6/25/02

Friends, family, and Darkstalkers... truly, this is the stuff of life.  I had a lot of fun over the weekend, even when I was helping a friend of mine and his family move from their apartment to a brand new house.  I was treated to a sneak preview of Castlevania: White Night Concerto on the car ride there, and I can see why everyone's so excited about it.  Aside from the Limp Whip Syndrome that first infected Super Castlevania IV, it's a lot of fun, and very much like Symphony of the Night.  As for the music, sure, it's a big step down from Circle of the Moon's, but the NES quality of the tunes adds a nostalgic touch to a series that's drastically changed since the first game was released in 1986.  Besides, White Night Concerto has a definite visual advantage thanks to the brighter color palette, which also brings back fond memories of the NES games.

I really wished I could have persuaded my friend to come with me to the Game Hits tournament that day.  Perhaps it was best he didn't, though.  I won last year's semi-official Vampire Savior tournament, but thanks to a new set of more difficult opponents, I wasn't so lucky this time.  What's really frustrating is that I got into the zone AFTER my first few losses.  It was just enough for me to beat a couple of opponents in the last chance bracket, but a very close loss to Game Hits' graphic designer Heath (the less geeky half of Fat and Geeky) dashed my hopes of entering the finals.  Despite that, I had a lot of fun... it was great to talk to all the Game Hits regulars.  I was relieved to discover that I wasn't the only one who had gripes with the current state of the video game industry... Shawn was a little disgusted with Sony's current dominance, and Carl admitted that he just wasn't playing games that often.  We all wondered aloud if it was time for another crash like the one in 1984... it was very difficult for Nintendo to revive the industry but once they finally had, the hobby benefitted greatly from their innovative ideas and powerful hardware.

The next day, I spent a little quality time with my mom, watching Disney's new film Lilo and Stitch.  I enjoyed the movie a lot... the animation was well done and very inventive, and many of the characters were very appealing, particularly Cobra Bubbles and Lilo herself, who was adorable, yet an appropriately weird human counterpart for Stitch.  The very cool sci-fi themed opening wasn't nearly as long as it should have been, and the conclusion was much too optimistic (even for a Disney film!), but I'm still very glad my mother and I waited for a later showing rather than settling for Scooby-Doo.  I'm sure I'll see that film too, but only because I'm a huge fan of Shaggy and I want to see how Matthew Lillard's interpretation of the character matches up to Casey Kasem's.

Well, that's how my weekend went, and that takes care of the updates for this month.  Stay tuned, though... July will bring with it a series of reviews centered around Capcom's 19xx series (a perfect complement to my reviews of 1942 and 1943 in the upcoming NES issue of Toastyfrog 'Zine) and maybe, just maybe, even a contest promoting my art site The Rogue's Gallery.

6/20/02

How many of you think I should redesign the index page?
How many of you like it the way it is?
How many think I should concentrate on Rogue's Gallery and finally get that finished?
...uh, anyone?
OK, how many of you really don't give a crap what I do?

Ah yes, that's what I thought.  In that case, I'll just post this previously unpublished Zoo Logic comic.  I intended for this to be in color, but I didn't feel I could do it on my own at the time.  I asked Josh to do the honors, but he was juggling so many comics of his own that he couldn't do it, either.  So, uh, just pretend they're blue or something. 

6/11/02

You've probably already heard the news that Nintendo is burned out on consoles... the new president claimed that video game technology has reached its limit and that developing new systems would be a waste of time and money.  Does this mean that Nintendo's going to take the same route as Sega and start developing for the Playstation 2 and X-Box?  A lot of people seem to think so, but I kind of doubt it.  As long as C. Montgomery Yamauchi has even limited control of Nintendo, the company will be too proud to give its competitors anything but the finger. 

My guess is that Nintendo is just going to support the GameCube for a long, long time.  It's tough to say whether this will ultimately benefit them, but it does have a lot of advantages over, say, releasing a new Playstation every couple of years.  In those couple of years, the GameCube hardware is going to be cheap for both Nintendo and its customers.  Better yet, since all the company's resources will be devoted to software rather than hardware, Nintendo will be able to wring every last drop of power out of the system, resulting in games that will look nearly as good as anything available on the PS3... especially if it's rushed out the door to compete with the X-Box as rumors have suggested.  Sony's already proclaimed that the system wars are over, but if Nintendo can get enough third party support for the GameCube (the only support it's lacking right now), Ken Kuratagi and his lackies may finally have to eat their arrogant words.

In other news, I'm pretty happy with how The Rogue's Gallery is turning out... I've almost finished the animal artwork and fanzine cover sections.  All I need to add to both to make them complete is some kind of navigation bar and maybe a background to keep them from looking plain; possibly something like slightly wrinkled paper to make it seem as though the reader is really digging through all my old art folders.

Here's another sample of my artwork.  I started work on this yesterday, and I'm not quite finished with it, but it should be pretty cool when it's done.  I call it... Spaceballs: The Fan Art!


(click for the full image)

6/7/02

In case you're not sure, yep, that's Zoo Logic all right.  The comic wasn't too successful on its own (probably because I never bothered to update it regularly) but I'll be publishing new strips here from time to time.  I've found that drawing political comics like the one above is a good way to handle the aggravation that results from the gaming industry's callous disregard of its customers ("What, you don't want another Mortal Kombat game? Come on, we're sure you'll like this one. It's got more palette-swapped ninjas... you like them, don't you? You don't? Well, you'll get used to it. And while we're at it, have a crappy Game Boy Advance translation of the same game!").

Speaking of which, it's pretty clear to me from recent events that Sony will be shoving Grand Theft Auto down our throats for the next couple of years, just as they had with Tomb Raider in 1997.  As a result, other game companies will be expected to follow suit with their own controversial games.  It's a sad irony, really... ten years ago, Nintendo took the sex and violence out of video games, but soon, you won't be able to publish games without all of that crap!

I was talking to a friend about this and he pointed out that the music industry is faltering thanks to the major labels pandering to teenagers with soulless, forgettable fluff.  I'm convinced the same thing is happening to video games, and the only way this crap will be flushed out is with an industry slump... not necessarily a crash, but I'd like to see Sony lose just enough revenue to make them step back and think about what they're doing to their customers and the art of game design as a whole.

6/2/02

Man, I didn't realize people were reading this site on a daily basis. I guess I'll have to start updating more often... there's no way I could update daily (let alone write articles that frequently) but I'll try to add something new to the front page every week.

This'll give me the opportunity to gripe a little bit about my recent trips to Blockbuster. I recommended going there for really cheap games in a previous update, but now I'm not so sure. The prices are still great- I was able to get a copy of Castlevania: Circle of the Moon for about twelve bucks- but lately the clerks there seem artificial and a little pushy, like they're the long lost sons and daughters of the fast-talking, hard-selling Fuller Brush Man or something. I come in to look at games, and they try to sell me just about everything else in the store, from copies of Harry Potter to the stale ice cream treats in the corner. C'mon, guys, I appreciate the low cost of the games, but if I want all of that other stuff, I'll specifically ask for it. And even if I do make an inquiry about something like, say, a satellite dish service, I'd like to be able to think about the purchase for a little while rather than being pressured into signing a contract right away. It's a big investment and I'm gonna need some time to consider it.

Before I go, I wanted to give you guys a couple of links to check out. The first is Shawn's Little Corner of Cyberspace, a personal web page written by a friend I met on the Toastyfrog message board. The second is Kelvin's Den, by the creator of Macropod Madness and Eleven Will Die. I've done some artwork for both of these guys and although I can't recommend it to all of my readers, the ones who actually like my character Byron might enjoy it.

Speaking of Byron, here's a picture of the little tyke while you're waiting for the premiere of my upcoming, sure to be trashed by Something Awful art site Rogue's Gallery.