Slime Keychains & Civ IV

I recently received some cool promotional items for the upcoming RPG, Dragon Quest VIII. As we all know, the slime creature has been the unofficial mascot for Enix and Dragon Quest for many years. Along with getting the DQVIII demo for free, I got two slime keychains. Pretty cool huh? Funny thing... I've never finished a Dragon Quest game. I still want to get around to playing DQ7 though. All I need is roughly 100 free hours to do so.




I've spent the good part of this week trying to get my hands on the Civilization IV Collector's Edition. You're only supposed to get it by preordering it. After being told by the local EB and GameStop that I should have preordered it, I was hoping that I'd be able to grab one from Fry's. After 4 delayed shipments, Fry's got them in on Friday afternoon (first told me Wed. morning, then Thurs. afternoon, then Fri. morning). So after being informed by a good friend that Fry's actually got their shipment, I went straight to buy it after work. How is the game? So far, I'm enjoying it a lot. More so than Civ 3. I'm not so impressed with how little effort went into customer quality control for the packaging and hardware compatibility. The game's two discs are mislabeled - disc two is labeled as the play disc when it's actually disc one. I've read reports that Civ IV doesn't work on certain ATi video cards. I guess I'm lucky - no problems so far with my Radeon 9700PRO. Let's hope it stays that way.

Level 60!!!

Hooray! My priest just reached level 60!

GameBoy Micro and its Awesome Packaging

I recently bought yet another GameBoy to add to my collection. Yeah, I don't need one but so far I have nearly every GameBoy model designed (I'm only missing the GameBoy Pocket). Was the GBm worth buying? I'd have to say yes. The screen is freaking awesome - it's crisp and bright. None of that motion blurr that occurs on the PSP and to a certain extent on the GBA SP. Sure the screen is small, but text is amazingly easy to read. While I previously used my NintendoDS to play GBA games, I'm going to switch to the GBm purely because of how light the unit is and how nice the screen is.

The GBm also supports faceplate changing. I doubt that I'd be willing to shell out more money to make my unit unique. I'd only be interested in the upcoming Final Fantasy themed faceplates that Square-Enix will be releasing for promotional purposes to coincide with FF4 Advance. Let's hope they release those here in the U.S.

I'd also like to comment on Nintendo's awesome use of packaging (at least for the GBm Famicom edition). The GBm I bought is the version that celebrates Mario's 20th anniversary. As you can see, the entire box is designed around the dungeons of Super Mario Bros. It's very nostalgic and very cool looking, to say the least. I wish companies in America took the time to design stuff like this. Instead, we get some crappy iPod wanna-be box design. =(

I also admire the compact design of the box. Not so wasteful with space.




Below, you can see the face of the unit as well as the back. Note how small the GBm is relative to the GBA cartridges it plays. Freakishly tiny.



While importing the GBm was't cheap, I'm very happy with it. I have a GBm that is unique to most U.S. GBm owners and I get a nice retro feeling GBA unit. Here are some more pictures that illustrate how small the GBm is when compared to other handhelds and everyday items. For a quick example, the GBm unit can fit within the boundaries of the PSP's screen!

If you have any picture requests concerning the GBm's size, feel free to suggest it.

Happy Mario 20th!

NDS E3 2005 demos

Here is something real cool. You can download these NDS demos that were available via WiFi at this year's E3 and send them to your DS at home. I really want to see that Zelda trailer they have up.

Decisions, Decisions....

There's a lot of deciding for me to do. Shall I continue my career at EA? Or should I try for a smaller game company? Perhaps leave the game industry for a while and pursue a career at Google? As of right now, I'm leaning more towards Google. Of course, any permanent job is a good one at this time. Working at EA, I've found that I'm enjoying the games that I buy less - I'm finding that I'm still doing work related stuff at home. That's not fun at all. And while I understood that working in the game industry would cause me to enjoy the games less, I never thought it'd make me this unsatisfied to play. I do still want a career in the game industry. It's just that maybe I need some time away so that I can regenerate my game ideas, designs, as well as my fun factor. Where ever I wind up working, I'm going to make sure I work my hardest. Not to impress others, but to impress myself.