Geek vs Life

You know, while we may get a lot of cool games coming out in the US, compared to Japan, we get the shaft (well, at least if you play RPGs). I mean, how many times does a game come out in Japan, and then in the US, only to be re-released or whatnot with bonus stuff, or there’s gaiden (side story) games that come out, and we never see any of it.

Let’s see… there’s a GBA Star Ocean game that never came out here (we never got Star Ocean 1, either). We never get the mobile games, like Xenosaga’s Pied Piper or the Final Fantasy VII ones. Rereleases? You mean, like the International Final Fantasy games, Kingdom Hearts’ Final Mix games, the PSP ports of Suikoden I and II, Star Ocean, and Star Ocean 2, the DS version of Xenosaga Episodes I and II…

I remember watching movies in my teenage years, wishing I could be as cool as their main protagonists.

I wanted to be radio pirate like Will Scarlett (Christian Slatter) in “Pump Up The Volume.” I wanted to be a rebel like John Bender (Judd Nelson) in Breakfast Club. I wanted to be singing on a float and outwitting everyone like Ferris Bueller (Matthew Broderick) in “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.”

Now, despite being way out of my teenage years, I want to be Charlie Bartlett in the film that was aptly named after him.

A very well off and enterprising kid, Bartlett (Anton Yelchin from Hearts of Atlantis) is expelled from his umpteenth private school and is sent to public school. In hopes of being socially accepted, he tries to council kids on their problems and prescribes them common anti-depressants such as Xanax and Xoloft during his lunch break.

The dust has cleared and one winner was left standing as Toshiba announced earlier today that it would halt production on it’s line of HD-DVD players.

With Sony, Panasonic, Sharp, Pioneer and JVC backing the Blu-Ray, it was pretty much just matter of time before HD-DVD spun it’s last cycle and went the way of the Betamax.

The news follows the announcement last week that Netflix, Walmart and Best Buy were going to phase out the use of the HD DVD format. With fewer and fewer options when it comes to finding the format in stores or even studios who would release movies that way, Toshiba has made the right albeit hard decision.

Implications of the HD DVD demise reaches even further than just the movie sales market, the video game market will feel the shockwaves of this as well.

Arguably one of the best Role-Playing Games ever released on any console, a sealed copy of Chrono Trigger for the SNES is now worth it’s weight in gold.

More to the point, the sealed copy was purchased from eBay for $1217 on February 4. That’s 1210 double cheeseburgers at McDonalds, 608 2 dolla’ lov u lon’ time, 243 pack of Camel Wide Menthols, 121 $10 lap dances, 60 copies of Brain Age, 20 copies of Dynasty Warrior 6, 4 Wiis, 3 Xbox 360s or 2 PS3s.

Is it worth it? When asked on whether he planned on keeping the game sealed for freshness, the buyer declined to comment. You lucky bastard.

Yes, I put “X”, and not “Brawl”. Why? Because that’s what it says on the spine of the game case in Japanese. And yes, I’ve gotten a chance to play it (all hail friends who import).

First off, I played using the GameCube controller, because I was told it was easier than the Wiimote. I didn’t argue, I’d rather have a controller anyway. In vs. mode, the gameplay plays pretty much the same as Melee. A few of the characters (such as Zelda, and the Pokémon Trainer) are a little harder to use because they have transformations/change-ups that play similar to other abilities/special attacks, and you might do one when you’re trying for the other.

Wouldn’t it be great if some games could merge? Imagine for a sec that you could add Samus to Zelda or Sonic to Kirby.

For your viewing pleasure, what if Mario and Luigi ventured into Vice City (from GTA)?

Can you imagine what it would be like to be able to travel from Seattle to Fiji in the blink of an eye for a glass of water? No 14-hour flight, just poof and you’re there, and then bam, you’re back. If you were a “Jumper,” (in the movie of the same name) then you could. Heck, you could be there and back before your show comes back from a commercial break.

A “jumper” is someone who is gifted with the power to be anywhere at any second. Call it teleportation, call it spatial projection, call it jump gating, whatever, in this movie it’s just jumping. Sounds like an almost godlike power doesn’t it?

The entertainment industry has been pilfering my memories as of late, and quite frankly it has to stop.

Taking 70’s and 80’s properties and re-vamping them for a new/old audience is nothing new: It’s been in practice since time immortal. We take something old, add a new spin to it and market the crap out of it. It has to end before it goes too far.

Take last summer’s biggest films for example. Most of them originated nearly 30 years ago.
“The Transformers” was a toy line, weekday after-school cartoon that ran from 1984 to 1987 in its original run. Last summer, “Transformers” was remade into a live action film with great special effects; but the story was so full of holes, a Mack truck the size of Optimus Prime could drive through it…sideways. Recently, the cartoon that has been in and out of production for the past 20 years mostly in CGI format was also revamped to make it look more like the old 80’s TV show.

Some movies get such an advertising push that when the film fails to deliver, you feel kind of let down. “Evan Almighty,” anyone? Other movies get that push and they rightfully deserve it. Recent favorites that fit that bill include “Juno” and “No Country for Old Men.”

Then you fall into the obscure category of sweet films that slip under that radar. Films like “Definitely, Maybe.”

The plot revolves around a father in the throws of divorce (played by Ryan Reynolds), telling a story to his daughter (Abigail Breslin) on how he met her mother and fell in love. In an effort to keep things “mysterious,” he changes the his wife’s name and tells the story of the three major loves in his life as his daughter tries to figure out which one is her real mother.

I know this is a little late, but since I’ve been on vacation and all, well, yeah. It gave me plenty of time to think about this.

Valve, the company behind Half-Life and the Orange Box, released a suite of tools for developers called Steamworks. This is potentially big. Let’s take a look at what it entails from their press release…

In other news, my girlfriend’s craving to own a DS will soon increase with the release of this new little game. I am slowly turning her into a gamer, hehe.

Lu Bu, Xing Cai, Zhou Yu, Zhen Ji and 37 more characters are back in the heat of hack and slash battle set in ancient China as Dynasty Warriors 6 is hitting shelves this Feb 19 on both PS3 and Xbox360.

Dynasty warriors has been one of my favorite series for the past few years. It’s pretty bloodless killing. The violence isn’t all about the “finishing move” as opposed to the numbers. The more you kill, the better. Use your blade, spear or any other number of weapons to conquer your foes. If things get too hairy, there is always the possibility to use your “renbu”, a scaled attacked combo that gets more powerful as you defeat more enemies without taking any damage.

Watch the trailer, good times are ahead indeed.