I made a strange Tweet last night, that no doubt confused some of you.
I was jubilant (and for once, I am not being hyperbolic there) when I finally killed this guy in Monster Hunter Freedom Unite:
It’s name is Yamatsukami, it’s bigger than a house and it’s the monster you have to kill to get to the highest level in the game, HR9. He took me four tries, during which I had to learn and get used to his one-hit-kill attack. Once I knew what to look for, he’s not so hard to survive. He’s got massive HP though, so I beat him with less than a minute left. I look forward to going back and killing him some more with better weapons.
So now I am at the highest and most difficult rank of the game (G***) with the hardest-to-beat quests that give the best rewards. How long has it taken me exactly to get this far? I wondered, and I checked. These next three images are the save files of the three PSP Monster Hunter games:
The times are not cumulative, because when the old save file is imported it resets the clock. Turns out I played MH Freedom and MH Freedom 2 much less than I thought I did, and this is partly because they are very, very solo-unfriendly (guild quests are multiplayer only). As you can see, things changed with MH Freedom Unite.
So the total time played in this series is about 404 hours. Impressive!
And I still have much more to accomplish in the game, including (finally) some multiplayer with SFL 🙂
Monster Hunter isn’t the only series I have played like a mad-man this year. Here is a shot of the save-file from Dragon Quest IX on the DS:
And here’s a shot (grin) of the save file from Monster Hunter Tri (the Wii version):
I’m too scared to do the math myself, but I urge you all to get out your calculators and verify that in the past ~36 months I have spent almost a month just playing Monster Hunter games.
What’s scarier: that I did this, or that I am proud of it?
I feel like I’ve written about a few Sony deaths before on this site.
But this one is particularly sad.
Yep, it’s dead.
It had been acting up a bit these past few weeks, taking a few attempts to start up, but today it just kicked the bucket entirely. It boots to the Windows log-on screen, and then everything (including the login program and task manager) fails to execute due to insufficient system resources. Sometimes it doesn’t even get that far. The research I have done online suggests a faulty core memory chip, or perhaps a failed hard drive (although I don’t know how it boots at all without a HD).
So, I think the day has arrived to say the old TR-1, which has lasted me many, many years – has bit the dust.
This little fellow has travelled with me to Australia (4 times), Hawaii, Japan (3 times), Puerto Rico and England. Every single vacation blog post you have read on this blog was written from this guy. I have used him this semester more than ever for doing all of my schoolwork including (especially!) writing my lectures, and I used him for about seven years do all my VB programming on for my simulations.
This latter issue is the biggest one. I can write lectures on my Mac, I can use other computers while traveling, but I currently have no easy way to replace this guy for VB programming. Last time I tried to install VB at school it wouldn’t run at all (ours is an old version), so I guess I have to find a solution – and quickly – especially if I plan on ever graduating.
Will that solution be a new Windows laptop? Ugh… I don’t really want one. But I may have to cave and buy a cheap one just for school use… and then somehow find out how to get XP software running in Windows 7 (Bernard, is this even possible?)
It’s been more than seven months since we bought an iPad, and to say it has changed the way we use a computer at home is an understatement. Almost 100% of our web-browsing is now done on the device, and I use it exclusively for email as well. I turn on my desktop rarely, and usually only to watch a video that is unsuported in the iOS (such as the new Ultraman movie trailer) or – ironically I realize – to update this blog.
That’s not to say I couldn’t do either on the iPad, it’s just that the WordPress app is currently woeful. Unlike the Books app, which in the last update turned the device into an incredible PDF reader. As you can see I made good use of this:
Yesterday was the long-heralded and greatly anticipated 4.2.2 update to the iPad OS. This gave the device several new features, including folders, multitasking, a new mail app, new browser functionality, the Game Center, wireless printing and a few other bells and whistles. I eagerly downloaded and installed the update, and here’s my impressions.
The shot above (the ‘desktop’ of our iPad) shows the new folders. To make one, just drag an app over another and hold it for half a second. They are an obvious feature that should have been there from the start, but I would have preferred had Apple gone even further with desktop customization. Such as adjustable icon sizes, ways to rearrange the grid or place items where we wanted (like Android does). Folders are a nice start though – the other features will come in time, I am sure of that.
Incidentally the background image of Sydney (click on the picture, I have included full-resolution screencaps in this post) was captured with the Maps app included with the iPad.
Frankly I don’t care about multitasking, especially since I rarely juggle between different apps. But it works and seems to work well. When I quit Angry Birds and switched to the browser before returning to the game had me exactly where I left off. A nice feature, but hardly necessary in the world of instant-start iApps. A bigger deal for the iPhone I reckon, for me multitasking just means a (new) slight pause every time I close an App.
The new Mail app is cool, and collects all your inboxes into one grand inbox. Thankfully this is entirely optional, especially relevant to micromanagers like myself that doesn’t want to cross the streams of my work and home inboxes 🙂
Game Center! What is this? Well, it’s a bit of an PSN for iPad, and includes achievements, friend lists, leaderboards etc. If you are using iOS, please send me – Richardjesperson – a friend request and we can compare our Angry Birds achievements 🙂
Now the big addition, for me, is the trivial ability to now search for words in-page in the browser. This has been my #1 missed browser feature since switching over to the iPad and I’m happy Apple not only added it but did in in an inobtrusive manner (since one goal of the iOS is to simplify everything). Here’s a shot:
To use it, just enter a word into the Search bar (upper right) and choose the new option to search on the page. Fantastic!
I haven’t used (or even discovered, to be honest) any of the other new features in the iOS, so I’ll end this review/tutorial here. I know quite a few of you use iOS on phones or the iPad, so I’m curious as to your opinions of the update (or the device in general).
For me the iPad has become all but irreplaceable, and 4.2.2 just makes a great thing better in my opinion.
To those that believe handheld gaming began with the Gameboy, I bring you the VFD electronic game:
The sights! The sounds! Especially the sounds 🙂
That video shows a game called Alien Attack, released by Tomy in the early 1980s. It was licensed by many other manufacturers, and in countries where copyright wasn’t so strong it was renamed Scramble to capitalize on the arcade game it had ripped off.
We owned it, and we loved it! Here’s a shot of what the game itself looked like:
It was technically portable, since it could be battery powered. VFD displays however are notoriously energy inefficient (at least the early ones of those days were) so we usually played using an AC Adaptor. Our version was differently coloured than the UK version seen above. If I recall, it was blue, orange and (mostly) white.
With one game and two players the situation was hardly satisfactory, and was shortly remedied with the aquisition of this guy:
Yep, Puck Monster by CGL! This was, as the name would imply, an excellent rip-off of the arcade game Donkey Kong Pac-Man. For me, it was even better than Scramble and I played the thing like I was possessed.
I can remember playing these in bed with the covers over my head. I can remember playing them in cars during trips, playing them at the table during meals and even bringing them to school and playing them (or swapping with other people to play their games, such as Frogger or Dig Dug). I can even remember opening them, removing the screen and electronics, and playing sans case. These were all the rage from about 1981 to 1983, and were perhaps my favourite toys in those days.
So what happened to our VFD games? Perhaps my brother remembers?
And speaking of him, many of you probably know he lives in Silicon Valley. What you may not know is that Silicon Valley is rumoured to be the home of the world’s best used electronic stores specializing in 1980s games. Since this is the case, I figured I’d be easy on him this Christmas and rather than expect him to go and hunt for something impossible-to-find for his impossible-t0-buy-for brother, he could just nip down to one of those stores and pick me up a VFD game or two. In working order.
If you read my twitter, you’ll have noticed (?) we spent yesterday at the New York Comic Con.
Before I start I will get this out of the way: there were too many people there! Although the organizers had booked the entire convention center (the con spanned 3 floors) the sheer amount of attendees was just enormous. Very, very quickly the main convention was clogged with people, making the simple act of just walking the aisles looking at the exhibitors a real chore. I’m not sure how they could avoid this aside from selling fewer tickets (which they won’t). Maybe the solution is to next year buy a three day pass and try to take it in smaller doses across a few days.
Anyway, that said, it was a blast – and a major upgrade from previous years.
What is the NYCC? It is a convention dedicated to comics, gaming, movies, anime and all associated forms of fandom. At the NYCC you can…
…buy comics (which I did!) or buy comic art. You can…
…buy toys or check out toys not yet released. You can…
…play games – both available and unreleased. You can also watch previews of movies of TV shows, meet ‘celebrities’, talk to many of the people that create comics today and goggle at the spectacle that is thousands (yes, thousands) of cosplayers. (More on that topic later).
Our day started early with a 5 am train to New York. We got to Penn Station around 8 and walked the 30 minutes or so to the convention center and joined the line. Here’s a shot of said line:
The line was hot and badly ventilated. Unlike previous years they had it double back onto itself, which meant we were not treated to the spectacle of the ‘professional’ Star Wars cosplayers known as the 501st entertaining the crowd. So the wait was a bit tedious… but at least it was fun seeing all the cosplayers (that’s a Servbot in the shot above).
Doors opened around 10, and the enormous crowd flooded into the main hall. The first thing that was obvious was how much bigger the con was. Roughly triple the size of last year, the scale of the event had clearly upgraded in a big way. Immediately inside the entrance was Ubisofts display for the upcoming Michael Jackson dancing game:
They had a massive crowd all day long because they frequently pulled cosplayers up to dance on the stage in front of everyone. I was a bit skeptical some of this was staged (what are the chances that some random Master Chief cosplayer happens to be a skilled dancer?) but it was fun nonetheless. Immediately behind this stage was the Capcom booth where Marvel vs Capcom 3 may have been the draw of the entire show. The crowds on that particular booth were so gigantic (watching versus matches on a gigantic screen, compete with play-by-play commentary) that it was difficult to even walk past.
And so on, and so on with the Wizards Of The Coast, Nintendo, Marvel and DC booths. Massive crowds at all of them, and the con had barely started. In previous years we’d scuttle around grabbing freebies – this year in many cases you had to earn them (by demoing products, filling out surveys etc.) I’ve no problem with that in principle, but with the lines how they were I wasn’t going to stand around waiting to earn a Golden Sun t-shirt that would have been free last year 🙂
The first celebrity we saw was James Marsters, who played Spike on Buffy. He was just in a booth posing for photos, maybe 10 feet away from us. We both were shocked by how old (wrinkled, haggard) he looked! Obviously makeup does wonders for his TV complexion! No matter, he seemed like a good sport as he posed with paying fans for photos.
Next we saw Simone Legno, creator of Tokidoki. His fame has skyrocketed in recent years, as his brand has become world famous and very, very popular. KLS didn’t rush for a ticket to get anything signed because she’d been lucky enough to have that done 2 years ago. Nonetheless we went and watched him as he was signing other items. Here’s a shot of him drawing a monster on a skateboard:
We also saw (and spoke with) Daphne Ashbrook, who played Grace Holloway in the Doctor Who movie. I declined, however, paying $25 for an autograph! (That’s the price of a Doctor!).
Here’s another celebrity we saw in the main hall:
Yes, it was amazing.
But we were especially stoked to see – in person – Rika Ishikawa. She is now in a band called hAngry x Angry with Hitomi ‘Yossie’ Yoshizawa. As in the girl we named our cat after. Anyway Yossie wasn’t at the con, but Rika was. We staked out a spot at the Kinokuniya booth to watch her meet with fans. Here’s a video of her being led in:
And here’s a blurry shot of her:
The no-photo nazis were relentless, but it was fun watching her meet her fans and sign whatever product they had brought. The line was substantial and seemed dominated by Japanese speakers. I believe they may have even come from Japan just to meet her at this event (I have read about some of the antics of Morning Musume superfans and I’m sure this would barely inconvenience some of them). It was a surreal moment…
Time for a lunch break!
And now it’s time for some cosplay!
For those unaware, ‘cosplay’ described dressing up as a character from a movie, game, book, comic, anime, manga etc. It’s been big in Japan for many years, and now seems to be just as big here in the US. We were both amazed at how many cosplayers there were at the con. Sometimes you’d look around and it seemed cosplayers outnumbered non-cosplayers. Here’s a gallery of some random ones I saw:
Of course it’s not all fans. There are a lot of professional cosplayers as well, hired by various companies to help attract people to their booths. Often these take the form of pretty girls:
I like to think my agreeing to pose with them is helping them do their job.
This next girl… well this next girl has a costume that… well I can only say I hope she was paid well:
I can’t stress enough just how many cosplayers there were. And the variety of outfits was dazzling and ram the gamut from anything to everything. The quality ranged from just awful to just amazing, with a healthy smattering of so-bad-it’s-good as well. For instance, here’s one of the latter:
Yep, it’s Ms Pac-Man (and yep, thats a dude). Here’s one of the amazing outfits:
That’s Master Chief from Halo. And he looked like he just walked off a film set.
My favourite two costumes were the following:
Similar in a way, aren’t they? Both were fantastic and very detailed, and the people wearing them were also very true to the characters. Let’s call the left one ‘Steampunk Iron Man’ and just take a look at it and be impressed by the design and manufacturing. The ultraman costume was equally (even moreso) impressive to me, and it had a light as well (the blue thing on the chest flashed). Kudos to both of these cosplayers, for showing the world what it means to be a man!
Random shot of a pretty girl:
She was working in a booth selling used games. Amongst their (very expensive) selections (most of which I own…) was a complete US Commodore 64 in the original box. It was only $80, and I should have gone back and bought it before leaving. That’s a missed opportunity right there…
And here’s me posing with Pedobear (yes it’s a joke):
We stayed at the con for over seven hours (over nine including our wait in line). We were both quite exhausted at the end, as were many other attendees. Such as this trio:
And as all good things do, the con came to an end for us around 6 pm as we said goodbye and headed back to the station for our train home. It was bigger and better than ever, and there’s no doubt we will return next year for NYCC 2011.
