writing, at least.

Time to get back to making games for the rest of you, then...

signz of the timez . . .

2007-09-01T15:51:00.000-07:00

yeah so i thought it would be pretty street and hip of me to incorporate "z's for s's" into my usually-useless subject line. it's tight though. i wonder, when was the first instace of the ebonics Z (or it's predecessor?) Did it originate sometime in the 1950s or 1800s (on purpose, not out of ignorance, I mean)

Anyway, let's talk about games. Game, games. So the EA Skate Demo has been out for some time now, and it looks pretty interesting, from the scant bits of info i have heard about it. I still suppose it's playing like a better Thrasher with Tony Hawk gfx. Man, i did not like Thrasher (but even i could have if I'd given it a real chance, perhaps!) The gamer community seems to be eating it up, and you know what - it sounds like it's a good game that was made with some love. So in that respect, good on them, they deserve it.

I got my hands on a couple of games this week, myself.. oldies but goodies. Last night I fired up Psychonauts on Xbox (the guy who works beside me says "that game hurts my eyes!") Um.. weird game. Very impressive though. Again, obviously a labor of love, and I am a little surprised that it didn't get pushed a little more - victim of circumstances? Style-wise it feels like it has "Nickelodeon Property" oozing out of it's pores (though it's an original IP from what i can tell) and while that turned me off initially, what can I say, it works! In spite of that it's a bit dark-laden more so than you'd think, given that label. Anyway I made it through the first section, interested to plunder further. It's nice to see when a project is driven on (almost) all fronts and put out nice and polished.. and lovingly. Shame what happens when it's released to an ungrateful public, but what else is new.

Today's play was 'NiGHTS Into Dreams" for our ol' buddy Sega Saturn. I have had a Saturn nearly a year now, complete with the special Analogue pad (1st to market, right?) but have only finally received this game from an eBay auction today, at last. Mind you I do remember popping it in for a moment here or there in the break room of my 1st job sooo many years ago, but not long enough to give it any kind of look. Anyway, cool game. I can see why Saturn players loved this back in the day - weird, colorful, stylish, "cool feeling." I had a little difficulty figuring out the mechanics at first but it gave me some onscreen info AFTER I failed my first attempt, so yeah better late then never. It's funny playing these older games in that there still remained a semblance of difficulty "if you die then it's game over, back to the beginning!" Yeah I sent the Psychonauts dude to his death countless times last night, only to regenerate at the last checkpoint ad nauseum.. not so with NiGHTS, you get that ass handed back to Character Select Screen thanks very much.

I have a lot of other things to get my hands on, actually a lot of stuff lying around (old-school roms mostly) that I want to give my gaming attentions to, but really I am looking at endless piles of work to do ad I'd rather stuff my free time with trying to level that mountain. Ummm.. I have some things I'd love to vent in here about my day job and what I'd like to do about it, aesthetically and business-wise, but I'll keep a lid on it for now. I'll say this much, I see a lot of work I can do yet and I am glad to be in a position where I can flourish so long as I can keep my energy flowing. I do miss "old-gen" though where it was easier to get away with being more stylish in a way.. funny how much we all bitched about it back then.

Watching the gaf boards, it's dramariffic as always. Heavenly Sword is getting "sorta" disappointing reviews (is it out yet?) and even worse is Factor 5's Lair.. 4.9 from IGN??? What is this?? I imagine that some high-ups gotta be pissed. This really confounds me, the credibility of website/mag previews gets completely called into question in these cases. Sure they wanna have a neutral stance (though optomistic) when a game's in prerelease state, but to be honestly excited about a game and then turn into a bitchfest when the game releases speaks purely of "something is just not adding up here." A quick zap over to gamerankings.com shows that more than a couple of reviewers think this title is a crock as well. It's too bad, Factor 5 = no slouch (net the best dev, but certainly not a bad one). Worse though is that the PS3 needs these "hyped games" to follow through and build their brand up. They haven't got anything to play on that system, still.

What else.. hmm Denis Dyack is at it again defending the latest round of "Too Human" butchering going on over at gaf. I gotta hand it to the guy, he IS what he is. You'd think someone above that guy would have yelled at him by now. It starts to make me wonder if it's all part of some bizarre otherworldly marketing scheme (which apparently even I am feeding into, now...) The latest round of pics they showed look bleh to me too. Some of the recent shots (past 6 months) didn't look bad, certainly not "amaaaazing" but not offensive. I think this entire thing is up in the air, but one thing's for sure, they did a good job of getting that game on everyone's lips (after all these years!) It sucks though, because now even if it winds up a "good game" then it won't win over the naysayers who have dug in roots to speak out on it. It'll have to be at least on a level with Bioshock to get a decent reception.. good luck, guys...

yep... i know

2007-08-28T02:40:00.000-07:00

Yeah, so.. I guess I finally have to bite the bullet and buy a Nintendo DS at last. Siiiigh. It's been a long time coming, but I can not refuse the siren song of Arkanoid. I had the NES version about a billion years ago, with the special paddle.. ya know, the one which broke later tat same night. I don't really wanna think about how much that puppy goes for on eBay MIB these days.

For that matter I had Stack-Up as well. but it was missing some pieces, so i brought it back and exchanged for Popeye. Yeah-h-h Popeye's all well and good and everything but --geez-- I wish I coulda given Stack-Up a shot. ROB got pretty lonely. Hey, sure, he wasn't exactly the most elegant piece of gamin hardware, but.. damn.. unlike the power glove, at least it WORKED.

So recently i have come to the realization that I must finally shell out and buy a next-gen console.. can they still be called next-gen at this point? Xbox 360 is going on 2 years old, in a couple more months! Anyway, last "current system" I bought was a PS2, back in 2002.. it's still faithfully serving, 5 years later (well, it's good for watching movies on, what can I say). I inherited a half-busted Xbox (model 1) about 1 year ago, I think it's been.. anyway, I don't game too much at home, and my PC is definitely pretty long in the tooth as well. What this all adds up to is the fact that I gotta get me some new hardware. I am still no aficionado, at least not inthe conventional sense - but as time passes, more and more I realize that it's my duty as a game artists, especially in these times (and the coming ones) to stay more current with the state of things. Now, I cruise all the regular gaming sites, I get an eyeful of what's hot (and what isn't) pretty regularly - but it's getting harder to appreciate as the tech keeps leaping forward, from just some crappy Quicktimes and screengrabs. I gotta say, in these days when an xbox live account enables you to download no shortage of demos, this is a pretty cost-effective deal. I am not going to pony up immediately, but I think pretty soon I will be bringing a new console home.

And so the question is, then.. what to buy? Oh, here we go. I had this dilemma last time around too, it was a lot of back-and-forth until I got my job at Left Field Productions and it became evident that I'd be needing to look at however many Action Sports games I could get my hands on. At that point PS2 was the king, baby..

This time around? Well, I had been considering getting a Wii for a little while, actually.. but it definitely doesn't suit for the reasons mentioned above. Many of it's coming games are NOT hi-tech looking, to say the least.. if I got it, it would be strictly fr entertaining my girlfriend, I'd suspect. It would be cool, but as long as I am not burning with desire, I don't think it'll happen. But, I'd love for them to give me a reason. Make some weird games, Nintendo!! Come on!

PS3. Sigh. This is the one I'd most "like" to see sitting on my self, for a few reasons. But to buy one, especially right now, would be folly. It's expensive as hell! There's no games for it! The live service is.. uh.. not to terribly impressive, just yet! Man. There's nothing for PS3. If they had half as much going on as the Xbox then it'd raise an eyebrow or two of mine, but as it is the thing is floundering. I feel bad.. I wanted them to get their act together. It's just sitting limp with it's buddy the PSP. I would have more to do with my aging PS2. Ah well, maybe next year.

And so, the conclusion is, I need to get a 360. The download service sells it, for my purposes! That and.. well.. hell! There's next-gen GAMES on the thing that you can get right NOW. Tons of 'em. Bioshock, Crackdown, halo Shortly.. Plus all the backlog. And it's cheaper. Oh well.. let's not forget, the things are built shoddy as all hell. I guess that's one thing the poor PS3 has going for it, anyway.. it actually kinda works..

I guess that settles it. I am gonna do some more research and see just how crippled the download service is on PS3, if for nothing other than argument's sake. I know people are downloading stuff off there.. not really too sure what's on offer that's a good compromise though (Ninja Gaiden AGAIN? QBert?)

I gotta end this by saying I do hope PS3 gets it's act in gear. They missed their window to rule the world again, but they can still scrap together a decent showing. They've got some amazing talent in their stable (exclusives-wise) that can put up a strong level of support, if they ever gt the games out at a reasonable time (and maintain exclusivity). I guess time will tell -- good luck guys, you will need it!

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A few posts ago I railed against metal gear solid 4. I said it lookd too realistic and boring, "like work..." Well, I saw the latest Leipzig trailer today, the one with the new bosses. Okay, I take it back!! "Laughing Octopus" -- man. Where the hell do they come up with this stuff? Like it or hate it, I appreciate the weird craziness of this stufff. It reminds me of crazy japanese Cyberthink from the 80s.. I don't know how to put it. But it's iconographic for next gen, for PS3. I am glad they are doing weird out of the ordinary stuff - keep it up. I still can't say the game will be my cup of tea, but I appreciate the bizarreness. It AIN'T REAL LIFE!!

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Skate demo released for 360 a few days ago. All I have seen are sme crappy Youtube vids.. I wanna get my hands on that thing. I am guess Thrasher, and I am sure I will not feel it when i finally get my hands on it.. but i bet it will be kinda fun. I get the sense that developer was driven to make something a little special. My loyalistic NS tendencies were strong before but these days I want to just see something different and unique, special. Nothing wrong with that. I have seen the latest trailers for Tony Hawk 9 as well, and it looks nice and all.. more of the same, as usual, though. I hope they got the framerate up fom last year, and maintained the fun factor without getting bogged down with features or something -- yeah i am biased but Project 8 was a fun arcadey title, and they could easily replicate that (in a good way). I guess we will see soon.

-------------------------------------------------

Things are alright for me at Obsidian, I started arting a new level last week. To tell the truth, it was rough getting started.. though it was a theme I thought I would enjoy, it was a dra-a-a-ag. You get burned out sometimes, and when that happens, youjust do't wanna do ANYTHING. Just don't wanna look at it for awhile! So I started cobbling together some reference, got some direction from my lead, started filling in the elements. It began to take shape, but very unsatisfactory, even after a couple of days.. no enthusiasm. Today was "Eureka!" though, sometimes you get lucky and come across that single piece (or in this case, pieces) of reference that just NAILS it for you "oh crap! THAT'S what it should look like..." I wet and slaped some nw walls in, a couple different elements, and suddenly it's looking far less stupid and it's invigorating to work on once again. Whew! And on that note, i go to get myself to bed.

(de)termination

2007-08-25T02:00:00.000-07:00

yeah so... hrrrmph. this is it, after all this time... i am finally entertaining the notion of buying a next-gen system. "what's that!" you say, "but Ron HATES videogames.." Yeah well. What can I say. Being the "next gen artist" that I am (ahem ahem) I am cognizant of the fact that it is getting tougher and tougher to keep up withthe trends.. damned irresponsible.. and though I check the boards and the local sites daily, one can only keep so abreast of the information without (duh) getting one's hands dirty every so often. And yeah, I guess xbox version 1 isn't exactly cutting-edge anymore.

One of the big things I have realized is that there's this whole demo-scene going on now - you buy a next-gen console and subscribe to the online component, and you'll get access to all manner of downloadable material.. Rather, the latest up-and-coming hot product will release a sampler of what's coming down the tubes next. I definitely don't have time to play through full games of -- ANYTHING these days, so honestly samplers would pretty much hit the spot for me I suppose. After all, I am basically concerned with getting a rough glimpse of what is out there, not necessarily that being in my position I would need to play through everything..

On the selfish side, it would be nice to have a set-top box to stream movies from. My friend did that one night at his apartment, he downloaded a flick for a tiny fee (for a single viewing, or 24 hrs.. whatever it was). Yeah I was impressed, it looked pretty quality! I have got sorta addicted to downloading movies back in the day, but it has been so long since that period.. such a pain in the ass for a nonbeliever like me. I have no problem about tossing a couple buucks (yeah.. a COUPLE!) to DL something from my couch, without havoing to get up ad do ANYthing. i don't need to keep a DVD copy!

On the personal side

So what, then, to sink (unfinished)

Captain of the Industry

2007-08-22T13:35:00.000-07:00

Games COnvention (or whatever they call it) apparently is goin' on in Leipzig, Germany right now. With E3 a thing of the past I kinda wish i could be there at the moment to shmooze and see what's goin' on. Also, damn it, it would be fun to just bum around in Germany. I hear the clubs are great and I know it would be a good time. Maybe in a few jobs from now I can swing it...

New footage leaked out for Mario Galaxy, the board-goers are kinda oohing over it. It looks.. well, i wouldn't say it looks "awesome." It looks capable, but man - a team like that, a history like that, you'd think after all these years they could churn out something somewhat remarkable! I'll say this much, even considering the hardware, the graphics look absolutely as perfect as they would ever need to (I'd still say the same thing about Sonic the Hedgehog 1+2 on Sega Genesis --- hell even Mega Man 1+2 back on NES, to be honest!) But now that the visual style is fixed at perfect, when can we expect the follow up of spot-on gameplay? It's harsh to judge just my short tidbit-previews and teasers, so I will reserve, but I already know the outcome 'cause "it happens every time." If you don't need to revolutionize, why would you bother...

Anyway in spite of myself I am interested to see the game when it launches. Have they even announced a date yet, I forgot! Mind you I have never played Sunshine and even worse, haven't played 64 for more than 5 minutes. I guess I could part with $5 on ebay for a system and a cart...

This piques my curiosity about New Super Mario Bros on DS, but again after what I'd seen "why bother?" It doesn't look bad, at all, it just looks like.. re-tread. In case I am coming across as overly mean, I'll think back to... 1991 when Super Mario World came out and it was already getting old. We all loved it as it was a big audiovisual upgrade, and it had some nifty tricks and gimmicks, but sooo much of that was forgettable. Run to the right, jump. Get coins. Get 1UP. For such a beautiful and remarkable game, why must they rely so heavily on gimmicks and cake-icing to get by.. when the design of the earlier efforts were rather GENIUS? Someone put it on autopilot and called it a day.

It's a little frowned upon to get snarky at the top franchises in gaming so I won't say anything to the tune of "these are bad games," they just aren't very evolutionary play-wise. Back then they didn't really need much more than an A/V upgrade and "more stuff to do," but in hindsight I want 'different, WEIRDER stuff to do." This loops around to today's games, where (damn it) everything is the SAME. Sequels are all well and good for films (not so much lately, honestly) but on games it just gets more and more boring.

I won a copy of Psychonauts on eBay today. My coworker told me "it'll hurt your eyes to look at..." I can't say I've ever been too entranced by the screens I have seen of it but something about this game tells me it might be a little more approaching what games could (and should) be about. I dislike the design of the character, and I wince at the thought of "steering him around with an Xbox controller" but i am eager to plug in and get my feet wet with it.

Looked at the video of Spore today, there's a new one up. It looks.. weird. Not bad, not bad at all.. the style looks a lot goofier and kiddier, or something, than I would have expected. Like Scholastic Edutainment or something. Again I am being harsh (but we should be!) I think WIll Wright is a Genius, looks like a megadork but a guy like him should look that way - he has a wonderful history and I think someone like that who has single-handedly helped steer the culture of videogaming more than a couple of times deserves a LOT of credit. He's no blowhard, just another PC geek in his suit and tie who seems to really know what the hell he is doing and the world is pretty fortunate for that. It's funny how he should be ranked among the likes of Miyamoto and yet you'd hardly picture the two ever being in the same room, never mind the same context.

I worked till about midnight last night and wrapped up my latest level, and now I am off onto the next one.. no end in sight! I am happy with how it ended up, I still want to make some changes to it as time permits. Like I said before, "next gen is a pain in the ass" and ain't that the truth. .but it's nice having more showpieces, I gotta admit.

another aimless post

2007-08-20T18:52:00.000-07:00

.. they are all aimless, come on...

monday, after a long weekend. i think i wrote in here the other night, after i got back from vegas - i don't even remember! it's all a blur, man...

i have been grinding pretty heavy at work lately. so much to do and so little time. i am kind of a stickler for quality, no matter what i am working on and if there's a motto i will have is "if you are gonna do it, do it right..." and that's just how it has to be.

man. i hate next-gen. i think it's going to make me lose my mind. there was a time, not long ago, when i was salivating at the thought of "ohhh i cannot wait, all this extra memory to throw around, i can finally make big huge texturemaps all over the place, just dripping with gorgeous detail.." Well sir, that day has finally come (or so it would seem) and the verdict is.. bittersweet. i do live having the extra space, (no more compressing everything to 256 colors? 128 pixels, at BEST?) but the flipside of it is - it takes TOO DAMNED MUCH TIME to make all the tiny details now! It's true - our memory went up but our allotment of time hasn't. they aren't exactly hiring armies of artists to make stuff yet (unless you're EA, or someone) and so this translates to "if you wanna make stuff look pretty, go ahead, but do it QUICKLY." The game biz has always been about speed, no matter where you were - but now it's just mounting. Can I hack it? Sure you can, any good game artist worth his salt is gonna have dozens of shortcuts up his sleeve. Honestly, one of the great things I love about this job, I have to say it's extremely rewarding to develop your personal process, your work method. Everyone has their own repertoire.. I am no different. You share stuff, you pick stuff up, but you always have your own tricks and shortcuts that you rely on to get the shit done.

By the same token, there's always gonna be some pratfalls that everyone's gonna fall victim to. Sometimes it's a huge pain in the ass.. sometimes you get so burned out on the little details that all the time you made up earlier is gonna get gummed up on something stupid. well, this happens all over the board, unfortunately, in any department of any job.. the key is getting better, more efficient, so that you can cruise smoothly thru the troubling BS with relative ease and get your stuff out the door looking as nice as can be.

overwork.. late last week i was sitting at my desk pulling apart lightmap UVs for what seemed to be endless time. jus tpulling stupid little boxes around.. placing them in ornate interesting patterns that matter to no one at all.. so long as my shadows don't overlap and bleed. i wonder how many hours of my life i have spent staring at UV maps, nah better not to think of it!! When I couldn't drive to vegas anymore, i handed the wheel to my copilot and drifted in and out of sleep from the passenger seat. you can bet that as my eyelids sunk hellward, i was having visions of those same UV maps being unwrapped in my mind.. the white lines and red dots, pulling and sorting and scaling and placing and resorting and offsetting... i could see it clear as anything. As the driver spoke to me about.. i don't know what, my mind drifted on the brink of oblivion as my attention was concerned with the nonexistent UV maps manufactured by my subconciousness. I tried to snap out of it and rejoin the conversation, but i would mentally pull a couple more boxes over to the right "just because it felt good."

Sigh.

So I need a vacation.

---------------------------------

I got my Gunner's Heaven game running on the Test PS2. Glad to see it works! I want to make a 2D run-n-gun! I missed out on a bid for the other PSX game I wanted, and it relisted for about 20 or 30 dollars more. I will have to wait for that thing to slip back down into affordability (isn't it a test kit, can't I just run burns on that thing!!!) In spite of my DC piracy noted earlier, I really don't mind shelling out a little cash for some of these games, really. Somehow it's less of a hassle.. or something. I guess so many of them cost so little anyway. Almost all the Saturn games I've bought cost me practically nothing. Well okay I DID shell out megabucks for that --one-- title (you shmupos can guess which one) but if need be I can always sell it back for the original investment. Sigh. I should just trade it in for the Zanac game, shouldn't I..

Watching myself type this (extremely nerdy) hot air, I gotta say it is nice, for a change, to spend mental energy worrying about simple shit that DOESN'T EVEN MATTER.

Alright. I want to finish up my current workload tonight. If i go on a tear I might be able to pull this off. Off I go...!

take that!

2007-08-19T12:00:00.000-07:00

OWCH!

Yeah, so here's my quality-of-life post (hopefully, a quick one..) Inspired by a recent thread on gaf, "why do developers leave the game industry?" Notably, the videogame industry is notorious for overworking their staffs with long hours and insidious crunch times and blah blah blah. Burnout being the eventual result, and dissatisfied people quitting their jobs to go and do something "normal," in order to have more time for social and family life, stuff like that.

Sigh.

Every job I have worked a has had some kind of overtime, "crunch" or "hardcore" periods where the staff was expected to put in extra hours beyond the (legal) call of duty to get a game done in a relatively tight schedule.. and the higher-ups will usually dangle some carrot or other in front of everyone's heads "if you do this for us, then 'good' things are going to happen!" Well, yeah, but define "good," please.. anyway anybody in the biz knows people who've done quite well, if not for working on a bonafide top-rated franchise then at least one that's moved a lot of SKUs, and so we all have friends who are "rolling in the dough" relatively. I remember moving here to LA 7 years ago, hearing how it was the land of milk and honey.. I didn't hear wrong....

So what happened? Why are people so bitter about crunch? Isn't it worth it, for a few years of your life, to pretty much just suck it up and play a little hardball? Sleep is for wusses, right? I have sort of got a reputation among those who know me as a workaholic, and yet you don't see me cruising around town in my canary yellow murcielago. Well, that's because i am a hoarder and i keep it all in coffee cans. no wait, i am extremely generous and i gave it all to charity. to ell the truth, i blew it all on blow and ho's, and don't you forget it. Well honestly, i've just not been in the "right place ad rigt time" (yet), but that's another story. Anyway i have already picked out my future mansion(s), wife (v/s), and cemetary plot (well at least that one is true). I am just waiting for the backend.

Anyway back to the point.. I find it ludicrous, the number of people who whine about hardcore. Yeah it's tiring. yeah it's not for everyone. Yeah it's... illegal in some cases. The morality of it is a different story. But there is no "slave industry.." no one is MAKING you do this. The compensation is not quite as evenly balanced as it, erm, could be, but still.. you are making leisure products! There is a future in it for anyone who has the nerve to hold on for awhile. If you can keep your metabolism from going belly-up, and you honestly enjoy your part in what you do, then just keep as (unfinished)

back from vegas

2007-08-18T21:36:00.002-07:00

that's nerdy

saturday night @ 9:30pm, just got back from vegas. i hadda take a day off from work as my girlfriend's ol' pal was getting hitched - we drove there all day, caught the wedding, crashed into the hotel bed (hard... i was gonna go to the casino but the urge to sleep absolutely overtook me). we just returned home and now i am gonna settle in for te remainder of the weekend with -- some work! yeah, it's never a moment to breathe, for this guy..

i was talking with a friend the other night, she is a bit of a writer and i suggested maybe she had ought to funnel her energies into a game-industry blog. she mentioned it had struck her but she didn't want it to be a case of conflict of interest. Yeah, i thought of this before, as well - and sure enough, i come home saturday night and see a link to my own website (and a quote from my own blog, which apparently had some editing issues) sourced from my very own company's fan-forums. yeah, a little strange and kind of off-putting! not that i don't welcome people reading what i have got to say in here, of course, i just need to always be mindful of the fact that it's important to always keep an eye over one's shoulder - you never know who can read what you are saying and what they can do with it, especialy in these days of "the new media."

As for the abilities we now have of "instantaneous information transmission," pretty much globally, or on a smaller level - well, yeah - it makes one tend to slow down for a minute. I have spent much time in the past on company messageboards (intranet) speaking my mind, relatively freely... i have learned it's better to keep to yourself largely (this is unfortunate, but understandable, as politics will dictate). that's just locally, but globally, everything is magnified...

Anyway, with all that in mind, i will always stick to the usual endless NDAs and such that i have signed (if you read it here, it's been in a wiki somewhere already, pretty much...) as opposed to disseminating the juicier info -- though that would certainly be more fun to get on about (ohh, the things i have seen, over the years). maybe someday when I become a powerful blowhard, eh? And now, to work...

i guess it struck a nerve...

2007-08-14T23:20:00.000-07:00

another busy day in the office, i was repairing ugly gross temp geo and textures.. well, replace "repair" with "replace" and you have a more accurate idea. sigh, texturemonkey, modelmonkey, got no money, janitor at the end of the day.. i make buildings! i make trees! i make fire trucks. i am like god with a boss!!!

I am not usually at liberty to say much about in-progress projects, for obvious reasons - let's just say that the game which i am currently working on.. it's been in production for a little while, and some time to go yet - it is coming along. i am pretty cut off from the community on the other side of the office but i finally ventured in there to see what was cookin'. their game is coming along very nicely. i was pretty impressed... hopefully i will get to put in some time on that project as well, at some point...!

so i like to listen to videogame-themed podcasts during the day, to while away the hours while i weld verts and offset pixels and yawn and fart and pick my nose. Honestly when you're pretty busy with production, it's an essential way for a guy like me to keep tabs on what's going on with the industry news - and honestly these days, there's no shortage of news in this field... no shortage of drama, especially! I will write a "podcast breakdown" blog one of these days, soon enough.. there's way too many to wade thru as it is, and honestly i can only bear to listen to a few of them. But the ones I like I do like very much, and heartily recommend. Today I had to give the latest DL of EGM Live a spin. Not my fave podcast for certain, but informative and not too terribly obnoxious (i'd say it's in the top 5 lately, actually). They did have a real nice interview with Lorne Lanning, the mastermind behind Oddworld.. remember those guys? One of those studios who were rather quite displaced from the "nerve center of the gaming scene," but always known for putting out quality (if eccentric) software. Truth be told, I never played any of their games (longer than a couple of moments or so) but surely I appreciated thir capable contributions to the gaming pasture.

Anyway I had my opinions about this Lanning fellow before, after reading some interviews previously and then, of course, their recent descent into sketchiness.. but I have to say I think the guy is on the level after listening to the ol' blowhard go on at length. Of the things he had to say, it was nice to hear him concur with the very thoughts I had had lately... to paraphrase, "in general, most people out there think that videogames are about killing! And the part of the consumer base that never gets into games, for that reason they are not really thinking that it's for them..." This is absolutely true, well it's not the main reason exactly but it's a strong contender. Look at other media.. all movies are not about killing! All the books, TV, etc.. Well, that is to say, that none of these other media chiefly focuses on one major factor. I have to say that for video games, a good 80 percent of them would have to involve some kind of combat.. sure you have sports simulators, racers, puzzle games, etc.. but these are still all dwarfed by the Halos and Final Fantasies and Ninja Gaidens of the world. Yeah, I know it's kind of a skew that I am putting on things.. but even te less violent, or more cartoony action games, involve running around and killing.. or at least shooting, rendering incapacitated, and so on.

This is why I am a big fan of puzzle games. You're goal is not necessarily to rack up points for murdering, you are exercising your brain/logic/thinking on the fly abilities. I'd say the same in favor of strategy games (even if they have a military theme), to some degree.. though yeah, I guess I would be a bit of a hypocrite, to a degree.

When I was at Neversoft I gained a huge respect for that sort of game, in that it was not really violent at all and neither was it trying to be a bonafide sports sim (rather, "inspired by..").. but it was concentrating on the player and his interaction with the environment. it rewarded creativity and let you feel like you were in this giant playground, doing things that you couldn't exactly do in real life (zipping up powerlines, over rooftops, etc). Sure it depart from reality early on, but it did so in a properly abstract way as to remain credible as a unique type of video game - and one that is not often duplicated, which I have to say is unfortunate.

It will be interesting when EA's Skate game releases shortly, to see how much of this formula they will try to emulate. Regardless of the whole "too late to the party?" argument, or any actual controversy, I have to say it's nice to see that in this day and age that anyone (even if it's a mammoth conglomerate like EA) is willing to still explore this relatively ignored avenue of game-style. I am disappointed to see that "oh well it's all got to stick to skateboarding," but it could be a lot worse.. skateboarding with guns?

Battle of Shoot 'em Up

2007-08-12T20:43:00.000-07:00

now THIS is what I am talkin' about. i love the internet, in that you can totally randomly be searching for something and accidently find a crazy website loaded down with tons of goodies that you didn't even know existed.
Here's the latest:
http://projectjapandreames.neufblog.com/shootem_up/wallpapersflayers/index.html

A french site (break out the google translator!) - but honestly i haven't even started with the text just yet. This page is bleeding through with tons of oldschool gaming flyers/promo sheets for various arcade titles from the wonderful 16-Bit era. there was a time, albeit brief, when programmers were lazy and it was easy to churn out game after game after game with nearly identical engines "fly to the right. shoot guns. acquire larger more colorful weapons." hell even
I could program that! But in those days graphics were suddenly stepping up a few levels and that
glitz was enough to get the fans ecstatic (myself included among those numbers). In America it was still a kid's industry, but in Japan it seems like they were taking it a bit more seriously, promotion-wise. These flyers and wallpapers harken back to a time when ultra simplistic gameplay was no sweat, you were just excited to see pretty explosions and abominable biomechanical nigtmare bosses with glowing lifebars deteriorating in their midsections. These
flyers portray some of the funniest engrish you'll ever see, and some of the illos are just bleed-from-your-jaw AWFUL, but it's all totally fun and reminds me of a time "best left in history" - the days of R-Type, Zero Wing, Truxton, and Chelnov. I want to print these all out in high quality and wallpaper a room (i wish!)

drayumkeyast

2007-08-12T16:28:00.000-07:00

today for the first time in a while i plugged in a Dreamcast controller and went to tow while i waited for my girlfriend to get her act together so we could have some lunch. I have often said that the DC was the last "cool"system that has been released, at least to my taste in video gaming.

Sega has always been a cool company, in that they were always well known for producing a stable of relatively mainstream-accessible material and yet they'd always support that with a healthy string of somewhat offbeat material. I can't really think of any other developer even approaching their size which would be so well-known for going across the ma as they had. A couple come to mind.. Konamai at times, Capcom, certainly Nintendo... but Sega stands alone when it came to weird risky (flat out crazy-shit) across the board. Hardware, arcade, and generally franchising what they could, to different degrees of success. Ironically, in the end they've never wound up with that "one surefire franchise" which could stand the test of time and the process of evolution. Phantasy Star, Sonic, those are venerable series but they never maintained the integrity overall of Mario, Zelda, Street Fighter, Metal Gear Solid. Perhaps it could be argued in some cases (Virtua Fighter). But no one would argue that it's incredibly hard to maintain ANY franchise over the course of several generations - survival through one is tricky enough.

My roomate at the time and I bought our DC after the thing dropped to @ $100. It hadn't been out for that long (a little over a full season?) it seemed and already it was getting long in the tooth, or rather, short to remain on the shelf. A shame, as it was finding its legs and no matter how you sliced it, what kind of gamer you were, it was shaping up to provide decent support in many categories. In fact I'd say it was one of the final systems to launch with a relatively decent lineup that didn't feel totally rushed out the door (ready to rumble, sonic adventure, hydro thunder, NFL, some others which escape me.. oh yeah Soul Caliber!) Yeah that's not all LAUNCH launch but close enough. Anyway when we picked it up, it wasn't long before I got my hands on virtua tennis - a game i could still have a blast with to this day. Titles like that don't really need several iterations if you ask me, the gfx are already good enough and the play control is completely spot-on.. I am not any kind of tennis fan, but games like that completely nail down for me the pure lighting-in-a-bottle of what is just fun about video games! My roomie and I would unwind at the end of the day with that game, I am one of those who gets very violently into it with the trash-talking and screaming and pretty much pummeling my own opponent with fists and such (on the couch beside me, not merely the screen). Yeah, so online has never been a big deal for me, I confess.

I remember going out to "splurge" on a DC keyboard and a copy of Jet Grind Radio (after seeing it at E3, i knew I had to get my hands on that game!) We never used the keyboard for more than emailing, really (don't ask) though in hindsight I really wish I had picked up Typing of the Dead at some point. JGR proved to be really fun - also great to look at and listen to, even if i never did get terribly far into it (the slippery controls were kind of a buzzkill) but it didn't matter, that stuff was fun.

I never really got much further with my DC, though some years later my buddy in NYC set me a spindle full of burns (oh so illegal). Think of me what you will--I can hear it now "It's guys like you who led to the Dreamcast being oboslete and Sega dropping out of hardware," oh ok let's not get too carried away. I wouldn't have bought anything else for it anyway, beyond what I did (well, maybe about 2 or 3 titles). I picked up American Pro Trucker today, for the first time in like 3 years - such a great idea for a game, even if somewhat sloppily conceived! I don't care. To me, games like that are what define a system - those are themes that SHOULD be made into video games. There's a reason you don't see more offbeat titles like that, and it's a shame. Crazy Taxi is another, a game I always considered to be a decent diversion but not one worthy of generating much fanfare.. for some reason the community embraced it, because it was unusual (same as above, really). Games like these came and went, and they were fun - captivating, if only for a few moments - but they've not left much in the way of an indelible mark on the gaming landscape. To me, that's sad - instead, we get umpteen versons of final fantasy or re-re-re-re-releases of ninja gaiden. Not to knock on the legacy of either such title, but GEEZ, it's not what you would call innovative or -shrug- "weird..."

I would love to see Sega "come back" and toss their hat into hardware once again - I have no doubt that it will never happen, though. Frankly I am amazed they've done so well (and in such a style) as they have with their resulting publisher-only status, and like many I am curious to see what they will evolve into. It is reassuring to notice that they look back on their legacy as far as the types of titles they will continue to put out, anyway. I haven't forked over money for a Sega game in a long time (well.. not a new one) but even a picky gamer like me can find something that they've funded to wrap their teeth around. (If I had a PSP, I would likely be playing Crush right now!!!)

Sega, as a company, is one I have much to say about - we have had a long history together (and presently, I admit they are the ones paying for the development of my current project). I will always hold them in high regard for what they released during the 16-bit years (in spite of the awful CD-Rom and extra-awful 32X nonsense and all of that). Sega Saturn is something i am just coming to appreciate now (better late then never) and I hope they can manage to stick around and maintain their relevance for a long time to come - gaming would never be the same without them!

Try Hard...

2007-08-09T14:17:00.000-07:00

so i found a couple of interesting JPN PSone games to check out: UMIHARA KAWASE SHUN and GUNNER'S HEAVEN. The former is a follow up to a Super Famicon title where you control this little girl with a Bionic Commando-style grappling hook in order to maneuver around levels- this one is more of a puzzle game than then "kill the futuristic Nazis" as it's inspiration was. I only played the SFC game briefly but this always struck me as one of those weird little cool games with a nice level of polish. Gunner's is pretty much an unapologetic rip-off of the old Sega Genesis favorite Gunstar Heroes, minus the 2-Player Co-op mode as well as the novelty. It looks like a pretty direct rip-off but honestly, is Gunstar a game that SHOULDN'T be ripped off? It's a little surprising that the Run 'n Gun genre is among the simplest as they come, yet it's never been terribly exploited. Here and there, but not so much as your typical platformer fare has. Anyway this game looks fun, with appropriate 2D love (both games are 2D actually) and I think it's a safe bet for both.

At this stage, I am not gonna ever pick up a videogame out of duty or brand loyalty or any of that - is f it is necessary reference for a project I am working on, then that is obvious, but otherwise I am not really into gaming for leisure anymore. So if I do pick up a game, it's gonna be pretty much for the other value it could give me; that is, what I can glean from it. There's so many knock-offs and sequels and all sorts of yawny bullshit littering the landscape nowadays, but there's also still a fairly healthy back-catalogue of just.. weird, interestingly designed games. Maybe the majority of those won't have the polish and finesse that more market-driven games would have received, but there are often enough cool little elements to make them worth one's time "oh, why didn't I think of making a game like that!" I have a whole rant about the Forgotten and Ignored Conventions of Gaming, but that's going to be more of an undertaking than I wish to sandwich in over here..

----------------------------------------------------------------

I consider myself to be somewhat savvy of Game-History related matters. I am not a whiz, but I have my share of knowledge. Yet every so often I will come across some morsel of info that will even have me scratching my head. The latest case - while cruising around on wikipedia, I stumbled onto the colorful history of a little company known as America Online (AOL). A minute of reading and I learned that the mega-corporation which helped shape the face of the Internet, began life as a humble obscure videogame download service?! No lie, apparently it was a special service for the Atari 2600 called "Gameline" - a special cartidge you'd plug into the console, which linked up to your phone jack. You could download games on a pay-to-play basis, something like a nickel per play - or something like that. Very bizarre. Anyway the thing debuted too close to the video game crash, and so it never really got too far - but the company which developed it (service and tech) went on to slowly morph into a pre-Internet Service (think of a low-level Prodigy or GEnie or whatever). Then time passed and some weird shady operations occured (don't they always) and it eventually reached mammoth status.. pretty strange.

news you can't use

2007-08-06T12:50:00.000-07:00

Man. I go outta town for one week and the world turns upside down, game-news-world-wise. Okay, well maybe not upside-down, but it's definitely as hectic as ever. Honestly, while I was away at my folks' for some family business, I tended to shy away from the internet unless absolutely necessary (that is, other than keeping tabs on the junkmail buildup in my email account, i kept pretty far away besides). Already a workaholic, I have become something of a newsaholic in recent years (more specifically a neogaf-aholic) - any of my friends who will give me a moment to chew their ear off will hear me raving rather rabidly about "ohhhh crap have you been watching the gaf lately?" And so, yeah, outta sight -> outta mind and it was nice to get away, if at least for a couple of days. Unplug, disconnect, think about some stuff other than game craziness.

But of course it goes on anyway. "GTA IV delayed? Whazzis?? Another WOW expansion to take over the world? Blizzcon and Quakecon? id speech?" etc etc. Man. I still haven't even looked at the last released Mass Effect and Heavenly Sword vids, I just haven't got the time for all of this stuff! Playing catch-up is always burdensome.. exciting, though, if tiring.

I did manage to jump on the MGS4 bandwagon for a second (well, that is, I watched the gameplay demo). Yeah, the thing looks pretty. But whew - okay, I will throw a dart into my foot right here and say that I've only played MGS 1 for a few hours and that's the extent of my familiarity with the thing. It's always been a good-looking, idiosyncratic game that's got "a whole room to itself" and the latest looks no different, but really - does it actually look FUN to play? Considering my recent posts, it shouldn't come as a huge surprise to hear such words out of me ("I like Burgertime and Columns!") but while the first MGS was novel and just fun and atmospheric, definitely boundary-pushing.. watching the new demo looked kind of yawn-worthy to me. I am of course a harsh critique of that style of game, simply because I prefer faster-action games - though of course stealth can be rewarding when done properly - I just don't like my games to be work more than play. Toys are nice but I don't need gimmicks over substance. Anyway I am sure the rest of the world will be pleased with the title.. Anyway I'lll end this rant with "Remember Portable Ops?" Does anyone?

So i got my hands on a PS2 Test unit recently. I won't expose my source (let's say I know a certain recently-retired Father of the Playstation Line.. not really, but that would make for an interesting story moreso than the truth). Anyway the thing can play JPN PS1/PS2 software, and I have a short list of games I'd like to check out for it - chief among which is a Compile game called "Zanac X Zanac," and I am not so sure I really wanna shell out $100+ for the damned thing. Though I'd likely enjoy it more than enough to get my money's worth. Ah so long as I am still working in 6 months, I'll shell out - deal? Anyway If anyone out there in BlogreaderLand has any weird Japan-only PS1/2 suggestions, I'd love to hear them - gaijin-friendly only please. I am thinking there's gotta be, also, some decent Simple 2000 games - and I might finally settle down with a port of Galaxy Force that is suitably rockin' (I should check to see if it's on the modded Xbox first, I suppose).

Anyway a week of catching up is ahead of me, so that will be some late-night pixel-pushing as it were.. stay tuned, and keep flippin' those Lynxes for Right-Handed Play...

16-bit atrocity

2007-08-03T15:57:00.000-07:00

Geez so it's already my third post in, and I am at a loss as to what i should write. Never mind that A. I am 3,000 miles away from home, in my Home City of Boston for a funeral and B. There's a ferociously-squeaking doggie toy making lots of noise in the room beside me. C. I am preparing to meet my old homeys for some drinks in a couple of hours and catch up on "the good old days," and last but not least D. I am trying to type this on a Mac. Most people love their macs unapologetically - personally I count myself among those who prefer their Mac in iPod form, good for listening to music on and little else. But then I am always good to whine about some arbitrary thing or other.

Lounging in my hometown no doubt brings back many found memories of the gaming days of years past.... ahh, my adolesence. About 4 miles up the street from the den I am sitting in right now is housed one of the favorite locations of my youth, the arcade known as Fun & Games. Natick or Framingham, (the latter I believe) but it was just on the town line either way.. Pretty much the typical higher-level slum arcade of back in the days, they'd obviously lay out the dough to get the latest uprights and cabs in and out of that place like it was nobody's business (well, I guess then it would be EVERYBODY's business). Yeah they had Baby Pac-man, Kangaroo, Pac-Man Jr... Cobra Command and M.A.C.H.3 (laser machines!) and of course the little kickass disco passageway (lit blinking ceilings and floors.. ohh man i gotta find a modern version of that thing!) As the years passed they brought in Hang-On (sitdown), Outrun (... same). APB, Vindicators, E-SWAT, Robocop, Rampart, ok ok ok you get the point by now. They had crazy tracks on the ceilings with the crazy spaceship contraptions passing back and forth, the whole thing had this junk-space-age setting, as if designed by some futuristic whiz-kid stoner. Yeah, yeah.. I miss the 80s version of the future, what do you want me to tell ya. Anyway, I drive by there now and I don't even wanna set my foot inside. I have in the recent years, and I should say I am amazed at all that it is still there - but right up there on the marquee, and surprised that they kept the same logo, it's heralded as a Lazer Tag Arena. Wait isn't that shit from the 80s too?

I have a lot more to say about the arcades from back in the day. but for now I must meet the old heads for a couple black & tans. Hey I am in Boston, what did you expect me to say.

If i am lucky, with a bit of searching I might be able to dig up some vintage pics of game rooms in the old days..

retroness

2007-08-01T22:19:00.000-07:00

Well, I should get this out of the way pretty early - I am definitely what one would refer to as a retrogamer. Whereas my peers are excited to waggle their wii's and get intimate with the 14 or so switches on their bluetooth xbox controllers, I am more than happy to limit myself to UP UP DOWN DOWN LEFT RIGHT LEFT RIGHT BABABA SELECT START. Not just for Contra, or Lifeforce, but pretty much in general when it comes to videogaming. Hell even if it's just a joystick and an action button, I can make do pretty well. Like most folks in my age range who do this for a living, I grew up during the Golden Age of Gaming; unlike most of them, I seem to have gotten myself quite stuck there.

When I was quite young, I got introduced to Pac-Man, Space Invaders, Atari 2600. I am not sure which caught my fancy first (hey, I was like 5 yrs old, whad'ya want) but I was pretty hooked right off the bat. It took a couple of years of nagging but finally my folks broke down and bought me an Atari 400 (yeah, that's right.. the one with the membrane keyboard!) I was kinda disappointed that it wasn't the Colecovision I had long been drooling over, but it won me over pretty quickly. Anyway, as I got older, things like the NES came into fashion and I was right at the front of that war. I was making maps for Super Mario Bros. when most kids still thought that stuff was terribly dorky.. Gluing my eyes to the Black and White kitchen television to save the princess in Legend of Zelda. Yeah, all the usual "80's Gaming cliche's" that you've heard thousands of times, I was just another example of the same story. But yeah, I was pretty fulfilled! Then, yeah, graduation to 16-Bit with the High Definition Graphics of Sega Genesis and SNES.. and well.. I dunno. I went to art school and discovered girls and beer, what can I say? My sheltered social life of adolescence finally gave way to finding something different to do with my hours (toiling away in the studio or rampaging thru campus) and I guess I started getting tired of sequel after sequel of the same ol' business.

And of course, halfway through college, I stumbled into my calling. Originally a Fine Arts student (but hey.. I had originally planned to draw comic books, in my innocence), I found my way into the mysterious young 3D Graphics department in our school. Jurassic Park was the new Hot Shit film, Terminator 2, and then the first Toy Story by Pixar.. 3D was always this beautiful novelty but now it was starting to pop up here and there for more than 14 seconds in a film (The Abyss). The time was right, I somehow slipped into it, and I was hooked immediately (I'll never forget the first time when someone showed me how to make a Sphere Bounce in front of a .TGA of a house on his Mac, and it only took 1 minute to render!) So yeah, I was hooked with the new captivation... I put down my charcoal and graphite and started laboring inthe lab, in front of Infini-D, in front of D-Paint, in front of Alias Poweranimator V7 on the SGI. Yeah, all the stuff I made was... CRAP.. but being in the middle of it was damn fun. It felt, strangely, like being a little kid fascinated with Legos, all over again.

But video games? Okay, I loved Sega but their CDrom system disappointed me and their 32X add-on was just malarkey. SNES was always very pretty but I never caught the RPG train and all the SFII ripoffs were making me yawn for years.. Saturn was on the horizon but (ouch) $400 for .. Clockwork Knight and Bug! (Yeah people look back at those games fondly, but looking at the box covers at the time, not terribly impressive). And then, we had the Playstation.. and of course Project Ultra, I mean N64. Okay, I was still paying attention, but I looked at the graphics on these things and then I looked at the 3D capabilities of the machines I was playing with at school. It was hard looking at these games with these super-simplified characters with blocks for hands and heads. It just looked ugly and gross. Virtua Fighter was pretty fresh when it launched but it didn't age well even back then. So basically, gaming lost me back there.. for awhile.

Yeah, it's a shallow thing to say. "I lost interest in games 'cause the graphics sucked" I know it's all about gamelay, and I knew this as well back then, but something about the rules of playing a 2D game never properly translated into those early 3D titles in a way that captivated me. Of course, things have changed in the years since - games are BEAUTIFUL now, even I have to admit it - but something else got lost that in there that has never completely been recaptured for me. That's not to say I haven't found games to enjoy since, not by a longshot. But things have definitely changed - I have changed - and working on the other side of the screen affects things as well.

So where does this leave me today, then? I mean, do I have any right to even try to write a game industry-themed blog when I say something like "I don't like video games anymore?" Well, honestly, I do like video games, and more than anything else, I can say I am profoundly excited about where games are going. I think anyone can agree that right now, we are stuck in kind of a rut of "bigger and better" where every game tries to outshine it's competitors with this gimmick or that, or throw some money at the proven dev team and let them crank out a sequel or inspired knock-off. And sure, a lot of the games come out well, with fun gameplay, multiplayer goodness, never mind the gorgeous audiovisuals. But for guys like me, the days of wonder are gone.. or at least, changed.

I have a lot to say about what retrogames I believe have held up, and what captivates me today. In spite of my tone, I still spend several hours a week cranking away at some of my favorites which time has otherwise forgot. More than mere nostalgia, there are a lot of titles which never received proper attention and slipped by the wayside, but due to the whole "retroscene" many have enjoyed sleeper status, a second chance. Some I have been lucky to get my hands on - so many, I still don't even know exist. The fun part is makinng those discoveries.. Anyway, those particulars are to be explored in other entries. For now, I must sign off..