VGHS Post Production Update Spoilers

So Freddie Wong decided to give an update regarding "Video Game Highschool" a series that was funded by kickstarter and they decided to be mean and give spoilers lasting 2 frames throughout the video. With a bit of magic, I've been able to extract all the images. No, it wasn't by pressing play really quickly.

Oddly enough, it was supposed to work by pressing the numbers, but for me (and probably a few other people) it was just off by a fraction of a second. Not sure why, but I found my way was still much easier.

Hasty Thanksgiving's Resolution at 3 AM

*Lift this blog off the ground and get it running again.

There are too many things that are distracting, destroying, demoralizing, and depressing me that I need an outlet. Kendo works well but I need something else. I've been reading less, and it's significantly noticeable that my vocabulary and mastery of english grammar is beginning to deteriorate.

I enjoy writing and even if it is only for myself again, so be it. I must clear my head so I can focus better on the things that need focus.

I'M NOT DEAD YET

Just give me a little more time. Once finals/major projects are over and I'm through with this year's school work. I'll be able to post up some news. In the meantime, I gotta figure out how to get my old reader base back.... again....

In other news, for some odd reason, my PC seems to pick up something on the hacker radar for Neople so I have to play DNF on my laptop which means my stream is dead for a while. I've bought a video capture card to hopefully record my PS3.

NIS America licenses anime

If you haven't heard about this yet, here it is.

We announced yesterday that we will release Anime titles in the US in 2010!
We are very excited to announce our first 4 titles!

Here you go!

- Toradora!
- PERSONA - trinity soul-
- PandraHearts
- Our Home's Fox Deity

We will let you know more about the release dates and all other info soon!
Please looking forward to them!

Please see the press release for more details.
Press Release (JPG / PDF)

Toradora!

PERSONA -trinity soul-

PandraHearts

Our Home's Fox Deity

To be honest, I'm not sure how I feel about this. NIS america's more recent works with Ar Tonelico II and Cross Edge have left me caring less and less about the company. I like Ar Tonelico II as a game and really want to play Ar Tonelico III, but when you have a company that purposefully removes voices because their own voice actors couldn't fill roles, have spelling mistakes, and forget to even convert and translate some of the japanese text, it leaves me wondering.

Having read through some visual novels (not by NIS) I generally ignored spelling errors and the occasional grammatical WTF, but thinking back on it now, I can't do the same with NIS. They should have a large enough staff of beta testers and quality control that major bugs, and aesthetics shouldn't be there. They're making rookie mistakes and it's making me question their other work. Just look at the email they sent. Notice how it says "Pandra Hearts"? I didn't do that, that was a copy and paste. You can look for yourself assuming they didn't change it by the time this is posted.

Stuff like this shouldn't happen, and it worries me when they start licensing anime.
I'm not sure if you've seen the Disgaea 3 opening as subbed by NIS America. It's pretty bad. The translation is....different from what I'm hearing and the subtitles themselves are extremely loud and the type set is a bit large. I'm glad that they're licensing anime and getting more content into our market, but I'm a bit skeptical at the quality it will distributed.

Additional Features

I'm contemplating whether to add a streaming broadcast onto the blog. Mildly insignificant but it could show you guys what I'm up to and what anime I'm watching. It would also probably violate multiple copyright laws now that I think about it.
Regardless, just a random thought out there, just to show you guys i'm not simply lying around doing nothing. (Though most of the time I would be in school. A laptop will fix that.)

Just some random thoughts after looking at atk's blog.

This week's post should be amusing. It's something that will most likely end up being a work in progress due to the nature of the post though.

Happy New Year!

New Year's resolution:
Get back on schedule
Get back on schedule
Get back on schedule
Get back on schedule
Get back on schedule
Get back on schedule
Get back on schedule
Find other material to fill up space for lost schedule

Update!

I've got one more final to complete before I'm officially free. I've quit DFO for K Dnf. DnF has recently had a new update which allows players to get one free level 40 character (what to choose). I've finished watching Baccano! (and have an urge to review it), and any other free time is spent either studying or staring in awe at just how much more awesome the korean version is compared to the american version....

Playing Borderlands

Rather.... I started yesterday and I won't be able to post for a while again.....
Midterm japanese project + 10 page research paper + computer science project = absolute mayhem until thanksgiving break.

To top it all off, thanksgiving break is the first break my college has had in this school year. Sonova.....

Dear Zerreth, How was NYAF 2009?

NYAF was last week, and this week I was swamped with projects due, so I haven't had much time to post. Sorry.

NYAF this year also had the World Cyber Games (WCG) national finals, so the booth vendors and attendees were actually mixed. Samsung had a booth near WCG as well as Sega, and I think that by hosting WCG at NYAF, it attracted a somewhat bigger crowd than last year. There was no maid cafe this year unfortunately. Next year, Comic-con is co-hosting with NYAF on the same day and share the same space. My thoughts are mixed about that, but I'll dive into that later.


This year, ATK wanted to go to the artist's alley again. This time, however, he and a few of his new friends in college wanted an artist's alley table as well. Prices actually went up in the artist alley by about 30%, whereas booths took a lesser hit. So instead of buying a table at the artist's alley, he decided to buy a booth and share the space with others. He contacted a new found friend at last year's NYAF, RedShoulder, and I contacted one of my college friends, Neolight, who was majoring in animation. Adding one of ATK's college friends we had 4 artists all sharing work at the booth.

Around August, ATK had to think of a name for the booth, so I proposed "Medley" as it was a group of artists with different styles and mediums all sharing work.


The first day (Friday) was relatively slow (as expected). All of us were all over the place trying to determine a better layout for the booth, we eventually ended up with a S shape with 3 tables. The table at the front would display all of our work while the tables to the side and back made an opening for others to enter the booth and allow attendees to extensively look at the artwork of each artist.


We had some support the second day. TheGunrun and his friend brought over some electronic equipment for us to try and advertise the booth better. At first we decided to have a small space dedicated to DJMax Trilogy so that we could try and hook some people in, but what ended up happening was that we were drawing a crowd of the wrong demographic, mainly those of the "join crowd because there's a crowd and leave once point of interest is now boring" group. It ended up distracting any onlookers from looking at the work, so we switched it to a stream of Neolight working on his animation on his tablet, and ATK's speed paints. For the later half of that day, I had to set up a playlist with my Zen as TheGunrun's PC on shuffle didn't really give us the music we needed.


The third day, we switched the setup so that there was only a monitor of DJMax playing and those interested would have to walk into booth to try. This shifted the crowd over to one side and freed up the front table so that it displayed everyone's artwork better.


I didn't track everyone's sales but I believe everyone at least once had a major sale one of the days. What surprised me the most at the convention was this one person who took a liking to ATK's Vocaloid crayon fanart (They're originally on this 17" X 22" paper) and bought them each for $50. We weren't intending to sell them, simply to display them to attract customers but who knew someone would take such a liking to it?

I feel that ATK and I should've also ordered DJMax Trilogy in bulk or something. The number of DJMax fans as well as those interested in buying the game was enormous. If only I linked them to this blog first, I could've probably gotten some commission from Play-asia...


I gotta say though. I was dead tired on Monday. I almost fell asleep in class and my performance in Kendo was atrocious. Regardless, this year was a good experience as well. Maintaining a booth and setting up a table at the Artist's Alley were on whole different levels.

I'm not sure what ATK should do next year though. Because NYAF is co-hosting with Comic-con, there's gonna be a larger number of attendees that will probably head on over to the artist's alley. At the same time, there's also going to be significantly more attendees. The closest thing to Comiket that we have here in the States is probably Otakon but nothing really focused on the artists. Hopefully, we'll get something like that soon.

NYAF 2009

Tomarrow is NYAF, and once again ATK and I will be there presenting artwork. This time, we'll be at Booth 131 along with 3 other artists who all do independent work. Aptly referred to as "Medley" we intend to try to make this bigger and hope to have more artists collaborate next year.

The Artist's Alley is fairly out of the way and cluttered which was a slight problem. In addition, prices increased and ATK decided to take advantage of this by buying a booth and sharing it among other exhibitors. Not only would this cut costs, but it also gives us prime space and more potential attention. Be sure to drop by.

Government spending is too much....

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8252939.stm


First off. I JUST realized today was Saturday. ooooh boy. Second, I have an RSS feed to BBC and this happened to be the latest headline.
After reading the article, I'm a bit vexed at the situation. From what I understand, Obama's being criticized for spending too much money. I'm a bit troubled considering that this is coming from conservatives and from a certain president who likes guns.


I understand that Obama HAS spent quite a lot of money for a lot of stuff, and he's most likely going to spend even more. Considering the rate that he's spending and ASSUMING he continues this rate, somehow recovering from that is going to get hairy and most likely result in higher taxes, which by the way is a necessary evil.

A certain John Maynard Keynes created a macroeconomic theory that mostly involved deficit spending. It worked because the spending helped stimulate the economy. That spending was for jobs such as bridges. Because people got jobs, they then spent money, and that spending helped other companies and so forth.

Currently that's what Obama is doing. I'm not saying that we're going to revive immediately, nor am I saying that this kind of spending is a great idea. Certain criticisms on what he spend the money on, somewhat bother me.


In particular, GM. In general, Conservatives' policies with the government and economic involvement is to stay out of it. If the government doesn't do anything the economy will work itself out. This is capitalism, where bad companies are supposed to fall and companies with good policies thrive. At least.... they're supposed to do that. Apparently, when companies are doing well, they complain to the government to butt out of their business. When their policies fail and companies have to start using the red ink, they complain that the government isn't doing enough to support them. And if the government doesn't support them, they threaten the country with unemployment and argue that it's not the workers fault that they entered a falling company, THUS the government should help the company.... Of course bonuses are basically unchanged.... I think that's being spoiled.

To then criticise the government for them bailing out certain US based auto companies for their poor standards on vehicles really annoys me.


Then there's a certain shrub who was elected nine years ago who decided to have fun with the middle east. This person, (let's just say "bush") retaliated against Afghanistan and left immediately saying that it's not the U.S's job to "nation build," a term that involve the in US spending billions of dollars smothering another country and then rebuilding its infrastructure which would (is supposed to) result in a more stable country.

(Funny enough, because we left so quickly, we have to go BACK to Afghanistan.)

Of course this shrub then decided to attack Iraf and guess what.... more or less attempt to nation build Iraq and ruin a certain Powell's chances for presidency. War is bad in almost all regards. Economies spend vast amounts of money and often result in many issues later on. Things that benefit from it: Population control, military companies, and fuel suppliers.



This is what we call a double standard. And it's even worse since Bush isn't that far behind. Your hindsight doesn't need to be 20/20 to see the mistakes. You LIVED through them.


By the way. During World War II, the upper echelon of the income bracket was taxed heavily to try and reduce the debt that war builds. Taxes were cut when we went to Iraq.

I'm not gonna shed a tear for everything Obama does, and if this does continue, we're going to be in a bigger problem. At the same time, I don't stand for hypocrisy.

Explanation

I need to apologize for the last three weeks. I'm fully aware that I haven't posted within that time frame, and I'm sorry. These last three weeks I've been busy each day with finals, essays and job hunting. I understand that as a blogger I need to also have this blog as a priority and I haven't been fair to you guys at all (To be honest, even the priority that I set for playing my games and watching anime is a bit off).

I won't ask you to simply forget that this didn't happen. That would be irresponsible of me. I also won't ask you to give me a another chance. I've asked that too many times, and so I'm fully aware that I've lost your trust. I'm sorry.

If Only....

I noticed that my Exteel review was considerably longer than usual, so out of boredom I decided to copy and paste it onto a word document and set to double space. From start to finish it covers almost exactly 8 pages including the additional spaces. Considering the time it took me to write that much I'm kinda annoyed at myself.

If only I took 45 minutes to about an hour and a half (I honestly don't know how much time it takes for me to write a post) for my term papers and came up with the same result, I'd have nothing to worry about. *moderate irritation face*

College overload

I need to apologize for these last two weeks. My classes end this week and finals begin next week, so all my teachers thought it would be a good idea to stack every conceivable project due date at some point this week, which is why I haven't posted anything last Saturday, nor will I, this Saturday.

I had a good review too and it's been formulating in my head the problem is, I simply don't have the time as of yet to sit down write it out and edit it. So, as a blogger to his readers, could you give me a little more time?

Poor Planning

There isn't going to be a post this Saturday. I'm heading off to a Kendo tournament (actually one of the biggest in the country) today and it's going to last the entire weekend. I tried waking up early today, but i messed that up as sleeping late tends to equal waking late.

Sorry for the delay guys.

I am Jack's brain stalling....

For lack of a better word. I'm procrastinating an essay due tomorrow. I have the materials and I should probably finish it ASAP, buuuuuuuuut.... I'm probably gonna end up writing it at some point past midnight swearing to myself and wondering how I ever became like this.

In other news, I'm prepping material for the site that will absorb this blog.... sorta. I've been given a date (not set in stone yet) as well as a rush order (woohoo) which results in me:
A. Panicking
B. Pulling stuff out of my ass (would continue metaphor but feels like I could take in a direction that would be SO wrong)
C. Scrolling through the memory banks of my brain to see if there was anything worth while mentioning.
D. All of the above and more.


To be honest, with the anime industry slowing down, and me possessing what I can officially (to be read as "probably/most likely") say to be a dead system (referring to PS2), I'm left with DS games, PC games, Wii games (currently playing Fire Emblem: Radient Dawn) and uh.....PS2 games..... from a console that would ask you to resist the urge to carbon date it.

So is the life of a dying reviewer.... not.
There's no way in hell I'd lose my motivation due to this small gap. So in the news now: Clannad ~Tomoyo After available for the PSP!











































....
































Head ---to---> Keyboard.

Half a semester gone, a week and a half of reprieve.... Thank god

I've finished my final Mid-term and with no more classes tomorrow, I can finally relax.

What does this mean? For the next week and a half or so, I'm either going to be asleep, watching anime, working, or trying out new games. Since it's Spring Break for me now, I'll post more frequently for the next week and a half.






And now for New York Anime News.




http://www.mediumatlarge.net/2009/03/anime-day-at-kinokuniya.html

Kinokuniya, a pretty famous (and expensive) japanese bookstore is collaborating with a bunch of companies to host Anime Day this Sunday. I know it's very sudden, but I only received word of this recently. I haven't decided whether I'll be going or not, but it looks interesting and a fun way to spend a Sunday.

You can do that with crayon?

As his editor and his friend, I keep tabs on ATK's work (especially even more so with the hell I had to go through organizing the minimal amount of recent art into a workable art book for NYAF '08). He recently sent me this image taken with what I presume to be a digital camera (you can see the flash on the bottom right, click image for full size).

According to him he drew it all in Crayola crayons.....
I'm not going to say something ignorant like, "crayons are the MS paint of non-digital art" but they're not necessarily easy. They much harder than colored pencils that's for sure. Since it's supposed to be a light, casual sketch, it's missing his watermark and signature (which I'll probably add on later).

Crayons are abysmally hard in my opinion. They make shading quite easy (although rubbing is much easier with charcoal or colored pencils) and who knows how much crayon you lose from simply sharpening the point for details. It's also not a very "clean" process in my opinion, tearing wrappers off, shaving the point, and dealing with small clumps of wax as you draw kinda frustrate me.

I gotta say though, lots of props to him for drawing this. I'm sure it's obvious, but the main thing that seems to stick out are the eyes. Rather, the clean gradient/highlights on them.

Character design wise, it could be better. It's an improvement from before, and he's finally getting back to his old self but it's nice.

I still await the day he returns to getting art like this up.


(Drawn June 20th, 2007)


P.S. If I can get drawings from him periodically, I might be able to use the Second Opinion to advertise for him. He seems to have stopped updating on DA and naver anyway......

Poor Planning

After deciding to see a protest at my college, when I came back home it was 4 in the morning. Somehow I was able to lie to myself about being able to wake up early before getting on the bus for my ski trip. I woke up early, but there wasn't enough time to write a review. Sorry guys. You're going to have to wait until late Sunday or later (Monday, I have a mid-term exam already).







Random note: I just bought DJ Max Trilogy, the DJ Max game for the PC. If you're a big fan of step mania, I HIGHLY recommend this product.

New stuff coming soon!

I'm currently looking up new content. It's not that I haven't run out of material (I know I said this before), but I'm trying to look for some more recent stuff and getting you reviews as fast as possible. I've just been recommended a bunch of stuff that I have to overview and as for games, it's starting to sag. Rather, I'm gonna be more focused on PC games from here on (budget's getting kinda tight). Finishing them ASAP and getting reviews in is important but so is my school work. Anyways, as of now I'm setting up a plan for the next month or so.

My main issue with finding PC games is that a lot of MMOs are point and clicks. Sorry but, I grinded that all away in my Ragnarok Online days. I'm looking for something with a bit more....variety. Graphics matter a bit, but if it's still a point and click, I now have a distaste for it.

As for anime, I'd love to take recommendations. I know all of you want some recent stuff and I can't be going over old stuff constantly, so write a comment with a recommendation or email me. It's there for you.