Awesome! The San Diego Comic-con! The world's largest gathering of all things once used to be considered nerdy! Comic books! Graphic Novels! Video Games! Anime! Manga! Star Trek! Fantasy! Cosplay! Well...okay cosplay is generally still considered fairly nerdy but if you've seen some of the costumes that I've seen then you certainly wouldn't say that anymore.

W...wait a tick! Didn't the convention start yesterday? Why are you blogging about it already? Aren't you busy enough with the convention's goings on that you wouldn't have the time nor the presence of mind to bother writing about it now? Normally that would be true except this year, quite suddenly and unexpectedly, I am not attending.

Ahhhh, I see that puzzled look on your collective faces! I suppose I should be happy to know that I haven't geeked it up enough for those who know me online to fully understand the magnitude of what I have just stated -- or should I be concerned that I don't define myself well enough? Regardless let me see if I can sum it up in once sentence.

I have been attending the San Diego Comic-con every year since 1982. :|

That's right, every year since I graduated from High School I have somehow gotten my nerdy little butt down to San Diego in order to do some major shopping. Of course it was much, much, smaller then and I had so much less to shop with but in those days (insert old man voice here) conventions were pretty much the only way to find the anime/comic book kinds of things that bring people like myself a decent amount of happiness; or a least a distraction from the lack thereof.

So here I sit, uneasy and somewhat despondent. Everything I move seems to uncover reminders of conventions past and all the great people I've met and all the strange encounters I've experienced. The convention has gotten so big and out of control that many channels that I watch as well as online sites that I frequent, continously remind me of the exciting times happening down at the giant con in San Diego. Come on down it's great! We're having a special event at such and such location! Stop on by! Look how much fun we're having!!!

*sigh*

So to prevent this from devolving into a rather unseemly maudlin affair let me attempt to reinvigorate myself by helping to dispel two of the biggest misconceptions that exist about the San Diego Comic-con. These are iron clad guarantees as there is quite obviously no bigger expert on the San Diego Comic-con than myself. That's goes without saying right?

Nerds - It's almost impossible not to hear this word liberally tossed around when a writer is attempting to encapsulate the San Diego Comic-con going experience. Even more amusing, stations that supposedly cater to what are ostensibly nerd-oriented interests such as G4 will quite often use the word in the most derogatory manner almost as if they feel oppressed by their supposed presence and that they are just an unesscessary evil to avoid at all costs.

The truth? There are actually very few serious nerds at the San Diego Comic-con. They are out there, sure, sure. But this convention is quite a bit different from most conventions in that it's not focused on one main interest and as a result you have major percentage of average folks just wandering around looking for their particular interest. You'd actually be hard pressed to find a hardcore stereotypical comic book nerd amongst the throng but when you do, they do truly stand out as quite the anomaly.

Cosplayers - Yes you know...those people that you always read about and see on the internet. If you seen any report on the nightly news or from G4 you'll no doubt see quite a lot of these people. G4 in particular has this proclivity for rounding up large groups of cosplayers and has them fill the area behind their talent as they segue from report to report about various comic book movies on the horizon. Wow! There must be tons of them down there! It's the biggest convention after all! Right?

The truth? No. There's really not that many of them there percentage-wise. I'll admit that If you distilled all the non-constumed folks away from the mighty throng in attendance then indeed you could probably get quite a few buses full of cosplayers. But for a convention so large there just really aren't that many of them there and they tend to really stand out. Honest! If you ever see pictures of mine of lines involving hundreds of people that I stand in waiting for an event to start you'd be hard pressed to find anybody in a costume at all. I would say there's a costume bedecked person for every 200 people and that's being really, really generous.

Exceptions to the rule - On Saturday night there's the big costume award show so there are a bit more of them around although they are fairly concentrated in the specific areas that it's happening in (usually the Ballroom) so they're easy to completely miss. Also there are a couple of convention standards involving Star Wars stormtroopers and Klingons. The stormtroopers are very well organized and have very professional outfits as well as a rather smashing hierarchy. They make regular sweeps all over the convention site and are rather impressive sight. Then there's the Klingons...

The Klingons, not to be confused with any silly prat that puts on a rubber furrowed brow and pointy ears, but the serious Klingons are in full force at the SD con although they are a tight knit bunch so you may easily miss them. They hold Klingon rituals and rites of passage in various rooms as part of a scheduled performance. They are serious about what they do but they are not weird about it if that makes sense. They have been attending the SD for almost as long as I have and they have my utmost respect as, like the now organized and unionized Storm Troopers (no I'm not kidding), they are complete professionals. Also on a side note many of the Klingons are in reality really big beefy guys that could really, really, hurt you if you tried to get cute so just...don't.

Don't mess with the Klingons at the San Diego Comic-con. I can't stress that enough.

Oh man! That San Diego Comic-con really sounds like a lot of fun!

Did I ever tell you that I used to go to the San Diego Comic-con every year?

No really!

It was fun.

A lot of fun.

I'll tell you about it some day.

*sigh*

...is Billie Piper otherwise known as Rose Tyler in the BBC series Dr. Who!

Wait! Wait! Don't run!

I'm not a big Dr. Who fanatic who will talk at you ad infinitum over which actor was the best Doctor and why (although the answer is pretty obvious). Sure, I grew up with the character and greatly enjoyed the series, but I was much more a fantasy reading type of fellow so I never became particularly fanatical about any sci-fi series.

The new series has however had a great hold over me since its inception. I'm still not that fanatical, but I am keenly interested in the show and the characters which in my opinion have been very well fleshed out. I am however, a bit enamoured with Billie Piper who played the good Doctor's 1st companion in the new series. Although it was slow to build, there really seemed to be a deep connection between The Doctor and Rose and it was heavily alluded to that the two have actually spent a lot more time together than the series on the surface lets on. Though I suppose absorbing all the power of the Tardis and being able to see everything that exists in time at once will probably bring you rather close to a Time Lord.

But eventually the need for apocalyptic drama reared its ugly, but quite necessary, head and the good Doctor and Rose were separated by a dimensional rift that neither could cross. In one of the arguably most heart-wrenching scenes (pictured above) of the series they share a quiet moment in which to say goodbye knowing that neither one has the ability to hold the other although the desire to do so is quite intently palpable. In other words...

Holy crap it was amazingly sad and touching and just a great moment!

So her stinct with the series had ended and off went Miss Piper! Doing some modeling, doing voiceovers for commercials, and filming more series for the BBC for which she is contracted to do a series of Pullman novel adaptations. She's keeping busy and getting good jobs so good for her!

But the void she left in the show was quite noticeable. Sure the other actors who portrayed later companions were all very good in their own way, but Billie seemed to have brought something very special and fans longed to have her back. There were quite a bit of ye olde rumouring but nothing ever came of it. She was always busy and the writers didn't seem to think it would ever happen and so I, and others, had somewhat given up hope.

The it happened last episode. Rose Tyler was back! She was still caught up in another dimension but she found a way to use an older victimized companion to bridge the gap and deliver the good Doctor a chilling message of ultimate annihilation! When the Doctor realized that somebody in the other dimension had knowledge to convey he stiffened at the description of the bearer of the news and was thunderstruck by the words she spoke -- end part 1.

To say I was excited and had chills running down my spine would be something of an understatement. Actually I suppose that would be a quite apt description but it sounds more dramatic when I type it out that way you understand.

So this coming Friday comes the second part and the romantic in me desperately hopes those two crazy kids somehow end up sharing some kind of intimate moment for once. The BBC America channel has hinted that a death will be in the offering so perhaps Rose will meet her end but as long as it's done right I wouldn't mind -- as long as they share that moment that is.

Kiss her dammit! :x

*ahem*

But life goes on and Billie Piper's acting career goes forward. She has a series in the States on the Showtime network called Secret Diary of a Call Girl for which I thank telvisnostic for turning me on to as I had erroneously thought that she had joined the cast of the Showtime series WEEDS due to the way the show was being advertised. I have yet to see an episode yet but I'm keen to watch it because as you might have deciphered by my subtle clues, I'm somewhat keen on her.

I thank the very few of you who read this for enduring my Dr. Who rant and yes I realize that probably a decent amount of the handful of my viewers won't really understand or care what I'm talking about but I needed to vent.

I'm not sure how I did it. I didn't get paid for it. I didn't get accolades for it. I didn't even get free food for it. Yet somehow, for some unknown reason, I managed to get up early each and every day and immerse myself fully in the world of the latest E3 Media and Business summit.

I watched every feed I could find. I kept detailed notes of my likes and dislikes of every conference. I furiously scribbled names and titles on any handy piece of paper for further reference fearful, always fearful, that my brain would become easily distracted by all the swirling colors and shiny pulsating lights and ever so easily unburden my mind of a precious shred of knowledge.

I even doubled-up my coverage by leaving a feed open on G4 playing in the backround so that the second a piece of information was uncovered I would be there. I could turn from feed to feed and...um, feed upon the knowledge being spewed forth like a technicolor display of dancing waters -- so bright and shiny, so dark and gritty, I could reach out and touch it but it would only run through my fingers as if it never existed. No, the games aren't ready for release just yet. But I was ready, very ready, to find out everything. No stone would be left unturned.

Did I mention that I consider myself a casual gamer?

Obviously if you watched what I watched and you are a gamer of diverse tastes then you are fully aware of the onslaught of gaming goodness coming our way. I could go and on about my favorites, or games that really disappointed me, or perhaps games that completely confounded me. But after that intense barrage of gaming glory I thought I'd just concentrate on a few games from a few questionably named categories that I created, that I had little to no interest in before E3. That's the whole purpose of the E3 coverage after all right?

THE EPIC

Resistance 2 for the Playstation 3

This is really the only game that just took me completely by surprise and just floored me. You see...I'm just not really much of a FPS or Covert OPS gaming type of guy. I do like to play FPS games here and there, but usually just WWII or fantasy types of FPS games. I'm really just generally bored with Sci-fi oriented FPS games and I think that the death match modes just killed the growth of the games. I'm just old school -- give me a machine gun, a pistol, and a shotgun and I'm good. I'll kill that monster for you ma'am don't you worry.

But this game just blew me away. Going into a city overrun with aliens monsters and fighting off monsters quite literally as large as a skyscraper?! I have to knock a building on it to kill it?! So I have to play a cat and mouse game with the monster from Cloverfield in order to put it down?! Awesome! I'm down!

Star Wars: The Force Unleashed for multiple platforms

Okay sure, sure -- I'm a nerd. I was there in 1977, a very diminutive lad who always had to sit in the front row so that the towering adults wouldn't obscure my vision, watching Star Wars and happy as a pig in mud. But my joy for the Star Wars universe has diminished quite a bit since those days. Those prequel films really did a lot of harm to my psyche.

So when this game was announced my feeling was slight interest tempered with vague apathy. Sure I liked the Jedi Outcast and Jedi Knight games for the Xbox but I really wasn't that excited for another game treading the same ground. Boy was I wrong. This game looks and seems to play exactly how I hoped it would. The fighting is fast and furious and it really put me in the mind of the sorely underrated game Psi-Ops for the PS2.

Tomb Raider - Underworld for multiple platforms

Much like Star Wars the Tomb Raider license just seemed really played out to me. They did make some improvements in making a decent game in the last iteration, just not enough to interest me. From the footage that I saw of this game they have definitely piqued my interest once again. The action looked really good and responsive, the sense of exploring the unknown without being forcibly led seemed intact, and Lara's curves - I mean environments look really...um, inviting.

The Interesting

inFAMOUS for the Playstation 3

A sandbox superhero game in which your decisions and actions will decide whether you are considered a hero, a villain, or perhaps somewhere in between. You control and can summon and shoot electricity and the city is overrun with criminals. Now go! I really like the simple but fun mechanic of this game. You can jump on vehicles, crawl and scale any building and have a duck and cover firefight with villians trying to shoot them while you fry them!:twisted:

...or do you? You could just create electrical handcuffs and knock them out. Some citizens got caught up in the firefight and were struck down. Will you use your electrical powers to revive them? Did I mention that your electrical powers just arc like crazy all over the place? Cool game that I never heard of until now.

Dark Void for multiple platforms

Do you remember the awesome Crimson Skies game for the XBox? Well this is made by most of the people from that team! That alone was almost enough to win me over but then I calmed down and watched the gameplay footage. The designers have decided to make a fully 3D environment but they included the ceiling. You have a future-retro jetpack and you can fly. Sure you can run around like normal just shooting up the bad guys, but then you can just jump off the cliff and scale your way to victory.

They created a nice camera technique so that when you come across a cliff face the camera will flip underneath you so that you engage in a duck and cover firefight utilizing the rocky projections as protection. Nice stuff and the mechanical designs are really nice.

Valkyria Chronicles for the PS3

This was shown ever so briefly at the Sony conference and the graphics really caught my eye. The character designs are similar to the fantasy WWII anime designs used in Operation Darkness but in this game they give them an odd watercolor look. The game's mechanics are strategy RPG and it looks to be a real hidden gem! I'm not much of a strategy gamer but this game might just make me change my mind.

The Downright Odd

The Misadventures of P.B. Winterbottom for unknown platforms

An independent game that is being shopped around in an attempt to get it published. Things look good for a XBL and Sony online entry and I certainly hope it does as I really want to play this game. Obstensibly a puzzle platform game but you create time paradoxes in order to obtain delicious pie! My descriptions really won't do this game justice so just stop the creator's website and enjoy!

Official Site

Deadly Creatures for the Wii

An action/adventure fighting game in which you play a tarantula and a scorpion? Sounds like and odd idea and so immediately I'm very interested in it. The developers are really pushing the power of the Wii engine and it's nice seeing somebody actually really trying to make a different but interesting game without resorting to shovelware tactics. The lizard boss fights look epic!

Onechanbara Revolution for the Wii

This is basically a port of a game that was released on the XBox 360 in Japan but it never came out in the States. I always hoped it would especially after they released another game from this company, Earth Defense Force 2017, but they never did and every day I cried and cried in despair. Let's get one thing straight -- D3 doesn't make good games. They quickly make rough games with funny themes that are slightly above the Burger King games in terms of quality. Sometimes they're kind of fun and other times...not so much.

The games are part of a series called simple games and that's what they are. Simple, sometimes fun, but simple. On the upside the simplistic nature of the controls should actually transfer well to the Wii which isn't really generally tooled for lightning quick moves. Oh yeah the game! You basically play a bikini clad warrior (along with some other various sexy girl types) and you shoot and chop up zombies like there's no tomorrow. That's it! Have fun warrior!

Oh yeah, one more thing...

The Lost

Where the hell is Tekken 6?! It was suppose to be the game that was going to make me have to buy a PS3! A year ago they had a teaser trailer and now a whole year later -- NOTHING?! WTH Namco?

The bee-yooo-tee-ful Kodak Theatre is now quiet and empty, a condition brought about by the obvious lack of programming on this fair night and the simple fact that long ago the Kodak theatre employees would have surely called the police on you if you insisted on staying long after all the conferences had ended. Honestly! I can't take you blog readers anywhere! As purty as it is you can't stay here and play DS games all night long! So what happened here? In an excercise to sorely test my self-editorial skills I shall attempt to write a brief impression of each conference. I'll surely fail so if you're bored and just want to humor me you can flip down to the bottom to get my final concise word.

Microsoft seems to have turned into the what everyone wants to force Nintendo to be, a company with a solid insight into the future of gaming and plenty of games for every genre and gaming sensibility. They attacked from almost every side of the gaming community. They immediately launched into Fallout 3, Resident Evil 5 and Gears of War 2 -- all just awesome looking titles that demand your attention when they are being demonstrated.

Hardcore gamers - check

They hit upon new XBox Live games and content like Galaga Legions, Geometry Wars 2, Portal: Still Alive (!) and new content in the form of GTAIV stuff as well as community developed games for download. They announced an agreement with Netflix in response to their weak movie presence which could be huge in the near future. This further solidifies their online dominance to a vast audience of gamers of all types.

Online gamers - check

They announced a new Banjo and Kazooie: Nuts and Bolts and a proper sequel to their suprise smash hit Viva Pinata. They also included an odd You're in the Movies game in which you splice yourself and your friends into films as well as an update to the Scene It! game.

Kids and casual fun gamers - check

Then they went on to hit on every level with announcements of sequels to Guitar Hero and Rock Band as well as a new singing game called Lips which allows you to sing along to any song on your iPod or Zune.

Massive trendy games and popular technology tie-ins - check

Then suddenly it happened! The next Final Fantasy would be on the XBox 360! This was an actually stunning announcement and drew a lot of positive reaction from the crowd.

End on a bang and to leave them mumbling excitedly all the way out the door - check

Oh wait! There was one more thing...

...the hell? This was the one moment in the presentation in which there was much confused mumbling which was quickly followed by polite and erratic applause. You know...the kind of accolade you give to a drunk person attempting to tell you a joke in the hopes that they will just go away? Yeah. Everyone is a tad iffy about the whole change. Most think it's a Wii-ification and others think it's MS's attempt to make the online XBL look more like the much maligned Vista OS.

Overall though I was very happy with the presentation and it seemed to have a little something for everyone. Even though it was long-ish, the whole affair seemed to move along fairly well but that may be due to my heavier interest in the 360. In fact I'm pretty sure it was...DON'T TRUST ME!

Whoof! This seemed like the longest presentation in the world even though it wasn't any longer than MS's. Again, it might due to my lack of PS3 goodness in my house but it also might be because I was very ill whilst watching the whole affair. At any rate let's forge ahead and try to hit this quick and dirty as to be brief.

The Good - Resistance 2 is crazy beautiful. I'm not a big sci-fi oriented FPS type of guy but immediately I wanted to stop everything and playt his game once I saw the showdown with that giant monster. You don't understand! It's you, a super soldier, against the monster from Cloverfield!!! My God it looked awesome! Nice job! Star Wars - The Force Unleashed is great! God of War 3 holy crap! Loco Roco and Patapon sequels for the PSP! Great PSP support! Online DC game could be cool! A montage of awesome games coming out that I had to go back and quickly figure out what was what. In that montage I saw something interesting.

Well this looks interesting. It puts me in the mind of Operation Darkness. Silly me and my proclivity for grabbing on to odd little side games that nobody plays.:P

The Bad - Yakuza 2 (AKA Ryu Ga Gotoku 2)? While it's nice to finally see this game come out it's been a loooooooong time and they would have been better served to immediately try to get Ryu Ga Gotoku - Kenzan! out right on its heels. Throwing in the announcement that Sony is offering a new exciting bundle...for the PS2.:| Dude I've heard of hedging your bets to get money from every port but seriously, do this stuff away from the crowds. This kind of stuff just makes me worry about you Sony. Speaking of which...

The Ugly - Sony aired various testimonials from programmers insisting that the PS3 was not hard to program for and that they love programming for it because you can just keep getting more and more power from it. Now if you know any programmers that indeed work on games for the PS3 then you know that this is completely untrue. I constantly have to hear from my friends on how painfully awful it is and exactly why in ways that I don't fully understand as I'm not a programmer. Oh Sony...if somebody insists over and over again that they don't have a problem without anybody prompting them to do so then they probably do.

Overall though - just tons of games that are very exciting even though I don't have a PS3 which speaks volumes. Hmmm...no Tekken 6 though.

Oh man here we go! It's the program that seemingly everybody was whining about. Indeed I will admit that I really don't enjoy my Wii system. To top it off I thought last year's presentation was the worst I've ever seen as they spent most of it concentrating on the perplexingly awful Wii-Fit board. But that was last year so let's let bygones be bygones and move on.

I actually enjoyed Nintendo's presentation. It was incredibly brief which, although I'm not sure was the greatest idea, did make the whole affair move along quite smoothly. Although the presenters weren't great, they did juggle them around a bit so their presence didn't seem to wear as much as the other presenters.

There was much Nintendo fun-nessness to be had. Raving Rabbits, Star Wars - Jedi, Wii-Sports resorts, that scary Wii-music thing with all that electronic sax and flute noise, and then lots and lots of exciting DS goodness. Good lord lots of DS goodness!:D Also...GTA IV for the DS?!?!:o Good Lord! Although I was still very sleepy and not at all well, as soon as Animal Crossing came up I almost fell out of my chair in excitement. Jeez! What is it about that game? I love it so much!:cry:

But...what about the hardcore gamers Daemon? What about our needs?! :cry:

Here's the reality. Nintendo didn't abandon the hardcore gamers, the hardcore gamers abandoned Nintendo years ago. Remember that N64 that you didn't play as much of because the Dreamcast had shiny games with hot chicks and blood which you then quickly abandoned for the PS2 which had even more blood and more detailed hot chicks? Why didn't you buy any of that 3rd party software?

Remember that Gamecube system which was actually very solid and awesome but you didn't buy? In fact you spat on it and called it kiddy whilst beating hookers down and blowing up the heads of aliens. Guess what happens when you ignore and abuse somebody? They pick themselves up, get a haircut, buy some new clothes, and go out looking for new friends that will accept them for who they are. Guess what happened?

They found friends. Lots and lots of friends. Friends who thought nobody thought about them either. Guess what? These friends have lots of disposable cash -- and lots of kids. So now the folks in Wii-land are supposed to take you back and worry about your needs? Didn't we give you a Zelda and a Mario? You want one every year?! Have we ever done that?

So am I surprised that Nintendo didn't address the need of the "hardcore" gamers? No. Why should they? Hardcore gamers have demonstrated quite clearly that they don't care about them and Nintendo has always -- ALWAYS -- been about Nintendo. They are notorious for their lack of concern towards third party developers and that's that. So here's fun Nintendo stuff to play with. Shut up and have some fun you killing machine you.

The funny thing is that there are in fact serious gamer games coming out for the Wii. If you do something as simple as to look at the E3 listing of games and select it to filter all the Wii games you will see awesome things like Mad World, Megaman 9, Castlevania Judgement, and a new Tales of Symphonia among others. Sound like normal adult games for all gaming types doesn't it?

So overall, even though I didn't really like most of what Nintendo had to offer, I could clearly see why lots of people would and so I give them a big thumbs up and I reserve a different digit entirely for all the furious hardcore gamers that won't stop whining about the mother they abandoned long ago.

Awww crap I really typed a lot again didn't I? Well I'm feeling much better so I'm riding on a high of sorts I suppose so lets sum it up for those of you that skipped ahead.

Microsoft - The leaders of the core gamer crowd -tons of cool games - Something for everybody - all things to all people - Very exciting.

Sony - The foundation of the core game crowd - a decent amount of really cool games - not as many exclusives in order to differentiate themselves from the 360 lineup but they're getting there - they need to move ahead faster and get more stuff out before MS develops a new system.

Nintendo - In a world of their own making and boy it feels good - Nintendo just gleefully plays around and makes tons of dough laughing at the hardcore gamers that spurned them - The DS is a unstoppable juggernaut - some interesting Wii-sclusives (my word! I made it up!) from third parties coming up but buried under Nintendo's hype machine. Go play!

So who won Daemon? That's what everyone wants to know right? Isn't it obvious?

Everyone.

No that's not a cop out. You might not have noticed but we are in the middle of a gaming renaissance. If you stop and think about all the great games that you'll never have time to play because there are so damn many of them then you'll go crazy. No matter what system you have there's plenty of games to play and have a great time with. So get out of here and go play some games you crazy kids!

Now for that pesky cat that posted my last blog...

Awwww...I can't stay mad at you, you little ball of fur. :oops:

Animal Crossing! Animal Crossing! Animal Crossing! Animal Crossing! Animal Crossing! Animal Crossing! Animal Crossing! Animal Crossing! Animal Crossing! Animal Crossing! Animal Crossing! Animal Crossing! Animal Crossing! Animal Crossing! Animal Crossing! Animal Crossing! Animal Crossing! Animal Crossing! Animal Crossing! Animal Crossing! Animal Crossing! Animal Crossing! Animal Crossing! Animal Crossing! Animal Crossing! Animal Crossing! Animal Crossing! Animal Crossing! Animal Crossing! Animal Crossing! Animal Crossing! Animal Crossing! Animal Crossing! Animal Crossing! Animal Crossing! Animal Crossing! Animal Crossing! Animal Crossing! Animal Crossing! Animal Crossing! Animal Crossing! Animal Crossing! Animal Crossing! Animal Crossing! Animal Crossing! Animal Crossing! Animal Crossing! Animal Crossing! Animal Crossing! Animal Crossing! Animal Crossing! Animal Crossing! Animal Crossing! Animal Crossing! Animal Crossing! Animal Crossing! Animal Crossing! Animal Crossing! Animal Crossing! Animal Crossing! Animal Crossing! Animal Crossing! Animal Crossing! Animal Crossing! Animal Crossing! Animal Crossing! Animal Crossing! Animal Crossing! Animal Crossing! Animal Crossing! Animal Crossing! Animal Crossing! Animal Crossing! Animal Crossing! Animal Crossing! Animal Crossing! Animal Crossing! Animal Crossing! Animal Crossing! Animal Crossing! Animal Crossing! Animal Crossing! Animal Crossing! Animal Crossing! Animal Crossing! Animal Crossing! Animal Crossing! Animal Crossing! Animal Crossing! Animal Crossing! Animal Crossing! Animal Crossing! Animal Crossing! Animal Crossing! Animal Crossing! Animal Crossing! Animal Crossing! Animal Crossing! Animal Crossing! Animal Crossing! Animal Crossing! Animal Crossing! Animal Crossing! Animal Crossing! Animal Crossing! Animal Crossing! Animal Crossing! Animal Crossing! Animal Crossing! Animal Crossing! Animal Crossing! Animal Crossing! Animal Crossing! Animal Crossing! Animal Crossing! Animal Crossing!

*faints*

Shoes here -- Please forgive my owner. He really meant to write a small blog about the E3 show but he's been up all night and he's not at all well and, well, you know...Animal Crossing. It looked like he was busily writing up some nice little entry summing up his thoughts on the whole affair but he just suddenly got up and collapsed on the couch mumbling about bugs, fishes, fossils, furniture and how big the new houses were and other stuff I can't understand 'cause I'm just a cat. I came over here and all I saw was Animal Crossing over and over again so I thought I'd post it 'cause it must be important.

Anyways...I'm sure he'll be fine tomorrow and it looks like he put a lot of foods in my bowl so I won't go hungry and...hey, is that a bug? 'Scuse me...

Meow.

The Natsu Bashou has come and gone once again and all that's left is to check the scoreboard and see how our favorite rikishi did and flip a coin to guess which of the Mongolian Yokozuna took the prize once again. But what's this?! There's a giant caucasian sitting on the throne?! Yes indeed for the first time ever a European has won the Emperor's cup and that person is the very quiet, and very, very tall (6'8") Bulgarian Ozeki Kotooshu (koto-o-oshu). Congratulations big guy!

Kotooshu's father flew out for the last few days of the matches when it became obvious his son might actually win. Since most people's eyes were still on the Yokozuna they didn't really notice Kotooshu's dad in the crowd and when Kotooshu clinched the tournament on the 14th day his father exploded with joy and stood up waving the Bulgarian flag and shouting.

At first the people around him just thought he was an over excited fan, but it quickly became apparent that it was indeed his father and the Japanese audience rallied behind him and gave his father a giant round of applause! The Japanese sport audiences remind me a lot of the French in this way. Although they completely support their hometown favorites, they just love upsets and underdog wins and will quickly support outsiders as long as they show determination.

Along with the win comes a bevy of fun things of course...

A parade!:D Every victory gets the usual big parade to display the winning banners and to give everyone who didn't attend the tournament a chance to come out and demonstrate some support for the winner! Unfortunately just a few minutes after the parade started it began to rain and poor Kotooshu and company had to roll up the windows and put up the roof in order to escape the weather.

Curse you Odin! :x

The up side to this is that the people who came out to show their support for the Ozeki didn't run from the weather. Despite the fact that Kotooshu had to wave at them from a tiny window they firmly withstood the weather and cheered their man on all the way home to his stable. Kotooshu was said to be overwhelmed with emotion at this demonstration of support and Kotooshu is not a man to demonstrate any kind of emotion.

Alright fish! Yes indeed these are mighty good luck fish that only winners of the yushou are allowed to hoist in such an ostentatious manner! Bow down your mighty Bulgarian fish-fisted master! Bow I say! :x

Then of course a nice hearty handshake from your boss to end an incredibly long day of a thousand cups, banners, and sponser prizes! I'm not sure why they decided to go for a photo op in front of what must be the angriest painting of a sumo wrestler...EVER, but who am I to judge? Perhaps it's another one of those mysterious closed-door hush-hush good luck sumo things. >_>

This gentleman's name is His Excellency Demon Kogure. As you might have guessed he is indeed one of those big production heavy metal perfomance artists in which all the members assume an identity to be something other than human much like the band members of GWAR.

Although he may seem a tad over the top to be involved with Sumo he is actually very knowledgable and has been following the sport for some time. The Sumo association, starved for attention and desperately wanting new younger fans, enjoys having him stop by to do additional commentary from time to time.

This time however he chose to throw everyone a curve ball and he decided that he wanted to sit in the booth doing the English commentary. Apparently he's been working very hard at learning English and he jumped head first into an opportunity to try out his skills. Although his abilities didn't quite match his enthusiasm, the English folks (and yes, quite a few of them are British) were keen to help him express himself properly so it was all very entertaining and fun. Kogure, or "Kakka" as he likes to be called, is very blunt in his criticism and does not pull punches. I look forward to seeing more of him in the future.

The rikishi Ama was a big spoiler in this tournament and he took down a lot of wrestlers along the way. He still has a little ways to go to stay consistant enough to make the Ozeki rank, but for now he remains the stand out guy that nobody wants to wrestle. In the match pictured above, He turned a costly mistake of a perfectly defended throw attempt by winning at the edge of the ring with a perfectly executed Utchari (backward pivot throw) move.

His opponent, the Russian Wakanoho, was having a very up and down tournament and desperately needed more wins. He was sure that he had victory in the bag when he perfectly read Ama's throw attempt and blocked it and got him up against the edge of the dohyo -- just one more inch and...victory! But instead all he got was another defeat.

This door paid the price for Wakanoho's loss.:|

You can watch the whole thing here in the replay from the broadcast which, somewhat humorously, begins with Wakanoho's immediate reaction once he was away from the crowd as he walked over to the replay monitor. Enjoy at Ama's ability to instantly shift and change with his opponent!

There was a somewhat ugly incident on the very last match of the tournament. The two Yokozuna's met up for the last match but a win or a loss was meaningless at this point as Kotooshu had already won the tournament and had beaten both of them. Asashoryu won but as Hakuho was going down and Asashoryu was beginning to mount a further attack in case he did not, Asa's momentum carried him into Hakuho's back into what Hakuho perceived as an extra shove (which Asashoryu has been known to do to lesser ranked opponents).

Now as you might have heard me said before, Mongolians are "Mui Macho" people especially with each other, and Hakuho is a Yokozuna no less. When Hakuho arose he shouldered Asashoryu hard and glared at him as they both walked away. Luckily, Asashoryu attempted to play it off as an accident (which is debatable) so at least the main ugliness came from just one man but still it left a somewhat sour note in people's minds.

Both were reprimanded by the way.

Not the prettiest tournament, but a strange one that ended in a unexpected manner which was nice for a change.

Death came and spread as silent as the wind -- a hot, very focused wind. The air itself, the very air that provided life to man and plant alike became the enemy of the very stuff of happiness and joy. The figurative metal which bound that happiness and joy was slowly weakened over the years. Slowly that figurative became a literal and the metal foundation of Daemon's happiness cracked -- just a tiny crack mind you, but that was more than enough to end it all.

Yes indeed dear readers, I have finally been struck by the three rings of death and my beloved 360 is now silent and probably a lot cooler than it's ever been.:lol: I suppose I'm rather upset but not for the reasons you're probably thinking. Sure, sure...I'm annoyed that I can't currently fire that baby up and play a pile of great games. Indeed, it is annoying not to be able to annoy people with my inability to compete competently online whilst we chat it up. Yes, yes...of course I miss all those little online games that I became so happy to play around with.

What really gets me is that it happened to me. You see, while so many units have heated up and broken over the years mine has never had even the slightest problem. This is despite the fact that I pretty much abandoned my other gaming systems for the 360 and I bought it just a couple of months after the launch. All those long, long hours of gaming for the last two years and not even a hint of trouble. I always enjoyed being the guy who got to annoyingly pipe in on 360 death threads with a hearty "mine is rather old and is perfectly fine" but that's all at an end. Now here I sit. A commoner.

*sigh*

I've had pretty good luck with consoles in the past and I still have a 1st generation PS1 that were also supposed to overheat and die at an alarming level -- or did everyone forget that? Yet there it is, sitting underneath my dresser working perfectly fine every time I have to pull it out. I was hoping this would be the case with my 360 but alas it wasn't in the cards. It's been a few weeks but I just keep putting off calling up those folks at MS to get myself a send off box for no particular reason. Sure I've been busy with insane stuff at work but I just keep putting it off.

So what have I been doing?

Yay it's Wii time! A friend of mine bought me one a few months ago but I really don't play it much. I've been trying to get into it and have a good time and all that jazz but...it's not really working out. I honestly don't care for the system cute though it is. Honestly, if it wasn't a big deal of a gift from a close friend I probably would have sold it by now. I'm going to keep at it and try to have some sort of fun with it, but the hate keeps building and I really think more than likely that I'm just going to end up back playing with my PS2.

The upside is that I've certainly had a lot more times to devote to movies which is a very big passion of mine. I've been watching an incredible amount lately and I suppose I should post some reviews of them here instead of just always in Fozzy123's movie threads just so people will see I'm not dead. Also I apologize to my other blogging and Myspace peeps as I just haven't been checking in lately.

So here I sit in a prison of my own making -- sulking and watching movies.

"You are next!" Those words crippled the lengthy diatribe that was building deep within my frontal lobe. "You are next!" Those words laid to waste all thoughts of attempting manual projects immediately exposing their inherent uselessness. "You are next!" All personal matters were cast aside! "You are next!" Every deed, object, person and thought (metaphysical or otherwise), were summarily expunged and all that was left was a singular specific task! "You are next!" A grand moment of sharply defined clarity was thrust upon me once more! "You are next!" "YOU ARE NEXT!" "YOU ARE NEXT!"

"YOU ARE NEXT!"

One moment I'm enjoying a nice, not altogether too lengthy sit down after a long day of book management and suddenly I spy a tasty new blog amongst my somewhat hesistant Gamespot running crew and there it is in black and white (unless of course you pay for Gamespot and have wacky colors selected for your text), I have been "tagged" once more! My task this time out: Name 7 songs that I've been listening to this fine day or/and night.

The tagger? That rascally bon vivant and otherwise fine upstanding fellow book dealer/ellipses abuser/NIN expert fan-type person Samwel X who I always envision wearing a fine bowler hat because I'm a hairy American transplanted from Europe and that's how we roll. Don't shatter my dreams!:x

1. Nine Inch Nails - The Slip

First up is Trent Reznor's newest effort The Slip which Mr. Reznor has kindly made completely free to download in yet another attempt to further distance himself from the giant crumbling machine known collectively as "The Music Industry". He knows he has enough fans to support him when he eventually releases the album on hard copies and that they will eagerly snatch up his uber-expensive special editions as well as his super super super special editions. Did I mention the even more special edition that's better than the super super super uber edition? No?

I'm currently still spinning the...um, hard drive and listening to the music and ruminating on the album as a whole so I haven't really attached myself to any particular song but "1,000,000" does stand out as a nice chunk of music.

2. The Grates - Gravity Won't Get You High

Next is the fine Australian group The Grates. Another one of those little indie alternative poppy rock bands that seemingly I'm the only person that listens to them much like the brilliant pop band Blood Red Shoes. They haven't really done much since 2006 which kind of makes me wonder if they're ever going to release another album. I know they're still touring so there's always hope but it always kind of makes me sad when groups put out albums that I can't seem to stop listening to and then they just up and vanish. Speaking of vanishing...

3. Queen Adreena - The Butcher and the Butterfly

Back in the late 80's a strange little band was formed called Daisy Chainsaw. They were a very odd noise punk/feedback/distortion band that easily stood out from the crowded alternative radio and college scene. They had a modest hit with Love Your Money but then they just up and disappeared.

A year ago I went digging through my old cds and ran across my Daisy Chainsaw cd. I kind of wondered what had happened to them and when I went looking I ran smack into Queen Adreena. Apparently there had been some personal problems in Daisy Chainsaw and after some years apart the singer and the guitarist from that band, KatieJane Garside and Crispin Gray respectively, decided to start up another band called Queen Adreena. Out of curiosity I went digging for it and what I heard I really liked.

4. Charles Mingus - Cornell 1964

Although I'm not particularly knowledgeable in Jazz I am a big fan of the genre specifially from the 50's and 60's. I've been trying to expose myself to more and more of it as it's much easier to get ahold of these days via the internet and I'm enjoying every second of it. Charles Mingus is one of my favorites and I've really been enjoying the Cornell 1964 album of his. It's music like this that really makes me wish that music stores still existed and I really miss working in that environment.

*sigh*

5. Stereo Total - Monokini

I honestly can't remember how or why I came to gain knowledge of the band Stereo Total but somehow I did and there you are -- the damage has been done. An odd cookie of a band that Wikipedia describes as "...a humourous mix of synth-pop, new wave, electronic, punk, and pop music." They also hit the 60's retro vibe on all cylinders so chances are if you like quirky bands that just do their own thing regardless of any particular scene then you will probably enjoy Stereo Total.

If you click on their name then please to enjoy THE MOST AWESOME VIDEO EVER! By the by, just for comparison's sake here's the original video for that song which is amusing but not nearly as completely awesome as the old people dancing. Just goes to show you that sometimes simplicity will snuggle up with synchronicity and create something amazing.

6. Panther - Secret Lawns

It's pretty hard to describe Panther AKA Charlie Salas-Humara. He kind of came out of nowhere when I was channel surfing one day and I just had to run out and tell my friends about him the next day. Just click on the link and be ready to be surprised/angered/annoyed/happy or any combination of those ingredients. In case you're interested, here's the original video that I ran into late at night called How Well Can You Swim.

7. John Lee Hooker - Blue King Pins collection

A nice collection of early John Lee Hooker songs that I borrowed from a friend some time ago and yet I still appear to have it as I threw it in the player once again today. Perhaps he'll read this and realize that he needs to put it back in his car from whence it came. Although come to think of it, I actually own the car that the cd came from when he owned it orginally. So if I put the cd back in my car I actually am putting it back from where in originally came. Hmmmm.... >_>

I understand my task was to name songs but I'm just not a song oriented person. I much more into albums and if I can't get into an entire album of a particular artists then I will most likely stop listening to them forever. I'm not big on collections of hit songs. As for who I tag I suppose I go with the following peeps:

MoonFoxx, JustPlainLucas, telvisnostic, Creeping Wolf, & Irkenechidna.

Don't feel obligated to participate however, just do it and have fun or ignore it and have even greater fun knowing you saved valuable time away from the internets.

Wham! Honestly I saw it coming like you wouldn't believe. Sure, it's easy to sit there on your acceptably comfortable chair and pass a knee-jerk reaction as to the state of my reflexive capabilities. "Why?" you think. "Why didn't he just move away and get a bat or something with which to bludgeon his rather irksome opponent?" In all honesty I must say in my defense that I was completely stunned. I have had a hard time keeping up with the bills and I thought this would be a quick job that would help get me back on my feet. I really didn't expect a man I set on fire to suddenly run at me and kick me into the sweet, sweet arms of oblivion. I really need to find a better job.

One of the aspects of XBox Live that I love is its ability to call attention to things I would have ordinarily ignored. One such item is the upcoming video game for the not yet released movie Kung Fu Panda. Being a fairly big fan of martial arts films, and yes something of a snob involving that genre, I was ready to soundly ignore this game as well as the movie. I've grown weary of most of the animation that seems to trudge out month after month with the cookie-cutter characters caught up in their cookie-cutter situations whilst they constantly become embroiled in their cooke-cutter chase scenes that seem to go on forever.

Yet due to the ease and speed at which I have access to demos on XBL I will often download things I'm sure I'll hate but for some sadistic reason I'll still try it out. I recall recently a friend of mine eyeing me askance as I downloaded Sega Superstars Tennis as he knew full well how much I loathed Sonic and games of his ilk. Who can say why I do it? Well I can I suppose but who would believe me? Well actually you probably would believe me as I'm a really good liar and...I'm getting off track!

So I downloaded Kung Fu Panda and lordy did I have a fun time playing it. It's a very quick-paced run around beat-em-up and the controls are incredibly intuitive and the combos are easy to play with and *shock* I actually found the dialogue fairly amusing despite my lack of appreciation for the wit of Jack Black. I know. I was surprised as well. I recommend it! Go punch things! :x

Finally! Operation Darkness is here! :D Well as a demo. :| But the demo's fairly involved and very fun! :) It's a strategy game! :( But it's a third person action game as well! :D It's has turned-based combat but you have to employ cover or you'll be cut down! :? But you can still rush in and gun them down at the end of your movement! :D It takes place in WWII and has realistic German tanks! :D It also has supernatural elements much like Hellboy in which you fight dragons and one of your members can even turn into a werewolf! :shock: It even has sexy females on the German side who wear somewhat inappropriate uniforms. :oops: But it's supposed to be hard! :( It will kill you if you make one mistake and you'll lose the war! :cry: But the character designs are top-notch and you even have one of the characters as your avatar on XBL don't you? 8) You can do it! Destroy the bad guys! :x

I decided to go back and try some old games that I had long before I got an XBL account. I'm not much of an online game but I thought I'd pull some off the bookshelf for the sake of picking up some achievements and just to see how much nicer everything looks now that I have an HD widescreen TV. The first one I hit was Burnout: Revenge! The game is still as great as I remembered it being and I fooled around with it enough to raise my level up and unlock some more races. I went online fully prepared to get slaughtered but wanting to have some crazy Burnout fun and tear it up! I'm sure I'd be taken down like crazy but I was hoping to score a few myself! Yeah let's play!

Unfortunately nobody would play with me. Although I was choosing quickrace I kept getting shoved into people's semi-private gatherings which would quickly be followed by me being shown the door by way of a quick boot by the host. I tried a few more times over the next few days and nobody would start a race. People would just come and go and talk about High School and then eventually leave or kick me out. I suppose I should just host a race and see what happens but Daemon's are notoriously dodgy about creating online gatherings. Also I beat somebody on Yaris online and didn't get the achievement! WTH? Grrrrrr!

I decided to check out Rumble Roses XX which was quite a jump back as I believe it was actually the first game I bought for my ye olde 360 many years ago. Needless to say it looks quite nice on a good tv and it's still as addictive as ever. In no time at all I was doing what I love to do the most in wrestling game -- laying down the most painful series of submission moves you'll ever see. I love the way you can chain wrestle during certain moves and cycle between more painful submission moves or some quick hold strikes to keep your opponent guessing.

The game still holds up well and is a decently technical fighter which belies its rather prurient presentation. Some of the transitions from holds to holds still surprise me as to how well they're done. In all honesty if I was wrestling I would totally steal some of the holds, submissions, and the transitions from both of them from this game and put them to use in the ring. To put some icing on the cake the XBL site has all the costumes online so you can mix and match everybody's outfits. Awesome!

Next up was Tenchu Z! Yet another game that gets quite a pounding critically yet remains a very addictive and very fun game to play. Playing around with it made me want to clear my file and start over again but then I remember I had another profile on my 360 that I could use to play through it while also receiving the achievements for my accomplishments all over again! Lord I'm such a Tenchu nerd. :roll:

The only thing that annoys me about the game is that it's entirely too easy to get the highest rating for a level in this game. The previous iterations would punish you severely for being spotted even one time so generally veteran players tend to think they failed if this happens regardless of the score. In Tenchu Z you generally will get the highest score as long as you kill everybody which is somewhat against the original spirit of the game. The other issue I have is that you can only create one character per file. They have a fun little create-a-character but it's annoying that you can only create one per profile. Oh well...it's not like ninjas ever really existed anyways. Oh! You didn't know that? Well now you do! G.I. Joe!

Instead of releasing the newest add-on to Samurai Warriors 2 as a disc in the store, the good folks at the Dynasty Warriors camp decided to release it as downloadable content on XBL. Despite my love for the game I was a little hesistant as many times their add-on games are really just little additions coupled with extreme levels of difficulty. This difficulty also often involves taking away your items and levels which somewhat defeats the purpose of the game in my opinion so I generally pass up on that kind of "fun" and wait for the next full iteration.

They did indeed add some higher levels of difficulty but they also added a nice chunk of new characters, new more powerful weapons, and the ability to raise the level of your characters from the original game even higher. Add in a bunch of new abilities to buy and lots of new game options and I was more than happy to pay 2,400 points to get those beautiful 2.4 gb's of gaming goodness on my system. Now if you'll excuse me I have to re-re-re-reunite all of Japan for the hundredth time.

Bonk! Much akin to a blow to the skull by a particularly annoyed Batman, life continues its assault on your not-so-beloved author. But somehow I keep stumbling forward, eager to see what lay ahead even if it only turns out to be certain doom. I mean, c'mon! Certain doom? Who could pass up a glimpse at that? I always imagined it to be something along the lines of a mighty galactic being like say...Galactus! Yes Galactus is here to harvest our planet! Who will stand with me against certain destruction?! Who will fight with me!!!!

Unfortunately that was only a dream brought on by a sudden slip followed by a perfectly executed crash into a nearby rock which resulted in unconsciousness, a quick trip to comaville, and then at long last the body shut down and then it's on to the slab. Silly human and your grandiose dreams. But for the moment we're still caught in the throes of stumbling so let's stumble on...

Without any planning or forethought I suddenly found myself working early on a Saturday and working late on a Sunday. This meant that I could make a day of Saturday and stay out late which is somewhat unusual for my life in the land of retail. Even more unlikely this happened to be the weekend that the local wrestling league Pro Wrestling Guerilla was having a show. The second smartest person in the world that I know suggested that I come with him and his friends to the show and I took him up on it. That's right folks...I left my house! :o

It's been over a year since I've been to a PWG show so I was equally excited and somewhat trepidacious at the idea of the whole affair. The event is much closer than it used to be so that was nice as traffic in L.A. is not a fun thing. Although we didn't arrive really early we still got the front row seats in the area we typically sit. What I didn't realize that, due to the setup of the new arena and the camera placement, our typical seats had become ground zero for over the rope and all out of ring action. I lost count of how many times I had to run for my life to avoid flying bodies.

Overall it was a fun night. I wasn't completely into it as so many wrestlers I knew were gone and when one new guy got in my face I didn't really have anything particular amusing to taunt him with as I'd never seen him before and so I felt slightly out of sorts. El Generico wasn't there and I hear he may not come back and Kevin Steen wasn't around. The Human Tornado wasn't there but he's still involved but I guess he's a heel now and my friends tell me it's not really working out.

Los Luchas (Phoenix Star and Zokre) were there though and of course they were amazing. They were wrestling some submission guys from Japan and they executed some very involved tag team moves. Nemesis was up to his old tricks with skill and humor being his forte'. Super Dragon and Joey Ryan had an insane halftime brawl that involved many dangerous moves coupled with broken furniture. Joey has really stepped up his game since I last saw him and it was nice to see Super Dragon sell a move for once. >_>

I have recently passed the 15,000 mark on my XBL account! :D It's kind of taken me a while as I seemed to have this tendency for buying games that are particularly hard to obtain a majority of their achievement points (DOA 4, Rumble Roses) and my account is relatively free of known achievement whore titles. Okay! Okay! I do have the worst offender of them all, Avatar, but I have a good excuse. A longtime good friend of mine is a semi-muckity muck employee of THQ and he will often pad any gifts he gives me with THQ titles as they don't really cost him much of anything. So there! :x

Honestly though I don't really have any problems with people who want to pimp out their score. I play silly mediocre games all the time for fun. If somebody wants to take the time to play Hello Kitty Roller Rescue then let 'em enjoy their rewards!

Unfortunately I'm still having problems with my injured knee. I honestly am starting to wonder if I'll ever be completely healed at this point. Every time I think I'm starting to get back to some sense of normalcy I stretch it a tad too far and pain and hobbling soon ensue, much to the delight of the nearby roaming wolves. I really should go to a real specialist and have him check it out but...well I'm not known for taking good care of myself. It's annoying me enough though so I think soon I shall break down and look into my options.

Allright this is completely out of left field but look at this manga I recently started stocking at my store. Looks fairly innocent right? A couple of sexy girls in semi-period...um, quasi-period...hmmm, fantasy period clothing ready to do battle. What's the big deal? There's tons of manga like this.

Aha! But the premise of this particular manga is that what if Zhang Jiao got a magic spell that could make him change the world. What if he and his brothers conspired to rid China of its heroes thus enabling them to take over. What if he were to suddenly change his mind in midspell and instead decide to change all those heroes into cute, and impossibly buxom, women of action so that they would have no rights and...hey, it's nice to have cute chicks around right?

Yay! You win if you guess that the premise of this manga is what if you read the famous Romance of the Three Kingdom story but all the warriors and generals were suddenly sexy manga girls! Hooray? I mention this purely to amuse or horrify ShuLordLiuPei and because it's just damn funny to me. Oh by the way, that's Zhang Fei in the foreground and Kwan Yu in the backround. :| Yup.:? Try to go play Dynasty Warriors again and pick Zhang Fei now.