So my Developer for a Day entry turned out better than I'd hoped! :D

I'm all moved into the new apartment. The cable guy was here not ten minutes ago to connect the internet. My work project is two days late due to my not being able to leave the house while waiting for the cable guy who showed up super late. I'm exhausted and there are boxes everywhere waiting to be unpacked. My roommate's grandmother had to have surgery today, so she's gone to see her in the hospital and unpacking is on hold until she gets back.

I'll post pictures as soon as things start looking presentable.

Meanwhile... YAY! :lol:

You may have noticed I haven't been around enough. Or not. I don't really know if I'm all that noticeable around here anyway. :P

I'm in the middle of a big move, got all my stuff out of my old apartment and none of it in my new apartment, so there's a LOT going on. As soon as I'm moved in and settled I'll be back to normal, I suspect. Until then, though, you should be able to catch me around here and there on AIM or when I swing through here for a minute.

*waves* See you all soon!

The Wii is mopping the floor in console sales worldwide. Japan has Wii for breakfast lunch and dinner, only seemingly abandoning it for their shiny PSPs and DSes. The US is still in the obscene shortage period, well over a year after its original launch, and Europe seemingly loves the Wii as much as anyone, with sales in just the UK and Germany totalling 3.4 million as of March. [1]

So the world loves the Wii. Where does Nintendo have left to go? South Korea. Korea's a hotbed of underappreciated gamers, where gaming addiction is a valid concern among most of the mainstream media and where almost 90% of households have broadband connections (compared to only 52% in the US and around 55% in the UK and Japan). [2]

In many ways, Korea seems like the Japan of yesteryear; a country with one of the most tech savvy populations in the world that is slowly building a reputation for cutting edge innovation in many fields. With the third strongest economy in Asia, and the thirteenth in the world [3], and a level of tech penetration that's almost unheard of by US standards, the Wii should clean up in Korea as it's done in the rest of the world, right?

Wrong.

Wii doesn't seem to be getting South Korea too excited. With only 35,000 out of the initial shipment of 50,000 sold, it might be the only territory where there was no release shortage.

So what's going on? Is it a matter of imports, has Korea been snatching up Wiis from other territories? Are they just not interested in their own version because their release was delayed so long that they've already purchased their Wiis elsewhere? Or is it that the Wii isn't what a country with a national MMO obsession wants for gaming?

Even being as relatively small a market as they are, compared to the worldwide scope of things, the fact that in one extremely technology driven territory the Wii has failed to perform seems more significant than the attention it's received. Does anyone else think this is significant news? Or just a national quirk that we needn't take notice of?

Some games just stand out in my memory. They're not necessarily the good ones, or the ones I liked most or liked least. Sometimes they're not even games I played very much, but for whatever reason, they're lodged in my memory for good. Sometimes these games defy proper reviewing, because my experience of them was so subjective that I can't translate that into professional evaluation. So I'll do these nifty little features on them. Introducing, Games I Remember: part 1.

Speedy Gonzales: Los Gatos Bandidos

Everybody's favorite speed demon of a Mexican mouse (er, are there even any other candidates for favorite speedy Mexican mouse?) is going head to head with the 'Cat Bandits' in this Sonic clone from 1995. I didn't know this was a Sonic clone, considering we were a one console household, and everyone else I knew also had a SNES and not a Genesis. If I had known that Speedy's rapidly whirling appendages were just one step shy of plagarizing Sonic's visual look, I wouldn't have enjoyed it any less.

Speedy Gonzales is a fast placed platformer that relies on using the shape of the land and the various pitfalls and cliffs to launch Speedy into otherwise unreachable areas. Instead of collecting rings like Sonic's, our intrepid hero collects little gold wheels of swiss cheese which line his pathways suggestively outlining where the player is meant to go. His goal is to rescue the other mice who apparently are not as speedy, and therefore have been trapped by the evil Gatos Bandidos and hidden in fancy metal bird cages all across the levels.

The game has a distinct clean visual styIe that's characteristic of SNES platformers. The lines are very crisp, the colors are bright, and everything has a well finished look to it, that makes it enjoyable to play. The music is fairly run of the mill for low budget platformers, combining everything from the vague latin sound of the village of Sleepy Rock, to the futuristic techno buzz of Galactical Galaxies (redundancy not sold separately!) and the haunted Ancient Keep theme which sounds strangely like Bach's Fugue in D Minor. Apart from a few ear grating sound effects, like the jackhammers in Fiesta City, the elements of the game are polished enough not to detract from the game's real strengths: the platform puzzles.

Like in other speed based platformers, the levels are multi directional and multi tiered. By 1995 the days of running straight from left to right, bouncing on hostiles as you go, were over. It was the era of Super Mario World with its tricky level design and multiple exits. Unlike in the Mario cIassic, for Speedy Gonzales to access the secrets of his levels isn't a matter of clever door opening or switch pushing, but rather it's about strategically using the environment to propel your speedy self into new areas. Jumping in the right hole, bouncing off the right spring, and swinging from the right pole are far more important than buttons or switches. In some cases, switches are necessary, but they usually take the form of rotating signs that Speedy just runs past and sets spinning. These deactivate lasers, raise gates, and reverse the direction of moving platforms in other parts of the level, opening up new areas for exploration. When beginning a level you never know which direction you're going to need to go, whether it will primarily be vertical or whether you'll find yourself running right to left, you simply have to try the routes and see.

Speedy Gonzales: Los Gatos Bandidos is one of those games you have to beat in one sitting. You begin with three lives and three continues, and you end when you beat the game, or in my case, when you die repeatedly with only a few levels left. In the end, this is the reason that Speedy sticks out in my mind as one of the most memorable platformers of the SNES era. Because for the styIe of game it was, with no save points and no level codes, it was long and it was satisfying. While I can play through the game in its entirety now in two or three hours, then my less experienced fingers would spend an entire Saturday wrestling with the Bandidos, and only occasionally would I win. It was the challenge of it, the challenge derived from length, not sheer difficulty that made this game so rewarding for me, and what earns it its place in the list of games I remember.

Sorry guys. There's a gaming blog coming, I promise.

This is just a public service announcement. In the past days i have crossed off three of the things that have been sitting on my to do list for more than a month.

1) Pay phone bill. That's right, I hadn't paid my phone bill in quite some time. Now I have. I feel good about this accomplishment, despite the fact that it's due again in like ten days.

2) Finish Developer for a Day Entry. That has been on my physical to do list since the contest was announced, whenever that was, but it's been on my mental to do list for a lot longer than that. From pretty much the first day I drifted onto GameSpot, I've thought that was the neatest contest ever invented, but so far I haven't had any good ideas or have been internet free or caught up in work hassles when the contest has been going on. Fortunately for me, this time the timing was perfect, and I sent off a document last night. A few of you have heard some tidbits of what I was planning... even fewer of you may have read it. Keep your fingers crossed for me, if you would? That's the culmination of a lot of hard work. I don't think it's my best piece of writing ever, but I'm hoping it does the trick. Goal is top ten...

3) Finish Riven Review. Riven: the Sequel to Myst is one of my all time favorite games, by far surpassing its older sibling, Myst. There aren't too many reviews on GameSpot for the game, and I've always rather wanted to get it some of the credit it deserves. It was harder than I thought to review a game that old, which is why it sat on my to do list for over a month. Truth be told the first few paragraphs were written last summer... :( When I abandon something I usually don't come back to it.

There's a few things on my next month's to do list that might be relevant also

1) Reviewing Psychonauts. I've got a slightly less than popular viewpoint on that particular game that I'm planning to vent when I get an opportunity.

2) Redo the article about learning to like WRPGs to make it presentable for trigames.net. I like that article, somehow though it didn't come out quite how I envisioned it. Tidying is in order before making that public anywhere but here.

3) Move to Biddeford. It probably doesn't look that close to Boston to you guys, but if you scroll up a bit until you see Augusta, then realize I live an hour further northeast from there you'll realize what a huge step in the right direction this is. Civilization here I come! Oh god, I can't wait.

I have moved out of my old apartment, as of this afternoon. It just seemed like a good idea not to pay for two weeks rent when my parents don't mind keeping me for free. I don't have a lot of extra cash right now, so it was like getting money back almost.

So if you notice that I'm a little scarce, I've got a few things going on, and unfortunately all my game systems are packed right away for the next move at the beginning of the month. May is not going to be a big month for gaming.

I'll post pics of the new apt and the roomie as soon as I move in.

I'm feeling springy, and it's looking springy, and I have some pictures I want to share with you. :)

These are the first flowers I've seen so far this year...

So I took my dog out for a walk. Happy dog.

I went with the dog too.

See, here we are, both together.

Also, it was kinda bright and sunny. Makes you squint.

Anyway, those are the very few pictures from my spring expedition. I know I talk about my dog all the time, so there she is. Here, just as a bonus for being so very nice, I'll give you another picture of her.

Daltrey, 12lbs. soaking wet.

I never realized just how weird this thing actually was.

Pretty weird.

[Edit] Whoo! Paycheck is here! First one since February! Whoopee! *dances away into the sunset*

This crazy lady claims that Nintendogs and My Little Pony broke her children.

Having poked around a little, I've come to the conclusion that this particular publication is a bundle of rubbish, and that the author of the piece in question is crazy on other issues than just the DS, but this is still nuts.

Here's her DS package (or at least a very similar one)... I'm gonna go with not legal. I can't convert from pounds to dollars in my head, but I went ahead and looked it up and I'd be hard pressed to buy even half of those games and the console itself if I was doing it legit.

Well done, crazy lady. Maybe your kids are broken because their mom's a software pirate?

I have to buy a new pc. As anyone who IMs me or tries to play online with me knows, my pc freezes and crashes and generally acts like it's in the early stages of death. The current consensus is that the hard drive is going, and it does seem to be getting worse... so long and short, Sophina is buying a new PC.

Now, I don't know how to build my own, and I don't have a handy pc genius floating around who wants to build one for me. Furthermore, I've got a hoard of gift cards to Circuit City that I'm using to beef up my underwhelming financial prowess, so it's a prebuilt machine for me. Buying from an electronics store comes with the annoyance of not being able to customize... well, anything.

Can't customize your features, can't customize your software package, can't customize your OS.

I'm not ready to move to Vista. I still have Windows 95 games I want to install! But I don't have any choice in the matter, since my prebuilt PC will come with Vista preinstalled and I'll have to pay extra to get them to take it off, and paying any more than is strictly necessary is right out, so Vista it is.

The most obnoxious thing about Vista is the fact that you don't get a physical copy of the OS when you buy it. I don't want an activation code and a download for reinstalls. I want a hard copy I can keep in my desk drawer in preparation for the inevitable reformat I'm going to need in a year or so. I can order a hard copy separately if I want it, but MS will charge me 12.99 for it. 12.99, hardly an unreasonable price for a whole operating system... except that by that time I will have already purchased it.

This falls under the worst of copy protection and digital distribution tactics. You don't want to pay for things that are already included in your game? What about things that should have been included in your game? I don't want to have to buy my OS backup disc, something I'm almost guaranteed to need.

Bad enough that my current copy of XP is flagged as invalid just because I've reinstalled from it so many times. Bad enough that I have to call Microsoft and fight with their customer service to reinstall my own legitimate copy of their software to the same exact machine (is it their business how often I reinstall? I bought the license fair and square...). Now I'm going to have to do the same thing with a license I own only digitally and don't even have that hard copy to work with. So I'm entirely dependent on your goodwill as to whether or not I can reinstall at all. Unless I want to pay again for a hard copy. Sweet. Way to punish the honest user.