Monkey Dew

Barry Lane Beyerstein

2007-09-15T01:23:00.000-07:00

On warm early July afternoon, fresh off a job interview, I found myself sitting on the train back home, starting out into places I’ve seen in the past and on a whim decided to take a detour ‘up the hill’ to my old alma matter to pick up a reference letter which had been waiting for me for some months. Up on campus, I retraced my routes that I took daily as a student a few years back. Much has

Frank Miller's 300 and My Computer

2007-03-10T06:05:00.000-08:00

Frank Miller's 300 was a disappointing experience, I left the theatres feeling empty. The pretty comic book images failed to light the fire inside me. The theatre I went to was packed with young movie goers, the target demographic for this film. In 2000, the film print of Gladiator melted right before my eyes halfway into the movie. The audience groaned and I could feel the palpable electric aura

Rome Picks Up

2007-02-12T23:44:00.000-08:00

**Spoiler Warning**I’ve wavered for a bit about Season 2 of HBO’s ROME. After taking 2006 off, the series is back airing its first episode in January. The season premiere was explosive, as expected, then it went into a kind of a lull. The main character arcs got lost somewhere in the latter half of episodes 2 and 3, with the likeable Titus Pullo /Lucius Vorenus friendship being pulled apart as

Hotel Dusk – Final Impressions

2007-02-05T20:38:00.000-08:00

I blogged about the then upcoming Hotel Dusk a month ago and its release has come and gone. Although the game appears to have a limit print run, I was able to snag a copy at my local EB in late January.Hotel Dusk Room 215, is in a word, brilliant. It is a classic noir tale spun into a masterfully designed DS game. The game isn’t perfect. Sprinkled throughout are a series of puzzles each with

The Visual Game

2007-01-11T00:00:00.000-08:00

40 hours in, The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess is just as good as I had imagined. It is rare in this day and age for hyped products (and Zelda certainly is hyped at least among gamers) to live up to expectations. The game isn’t perfect, and I had wished Miyamoto had listened to his team members for creating a Twilight Princess SP version for Wii owners, but that's really a minor quibble

Hotel Dusk

2007-01-04T23:26:00.000-08:00

If you were to ask a hardcore gamer why they think the Nintendo DS is such a huge hit in Japan and is increasingly pulling away from its rival in the West, they will probably point to the new Mario game, lots of software for big name third parties (specially Square-Enix), and non-games, a new genre of games loosely connected as games that appeal to people who don’t normally play games which has

OFFICIAL: Dragon Quest IX for the Nintendo DS

2006-12-11T21:58:00.000-08:00

At the Dragon Quest 20th anniversary event, Dragon Quest IX, the latest installment to the hugely popular RPG series in Japan has been announced to be a Nintendo DS title!This marks Dragon Quest's return to a Nintendo console in 10 years and the first since Dragon Quest VIThe game is developed by Level 5 (the same team who worked on DQ VIII for the PS2) and will be in 3-D.Update: The game is

SONY: Oops! We did it Again.

2006-12-11T19:47:00.000-08:00

Sony’s PSP marketing has gone off the deep endThe once well oiled marketing machine that sold the RPG to Americans with glossy ads have been reduced to bungling the advertising campaign of the PSP not once, twice, thrice, but FOUR times (at least).There were the ill-conceived ‘fake’ PSP graffiti ads, the ‘White is Coming’ European PSP ads which featured a white woman grasping the face of a black

The November NPD

2006-12-10T21:41:00.000-08:00

The November NPD results was released last Thursday but I didn’t get a chance to make a post about it. Here are the numbers (US sales data only) gathered from official published sources.Nintendo DS - 918KPlayStation 2 - 664KGame Boy Advance - 641K Xbox 360 - 511KNintendo Wii - 476KPSP - 412kPlayStation 3 - 197KThe Wii and PS3 Numbers were not big surprises as Nintendo has already noted it had

Wii Sells out in Japan, Luigi is Arrested

2006-12-04T22:08:00.000-08:00

The Wii was launched in Japan on Dec 02, Saturday this past weekend and all 400,000 launch units sold out within the day according to Nikkei news service. For those following the Wii story, the sell out was unexpected.*Although Nintendo hardware launches have always been met with a sell-out, the launch quantities and the lucklustre performance of the GameCube had left many speculating that once

Where are the Wiis?

2006-11-26T15:10:00.000-08:00

Well I’m not going to go rant for 3 paragraphs about how I didn’t or couldn’t get a Wii last Sunday and haven’t been able to obtain on since despite a restock on Friday, but I don’t have a Wii, but I have a classic controller sitting next to me (for the Virtual console stuff) and the controller gives me a strange sense of what a Super Nintendo controller might have looked like had it existed in

Twilight Fantasy

2006-11-13T18:43:00.000-08:00

The full trailer to Twilight Princess which I alluded to in my previous post is now posted The only reason I did not include the trailer in my previous post was I could not find a decent enough feed from YouTube to link to. So I’ve decided to upload my own copy of the trailer (courtesy of GameTrailers) and put it up on YouTube. The Zelda franchise has certainly come a long way since Ocarina of

The Legend of Zelda

2006-11-12T03:50:00.000-08:00

Over the past week, I have re-watched two amazing pieces of PR video Nintendo released to promote its game. The first video is the game’s introduction, set to a brilliant choral re-imagination of The Legend of Zelda (NES) opening theme with visual allusions to the Ocarina of Time, including a reversed but similar camera movement where the camera speeds along the field of Hyrule as it slowly

Temenos Liberator

2006-08-13T21:06:00.000-07:00

The culmination of about a month and a half of work, and nearly five months of working together as a group was the fight against one of the harder ‘boss’ characters of the game, the Proto-Ultima Weapon.Players who unlocked their access to Al Tieu will have fought a tough battle against Ultima and Omega back to back on the airship, but this Ultima is about five times harder and requires many more

E3 is Dead

2006-08-06T20:13:00.000-07:00

It’s official. E3 as we knew it is dead. Last Monday the Entertainment Software Association announced that the giant industry trade show held every May, preceded by multimillion dollar press conferences from the big 3 manufacturers, and best known to the general public as that ‘videogame thing’ in Los Angeles, has been cancelled.Ultimately it came down to a cost vs. benefit equation. According

The Big Payoff

2006-07-30T22:28:00.000-07:00

About two weeks ago, I had put an order from a prominent import side for Play-Yan Micro, the Nintendo produced but Japan-only media-player attachment for the Game Boy Advance, which also coincidentally works with the DS. I had discussed this in length in this 2005 posting.At around the same time, two other friends and myself in Final Fantasy XI began working on missions for one of the new (rare/

The Art of Animation

2006-07-15T01:08:00.000-07:00

When a piece of art, a movie, or a composition connects with you, there’s that electric moment of first contact. It is at the moment when you catch a glimpse of a film or hear the first notes of an artistic work and for a brief moment you feel pure bliss. The sensation is unfiltered and genuine. For that fraction of a second, you’re unjaded and become a kid again.I had that electric moment

Total War: Rome

2006-07-10T15:23:00.000-07:00

One of the pleasures of picking up well-received PC games a year after its release is the ability to pick up their ‘Gold Editions’ which usually include the 1st expansion and a patched vanilla game and a substantial discount. This is what I did with Rome: Total War. I’ve seen it on the shelves for some time, often retailing for as much as $60.00

Trans-Mars-Rover

2006-06-30T23:00:00.000-07:00

What a disappointment. I’ve waited months to see the sneak preview to the upcoming Transformers Movie and we get something that looks like it is the teaser to another passable sci-fi action flick from Michael Bay. Ok well, this may end up being just that, but still, this is THE TRANSFORMERS live action movie! What do we get? Half the trailer is

Miyamoto's Dark Side

2006-06-23T00:38:00.000-07:00

Nintendo's Shigeru Miyamotophoto courtesy of Impress Group CompanyNext-Generation has a very interesting editorial discussing this very issue. The topic at hand is Shigeru Miyamoto’s influence on gaming. On the balance, most of us can agree his influence is certainly positive, but a question often not asked is has his presence in the industry brought negatives to the table. More bluntly, it

Fantasies are Never Final

2006-06-17T21:34:00.000-07:00

... and blogs are never truly abandoned. A lot has happened since my last post but rather than bore people with accounts of the past, here are a few things on my mind at this point in time in no particular order and no particular significance. These are just things that I thought worthy enough to mention.DSLite - I liked the original DS, but many people complained about the screen vis-à-vis

One More Turn of Civilization

2005-10-24T21:42:00.000-07:00

In a few hours, I should be sitting at home losing myself inside the world of Civilization IV. Fall and Civilization addiction has been a tradition for me for quite a few years now as Firaxis has had a penchant of releasing Civilization games and its expansion packs in three of the last four years during the October-November frame.This fall I get to play with a new game. But it’s actually not all

Nintendogs Day 4

2005-10-17T22:01:00.000-07:00

Nintendogs is a great game. As I noted in my earlier post, the game sold 200,000 units in its first week in North America, it sold a further 250,000 units in all of September, putting its cumulative total on September 31st at 450,000 units sold. In Japan the game’s sell through is fast approaching 700,000 units and the game did reasonably well in Europe after its late launch with 150,000 units

ROME Episode VII: Pharsalus

2005-10-10T17:27:00.000-07:00

It has been several weeks since I wrote a review of HBO’s Rome. That’s not to say I have lost interest. In the weeks since my last entry, HBO announced ROME would be renewed for a second 12 episode season and the first season of the show is moving along quite nicely.I have to admit though at being at little disappointed with the overall direction of the series. I don’t mean it as a deal

Square Fantasies Makes the World Go Round

2005-10-05T22:40:00.000-07:00

What a day. Final Fantasy III, the long rumoured but never shown Nintendo DS game was finally shown to the public today and it will in fact be a complete remake. The tiny press photos published by Famitsu reveal a colourful pre-rendered world with what appears to be 3-D characters. As if that wasn’t enough, Final Fantasy V and VI were announced for the GameBoy Advance/Micro.The announcements come

Micro Machines

2005-09-27T22:51:00.000-07:00

In the span of a week, I’ve splurged on two cool new gadgets from Apple and Nintendo respectively.The iPod Nano is my first real iPod and I’m converted to the brand having only used it for a few days. Having used previous flash based players from Creative and other manufacturers, the wealth of features Apple was able to cram into the Nano is simply amazing. That is clearly the benefit of a market

The Revolution Q&A

2005-09-21T01:05:00.000-07:00

Fresh from his trip to last weekend's Tokyo Game Show, WIRED’s Chris Kohler, known on-line as Kobun Heat, was kind enough to offer to answer questions regarding Nintendo’s Revolution(ary) controller at Gaming-Age.com. In a cynical gaming forum populated with self declared pundits and experts, Mr. Kohler stands heads and shoulders above everyone else both in his ‘real’ expertise when it comes to

The Revolution Revealed

2005-09-19T20:46:00.000-07:00

When Nintendo’s Satoru Iwata showed off the empty shell for the Nintendo Revolution this past may at the Electronics Entertainment Expo, he promised the world that the real revolutionary aspect of the console hasn’t been shown to keep it secret from Nintendo’s competitors for a while longer. In due time the world will see it, he promised. Iwata has kept his word and this past weekend, in his

Beyond Shrek: Final Fantasy VII Advent Children

2005-09-17T13:28:00.000-07:00

It has been about ten years since Pixar created the CG film genre with Toy Story. Unfortunately, in those ten years, CG films have largely retreated into a narrow genre of children’s films or a children’s film with adult humor mixed in to make the viewing tolerable for the parents who would inevitably have to accompany little Johnny into the theatre.What many people did not notice about Toy Story

Nobody Knows

2005-09-17T00:34:00.000-07:00

Kore-eda Hirokazu’s Nobody Knows (Dare mo Shiranai) was officially released on DVD on the 13th of September. It will however undoubtedly miss the watch list of your average Best Buy DVD-Tuesday movie crowd.Nobody Knows is a film about how a group of kids who deals with abandonment for six months and was filmed as a documentary-drama with a handy cam over the period of a year where Director /

Episode III: An Owl in A Thornbush

2005-09-13T20:36:00.000-07:00

The third instalment of ROME is a bit of a hit and miss. The story picks up where Episode II left off with Caesar marching on Rome. His strategy of attacking with a single legion appeared suicidal to the senatorial faction. But it soon became apparent that he had been vastly underestimated. With only one legion, Caesar’s speed had surprised Pompey and Caesar was suddenly in a position to take

September 11

2005-09-11T16:35:00.000-07:00

It’s been four years. It took me sometime to get out of my procrastinating to load up my world processing program so that I would write an entry about what is undoubtedly the single most important world event in my short twenty four year life.In the past few days, I had struggled to come to terms with how I wanted to express my inner grief about this event, the deep sadness I felt and still feel

More on Age of Empires III

2005-09-10T00:46:00.000-07:00

Real-time 3-D LondonI may have spoken too soon about the Age of Empires III demo. While I gave the demo a decidedly negative first impression in my post two days ago, I’ve had some time since to invest more time in the demo, particularly in the Skirmish games where players start out in a random map against an A.I. and build out from scratch. These types of games are my favorite to play to pass

The Age of Empires III

2005-09-07T23:03:00.000-07:00

Pretty Water: In-game screenshotThe Age of Empires III demo version 1.0 is out. Here’s the good news. Despite early press screens showing some absolutely stunning and obviously staged CGI scenes of armies marching in forests with reflections, foliage and the like, the final game, or at least the version Ensemble let us play, is closer to the old 2-D sprite based Age of Empires (AOE) than the non

Episode II: How Titus Pullo Brought Down the Republic

2005-09-05T16:39:00.000-07:00

And the series gets better. While not as flashy as Episode I, the second instalment of HBO’s ROME delves into the politics of the late republic. Without giving the plot away, there are several scenes in the episode that dealt with the backroom politicking of the generals and senators. The heart of this episode revolves around the two largely fictional characters Titus Pullo and Lucius Vorenus

Microsoft wants to ‘Kill’ Google

2005-09-04T19:23:00.000-07:00

Mark Lucovsky, a former Microsoft employee and a key Windows architect, who quit for Google in 2004 made the claim that Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer vowed to “kill Google” in a tirade against the company when the former Microsoft executive told Mr. Ballmer he was quitting for Google. This growing war between Google and Microsoft began when Google hired away a Microsoft executive in China. Microsoft

New Orleans and Bush

2005-09-03T12:36:00.000-07:00

I’ve been busy most of this week with work and have been too tired to even check the news for what was going on. Everyday after work, I only caught glimpses on what was unfolding in the United States. On Wednesday, the conservative columnists on the National Post complained about the smug ‘snickering’ by forum posters at the UK based left-wing Guardian newspaper over the mounting crisis in

The Dog Days of Summer

2005-09-03T10:43:00.000-07:00

Who would have thought? Nintendogs, Nintendo’s Tamagotchi, pet simulation, non-game, whatever you want to call it is probably the biggest surprise for the market this summer. Dismissed months before its release and mocked by hard-core gamers as a flop in waiting, Nintendogs has sold well over 500,000 copies in Japan. It has boosted the Nintendo DS’s fortunes as the DS continue to outsell the PSP

Roma Victa

2005-08-29T22:35:00.000-07:00

HBO’s new TV drama, ROME is shaping up to the one of the most exciting shows of the fall. The TV series is set during the twilight of the Roman Republic when Pompey Magnus and Julius Caesar ended their personal and political friendship and the two friends turned against each other. The show is amazingly rich in its historical accuracy and detail. Rome itself isn’t CG or a bunch of sandlots and

Final Farewells

2005-08-28T13:10:00.000-07:00

Today was my last official day in Final Fantasy XI. I finally told everyone that I was quitting and I gathered everyone who I could into Maat’s courtyard in Ru’Lude Gardens for a group photo and to give my final farewell. I thought it would be fitting that I would end my days in Final Fantasy XI in the presence of the non-player character who had challenged me to reach higher and go further than

Firefox: The Best Browser Ever

2005-08-27T16:33:00.000-07:00

I’m in the mood for hyperboles. Firefox is indeed a great browser. Maybe not the best browser ever but it is pretty damn close by providing the feature set I need and want without Internet Explorer’s security holes, pop-ups and sameness.Those who know me personally know my dislike for Microsoft products. While the company from a business standpoint is brilliant and exemplifies the greatest

An Epic Rant

2005-08-26T00:45:00.000-07:00

I love epic movies. In my spare time, I dream about the promise of the ultimate Hollywood movie in this genre. In fact, only Hollywood has the resources and the know how to do a great epic movie. In the many littered corpses of failed epics that I hated or felt deeply disappointed by, there are moments of pure brilliance. But despite an intense slate of summer blockbuster films, including Star

Happy! Mario

2005-08-22T23:41:00.000-07:00

One of the coolest gadgets coming this fall is Nintendo’s 3rd iteration of the Game Boy Advance line, the Game Boy Advance Micro, Nintendo’s iPod Mini inspired Game Boy design. The company revealed recently the new device, which looks more like a stick of gum or an MP3 player than a gaming machine is scheduled for a September 17th release in North America and will be available in two colors,

More on Sheehan

2005-08-21T20:49:00.000-07:00

The New York Times’ Frank Rich has an op-ed piece out attacking those who question Cindy Sheehan and makes for a good read. It also happens to serve as somewhat of a rebuttal of what I wrote last week. The article is largely eloquent in pointing out the failings of the Bush administration and the vociferous attacks by the right-wing commentators on Ms. Sheehan. Where I have a problem though is

My Final Fantasy

2005-08-20T23:10:00.000-07:00

I had an addiction. I was addicted to Final Fantasy XI. Like any other MMORPG, Final Fantasy XI is all about stat modification, wealth accumulation, and hunting for that expensive or rate item. FF XI is also unique from most of its MMORPG kin for skewing a bit on the ‘hard’ side. In many ways, the game also takes more patience, more commitment and more ‘help’ than a rival game like say, Ragnarok

The Geek Factor

2005-08-19T09:42:00.000-07:00

Akihabara Station in TokyoThe New York Daily News published a recent article about the chic factor of being a Geek. The article notes that with the upcoming releases of “The 40-Year-Old Virgin and The Baxter, and the recent success of Napoleon Dynamite, Hollywood has gleefully embraced dorkdom.” It is also quite interesting to note that the lead character of The 40-Year-Old Virgin, Andy, “

Bring the Troops Home?

2005-08-18T18:44:00.000-07:00

In Sid Meier’s Civilization games, the democratic forms of government are often afflicted with war weariness after a war has gone on for too many game turns or too many military units have been lost. This is a game feature that makes the God-like players of the game accountable to their virtual citizens and serves as a limiting factor for democratic governments who

Beginnings… and the death of an ideal.

2005-08-18T02:29:00.000-07:00

And so I begin again. Another blog, another day on an Internet crammed with blogs. I have a long history of failed blogs mainly because I don’t find myself all that Interesting to talk about so I start a blog, make a few posts and lose interest. But I love writing and I find myself sometimes talking and expressing a lot of viewpoints with friends, both on-line and off and in message forums.