Archive for the ‘Tech’ Category

Radioaktivität

Monday, September 19th, 2011

The above song was released in 1975, and to this day remains one of my favourite songs of all time. It is, of course, by electro-rock legends Kraftwerk, and I have embedded the video here because I am somewhat dumbfounded that it has taken me almost all of my life to actually discover there is a video!

Watch this next:

In my opinion, the above is about as close as a band could ever get to a perfect live performance. That’s from their live album/DVD, Minimum Maximum, otherwise known as the best live album ever made.

The performance of Radioactivity, 29 years after the first release, is just chilling. Doubly so when we consider how easy they could replace ?? (‘Hi-Ro-Shi-Ma’) with ?? (‘Fu-Ku-Shi-Ma’)…

Dragon’s Dogma

Sunday, September 18th, 2011

I’ve been ignoring my PS3 recently, including almost the entire summer, mostly because I haven’t had the time to play anything. Portable games, including on the iPad, fill in the spare time well enough.

There are precious few PS3 games on the horizon that have caught my eye, but one of them is Dragon’s Dogma, by Capcom.

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This is their attempt to make an open-world fantasy RPG that (apparently) matches the approach of Monster Hunter with the appeal of a western game. “Monster Hunter meets Dragon Age” in other words. I don’t think for a second it will be as good as Monster Hunter – or even very similar, based on recent views – but it does look impressive.

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My interest has risen in recent days with the news that Dragon’s Dogma will contain weapons and gear based on those in the upcoming Berserk motion picture. Capcom has toyed with Berserk-looking gear in the MH games; it seems now we’ll get to use the real stuff 🙂

GoatUp

Friday, September 16th, 2011

This week has been depressing for various reasons. At a time when I probably need them most, the last thing I can succumb to are distractions.

And yet a bright spot has been the new Jeff Minter iOS game, called GoatUp. Here’s a screenshot:

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Gameplay is tough to describe… An infinite climbing platform game with a high level of challenge and yet an equally high level of “just one more time”. My highest score is 680,000 so far.

At $2 it’s a no brainer if you like arcade games. Another winner from Llamasoft 🙂

Monster Hunter

Tuesday, September 13th, 2011

Well it seems the 3DS just beat the Vita in the next handheld war even before the Vita was released. In the last week two new Monster Hunter games have been announced for the 3DS. These two games alone guarantee mega sales in Japan, and a boatload of very excited fans in the rest of the world.

Here’s the trailer for Monster Hunter Tri-G

And here’s the ‘concept trailer’ for the next numbered entry in the series, Monster Hunter 4

Both are loading very slow right now. I recommend reducing the quality to 240 if they stagger.

MH Tri-G is released in Japan this year! No news yet on (what I consider) an inevitable US released.

Here’s a shot of how the game looks running on 3DS:

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Diehards like myself will undoubtedly get excited by such trivialities as the persistent map on the lower screen 🙂

Look What I Found!

Saturday, September 10th, 2011

This particular blog has been going now for over five years, all the way back to July 2006.

However it was preceded by another blog, which is still lurking online.

Check it out here!

Yep, that’s the blog I kept during out third Japan trip, back in 2006. It looks like we had a lot of fun.

And, for no reason other than it made me smile…

Check out something crazy I did 4 years ago 🙂

It’s rare I re-read any of my blog entries (951 and counting!). Maybe I should start digging through them. Who knows, it may make for a good blog entry 😉