Tuesday, September 22, 2009We Were Braaaaagging.... The irony is that I think Within You Without You is the worst song on Sgt. Pepper.
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Monday, June 1, 2009We Would Sing and Dance Around From Kotaku.com In other news: entire Abbey Road will be in the game! Update: *Point point* link : 1:09 PM
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Thursday, March 5, 2009Say You Want a Revolution September 9, 2009 is kind of an odd date to release The Beatles: Rock Band...
... ... ... ... Oh I get it lol. link : 11:26 AM
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Friday, January 9, 2009What's an Ooby Dooby? Six Roy Orbison songs hit Rock Band last week and I got three of them, Oh Pretty Woman, You Got It, and Ooby Dooby. Fun fact: Ooby Dooby was featured prominently in Star Trek: First Contact, and was the first human song the Vulcans heard.
Some associated news have been found on the net too. GameDaily has a cool interview with Orbison's widow about the games and music. She has a very positive attitude towards the merging. Digital Game Developer has some really interesting information on the technical process of taking master tracks and making the song playable. The Orbison Estate actually took the opportunity to remix the song just for Rock Band, making the guitar sound more modern. link : 6:52 PM
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Wednesday, October 29, 2008While My Plastic Guitar Gently Weeps (with Joy) Beatles License Songs to Viacom Videogame Unit
The Beatles have licensed songs to MTV Networks' Rock Band videogame series, according to several people familiar with the matter, a coup for the Viacom Inc. unit in its battle with rival Activision Inc. for supremacy in the world of rock and roll video games. Update: Today the Beatles and MTV Games officially announced plans to make a Beatles music game. Woohoo! There's articles all over the net, but check out this one, the press release at Beatles.com. It's eerie reading quotes from representatives of all four Beatles about how cool a videogame would be. Kind of a weird Bizarro world situation. For example: "It's cool. I love it and hope it will keep inspiring and encouraging the young generation for many decades," said Yoko Ono Lennon.That quote would be inconceivable one week ago. link : 8:25 PM
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Tuesday, October 21, 2008How to Turn Me Off Instantly Pronounce Lex Luthor "Luth-e-r" instead of "Luth-o-r" in a big budget game production.
link : 11:00 AM
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Saturday, September 13, 2008It's a Nice Day for... Rock Banding Rock Band 2 comes out on Sunday at midnight. Three hours before the hunt begins!
Update 5:47AM Buying Rock Band 2 at midnight was no problem. Picked it up at the original Super Walmart in town. Got lost on the way back due to heavy rain and crummy road lines. Been playing on and off since around 12:30AM (!). First impressions: there are a lot more songs that are really fun to sing, like Hungry Like the Wolf, That's What You Get, Eye of the Tiger, and Kids in America. My throat started complaining at around 3:00AM so I switched to guitar but by then I was also drowsy so I kind of half-heartedly played. Old interface problems fixed, but new ones were made. More details when I'm less likely to pass out at the keyboard. link : 9:17 PM
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Saturday, August 2, 2008Tales from Comic-Con, Day 4 (Sunday): I Just Want a Goddamn Cardboard Tube I didn't go to Comic-Con on Sunday in 2006 because I was tired of it by the fourth day. My family convinced me to go since I did have Comic-Con and trolley passes. A deal 's a deal! Getting there was no problem. Once inside, though it was chaos. Sunday was kids' day. Now, most kids were fine, but what was not fine were the con newbies: parents with strollers. Pedestrian traffic was crazy because of the strollers everywhere. The parents would stop in the middle of the aisles and gawk and whatever booth, blocking the people behind them from moving. Babies in strollers would drop stuff or grab things from passersby. And crowd control was a lot worse than in 2006. Booths just couldn't handle long lines of people so lines wrapped around and around with no indication of where the line ended or what the line was for. In 2006 I specifically saw such lines broken up to help the flow of traffic, but this year it was the norm. I tried three times to talk to staff members what was going on in the line they guarded and two times I was completely ignored. The third time I was ejected from a line I accidentally stood in. That line was important, too:
Omar Dogan, artist at Udon comics, was doing commission sketches. I think his work is fantastic so I went to his booth. Luckily, he wasn't so busy so I could get my request in: Karin from Street Fighter Alpha 3. Mr. Dogan was very nice and he told me to pick it up around closing time. As I walked away it occured to me that I had no way of safely transporting a 11" x 17" art piece. But, I saw many convention-goers all weekend with poster tubes from the Fox booth so off I went. When I got there they were out of posters with a sign promising more later. I walked around some more and returned. Now there was a giant throng of people demanding poster tubes. I walked around the booth but couldn't find where the line ended. I saw one likely spot, a corner with a staff member and what looked like the end. I asked the man if it was the end, and he said no. It turns out, the line continued directly behind me, from where I had come from. So... that meant I was in the line right? No, said both the guard and the woman behind me (whom is a jerk btw). At this point I was on the verge of a freakout so I left ending my quest for a poster tube. I calmed myself down by first watching Spore being played at their booth, played some Rock Band in the game room. Walking through the exhibit hall made me have an attack again so I sat in a secluded area playing Phase on my iPod. Once I was refreshed I went back to see Omar Dogan. Surprisingly my piece was done (it had been around three hours). It's fantastic: inked and shaded which is beyond what he needed to do for a con sketch. I had him keep the rough lines. I wrapped the drawing in some thick posters, forming a protective tube I had to hold closed. Having gotten that, there was nothing I needed to do so I left Comic-Con as fast as possible.  {Things I got at Comic-Con. Click to see annotated version at Flickr.} I'm not sure if I want to do it again. At least I'll skip a year like before. Maybe two years. I did have lots of fun and got many unique souvenirs, and talked to some great people, but the aggravating times were insanity-inducing, literally. I'm pretty sure it's all worth it, though. Maybe. Let me look at that drawing again... link : 3:13 PM
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Monday, July 28, 2008Tales from Comic-Con, Day 2 (Friday: Part 1): My Own Personal 8 Mile I found parking at the Fenton Parkway trolley station and got to Comic-Con at least a half hour earlier than Thursday. As I was walking there, a man with a box of cards handed one to me. It said Top Shelf 2.0, about a new webcomics project. He asked me if I've heard of them and I said no. He then explained that Top Shelf is the company featuring Alan Moore as well as other well known graphic novels such as Craig Thompson's Blankets. I felt stupid because I was thinking webcomics when he asked. Of course I knew about Top Shelf! We kept walking and talking towards the convention center. At one point, a middle-aged man with gray hair and glasses wearing a red shirt under an open flannel walked up and said hi to my companion. They chatted business for a few seconds while I stood by. When they were done, the man continued walking past us. I knew something was strange so I asked if I should know that man. He replied "It's Scott McCloud."
My face went =O. Scott McCloud is pretty famous for his books about comics theory: Understanding Comics, Reinventing Comics, and Making Comics. He also invented the 24-hour comic. It's kind of a big deal to see him, much less walking down the street like anyone else. Well, I'll know what he looks like in real life for next time. While the morning had its thrills, I was very excited about the afternoon: Thursday had a Smash Bros. tournament and Friday it was time for Rock Band to take the stage (though there wasn't actually a stage). The tournament was set up as score duels between two bands at a time. Each duo of bands picked a song to play and then they played the other group's pick. The score is added and highest wins. Pretty slick way of doing it I think.  {Dueling bands at the Rock Band tournament.} The clustery Smash Bros. tournament the day before had me worried, but the Rock Band one was well organized. I joined a trio looking for a bass player or vocalist but they booted me at the last minute. I was pissed I didn't have a band because I really wanted to sing. Luckily one of the bands couldn't find their fourth when they were called up and I hopped in to offer my services. It was me, pushing 30, with a bunch of 8th and 9th graders. By the time we worked out the band issues the competing band had already picked their song: Buddy Holly. I have a mental list of songs I'm uncommonly good at and I scanned the playlist for one: Celebrity Skin was my choice. No one likes Celebrity Skin, except for Anna and I. We played our hearts out but they beat us completely. Special mention goes out to my competing vocalist, a stocky guy in an orange shirt. He really worked the crowd from his giant yells for overdrive to his clapping and waving to other songs. His band won the tournament, with the prize being a copy of Rock Band 2. Considering that two months ago I didn't know I had the capacity to even learn singing, doing vocals in front of a crowd at Comic-Con was huge to me. And it was only 2PM. link : 8:17 PM
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Sunday, July 27, 2008Tales from Comic-Con, Day 1 (Thursday): Kind of Familiar Much like my 2006 trip to Comic-Con, I started out by getting lost trying to find the Mission Valley trolley station. I got to the convention center a little late, just before noon. Unlike my last visit I decided to skip most of the panels. I go for information and that can be obtained from the internet from reporters and bloggers after-the-fact. Instead I spent my time in the exhibition hall photographing booths, many of which are in the same place as last time. There were some differences though: Udon Comics shrank considerably and got a section backed by the wall. Capcom grew and had a multi-tiered setup. Marvel actually had a recognizable booth instead of horning in on one of their subsidiaries.
 {The small press section is supposed to be one of the less-busy areas.} Later I wound up in the game room playing Rock Band. There was a Smash Bros. tournament in the afternoon but it was a mess: people didn't hear their name called, people kept sitting directly in front of the projector (didn't they feel a circle of heat on their backs?). Then again running a convention program is no easy task, and the sponsor, sdtekken.com did a good handling the crowd. I sat next to a mom cheering her son and we conversed about how troublesome the crowd was while they sorted out what the next match was going to be. I also didn't like the format of the tournament, though it is standard for Smash Bros. Why only have one on one matches on the flattest stage when the game features 4-player battles on over twenty unique stages? It got kind of boring after a while and I skipped a lot, coming back to see the end.  {A finely detailed Predator statue at the Sideshow Collectibles booth.} Also, 100th post, woot. link : 8:00 PM
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Monday, July 14, 2008Miscellany It's hard to imagine that in less than twenty four hours I'll once again be jetting off to San Diego to visit the family. Here are updates on recent goings on before the San Diego/Comic-Con stuff fills the blog.
Labels: animals, anthropology, games, Keeley link : 6:11 PM
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Tuesday, June 17, 2008Singing, Strumming and Standing Still Games My birthday wish came true when my family conspired to get me Rock Band and an Xbox 360. Kind of... it's almost a month later and I think the statue of limitations on hijinks has expired. Well, what really happened is that I couldn't take it any more after my Illinois trip and ordered Rock Band a few weeks early. Then my family said they were going to order it for me. I quickly calmed down and told them I was already on the case, not really mentioning that I've been playing Rock Band for a week by that point. =)
Rock Band is as incredible as I remember it from Anna and Anthony's house. Unfortunately Kristin and her boyfriend were very unimpressed by it so I'm pretty much playing this party game sololy with me trying out every position. I've taken to vocals and I'm actually doing the best in that area at the moment with a firm grasp of expert mode. Guitar is a close second with me in the last set of hard (curse you Flirtin' With Disaster, Train Kept A-Rollin'' and Green Grass and High Tides!). Drums is giving me trouble and I'm struggling at medium difficulty in the drum tour. There's a subculture of Rock Band players who play "voxtar" or sing and play guitar or bass simultaneously... like Jewel does in real life. I've taken up voxtar, even buying a real life mic stand to make things a little easier to manage. Voxtar is really fun, and makes doing vocals or guitar by themselves kind of empty-feeling. It's a challenge though as you can guess: I'm working on simultaneous hard vocals and hard guitar at the moment and some songs are very troublesome. It helps if I know the words already like I Think I'm Paranoid or Sabotage. Rock Band was not all that happened around my birthday. A mysterious package from my family had arrived a little before the date. Since Rock Band was well out of the bag, I kept the box sealed until May 28th so I'd something to open on my birthday. It was a rather large Amazon box and very evenly dense and heavy. I had absolutely no guesses what it could've been. When I opened it I was completely stunned because out slid out Wii Fit! Wii Fit is another unique Nintendo game. Jokingly I call it The Scale Game, or Standing Still: Hyper Turbo Championship Edition. While there are a lot of active things to do in Wii Fit, many minigames just as yoga or the balance tests simply asks you to hold a pose perfectly still. It's certainly a different gaming experience than the norm of pushing buttons as accurately as possible, and therefore quite a challenge. With all these new games, a job, and research my plate is so very full. I haven't played Warcraft in almost a month. I wonder if my guild hates me. Labels: games link : 5:00 PM
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Friday, April 4, 2008Declassified Story from Work and Other Notes
 {Rawr.} link : 10:25 PM
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Tuesday, February 19, 2008I'd Like to Be... Endless Ocean (link warning: creepy music) is one of those non-game games that crop up from time to time to remind people that games aren't all about shooting and competition. At it's core, it's a marine biologist simulator. You dive in the fictional Pacific tropical reef of Manoa Lai and look for fish. Upon sighting a fish you have to obtain information from it. Strangely, this is mostly done by rubbing the fish (waving the Wii remote), though you can also feed them. When they like you enough, sparkles appear and you can read a short blurb. Sounds kind of trite, right? But it's all in the presentation:
 {Look, a sea star!} The graphics are wonderful. It's not real-real, but it's more than enough. Besides swimming around and rubbing fish, there are a few other objectives. You can also lead people on dives to find the fish they want to see. Someone working at a magazine will send requests for photos of certain fish. Your financial backer will point you towards certain features like shark spawning zone. But it's all very open ended and these tasks can wait if you just want to dive. There are of course some amusing things that crop up in this open-ended game. After a point, fish started to like me so much that they would follow me wherever I went. Sounds cute... until you want to take a picture. Then they ruin every photo I try to take by swimming in my face:  {A nice photo of a hammerhead shark, except for the fish-in-my-face.} The fish-rubbing mechanism is also questionable in places, like when stingrays are involved: Petting a lionfish is also a bit weird, since they have poisonous spines and all. And of course, one liked me so much it started following me. Safest. Dive. Ever. To my surprise, the game has a basic plot involving my fellow researcher's family issues and how they're linked to her work. Also, I branch into underwater archaeology as the obligatory underwater ruins are discovered. It's like I'm working... kind of.  Endless Ocean is one of those "edutainment" titles that is actually engaging. It doesn't take itself so seriously, which keeps its flaws in check. How could you not smirk when "Amazing Grace" starts playing upon seeing your first whale shark? Update: I forgot to mention, the game can read mp3 files off of an SD card and play it instead of its own Christian tunes. Can you say "Octopus's Garden?"  {This game should be rated Mature because it has boobies.} Labels: anthropology:archaeology, games link : 2:33 PM
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Sunday, January 6, 2008This Year is Warmer Than the Last (A True C!G!A! Update) Today was unseasonably warm when I stepped outside to attend to the chickens. The cats all ran out and had a good time. I did not really partake in the outdoor activities though and went back to my basement den.
In said hideaway I've been getting more things done. I've been coloring the next few pages of Keeley's comic. The settings are far less complex so it shouldn't take me a month like the 9th street adventure I just posted. The pages I'm working on now set up the second half of the issue, which is another exploration of Keeley's social life. Sometimes I emerge to the surface world, where my Wii is. I bought Super Mario Galaxy for myself for Christmas. I've heard good things about it, but I really did not like Super Mario 64 or Super Mario Sunshine. I was very pleasantly surprised by Galaxy. The levels are all very creative and it really pulls me into the world(s). Playing Mario on an upside down world or running along the surface of a sphere was a lot easier than I had imagined though sometimes I take a long jump out of sight and into a black hole. This time I am not doing any more work that what is required of me at the step I'm on. I was bitten last project when I went ahead of myself and did a big chunk of research before the concept was accepted. The step I'm on is just a mini-proposal, around 2 to three pages. It's the hardest 2 to 3 pages I've ever written, but dammit, when I'm done it will be the best 2 to 3 page essay ever. Distressingly enough I was alerted by Kristin to the fact that yesterday was already Saturday. For some reason I had lived my life yesterday thinking it was Thursday. I did find it weird that some websites I visited mysteriously had their weekly posts done, but I did not think much of it. Losing two days in my mind means I've made less progress than I had thought. On the bright side, since the weekend snuck up on me, I can take a break. link : 10:28 AM
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Wednesday, January 24, 2007Space Battle I somehow missed the birth of networking sites like Friendster and Myspace but all of a sudden it seems like this type of site is almost ubiquitous with casual internet use. Specialty sites have come up to cater to specific audiences. There isn't one for anthropology yet so I'll write about two that cater to the other two-thirds of this site's theme.
1up.com is a networking site for gamers. I usually go there for the news, though I've visited it less as less since it is so complex. I just want my gaming news! The news sits in a little block of text surrounded by links to blogs. I don't want to see what Joe D. Gamer says on his gaming blog. I have my own! Why read the World of Warcraft Blog when I can just play it with the other eight million people who have it? Anyway, I wanted to see how the networking part of the site was going so I went profile hopping. I even found someone I know! So I set up my own little profile and tried to invite him to be a friend. And... nothing. I have no idea how to do it! The site is just so cluttered. The obvious "Invite Friends" button is actually for spamming my friends who don't have a profile so they will join. But how do I send and invite to someone who is already here? I still haven't figured it out. The help link, buried in the lower right of the page, leads to a single page that only shows me how to sign up for this monstrosity (using outdated screenshots no less). I give up. My reunion with my friend will have to wait until I get some more patience. On to other things, like writing this post. I've dumped on 1up.com a bit now so it must mean I have a solution for all of their flaws. Well, to show an example of a networking site that works in its simplicity, I present Comicspace. Yes, it's a blatant name-ripoff of Myspace, but it is so much better in execution. Just compare the two home screens. Comicspace has a tasteful row of ads at the top, and the rest of the page are large blocks of information. there is a lot of information here but it is given room to breathe. And once you start clicking links and filling out text boxes, it works flawlessly. Comicspace is run by one person with volunteer programmer helpers and it just plain works. Myspace has all kinds of money backing it and it fails. There are errors that show up for the most mundane tasks like sending a message or seeing someone's profile. It's shoddy while Comicspace is expertly designed. Just look at it! It's, dare I say, a beautiful site. link : 7:44 PM
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Sunday, January 21, 2007Blizzards... Everywhere! Columbia got covered in sheets of ice over the weekend, causing all kinds of hilarity... if inching along the sidewalk and then feeling that moment of terror as I slip was hilarious. School was supposed to start on Tuesday but it was canceled due to the icy conditions. Still, I braved the outdoors that day for something way more important than school: to get my hands on the Burning Crusade.
Walmart was out (I was there to get contacts) but Best Buy had lots and lots right by the door. I don't know if I was trying to act cool or what, but I walked by the display and went around the store before returning to grab a copy and check out. The cashier tried to start a conversation about it, but she knew nothing about the game. She asked if I "had everything I needed to play." My mind raced. Did she mean actual real life things like a computer, and a copy of World of Warcraft? Or did she mean in-game things like a level 60 character to take advantage of the new areas? I answered with a ambiguous "Almost!" She then asked me about what Warcraft is exactly and what the goal is. By then I knew the context of the conversation so I was happier to keep talking. Labels: games link : 9:51 AM
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Wednesday, January 3, 2007 I realized that Comics! Games! Anthropology! still lacks a games article so here goes. While I'm vacationing in Poway I'm having a severe case of game withdrawl. At my parents house, the only machine capable of playing games is my mom's G3 iBook. It's so old it couldn't run Warcraft III. Well, it could, but it's hard to get into the medieval strategy when all I can see is a green and red blob attacking a blue and yellow blob at five frames per second. I bought the Starcraft Battlechest at Target, and that was a lot of fun. I haven't played Starcraft since it was the newest thing when I was an undergrad. The gameplay still holds up. It's a lot of fun for such a simple system of upgrading one's units. I wish my armed forces would know when to attack and retreat on their own though, but I guess there has to be some control on my part.
When I'm bored of Starcraft (and Diablo II, which I also installed), I found that reading about games was a good substitute for actually playing games. In particular I found this website, Hardcore Gaming 101, which as many articles about old games. They're all very thorough, detailing every version of a particular series such as Altered Beast or Prince of Persia. There's also articles about niche games like Cho Aniki (um, probably not safe for work). I could read these articles all day... which I sometimes did. There's another site called NFG Games which has some nicely researched articles on the history of different characters such as Sonic and Mario through the years. They focus on how their graphics have changed as they starred on more and more advanced articles. Fascinating! Labels: games link : 6:31 PM
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