note

On My Own, Pretending He’s Beside Me

12:00PM Mike Fahey | To: Ash From: Fahey RE: Random Strangers Practicing English With Crecente sequestered in a room somewhere and forced to play Halo 3 until his brain explodes, I’ve been pretty much left to my own devices here. Filling his shoes isn’t an easy job, let me tell you. Once the fourteenth or fifteenth groupie showed up on my doorstep asking to stroke the long, luxurious locks that I obviously do not have I started getting a bit annoyed…mainly because my digital camera was running out of batteries. It’s amazing how many people came to me for advice and decisions while he has been away. If I inadvertently ordered anyone’s death I am terribly sorry. It is my first time – naturally people are going to die. What you missed: Eternal Sonata Coming To PS3 – No really FASA Goes Bye Bye Virtual Console Getting NeoGeo Games Nintendo Takes The Lead The Halo 3 Teaser Teaser With my flu symptoms kicking into high gear, I’m off to do the responsible thing – play more Dynasty Warriors: Gundam. Have a good night! More »

Random Strangers Praticing English

11:40PM Brian Ashcraft | To: Crecente From: Ashcraft Whew! Back in Osaka. Just in time for dinner. And dinner was okonomiyaki and yakisoba. No kidding. True Osaka food. Damn, it’s good to be back. More »

“I Can Do This As A Friend. Are We Friends?”

11:30PM Brian Ashcraft | To: Crecente From: Ashcraft RE: Best Dentist Evar If Tristan has the best dentist evar, then I had the worst childhood dentist evar. Here’s the laundry list of things that happened: When I was five, I got my arm stuck in the chair and had to go to the hospital. The day after I got my wisdom teeth pulled out, the dentist gave me shots and then said to his assistant: “Oh. We pulled his wisdom teeth out yesterday.” He told me that I had cavities between every single one of my teeth. I went to another dentist, who said I had like three. Never went back to the evil dentist ever again! Though, when I was in high school, I saw him at the bookstore. In the adult section. Reading the adult books. What you missed last night Aussie sells Halo 3 Katamari on PS3 and Wii Is Microsoft showing this off tomorrow? Eternal Sonata for PS3? More »

Best Dentist Evar

12:00PM Brian Crecente | To: Ash From: Crecente Re: Roach Burgers (Yum, Yum) When you go to the dentist you get the crap drilled out of your mouth and a head full of pain. When we go we get free trips to amusement parks. OK, I’m lying, this isn’t typical. Tristan’s pediatric dentist is like the best dentist on the planet. In fact she was featured on Oprah. Not only does she have an amazing rapport with kids, but once a year she throws a gi-normous party for them. This year she rented out an amusement park up in the mountains and invited all of her patients and their parents… for free. We took Tristan and had an absolute blast. Somewhere between the rides, the lunch, the tug of war and me totally pwning Tristan and my wife at 1-v-2 beach volleyball Tristan smiled and said “This is the best day ever.” Imagine that, the best day ever having something to do with a dentist. What you missed: BBC Coming to Xbox Live? Terror Fears Ban Xbox 360, PS3, DS from Jails Make Love, Not Warcraft Wins Emmy Eternity’s Child Moves to Wii Fahey’s Big Austin Adventures 40GB PS3 With Spider-Man 3 for Christmas Big Valve Announcement Coming Tuesday Wii Zapper Details Confirmed As I mentioned earlier, I’m off to Seattle tonight to play Halo 3 under embargo. In fact I’m sitting in the airport at a bar writing this. Talk to you later this week when I get back. More »

Roach Burgers (Yum, Yum)

11:40PM Brian Ashcraft | To: Crecente From: Bashcraft RE: Travels… or Trevails I know whatcha mean about relaxing. Today consisted of going to immigration, taking the kid to the doctor, writing two magazine articles and calling Austria. Nothing like calling Austria. Fine place! So I got a few more prospective places for our TGS party. Very much looking forward to the meet up. While I was out today, I took the wife to eat hamburgers. We went to Freshness Burger. Freshness Burger is like MOS Burger, but not as good. Mrs. Bashcraft had never been to Freshness Burger, so we went. We both were famished and sat down to our Classic Burger and Classic Burger with cheese. Not bad. Not as good as MOS Burger, but w/e. So as we’re sitting there, gobbling down our burgers and my wife is talking about going to Universal Studios Japan with the kid, I see a large, black cockroach scurry across the floor. My wife is still going on about USJ as I check my food. No roaches. I glance over hers, which seems fine. I have two options: Tell my wife I saw a cockroach or don’t. Telling her would involve her getting freaked out and having to go to another restaurant. And besides! We had already eaten half our food. The rest of the lunch was spent chewing my food, choking it down and looking at the black, shiny roach inch its way up the wall. Mrs. Bashcraft said her Classic Burger was delicious. What you missed last night New Japanese Book Asks Why PS3 “Failed” Wii Zapper with Zelda? SCEE’s new marketing ploy Why all the BD hate? More »

Live From New York

11:00AM Flynn De Marco | To: Ash From: Flynn Subject: Moving Out So, I’ve been reporting all weekend from New York City which is now my temporary residence until I move to San Francisco in December. I packed up all my stuff and it’s now in storage in Atlanta awaiting my return to pick it up and move it across the country. I can’t really say I’m going to miss Atlanta much except for some friends and it feels good to be in a new environment even for a short amount of time. I leave for Tokyo a week from today and I’m sure I’ll get really excited about it one I’ve gotten a chance to settle in here, but it will be an awesome trip and It will be cool to see you in person again. Some things you may have missed this weekend: The Master Chief figure made his debut at Madame Tussauds in Las Vegas This list of the top 25 best selling games was surprising Silent Hill 5 looks awesome I’m off to relax and check out some Heavenly Sword and try to adjust living out of suitcases for the next three months. Have a great week! More »

Travels… Or Trevails

12:00PM Brian Crecente | To: Ash and Flynn From: Crecente Re: Drink Less Booze, Drop Weight I don’t exactly have that problem. While I’ve put on a bit of gut weight, I’m still a slender 60kg and 173cm-ish. Maybe I need to start drinking more Sake. This hasn’t just been one hell of a week, it’s been one hell of a month. Next week I fly out to the northwest to spend some time playing an eagerly anticipated game for a few days, then I return to finish prep work for Tokyo Game Show and fly out that Sunday for Japan. I think I’m about ready for September to be over and with it all of these conventions. Not that I’m not going to have fun, but I can’t wait to relax a bit. This weekend I’m going to strive and beat BioShock and start prepping for a little World in Conflict tourney the developers are hosting. Fahey is going to be my second and it’s going to be a bloodbath.. not in our favour. Have a nice weekend guys. What you missed: Madame Tussauds’ Master Chief Invades Las Vegas Zero G Flight

Drink Less Booze, Drop Weight

11:40PM Brian Ashcraft | To: Crecente From: Ashcraft RE: BioShock Hang-Over Damn you and your BioShock. The Asian edition doesn’t come out until later this month. That, and my 360 is still getting fixed. Recent discovery: Drinking a half-bottle of sake everyday makes you fat. I love sake. Like love it. So, so, so much. I’ve visited a tonne of distilleries in Nara, and I’m fascinated by the drink, how it’s made, how delicate the flavour is, how it ages, blah, blah, blah. So! After I finish a 12 or 13 hour blog marathon, I would throw down half a bottle of the stuff. That makes you BIG and FAT. More »

Bioshock Hang-Over

12:00PM Brian Crecente | To: Ash From: Crecente I’m sure you noticed but our servers all crashed for several hours this morning. Not only could we not post, but people couldn’t read either. It sucked. I was up till about 3 a.m. this morning playing Bioshock, my first dip into the world. I’ve been meaning to play it for a bit now but I was in Leipzig and then up to my eyeballs catching up and helping you plan a bit for the Tokyo Game Show. More »

That’s Not Heavy, It’s My Computer

12:20PM Brian Crecente | To: Ash From: Crecente Re: A Very Important Question (About My Hair) Dude, mullet? Why would you want business in the front, when you can party all the time? That’s all I’m saying. So HP’s new Blackbird PC landed on my doorstep this afternoon, just hours before the embargo lifted. I was supposed to have received it weeks ago to, you know, get time to actually check it out before writing about it. But that didn’t happen for some reason. And to make matters worse, the thing won’t boot up, the hard drive appears to be bad. Personally, I don’t think that’s that big a deal, from my perspective. I know what sort of wonderful things are out there in the way of cards and memory and motherboards, so none of that is going to impress me. And that’s not what sets this thing apart, it’s the 30 kilogram-plus chassis. The thing is made of solid aluminium, no plastic at all. And I was able to take the whole thing apart in minutes. It’s the best tooless PC I’ve ever seen. But it’s also a really big, really heavy paperweight right now and the box it came in is HUGE. I’m going to call up HP tomorrow to get it sent back. I just don’t have the space for it. What you missed: Fahey is at the Austin Game Developers Conference PSP2K hit today New iPods have a gaming built in Karraker Quits SCEA but not before he chats with us Fahey is invading Garriott’s home The Lair Curse, Worse than the Madden Curse? Blackbird Impressions More »