On Saturday, MK & I went holiday shopping in Jersey. We stopped by the Japanese food mart and managed to stock up on supplies, including….

And on Sunday we saw the Chronicles of Narnia, which I thought was pretty neat. Plus we had Callahan’s twice! Unfortunately,hermes belts, the service was pretty shitty on Saturday; this dumb bitch got all huffy because I was pissed that she was leaning on my chilidog. Also, MK’s dad did an impression of Johnny 5 being electrocuted. So, when was the last time your father did anything as cool?
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Next door to the food store is a place that sells toys plus teapots and cups, which is where I picked this up; Steamboy may have made a lousy movie, but the figures are hella cool:

As for my latest addition to my collection, the original owner’s name is written in the inside front cover (the kid had to be no older than 4, at least going by the handwriting). So Brian Myers from 310 Shed Road in Rye, New York, if you’re reading this… I have your book.

Hey, remember the angry pepper from before? Well here he is again, and eating one of his own kind:

- And here’s another dime a dozen type thing, but when they’re good, they’re pretty good: a vid of someone playing game music via the piano, this time, Sonic the Hedgehog.

Here’s some freeze-dried ice cream snacks that I got mostly because of the super box:

- Something which also got lots of talk a little over a week ago, which John reminded me of recently, was Acclaim’s assets going up for auction, or at least the rights to their back catalogue. Though like most people, I’m only interested in Red Star…

- Finally, here’s something I cam across a long whiles back and totally forgot about, but was reminded of via Simon last week. In the UK, home of the shittiest shit games imaginable is a Harry Potter clone called Barry Hatter. So for those of you who don’t know…

- The prospect of playing Genesis games on Nintendo’s new system seems a tiny bit more possible. Plus I guess the big N really is making a controller shell! Eh… I already have my Cube Hori pad, so I’m not too worried.

I was also told that not only is the fact I never learned how to ride a bike pretty depressing, but the fact that I had a bike but the training wheels were put on incorrectly, which meant that I could never properly learn balance and thus why I never learned how to properly ride, was the saddest thing Dave had ever heard. Which to be honest, would make an excellent title, perhaps a replacement for “Unlucky”?

I don’t have the specifics, but the Xbox 360 launched in Japan last week and I hear its a colossal bomb. The price of the system has already been slashed a bit, though I don’t know to what extent. Meanwhile, new shipments are trickling into Best Buy and lines have formed for them across the city. This is the first time I’ve ever recall this happening for a system that’s already been launched…

- Time for another neat game-related shirt, this time for Metal Slug. And it features German!

Easily the most popular item was the assortment of make your own, glow in the dark figures. There’s eight different types, and the parts are totally interchangeable. Thankfully, unlike most Japanese toy assortments, you know exact what you’re getting, hence the mad rush of folks digging through the pile to get the ones they wanted (actually, it mostly this really big Japanese kid who kept growling to himself… plus he must have been no older than 11 or 12, but he had grey hair!). I got two, a pirate and a scorpion, but haven’t had time to put them together (some assembly is required):

- So I’ve been looking for it for seemingly forever, and someone has finally pulled through. Here’s a video (in two parts: number 1 and number 2) featuring two idiots trying to act a fight scene from King of Fighters.

… you know, for shovelware, it really doesn’t look half-bad.

Also, in the January is running their pics for best games of 2005, and We Love Katamari won the “Best Attempt To Pander to Stoners” category. Electroplankton and Lumines were the runner ups. Interesting….

- I know this is relatively old, but I just learned about it not too long ago; 1UP’s super awesome look at the behind the scenes of ICO, straight from Ueda’s own presentation from the GDC a few years back.

- So the p.r. for the Xbox 360 in the UK is pretty awful. Take this video for example, which is basically three solid minutes dancers, tattoo artists, skateboarders, and some DJ chick who I think is a Spice Girl going on and on and on about something which I can’t follow since they’re British accents are so thick. Its pretty close to the Japanese p.r. vid in terms of lameness (though that at least features some game footage).

- Here’s a really interesting read from a concerned parent as to why video games and young children sometimes should not mix. Its finally nice to hear from a parent on the subject who isn’t all pitchforks and hang-rope.

This last weekend was fairly laid back, at least when compared to the past couple. On Friday night was Rob & Michele’s birthday get-together, where I received a gag Xmas gift from Dave: an Avril Lavigne “sketch book”. It’s a small spiral-bound notebook containing pictures, sketches, and poetry from Avril, which is meant to be an intimate look into the soul that is Avril. Its pretty fucking hilarious, especially the little sketch of an eye that’s crying (cuz she’s so filled with teh sad-o’s), which I’m so sure she scribbled and not some uncredited production assistant.

I also forgot to mention another gag-gift that Dave passed along last weekend: yet another crappily produced Transformers story book (he always grabs one for me at a con or something… I have a couple thus far). You can find scans of it here; astute Transformer fans will instantly notice that much of it is traced directly from the back of the box… and very badly at that. Hopefully, I’ll eventually get a copy of that one I used to have where the Autobots had very human eyes (even in car mode!) and teeth. Speaking off, I would pay anything to have the original artwork to this:

- Well the big news is that the new PSP Katamari game (now I understand that its called Me and My Katamari) is going to have a 2D mini-game:

Plus, there were huge plush pillows with Super Mario bad guys on them, an awesome model kit of a robot that was part fighter jet and all surfer, plus assorted New Japan wrestling toys (featuring many talents whom I had only heard of but never knew what they looked liked, like Chono and Naruse). Unfortunately, neither MK & I had a camera handy, hence no pics…

- Not only is a new Sam & Max game on the way, but there’s a new web comic from Steve Purcell himself!

- On a related noted, video games and Japanese wrestling goes hand in hand. And another thing I’ve been looking forever for also been finally delivered: videos featuring Hard Gay! And after you’ve read up on the guy, you can revel in his awesomeness here.

- At Insert Credit, someone has proposed an interesting experiment to see if video game playing can be somehow measured and averaged. Basically, do people play the same level the same way? Does that make sense. If not, maybe this video of different plays of Gradius all shown simultaneously (via different tinted ships) might help. As already commented, it has a very Groundhogs Day feel to it…

Once again, its been a pretty busy week, so I’ve had barely a chance to surf the web for much gaming news; I’ve been on the GAF for like 5 minutes this past week, which is like a record for me!. But I have caught bits and pieces…

Some chocolate biscuits which I again picked up due to the very keen box:

- Want another reason why you shouldn’t feel bad for downloading music? Because K. K. Slider (you know, the guitar playing dog) in Animal Crossing DS says so.

So anyway…

They also had keychains from Virtual On characters, so of course I had to get one:

Here’s a pack of Tamagochi shaped jelly treats. It has that great strawberry jelly scent that only the Japanese seem to know how to produce:

A box of choco-filled cookies. You randomly get one of several groovy looking bear key-chains. I ended up getting the tough guy with kendo stick one, as pictured on the box:

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By the time I was finished, it was time for work, so I didn’t have time to go through another battery of tests. Guess I’ll find out tonight…
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So I decided to follow some advice that was suggested on YayHooray and re-reinstalled Tiger, with the archive & install method yet again. But this time, I also backed up my preference folder; after the restart, I trashed the active copy along with the previous system folder, then immediately did a restart for an extra fresh copy of the OS. It had been suggested back when troubles first came up, but was hesitant since I was still thinking in OS 9 terms; in Classic, preference files often contained such essential info like serial numbers and the such, so I didn’t want to risk loosing them and end with a locked app. Once I finally got the picture that preferences files don’t work that way in OS X, I got rid of them all for a fresh folder in return, then simply picked and chose and dragged back older ones when they were needed (which in my cases was only two Apple apps, Mail and iChat, and a few other random others, mostly emulators).

Folks have been accusing of MS acting arrogant, stemming back to their GDC presentation, and all the way to their recent decision to unveil their new system on Xbox with a bunch of celebrities instead of E3, and I have to say that I’m starting to agree. As much as I’ve always despised MS, I’ve been quite happy with the success that Xbox has had, since it proves that a dark horse can come in and make a huge impact, but nothing worse than letting success making you blind and greedy. Guess they didn’t notice that backwards compatibility was a major reason why the PS2 was so enticing right out of the gate, despite a rather lackluster selection of software. And in this day and age where there’s so many systems floating about, its all the more important. I only have so many inputs on my TV.
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But back to Harry Potter fans, I’m one of them, but I have to admit, I’m generally low-key about it due to the fact that diehard Potter seem to be getting progressively more and more annoying. Its one of things where the fans have managed to damper my enthusiasm over something; most Potter fans I’m sorry to say that many of them are sorta sad and creepy (though this doesn’t apply to any of my friends if anyone is thinking that way). Granted, fandom can ruin almost anything, but I can almost always respect, or even understand , the behavior to some degree. Hey, its a pretty goofy for a grown man to dress like an elf or a storm trooper, that’s at least a tiny bit more dignified that dressing up as some 13 year old boy, if you catch my drift.

I didn’t always feel this way, but I guess its all due to the fact that I cannot allow myself to duped into thinking the fifth book was anything besides crap. Okay, maybe that’s a bit harsh, and perhaps I should give the book one more shot, but all I can say is that I’ve read the prior four books maybe five or six times, each, and I’ve only managed to trudge my way through the fifth one book just once, and recalling being mostly bored to tears 90% And that much talked about death scene at the end. Extremely anticlimactic (and dare I say, very gay). Most folks seem to have issue with Harry’s characterization as an annoying, bratty teen, and I didn’t have a problem with that. I just found the book really boring as hell.

- Last night I re-installed Tiger using the archive & install method. I was hoping for some dramatic improvements, and that perhaps all my problems would be fixed. Didn’t happen. Aside from TextEdit’s save function being as fast as it should be, there were no real improvements; the text wrapping problem remained, and Automator is still fucked. I didn’t detect some of the other problems I listed last time, but time would bring those out.

- Even more Xbox 360 info was leaked today, and still no word on backwards compatibility. I think its safe to assume that it ain’t gonna happen, which totally blows. I know there has been no real details from Microsoft thus far, but still, its such a major feature that if it was happening, something more official should have at least hinted towards it by now. I’ve heard from more than one source that “they’re working on it” but that’s not much conciliation.

- I also forgot to mentioned yesterday that 1UP just posted a really good look at Gunstar Super Heroes, which includes an ultra hot video of the game in action. Plus I also forgot to pass along the link to Tetsuya Mizuguchi’s English blog, which is also on 1UP. Man, what a coup for ZiffDavis; seems as if 1UP finally has some good stuff going on (hey I kid, there’,hermes belts;s tons of awesome stuff, its just that’s fucking impossible to sort through due to the site’s ultra shitty coding).

- And here’s the intro to some Japanese show that I know absolutely nothing about, but it’s my mission to get at least ten seasons of it. Its also further proof of how lame American television is these days. Want proof?

- As for today, its been revealed that someone has created a Game Boy emulator for the PSP, marking yet another massive step forward for the homebrew/emu scene. Unfortunately, much like the thing I passed along before, you’ll need a Japanese PSP, and one that still has firmware version 1.0 (all US PSPs came shipped with v1.5). But hey, its still a start.

- Anyway, I’m trying to maximize the extra time I have since I know its not going to last for much longer. In addition to reading the copious amount of comics courtesy of MK, I have to see Oldboy (which I first saw way back when) on the big screen while its still in town. If it happens to be playing near you, or will so soon, you seriously need to see this movie. Here’s the trailer btw. And yeah, its another lame-ass American produced trailer that doesn’t do the original any service, but its better than nothing I guess.

- And sticking with movie trailers, here’s one for Mindgames, which combines anime and live actors. Feels like a mix of FLCL and Who Framed Roger Rabbit.

- And back to geeks dressing up, I’m having a hard time figuring out if this is for real or not.

The first level is awesome because it plays just like the Starfox of old (which is why I liked my brief first encouter with the game). I’m a diehard fan of the original, but have not enjoyed any of the sequels, even Starfox 64. Call me boring, but I’m not a big fan of “variety” in certain games, and the subsequent Starfox titles are a prime example of this; just like in Sonic Adventure where I could give a rat’s ass about some stupid cat that could fish, I just want to fly and shoot in a Starfox game, and that’s it (just as how with Sonic Adventure, I just want to run and jump and enemies, period). Don’t give me any of this tank driving bullshit, and certainly any out of the vehicle, on-foot action. Its all an attempt at adding different gameplay modes, but I’d much rather have one very strong one instead of a bunch of others that are less refined all slapped together.

Also, it doesn’t help that the controls are broken. The original Starfox on the SNES controlled perfectly, so why the need to mess it up? And I can’t stand all the hate for on-rails shooting, since I find the free roaming flying and shooting levels just as tedious here as it was on the N64 version. But on the plus side, some of the graphics is certainly nice (though I’m assuming it would be much better on a decent display) and the music is pretty hot. Hell, I even like its rendition of Starfox theme, though I still fail to see why Nintendo has always chosen to ignore the brilliant music in the SNES version.

One has to wonder then the exact reason why. Most state its because of the difference in technology, but so there was one between the PSone and PS2, so that doesn’t mean anything (and this is Microsoft we’re talking about… if anyone would have the means to figuring out how to run software, they should be it. But then again, we’re talking about MS). Maybe MS just doesn’t care? Perhaps.

So I’ve been playing Starfox Assault for the past few nights. Even though the game has gotten a ton of hate, I rather enjoyed my experience with it at a Nintendo press and picked it up anyway. Well, everyone else was correct afterall, cuz the game does indeed flat-out suck.

- Back to movies, I guess I should comment on the new Harry Potter trailer. Obviously there’s not too much to comment on since its only a teaser, but thus far it looks as if there’s potential (though diehard Potter fans everywhere seem to vehemently hate it with a passion… I’ll get back to that in a second). Initially I was a bit worried since Alfonso Cuaron wasn’t on board since he made Prisoner of Azkaban so fucking fantastic (to the point that its even made the first two films almost boring in comparison) but now I’m hopefully curious.

- Back to Apple real quick, you can now buy music from Final Fantasy via the iTunes store (click this link to access it). Awesome! And for so many reasons: to the best of my knowledge, this might be the biggest initiative to sell game music (including chiptunes) on such a massive scale. Hopefully this will be successful enough to see similar releases; at the very least, I’d like to see some of the arranged Final Fantasy soundtracks available, like Dear Friends.

- One reason why I was up till 4 in the morning was all my Tiger diagnosing. But the other was my allergies, which has stuffed up my nose so bad that I can’t even sleep. I must say, I can’t recall any other time where I’ve had so many friends all messed up due to allergies, and all at the same time. Anyway, to help pass the very late nights, I’ve been trying to catch up on some games, but the thing is I really need a new tv bad since the one I have is going bad; the image is ever so slightly blurry, which makes playing hi-res games, or ones that have dark and detailed graphics, and especially anything with text, a real headache to play.

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I think about how this may have to do with our worship of the brain as the seat of intelligence, our culture separating the brain from the body… Is Stephen Hawking brilliant in spite of his body?

The hidden cost does not bother me as much as the suffering associated with super-sizing and over-eating. The unhealthy weight, the resulting lack of mobility, the aching joints… I think about processed foods. I imagine the body feels unsatisfied by the lack of nutrition in processed foods, which then leads to over-eating, which is enabled by super-sizing, which can lead to diabetes,hermes belts, the fastest growing disease in the world – and also the most profitable business?

When we were in Cancun, Mexico in the beginning of June we all commented on the sensible portions we received in restaurants. Then I noticed this BoingBoing post:

Hidden costs of super-sizing: 10x more than the meal
A study from the University of Wisconsin-Madison has concluded that the whole cost of a $0.67 fast-food meal supersizing is nearly ten times that, once you factor in all the hidden costs of overeating.Link(Via BoingBoing)

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