Wednesday, November 21, 2007
Don’t Eat At Empty Sushi Restaurants
11:40PM Brian Ashcraft | To: Simon From: Ashcraft RE: One of Our Cakes Is Missing Sounds like you had a busy day! If Brandon’s lurking around the office, do tell him “howdy” for me. He’s good people. Over the weekend, the family and I went and go sushi. Usually, families go eat conveyor belt sushi (AKA “robo sushi”) or yakiniku. And like I said, this past weekend, it was sushi. On Friday, Saturday or Sunday sushi restaurants are packed with people. The waits are long to get a table. There’s a chain restaurant near our house. It’s not bad, fairly inexpensive. When we arrived, there was no line and got a booth easily. Half way in the meal, my wife pointed out that the onions on the salmon sushi weren’t chopped as finely as they usually were. Everything seemed decidedly bland — more so that usual in a place ike this. Then it hit me. The restaurant was totally deserted. There must have been less than fifteen people in the entire place, which looked to seat over a hundred. And on a weekend? Unbelievable. “Wasn’t there a sushi restaurant near us that was closed for a while? Like for a few days?” Mrs. Bashcraft asked. “I don’t remember hearing about that.” “Yeah, there was something about it in the paper I think.” I forced down the tuna in the mouth. We just kinda sat there, finished up our meal and split, went home and waited to get really sick. Thankfully, we were fine. Rule of thumb: Never go to empty sushi restaurants. What you missed last night Mario Galaxy sells the crap outta itself Uncharted gets censored Haruhi dance in prison More DBZ movie news Japanese Actress Admits Halo obsession Welcome Rock Band More »
Rare, Horribly Expensive PlayStation AF1s
11:20PM Luke Plunkett | SDF sneaker fiends, be on alert. On offer here: one pair of very shiny, very rare and very expensive ($US 1000+) PlayStation-branded Air Force 1s. How rare? Rare as in they were never made available to the public, only given away to celebrities and Sony execs. We heard Phil Harrison still rocks a pair of size 21s on casual Fridays. Nike Air Force 1 Playstation Edition [gameSniped] More »
Retro Game Tunes. MIDI Art. So Friggin’ Awesome.
11:00PM Brian Ashcraft | This comes via commenter Muu, and it’s probably easier to explain through watching, but here goes: In the above clip, MIDI is being used to convey musical notes and as art. The individual who created this arranges all the music himself and then pipes it through a program called Music Animation Machine player. The response to these clips has been tremendous, encouraging the creator to churn out more. Actually quite amazing stuff! Hit the “more >>” for, well, more. More »
Double Your Funde Razing Fun
10:40PM Brian Ashcraft | Don’t forget! Joel Johnson, Brian Crecente and Brian Crecente’s hair will be putting on their officially blessed Child’s Play fundraiser in two fabulous cities. On Wednesday, December 12th in Brooklyn and Denver, kind hearted and generous gamers will gather to play Guitar Hero and Rock Band, drink some beer and help raise money to benefit hospitalized children for the holidays. The Brooklyn competition will take place at Barcade (home of the World Famous Kotaku Party 2007) and in Denver, rockers will attend at the glamorous and exciting Walnut Room. In both locations, a donation of ten dollars (either at the door or through raffle tickets depending on the location) could net you a host of currently unannounced fabulous door prizes. All proceeds from bothe events will go to benefit Penny Arcade’s Child’s Play Charity. Last year’s Brooklyn event raised over $US 4,200. This year, let’s totally kick the shit outta that total and raise moar. Joel, who heads up Boing Boing Gadgets, will be handling the Brooklyn bash, while Crecente will be heading up the Denver one. Likewise, Crecente’s hair will help with the Denver event. (That, and drink too much beer.) Read more about all this in the link below and help a good cause rock out. Because, really, a cause good enough for Crecente’s hair is indeed a good cause. Funde Razor [Official Site] More »
Microsoft UK Offering Free XBLA Games…
10:20PM Luke Plunkett | …for anyone who ropes a mate into buying a 360. Let me elaborate: if you already own a 360, and you manage to coerce someone else into buying one, you’ll both get ten free Xbox Live Arcade games. And not ten rubbish, forgotten ones either, as the deal includes Bomberman Live, Every Extend Extra Extreme, SFII Hyper Fighting and Sonic. Remember, this announcement is for the UK only; most other Europeans won’t mind since the same deal’s been running in places like Germany for months now. Microsoft’s charitable/arm-twisting press release follows. More »
Lost Odyssey In Short Story Form
10:00PM Brian Ashcraft | Microsoft recently held a huge Lost Odyssey event in Tokyo. It was announced that the game has gone gold and will be out December 6th in Japan. Also, there were orchestral renditions of Blue Dragon and Lost Odyssey music as well as fantastic facial hair. Kotakuite Adam was in attendance and picked up a copy of the book The 1000 Year Dream, which consists of 32 short stories by award-winning novelist Kiyoshi Shigematsu that have been incorporated in Lost Odyssey. In order to help non-Japanese speakers understand what kind of stories these are, Adam has done a nice job of translating one of them. That after the jump! More »
The Price Of Cowbells
9:30PM Luke Plunkett | Case you slept on the news, Rock Band is out. Drums and all. So now’s as good a time as any to remind you that, even though it’s $US 169, your spending isn’t over. You may, one day down the line, want a second guitar. You may want some dodgy hair extensions. You may want a black leather jacket. You may even want a torn, faded, original Slippery When Wet tour T-shirt. That’s fine. But you don’t need any of those things. Not like you need a cowbell. Those drums ain’t shit without a cowbell. So as a public service announcement, we figure now’s the time to let you know that prices for decent cowbells on eBay are hovering around the $US 20-30 mark. You’ve already spent so much, may as well spend a little more, get the job done before the market explodes. Cowbells [eBay] More »
The Wii’s AAC/MP3 Move Isn’t Nearly So Bad
8:30PM Luke Plunkett | Nintendo’s decision to ditch MP3 support in favour of AAC playback for the Wii seemed a bit silly. Why would you do that to us, Nintendo? Why ruin our Photo Channel and Excite Truck playtime with your legal ass-covering? Turns out it’s not as bad as the move’s initial wording would have you believe. …it’s important to note that [the new Photo Channel] is an optional download and is not planned as part of any system updates to Wii. If your Photo Channel currently supports music files in the MP3 format, you can retain this compatibility by electing to not update your Photo Channel to version 1.1. Additionally, this update will not have an impact on Wii games which use MP3 music files. These Wii games will not be compatible with AAC files and will continue to use the MP3 file format. So the move’s brought about by updating your Photo Channel? And we can still listen to custom redneck soundtracks during Excite Truck? Well why didn’t you just say so in the first place, Nintendo! You had us worried sick. Wii Photo Channel update – if you don’t want it, don’t get it [Go Nintendo] More »
PCs Are “Always Better”
8:00PM Brian Ashcraft | Consoles or PCs? Quick, where do you stand. Crytek art director Michael Khaimzon is a PC guy and for good reason. He explains: My opinion on them in comparison to the PC is that I think the PC is always better. Because the PC you can do so many things with, and the console is just there for the gaming… You cannot create characters on a console — you can’t run a 3D program from one, as far as I know. You can’t play certain strategy games on a console well, like Total Annihilation for example, or at least I haven’t seen one, I think it’s limiting to certain types of games. Sure, it’s common knowledge that PCs are way more powerful than consoles. They’re also way more expensive. You get what you pay for! PCs Better [Games Industry] [Image] More »
