News & Updates in June 2002
- Saturday, June 29, 2002
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Added the profile of Brad Hunter (Zoids New Century Zero).
- Thursday, June 27, 2002
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No anime updates, just thought I'd talk about what's been going on since I didn't mention anything on the two previous updates. We borrowed Orange County last week, which was hilarious. It seemed like a very short movie, as we didn't want it to end. Over the weekend we saw Black Hawk Down, which was awesome. It was almost non-stop, extremely realistic action. Yesterday we tried watching Pootie-Tang, which we recorded off of a movie channel. That lasted for just under five minutes, so then we popped Heist in the DVD player. This wasn't a bad movie, just a slow movie. Tonight we watched Spiders, which was entertaining. Bad effects and some weak acting, but isn't that the whole point?
- Monday, June 24, 2002:
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Added the profile of Z.O.E. 2167 Idolo.
- Saturday, June 22, 2002
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Added the profile of Patlabor the Mobile Police. Added pictures for Dekunobu, Genshyu, Onimaro (all from Twin Dolls / Twin Angels), and Kimiko Ayanokouji (from Debutante Detective Corps).
- Wednesday, June 19, 2002
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Added the profile of Yolei Inoue (from Digimon).
- Tuesday, June 18, 2002
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Added the profiles of Lost Universe and Dangaioh Hyper Combat Unit. Updated Vega Obscura (Zoids).
I haven't really mentioned anything about what I've been doing at work lately, although it's not like there's anything exciting goin' on. I've been working on Growlanser II, and added a few features here and there. The game was lacking a time played counter, so I added that. Previously, it only had the date and time that the game was saved, so there was no way to tell how much time was put into it. I also added a feature that allows the cursor to jump from point to point on the map. This makes it a lot easier to get where you're going on the overhead map, as the standard cursor method would constantly overshoot the desired destination. I added a few other minor things, but I can't think of what they are at the moment.
- Monday, June 17, 2002
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Added the profiles of Blue Submarine No. 6 and Maze: Mega Burst Space.
Last night my wife and I watched Corkey Romano and Enemy at the Gates. Corkey Romano had some chuckles, but is more of a catch-it-on-HBO type movie. I enjoyed Enemy at the Gates, although felt it was a bit too long. There were definitely some scenes that could have been cut out to make the movie shorter. Still, it had a good story, some good action sequences, and I liked the characters.
- Saturday, June 15, 2002
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Added the profiles of Samurai X, Kaoru Kamiya, Kenshin Himura, Sanosuke Sagara, and Yahiko Myojin. There has been some more updates to Our Pacesetter Nightmare Experience, and this week I registered the PacesetterSucks.com domain. All of our Pacesetter complaints are now located there, although I will still be keeping a mirror copy of our Pacesetter site at www.absoluteanime.com/pacesetter/, where it can already be found on most search engines.
This week we watched Along Came A Spider, If Lucy Fell, and UHF. Along Came A Spider didn't really captivate me, and it really just seemed like there was no real motivation to it. If Lucy Fell wasn't bad... for a romantic comedy. It was vaguely entertaining, with a few legitimate laughs. UHF, one of my favorite comedies, we watched with the commentary (mainly by Al). This was disappointing, as a lot of it was boring and the way he kept announcing the address each set in what seemed like every shot just got plain annoying. There were some jokes, some amusing anecdotes, and some cast members who made audio appearances, but overall hearing it once was enough for me.
Now for some things I forgot to mention our trip to E3 Expo. First off, Stephanie M. Komure, who was our graphic designer during the Arc the Lad Collection project, dropped by the booth. Although she had left the company not too long ago to pursue a career in anime, it was still great to see her again. I also saw Justin, who also used to work for us a while back, but who left under not-so-good conditions. He was completely upbeat and seemed to enjoy working at Enix (who is making Robot Alchemic Drive which I am really looking forward to). I didn't see Tim Trzepacz (our ex-programmer) or Zach Meston (our ex-writer) at all, although others saw Zach so I know he was there. While looking around the other hall, Victor and I ran into Matt who also used to work for us, although that was before my time so I didn't know him.
While walking around the floor by myself, I saw Gary Coleman being interviewed in one of the walkways behind the booths. I saw Adam Sessler preparing to show a segment for Extended Play. There was also Mr. T, some pro wrestlers, and some famous skateboarders. Back at our booth, I got to talk with a few Working Designs fans, including a couple whom I met and talked with last year (one of whom, Robin, is expected to start working for us shortly).
During the show, we were giving away free inflatable Growlanser swords to anyone willing to wait in line and play the free crane game. The line went around one entire side of our booth which was there for just about the entire show, so for the people who didn't want to wait we would offer them the opportunity go get a free sword by trading us booty they had gotten around the show. We got a lot of crap this way. On the last day of the show, about a half hour before it was time to close down, is when the trading frenzy really took off. We had a crowd of people surrounding us trying to trade anything and everything (including business cards and a deck of playing cards that we were handing out for free) for a sword. We got shirts, hats, pins, magazines, pendants, candy, cards, sunglasses, and a load of other crap, but by far the most unusual things offered to me were tampons and free lap dance passes.
- Saturday, June 8, 2002
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Added the profiles of Vega Obscura (Zoids New Century Zero), Gan-chan (Adventures of the Mini Goddess), Heller (Ultraman II), and Anavel Gato (Gundam 0083).
My wife and I went to see Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones on Monday, and it was pretty good. There was this one scene where Anakin was trying to ride a creature while standing that really should have been cut out because it looked SOOOOO fake. Still, overall it was much better than Episode I with a lot more action and a more involved story with a sense of purpose. On Thursday night we watched Moulin Rouge, which was pretty good, especially for a musical, which I usually don't like. The day before that we saw Three To Tango, which sounded like a romantic movie so we put it off until we had nothing else to watch. We were surprised, as it actually turned out to be pretty funny.
At work, I'm still pounding away at Growlanser II. As of last night, we seem to have a version that works well with both English and Japanese text intermixed. There doesn't seem to be any more crashes or bugs, and just about all the menus are now in English.
- Saturday, June 1, 2002
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Updated our Pacesetter Horror Story, but sorry to say there are no anime updates yet. I've got a few I need to do, and hope to get to them soon, but first I wanted to fill you all in on what's been going on.
Shortly after the last update we received a hard drive with everything we needed to build Growlanser II and III... mostly. It did look like everything was there and we were told that they had actually built the game on that hard drive, but I soon discovered that in order to build the source code, we required a development program called CodeWarrior. So we ordered that, and when it arrived a couple days later I installed it and tried to build the source code. It didn't work. It wouldn't even try to compile. So I check out the help and readme files, and discover that I need to register the product via e-mail in order to receive codes that will let the program work. Okay, so I sent off my registration info and went home. With the E3 Expo coming up soon and none of our new projects up and running, it felt like it was going to be a very long couple of weeks. Luckily, the next day the codes were waiting in my inbox and I was actually able to finally get started on Growlanser II.
On the morning of May 10, Treeses and I celebrated my 27th birthday by opening my presents in the family room. From my parents, I received a dragon wind chime and a box of Pirate's Booty, which is some kind of snack. Treeses got me The Transformers DVD box set, the newly released Highlander DVD, Grand Theft Auto III (for PS2), Star Wars Jedi Starfighter (for PS2), and The Simpsons Monopoly (which didn't arrive until a few days later). We would have liked to do more, like perhaps go out to see a movie, but unfortunately I still had to work that day. Still, it was a nice little break.
The day before we were to leave for L.A., I was at work until six in the morning trying to get the latest changes into the game. Personally, I wanted to reserve that entire day just for testing so I could fix any problems that showed up, but unfortunately that didn't happen. Right before I left work, I started burning a disc so it could be tested the next morning (or technically, later that morning). And what happened when Don came in and tested it? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. It wouldn't boot. So they called me in, and we all (Victor, Don, Don's wife Heather, Kelly, and I) ended up staying there until about 8:00 PM (the plan was originally to leave around 4:00 or 5:00) until we had a disc that worked. And that disc didn't even work well, as it would constantly lock up at certain points in dialog. Anyway, we had a long drive ahead of us, so we just called it good enough and took off for L.A.
The drive down was not very exciting, but thankfully Victor brought along his portable PlayStation and his laptop with DVD player. In the extremely uncomfortable back seats, I started out playing Incredible Crisis, which turned out to be quite a fun game. Then Victor and I started watching What's the Worst That Can Happen? starring Martin Lawrence and Danny DeVito. Now that was a stupid movie. The battery in the laptop went out towards the end of the movie, and although we had a backup, neither of us really wanted to continue watching that boring piece of crap. About half way through the trip, Victor and I moved to the front seats. While Victor drove, I tried playing Incredible Crisis some more. Once I got to the part that required some quick thinking mathematics, I switched games to the Legend of Dragoon. I continued on this game for just about the rest of the trip.
We finally arrived at our hotel early in the morning. A call from Kelly to the hotel earlier during our trip informed them that we would be arrived very late and confirmed that they would not give away our rooms. At the front desk we learn... surprise, surprise... they gave away our rooms. They had one room available, so Don and his wife took that while the clerk tried calling every hotel on his list to find available rooms Victor, Kelly, and I. The very last hotel on the list had two rooms available, but one of those was a double so it all worked out. I think we actually got to bed around 7:00 AM, and then took off around 1:00 PM.
The next day was the start of the three day show. The first morning I had to be "Colin" because Victor had my name tag with him and he hadn't arrived yet. For the first two days, I walked around until about 1:00 AM, one hall per day, then came back and helped out at the booth where I spent the entire third day. So what are the must have games?
Must Have Games!
- PlayStation 2.... Contra, Kindom Hearts, Robot Alchemic Drive (RAD)
- Gamecube......... Resident Evil 0, Metroid Prime
- X-Box............ Nothing! Absolutly nothing!
- Gameboy Advance.. Nothing new here, just Super Nintendo re-makesContra is an excellent example of how remakes and sequels should be done. It looks beautiful, set in a gorgeous 3D environment, yet it keeps the same feel and game play as the original game. Robot Alchemic Drive is a unique game that lets you control either a person or a jet that can transform into a robot. When controlling the robot, each arm and leg is controlled separately using the shoulder buttons and analog sticks. This adds a completely new dimension to game play. Kingdom Hearts is an action RPG that has a supporting cast of many Disney characters, with well done voice acting, animation, and camera angles. Resident Evil 0 is still Resident Evil, which the same crappy control, but the environments in the Gamecube version is simply amazing. The Legend of Zelda, although visually seems like it was made for little kids, still looks like it could be an enjoyable game. This is the only game on my list that I didn't actually get to play.
After the show on the third day, Victor, Don, Heather, Kelly, Chris, and I went to Six Flags Magic Mountain. Using fast-lane passes, we went on Goliath first, and second, then on to the extremely rough-riding Viper which made all of our shoulders sore, next was the extremely wussy Superman the Escape, and finally X. While waiting in line for X, which took about two hours due to them running only one car which broke down at least twice, we were thirsty, our feet hurt, and it was cold and windy. Plus, I think we were all a bit apprehensive about that initial face first 90 degree drop. However, once we actually got on the ride and headed into the first drop, all fear turned to exhilaration. That was the coolest ride I've ever been on, and can't wait to ride it again. By the time it was over, it was almost midnight. No time to shop tonight.
Victor, Kelly, and I went back the next morning just to do some shopping. No rides... well okay, maybe just one. Most of the stores didn't open until noon, and there was no line at Freefall, so we went ahead and did that once. Then we went on to shopping. The first thing I got for Treeses was a caricature of myself, which turned out pretty hilarious. The other thing I got for here was a HUGE Goliath mug. Anyway, soon after it was time to head back home, so we went back to the hotel, threw all our stuff in the van, and off we went.
For the first couple hours of our journey, the traffic was terrible, and not just because of the holiday weekend. The first cause we discovered was a fire burning along the side of the road. The second cause... a dead person laying along the side of the road, wrapped in bright yellow plastic with one foot hanging out. But after that it was pretty much smooth sailing the rest of the way. We stopped at a couple of Travel Advantages, and at the Arden Fair Mall for some Steak Escape... oh yeah, and Krispy Kreme... but they weren't hot so we just got a box to go. We finally made it back to Redding at about 11:30 PM. While I was gone, Treeses took her mom to a family reunion, so when I got home she was still in Sacramento with her mother. Oh well. I was extremely tired and fell asleep right away.