Otaku – Page 91 – Robot Claw

To Infinity And Beyond

May 2, 2013

This past Tuesday, Florence was in town! Since she lives in the desert now, we don’t get to hang out much, so the most had to be made of it.

The decision of what to do was easy: it was time to launch model rockets!

“What, what?!” you ask? Well, I had kept it a cunning secret that Florence had purchased me model rocket supplies for Christmas, knowing this day would eventually come. Here’s a rare shot of me assembling one of the rockets a few weeks ago:

There were three in total. Before her trip I built everything and made sure it was all ready to go. A scouted out a location and bought a few extra engines. Very soon, I was to send an emissary into the cold, dark depths of space! And the very first said emissary would be no less than ‘KUMA 01‘, the bear-rocket:

We launched in Delmar park, near my house. The weather, as you can see, was perfect. KUMA is a little rocket, and it had a B-4 engine in it. What does that mean? Who knows! We certainly didn’t. I think you can gauge from this launch video how high we expected this rocket to go:

It went so high! And there was apparently a wind up there, since it traveled quite a distance (via the parachute) before touching down. In the future, remind me to snip a hole in the parachute prior to launch. Happily, KUMA survived the trip intact:

Giddy with success, it was time to move on to the big rocket, LOADSTAR. This guy is designed to carry a payload, and has a (frankly ludicrous) dual-stage that requires two engines. It was also a total bastard to assemble, and I had less than 1% confidence it would survive a landing. Here it is ready to be launched:

The launch was spectacular… ly bad! As I half-expected, the second stage failed to ignite, and therefore the re-entry mechanism did not deploy. LOADSTAR fell like a stone, nose first, into dirt:

Although it failed, I was amazed it survived intact. Kudos to gorilla glue, I suppose! I will tinker with LOADSTAR and try launching him again one day.

And then we moved onto what was perhaps the craziest of the three rockets, ATOMOS. And yes, I just made up that name one second ago. At any rate, here’s a few shots of the pre-launch procedure:

This rocket carries two shuttles, which detach at the zenith, and then glide to earth (probably bearing messages from God). This rocket kit had existed in my car for a millenia, and was actually damaged when I built it. If LOADSTAR was expected to fail, ATOMOS was expected to explode!

What’s that? The thing in the top left of the above shot? Here’s a closeup:

OMG it’s Florry, hiding behind a plastic lid because she was scared after the LOADSTAR tragedy 🙂

I had put a stronger engine into this guy, a C-5. What does that mean?? Who knows! Let’s launch:

HOLY MOTHER OF GOD IT WENT HIGH! You can see from that photo (taken on my phone…), this rocket had purpose. It raced up, screaming through the troposphere, writing “Goodbye fair Earth” with its exhaust. Maybe. At any rate, it was an amazing launch, one of the shuttles even worked correctly (the other fell like Icarus) and both the rocket and both shuttles were recovered intact.

There was only one engine left. A strong one; a C-5. It made sense to put it in the smallest, lightest rocket. KUMA 01 was on a one-way trip to infinity and beyond!

The final launch was so momentous it required two people. This may have been because the launch device had two buttons, and we both wanted to photograph the rocket as it was taking off. We hid behind our plastic shield, said a quick prayer, and pushed the button. This happened:

Look at that power! Look at it:

It was like all the angels got beneath this little bear-rocket and lifted to heaven at faster than light speed! It just went so fast, and so high, and penetrated the atmosphere and we never ever saw little KUMA again…

…at least not until he touched down safely a minute or so later 🙂

As you may be able to tell this was big fun. I already have some ideas for my second round of rocketry later this summer.

Thank you Florence, both for the rockets and for helping me launch them. 🙂

Tribute to the Nintendo DS

April 27, 2013

This past week, Nintendo removed the Nintendo DS from it’s future sales projections. This is as good a sign as any from them that the system has been ‘retired’ and is likely no longer being produced. Although it is still in stores (and selling respectably, at least in America), it is likely that by the end of this year it will be completed replaced by the 3DS.

The DS was released back in 2004. Upon launch, it was an ugly duckling, especially compared to the then reigning handheld, the Gameboy Advance SP. This is what the DS looked like when it was first released:

On the day of US release, November 21 2004, I bought two systems (one for KLS), and one game. The game was Super Mario DS, a rerelease of the Gamecube classic. I hadn’t played it in years, and enjoyed playing it again on the DS. But there was no question, in those early six months or so, that this was a troubled system.

After about a year though, the games started coming out at a good pace, and some system classics were released early in the lifespan. This included Castlevania and Advance Wars games (the latter still without a sequel…), and Animal Crossing and the ‘games’ that would skyrocket the system to popularity: Nintendogs and Brain Age.

Back then – in mid 2006 – the system could do no wrong. It was the most successful game system of all time, raking in massive profits for Nintendo and with developers lining up to put games on it. This was the start of the golden years for DS; what would perhaps be the best years of any game system.

I liked the DS from the start, but by the time developers had gotten their minds around the system and fully fledged games (as opposed to two-screen inflated demos) started coming out it had become perhaps my favourite system of all time. One after another, fantastic games were being released. I bought them all; I played them all.

The system went through a few iterations: DS Lite, DSi, DSiXL. I bought them all, and to this day own 6 different DS systems. I took advantage of the lack of regional lockouts and bought games in the US, Australia, England and Japan, and own more foreign software for the DS than for any other system. I was buying games for it at a rate of almost 3 per month, and for many years it dominated my game time.

To date, Nintendo has sold 153 million DS units, and 933 million units of software have been sold. That’s an average of a little over 6 per owner. This number seems alarmingly small to me, since I own 261 different DS games, and couldn’t begin to imagine how to distill my collection down to only 6 ‘must-haves’.

But I shall try. In no particular order then, my six favourite Nintendo DS games:

Elite Beat Agents – the best music game ever made, hands down. This was based on the Japanese original, Ossu Tatakae Ouenden, itself a magnificent game (as it its sequel). But this English language all-new installment is the best of the series.

The World Ends With You – Incredibly hardcore and detail-oriented RPG set in Shibuya, Japan featuring a mind-bending story, fantastic music and one of the best combat engines ever made. It’s available on iOS, but the long-rumoured sequel is MIA.

Etrian Odyssey III: The Drowned City – Impossibly, the ‘wizardry’ game type was resurrected on the DS to great success. I could have probably filled this list with six such games (including Dark Spire, Wizardry Asterisk, several Shin Megami Tensei games etc.) but the one series to rule them all is Etrian Odyssey. The best DS installment was the third, but I’m glad to say the series is going strong and the fourth game, recently released on the 3DS, is on my shelf waiting to be played 🙂

Super Robot Taisen OG Saga: Endless Frontier – Yes I know you’ve never heard of this unlikely spin-off from a series that will never be released outside of Japan due to copyright hell. But this was a fantastic and very lighthearted traditional RPG with a great story, incredible 2D animation and some really striking character designs. I loved it to death, and wish Atlus would release the sequel! (Incidentally this game was released in very limited quantities and is a pricey collectible now.)

Dragon Quest IX: Sentinels Of The Starry Skies – Hundreds of hours of gameplay and oodles of dungeons to explore, bosses to kill and loot to collect make this perhaps the best traditional RPG on the system.

Animal Crossing: Wild World – The best Animal Crossing yet (well…) came out early in the DS’s life. I played it daily for almost a year 🙂

All told, I own just shy of 1400 games for 26 different systems. It’s remarkable that almost 20% of those games are for only one of the 26 systems. The DS may be discontinued now, but I don’t doubt I’ll still be buying games for it in the years to come, and I don’t doubt that I’ll still be playing DS games for many, many years 🙂

My New Job

April 20, 2013

Twenty-five days ago, Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate was released. Here’s a photo I just took:

Yes, my save file is 174 hours.

That means in the last month i have spent 29% of my life playing this game.

Here’s Momo in her G-rank gunner armor:

This may be the most addictive game I’ve ever played. 174 hours in under four weeks? That’s a full time job!