Final Score:

Power Line: 50,0000
Man: 0

Some of you have already noticed this, so I might as well make it clear to everyone. I'm no longer a GS moderator. The reason behind this is that I simply haven't been able to put the time or energy into performing my moderation duties for a while now, and not seeing this changing any time soon, I voluntarily agreed with the GS staff to turn in my mod badge. I may take up the calling again, as a door has been left open for me, but that probably won't be for quite a while.

I have a lot to talk about, so let's try the cateogorization approach that all the cool kids are using these days:

Game Testing:

Although I'm still working at Nintendo as an associate game tester, I'm no longer testing games in the general sense. A few weeks ago, I was assigned to work in the text department, and so my duties now mainly consist of copy editing game text. So far, it's not bad, but with the onslaught of holiday season games yet to come, my workload may soon see a huge increase.

Geist:

Ever since I bought this game, I've found it to be a very fun game that appears to be going underappreciated in the Gamespot community. Maybe it's a combination of the abnormally high expectations people carry for Nintendo's games combined with heavy cyncism for the concept, but for whatever reason, I don't think that Geist is getting the fairest of shakes. Time will tell how the gaming community at large will judge it, but as long as I find it enjoyable, there's no reason for me to be frustrated by the opinions of others.

Record of Lodoss War:

I finally picked up the four-DVD set of the Record of Lodoss War TV series a couple of weeks ago (originally released on disc years ago) and got around to watching the final disc last night. In terms of storyline, it's a simple but elegant fantasy, and to my understanding, it follows the original source material much more closely than the OAV series of the early 1990s. However, it does have its faults, mainly in that it condenses many events into sidenotes that can blindside the viewer. At several points, I wished that the show would slow down for a moment and explain some of the background details that it asked us to accept without question.

In that sense, while the TV series is still certainly entertaining to watch, it's neither better nor worse than the original OAV (although the short omake segments that tag along at the end of each episode are absolutely hysterical). Also, since the TV series is actually a sequel/remake of the OAV storyline (picking up at OAV episode 8 and ignoring the events of 9-13), both series are required viewing in order to get the full experience.

Purple & Gold:

Go Huskies!

Yesterday was the final day of work on the project, as it was sent in to Japan and officially given approval early this morning. Today, I'm enjoying a leisurely day off and preparing to return to Nintendo on Monday to start on the next project.

Although I can't say anything specific about it, I can definitely say that this project was the best one I've ever worked on, and considering that it was also the longest project I've been a part of (at close to two months), that's definitely a good thing. On another note, and something that I find particularly encouraging, about an hour before the usual "This project is being sent for approval" team meeting, I was called in to speak with Rich Richardson, the testing department lead. He had some very good things to say, indicating that my work on this project has caught the eyes of some people in the office, and that this may result in further, more stable work in the relatively near future.

By more stable, I don't mean that I'd be a permanent hire. I don't want to get my hopes up, but this project may have put me in a position where becoming an offiicial Nintendo employee may be a little more than a mere pipe dream. Once the project is released, I'll tell you more about my role on it.

I picked up Custom Robo for the Gamecube on Friday, and it's pretty much all I've done this weekend. I've played through the entire single-player A New Journey storyline, and have cut a good swath out of The Grand Battle tournament mode, to boot. I recall that Gamespot didn't give this game a particularly great score (somewhere in the mid-six range), but for the amount I paid, it's been very fun, and a nice cool down from my RPG overdose as of late. Despite the fact that the single-player storyline is really only a way to teach the player game mechanics and strategies, there's a bit of depth to the plot that's roughly equivalent to an Angelic Layer / G Gundam amalgamation. Not pariticularly original, but it has some hilarious moments.

Naturally, by playing through the single-player game, I've already unlocked a large number of parts for use in the Arcade and Vs. modes, which I've spent very little time in thus far. I doubt that I'll get much use out of the game's multiplayer features, but on the rare occasions when I have two or three people visiting my tiny apartment, it might be a nice change of pace from SSMB. The robo combat is very simple to pick up and very arcade-like, and the level of customization that the various parts provide (once they've been unlocked, of course) is surprisingly deep. There's no real set combination of invincible parts, at least as far as I know, and the variety of bodies, guns, bombs, pods and legs mean that four people can play however they like and never be forced to use identical setups.

Even the credits are pretty amusing, as they hold a playable minigame much like SSBM. In it, you control a custom robo from a first person view and battle an opponent. After beating story mode I even unlocked a first person view mode in the option menu, but I haven't bothered trying it out yet.

I imagine that it won't be too long before I switch Custom Robo out for another game, but it's been fun, and I'm liking it enough that I'll probably pop it back in from time to time to wind down on stressful days. If you're looking for an older Gamecube game to fill a gap in your library, you might give this game a try.

The current project I'm on at Nintendo should be coming to an end within the next couple of weeks, give or take. The coordinator leading our project is also commanding something else, and I imagine that I may be transferred over to it once the current one is officially considered done.

As a sidenote, I've decided on a D4AD project to work on: Ardenian Saga II: Ophelia's Death Cry. It will be a sequel to my DFAD2 project, and while my design document for Ardenian Saga: Everlasting Winter made it all the way to the finals, I have hopes that this new one will do even better.

There are times when game testing can be an excruciating, disappointing process. It's not uncommon for a tester to spend the better part of a day or days researching the cause of a bug, recording video of its occurence and writing up step-by-step instructions on how the bug is triggered, only to have the developer stamp "No Bug" at the top of the report. Depending on what sort of issue it is and the stage of a game's development, the frequency of this sort of occurance is variable, but when a tester expends a large amount of energy on researching a bug only to have another party label it a non-issue, it can really sting.

That's why I like days like yesterday. A large amount of work was put in by members of my team to root out issues that are impossible to ignore. There's nothing quite like the feeling of having the developer right where you want them.

Out of idle curiosity, I was wondering whether some of you out there in the land of the rising intarweb would be more interested in seeing a brand new idea from me (of which I have a couple) or a fully-fleshed version of my cancelled DFAD3 project. This won't really have anything to do with my final decision one way or the other, but I never really did get much feedback on The Stars in the Sky (summarized in this old entry). Currently, my other ideas include a follow-up to my DFAD2 entry and a horror title that's been bouncing around in my head since the REmake hit my Gamecube.

As part of this holiday weekend's festivities, some friends of mine and I visited the Science Fiction Museum and Hall of Fame. This is a relatively new facility located at Seattle Center (home of the Space Needle, the Experience Music Project and other tourist attractions). It's also well worth visiting if you have any interest in the genre whatsoever.

The museum isn't huge, but it's fair-sized, and it's home to an incredible array of exhibits that are all related to the history and nature of all things Sci-Fi. Some of the more notable items on display include:

• Costumes from various movies and TV shows, including Charleton Heston's astronaut uniform from Planet of the Apes, the Batman and Robin costumes from the 1960s TV series, one of Cat's gaudy outfits from Red Dwarf, Michael York's costume from Logan's Run, several costumes from Babylon 5, Sean Young's dress from Blade Runner, and several costumes from the original Star Trek (among others).
• First and second edition novels of various classic works, including War of the Worlds, Dune, Ringworld and too many others to count.
• Weapons ranging from phasers from every Star Trek show to a crossbow used in Barbarella.
• An interactive wall-screen video display featuring starships from numerous film and television works.
• Another (less grandiose) interactive display featuring biographies on science fiction authors dating back to Mary Shelley.
• A small section on Japanese mecha and giant robots featuring scale models of various robots from the Gundam universe.
• A timeline display comparing notable historical moments in science fact and fiction with other world events datiing back to 3000 B.C.

If you're ever in Seattle and feel like blowing a couple of hours, the Science Fiction Museum is a great way to spend them. I highly recommend it.

I'm currently on my fourth project at Nintendo as a product tester. The third project ended at the end of May, and I was tossed onto a new one immediately thereafter. After working on this new project about a month, I can say that it's easily the best project I've been on yet. I'll easily be recommending this one to everyone even remotely interested in its genre when its released.

As much as I'd love to delve into some of the madder and more entertaining aspects of the job, I unfortunately can't elaborate on any of the recent goings on because most of them relate directly to products that are still in the development or pre-release stage. However, I can say this much: My current project is one of the more complex ones to which I've been assigned. While things haven't been excruciatingly difficult, the workload has become more complex and jumbled due to the fact that about half of the project's team was transferred to a new project that just started. The fact that this new project is also being headed by the coordinator of my project doesn't make things any easier.

And now, Testing Pet Peeve #1: There's nothing more irritating than submitting a bug report, having it rejected as not being a bug, and then seeing said not-a-bug has been fixed three versions later.