12.30.2005

total filler

Man, I've completely got writer's block or something. I don't know what to write about.

I also don't know what to tell us to play. I was thinking Snatcher, but that requires either a Sega CD or, you know, copyright infringement or something.

Well, okay, here's a topic that should be fun for discussion: I've got about $75 in holiday-type discretionary income, and I am totally nervous about spending it suboptimally. What are some worthwhile purchases?

OH, and topic number two that is really more of a question than the topic of a blog post: our apartment is large and has fuck-all on the walls. I assume you guys all have walls. What kind of stuff do you have on display? I'm mostly talking semi-grown-up stuff, not Super Metroid promotional artwork or plush Parappa the Rapper dolls (I've got that angle covered).

12.29.2005

Since I got back from visiting family, I've been busy running a bunch of errands and seriously cleaning the house. I sort of lost my blog momentum. Maybe tomorrow night.

12.20.2005

Hey, are you guys playing anything right now (well, not right now, but in like 5 or 6 days, because I'm leaving to go to Dallas/Longview tomorrow morning)? I want to do like a game club where we play the same thing and then talk about it. Is there maybe an older game that you missed or want to play again?

16:44 of meh

First podcast is up. If I do another one, I'll put a podcast area in the sidebar or something.

The music's pretty good, I think.

Hey guys is it too early to post New Year's resolutions

I take my resolutions more seriously than most people, I think, for reasons I won't go into right now because I don't know what they are. (I guess it basically involves me hating myself and seizing a semi-official chance to change)

So I thought for a good few minutes about these, and decided to post them now because the other entry I was going to post isn't done.

1. Make two friends to hang out with away from school.

2. Write more than five game reviews, each one in a different style.

3. Blog more. Or, rather, write more entries for my internet journal.

4. Draw one great comic.

5. Write a novel of any length and of any quality.

6. Surprise Mary with at least
a. one wonderful gift
b. one fancy dinner

7. Get a nice new hairstyle. I don't know if this counts as a resolution or not. But hell, there's a decent chance of accomplishing it.

8. Learn how to do some more web stuff for real.

12.17.2005

How to Eat Sushi

Video link, via Yukihime.

I don't actually know much about real sushi etiquette, because I'm a barbarian. Also because I'm not a sushi fan, but mostly the barbarian thing.

(10+2)x5

I haven't had any work to do in the last few days, but before that, I had all kinds of final projects. I had bidness to handle. I'm pretty averse to work most of the time-- even when I feel like I should sit down and get some stuff done, I'll just waste time on the internet, or go check the mail, or even clean the house to avoid working. To be honest, it's a problem.

Last week, I downloaded Konfabulator because, well, downloading software is decidedly not writing papers. Anyway, Konfabulator (now Yahoo! Widgets or something, ugh) is like the Dashboard Widgets for OSX: it runs little programs, mostly user-created that you can keep on your desktop. I took a screenshot of my desktop to give you an example. I've got a little volume control deal, and a clock, and sometimes I run weird shit like an HTML color picker, or a Netflix queue lister, or a little Quagmire head that plays Family Guy quotes when you click on it. You know, your basic resource-wasting stuff. But my use of this program had an unexpected side effect: productivity.

See that little red timer thing?

It's based on this time management idea from 43 Folders, which is a site all about organization and time management type stuff. I like to read some of the planning stuff when I am, uh...

so anyway, the timer counts down from 10 minutes, then turns green and counts down for 2 minutes, over and over. The idea is that I work for 10 minutes, then I screw around on the internet for 2. Five reps, and that's an hour of mostly-work. Not bad. I don't know if any of you guys have the same laziness/distraction problems that I have, so I don't know if this is helpful.

12.15.2005

御そろいなTシャツ

I mentioned it on Jessica's Xanga blog, but I did something kind of stupid and wonderful today. I bought a Katamari Damacy t-shirt. I kind of couldn't help it. I'm going to have to go hang around EBGames so I can score some cool points from the jackass clerks-- none of the people I see all day at school have any idea what Katamari Damacy is, despite my attempts to subliminally educate them with a dazzling array of excellent wallpapers.

12.14.2005

You asked.



I can't make my mind up about the damn Revolution controller. Except that it looks neat and fun and I want one. But that's me, and I say that and mean it about pretty much every controller that comes out, so I'm not the best judge. It works out for me, because I'll enjoy it no matter what impact it has on the future of the video game industry or whatever.

First a little intro about the "Revmote", done completely off the top of my head and with kind of a fuzzy understanding of the technology. If you want "facts", or "barely concealed Nintendo fanboyism as professional journalism"then I guess I'll direct you to this IGN article. Sorry I linked to IGN. I'll try not to do it anymore.

In case you haven't seen it, this is the controller.



There's a TOTALLY NON-MOTION SICKNESS INDUCING (thx Jessica) video on this page that shows actors pretending like their Rev controllers are plugged in. It should give you an idea of how people who have never seen a video game pantomime how Revolution games will be played.

What you see is two parts: the "remote" part and what lovable Internet types like me (but cleverer than me) have dubbed the "nunchuck" attachment. The remote is the main component of the controller, and in addition to having the obvious d-pad and annoyingly labeled buttons (A, b, a, select, start. Seriously, there are two a buttons on this thing. There are other letters, guys, seriously. Hell, talk to Sony-- they aren't even using letters!), the thing is a 3D pointer with rumble and (possible) force feedback. So, to use the dumb cliche examples that have been brought up so far, in a tennis game you swing the thing like a racket, in a cooking game you make, you know, sauteeing motions, and in a football game you spike it on the fucking floor. You would tilt the thing in the direction you want Mario to go, and jerk it upward to make him jump. It sounds fun and novel to me, but also weird. But wait, there's more! The nunchuck attachment has an analog stick, so you can do basically dual-analog things (FPS games are the most common example) using the stick and the pointer. Nintendo has promised that there will be many such attachments, and that they will be inexpensive. I predict that one of those promises will be true. I actually don't know which one.

So why this controller? Why this shape? Does the Revolution controller look like something to you? Something... familiar, maybe, that you use every day even when you're not playing video games? That's right, a television remote. You see, TV remotes are covered with buttons and all kinds of crazy shit, but people use them just fine. But when you give a non-gamer, say, a Dual Shock, and offer them a game of Ico, they'll spend a few seconds pounding buttons as hard as possible and wiggling all the analog sticks, then waving the controller around in the air for some reason, before giving up and telling you that games are too complicated. Maybe they'll tell you what games used to be like, because you've never played Pac-Man before.

I'd like to say that this scenario relies on outrageous stereotypes, so I will. It's also largely true. I saw plenty of (and here's where the REAL stereotyping gets going!) girlfriends and old people frustrating themselves with whatever demos I had in the machines at Game X Change. I eventually learned that it didn't matter how good I thought a game was, it still wouldn't win over non-gamers if they didn't know how to "make the man move".



Non-gamers-- that's who Nintendo is making the Revolution for. Not us. Not people who have grown up with games and would like to see the medium evolve, although in the right hands the thing has the potential to help that along. Nintendo got the idea with the Rev to go after the biggest demographic of all: the "everyone else" set. You know, the people who hate games but are addicted to computer solitaire. The people who don't want to buy strategy guides, and don't know what a hit point is. And especially people who stopped playing video games years ago-- these people are very important to Nintendo's strategy. Nintendo is making a cheap(er) system, with a controller that looks like an iPod and a Tivo got it on, which doesn't have too many buttons and uses a fairly transparent method of control (the controller's movement translates directly into onscreen movement), to attract new gamers. And, more than the controller, here's what Nintendo is doing to capture casual gamers-- they are making old games available for download. Think iTunes for old games. They've said it will be stuff for every system from the NES to the N64, for some unspecified 'low' cost. So if you remember this weird game you used to have where you shoot ducks and the dog laughs, [i]you can get it,[/i] and the Revmote will emulate a gun controller pretty well. If you missed a couple of Zeldas, go ahead and download them. It won't cost much.

Do I think this strategy is going to work? Hell if I know. What I do know is that by saying that games are too complicated and need a serious change, they're alienating the people who are proven to buy video games. It's obvious to me who they should be marketing to-- me. What I see in the Rev is not a perfect casual system-- it's the perfect second system. You buy your PS3 or X360 to play new FPS, and Madden, and franchise games and such, and you buy an inexpensive Rev to play first-party Nintendo titles (which are going to be the only ones to make good use of the remote anyway) and download old games. The only things they need to do to ensure sales to people like me (assuming, for a second, that I'm not going to buy one just on the principle of it being a new system, which I'm really trying not to do anymore) are:

-Nintendo franchises. Duh. Whatever controller they use, a Nintendo system needs Mario and Zelda. Oh, and Pokemon.

-Super-obscure downloadable games. Yeah, I know I'm going to be able to download first-party hits from the ages. But what about obscure stuff? Japanese games? Power Pad games? Color a Dinosaur? I had better be able to buy shit I've never heard of. I've played Punch-Out before, guys.

And that's it. Do that and you have the potential to get everybody, from hardcore gamers who want to hate Nintendo for innovation to people who watched their kids play Excitebike for a few minutes. But hey, Nintendo? You really want money? Do this:

-Open development. Let us write our own Rev games and put them up for free download. Instant internet priapism.

I guess I sort of got away from the topic of the controller, and talked about market analysis for some reason. Mostly that I forgot all the examples I had come up with of neat things to do with the Revolution controller. I had a lot. Uh, I mean, let's discuss some possibilities in the comments thread!

12.13.2005

HAPPY GAMES ONLY

It's late, and I'm kind of tired, but I wanted to draw your attention to the BLUE SKY IN GAMES banner in my links area. Talking about Jet Set Radio yesterday reminded me of this 'campaign' on UK Resistance which is worth reading and pretty funny. It makes some valid points-- for example, that people should stop making dark, gritty games about being a street criminal, because they're stupid and ugly and not fun. Just don't make the mistake of taking it seriously, like too many people on message boards have. It's the internet, people. Don't take anything seriously, unless it's a completely unfounded rumor about how awful the government is. Those are all totally true.

Seriously, though, look at some OutRun 2 screenshots and tell me the world isn't an okay place to live. At least the beautiful world inside your TV where you race your Ferrari along perfect beaches to impress your girlfriend, who apparently has a thing for crazy-ass driving.

(Full disclosure: I am really quite terrible at OutRun 2. I convinced myself I had to have it earlier this year when it dropped to $20, and I've barely cracked it because I am bad at it. This is a shameful revelation about my skill(z), and I hope you understand just how hard it is for me to open up like this and reveal personal details about myself.)

12.11.2005

No uki-uki-waku-waku feelings here

Welcome to the new blog.

As usual, the titlebar, etc. will rotate, but I wanted to start out with something very upbeat and happy-looking, and for me, there are few things that say 'upbeat' like Jet Set Radio. It might just be because it happened to come out during a happy period in my life, but I don't think so. I think the game, on its own, just exudes a jubilant, celebratory attitude toward (fictional Japanese) life (on the street) that always affects me positively. Just look at that blue sky! I mean, this game is about kids who skate around town grinding on rails and tagging walls for basically no other reason than fun. Even when the motherfucking police are rolling out tanks to kill them, they're still doing Backslides and Misty Flips and spraying big, colorful tags. The whole time, relentlessly catchy music is playing over the pirate radio station for whom the game is named.

A lot of people play games as escapism, and there really isn't a better game to play for that purpose than JSR. My experience is that I just feel better when I play it. How could a game be any more perfect than that?

I wanted that perfect, escapist, happy feeling to be here too. I stole happiness from Sega.

(I'm sort of disappointed with this first entry, but if I think of better/more things to say about Jet Set Radio later, I will in a new post. I'm not going to stop myself from posting like I normally would! HAPPY BLOG, HAPPY POSTS)