Tim

nothing too immense, just messed around with underground stuff and kooky lighting effects. i wanted to put more trees in the level but it took forever to load. oh well...

here's the official banner

and screencaps

My roommate got his Nintendo Wii last weekend and the new Zelda and Excite Truck games, but I've been spending my downtime bowling in the Wii Sports disk that came with the system.

Here's the usual youtube linkage, showing game footage and what people look like when they play

People playing

Game footage

My computer has been down for the last week or so with this "NTLDR is missing" error so I figured I'd share the fun.

A friend of mine who knows computers pretty well came over and helped me try to fix the box with a little help from this site ---> NTLDR is missing. We tried all of the solutions listed there except "running the fixboot and fixmbr commands" because they threatened to permamently damage the hard drive I bought a month ago (which i bought to fix the NTLDR error i was getting this summer with my eight year old hard drive).

So now i apparently need to pay someone to fix it, which sucks.

Oh yeah, the NTLDR problem is common enough that there's an ntldrismissing.com. Go Windows.

Andy didn't say anything about showing OR telling this week, but I figured I'd share some fun stuff anyways.

Everyone has that geeky friend who gets off on listening to old Nintendo midis and Final Fantasy soundtracks (I know, those things are rad, but stick with me a second) but not everyone has that super cool secret geek friend who listens to Nintendo-metal!

There are a handful of bands around who take their favorite old school NES songs and rock em out on their guitars and drums, here are a couple I dig:

The Advantage
These guys are great. Two of the members are from the band Hella, recognized worldwide for their precise classical guitarwork and ultra-technical drumwork. Or not. Regardless, the Advantage play some damn good music and don't stray too far from the original songs while they do it. Check out:
---> "Castlevania 3 / Willow / MM2 Bubbleman: medley"
---> "metroid: kraid's lair" (if you owned an NES, YOU KNOW THIS SONG)
---> "megaman 2: dr. wiley"

Minibosses
I don't know as much about these guys as the Advantage, but they really are known worldwide; my friend showed me the "live in the middle east" album.

check out:
---> "super mario bros 2"
---> "ninja gaiden"

I totally forgot about blogging what we had planned for our midterm project a while back, so I'll talk about it now.

I realize the game may need some background info, so here goes: during the game, you fight huge monsters called Colossi and have to figure out how to defeat each one in some super obscure fashion. For example, there is one who is covered in armor and swings a giant club at you. To break through his armor you have to get him to smash his club into a big metal plate in the middle of the level, which will jolt him super hard and bust chunks of armor off. Then you have to lure him somewhere else and wait for him to swing the club at you so you can run up it (while it's stuck in the ground) and attack the areas exposed when his armor exploded.

When I was playing through the game, I had a ton of fun trying to figure out just how the hell I was supposed to take each one down. Until the last one... The final colossus himself doesn't seem that hard to to defeat, but chronic problems with the camera caused by the layour of the level make it a bitch to do what you need to do. Every other time in the game, you can do what you need to do once you figure it out. But against the last colossus you know what needs to be done but can't do it because the camera is going crazy and the game is slowing down because it's trying to render too much background and level information all at once.

So I figured for my midterm project I would redesign the final colossus. I already have a pretty solid idea in mind, one that will keep the dude overwhelmingly big without overwhelming the playstation (hopefully). And mine will be all around cooler and better and funner.

I lost the handout you gave us to read so I didn't have anything to blog about. BUT after playing a few games I've got something to talk about.

First up: Adventure
Oh my GOD. I was getting vague flashbacks of wanting to stab my eyes out after "playing" that game when i was little. Maybe it wasn't fun because I didn't know how to speak the game's language, but I doubt it would have been worth it. I'll keep my 'choose your own adventure' books.

Next up: King's Quest
Alright, now THIS game was rad. While it did have a little action (re: "holy crap an ogre! I'd better move my character over here in a timely fashion") it definitely didn't rely on it and was really fun without it. The game did benefit from some snazzy graphics though. Even so, clicking the mouse or pushing the left arrow and watching the character move right where you wanted him to was refreshing after 15 minutes of:

> run ne

you are in the forest
>north

you are in a valley
>west

you stand in a stream, it forks in two separate directions
>go right

what?
>take the right path

...
>go left then?

you are in a forest
>GODDAMNIT

I totally forgot to blog my expectations for the game before we played it, which was lame because I actually did read the introductory section, so I guess I'll give a few thoughts on the aftermath:

The first time we played it, the game was pretty fun. "Oh hunger striking gets the guy out of prison. har har." But when I played it the second time it just felt really monotonous. Fraternize, fundraise, meet with ___, recruite ___, "the opposition is trying to recruite____", blah blah. And then when your only useful character gets sent to prison for publishing a website or something and can't get out because she lacks public recognition or something it just gets worse. I don't think a game needs action to be fun (see next blog), it just needs something more than a moral message and repetitive gameplay.

Generation Fit: A Grassroots Look at Implementing Exergaming and Exerlearning in Schools and Organization

Session Description
Judy Shasek has developed an easy to implement program that allows schools and other organizations to use basic dance games and other interactive movement/fitness games as part of a habitually active lifestyle. Called Generation Fit, her grassroots campaign has taken her around the country several times helping chools, school districts and other organizations use dance pad games and more (including Guitar Hero) to motivate young people in new ways to maintain physical health. Along the way Shasek’s field studies indicate that using just 10-15 minute in-class dance-pad sessions supports conventional efforts to improve learning outcomes -- linking active movement with learning as iterative elements within even a single classroom period.

Idea Takeaway
Attendees will not only learn more about the world of exergaming and its proponents but specific ways to implement exergaming and exerlearning into schools and more!

I think this is really awesome. I know a few people who use Dance Dance Revolution as a means of exercise (I guess it has a calorie-burning counter in some versions) and getting kids to do this in school could be perfect. I mean, kids like video games, kids are competitive, a lot of kids like DDR... It would be especially sweet if teachers forced kids to get a certain score or beat some song before they could go to recess.

But I'm not sure how much exercise kids get playing Guitar Hero. I guess it gets them off their asses (it's hard to play the game sitting down) and improves their dexterity/ hand-eye coordination, but they would have to be rocking pretty hard to burn any calories. And I'm not sure what's up with the part about dance pad sessions improving learning outcomes. Do they learn how to conjugate verbs during techno dance-a-tons or something?

I just wanted to share a bit about the myriad of rhythm games out there. Everyone knows by now about Dance Dance Revolution, and Guitar Hero has made its way into homes across America, but most people don't know there are games for tons of other instruments too. I got hooked on Guitar Freaks (japanese predecessor to Guitar Hero) a while back at my local arcade and dug around to find stuff like DrumMania and some crazy turntable and keyboard games.

Read about:
DrumMania

Keyboard Mania

And watch a video of some guy playing DrumMania

this guy too

While I was screwing around on some video game news site I saw huge banners for this game Just Cause, which sounded really familiar as if I'd seen it advertised on TV or something, so I looked it up and here is what I found:

Just Cause

the Wikipedia description (since the official site assumes we know what it's about):

Just Cause is set on a fictional South American tropical island called "San Esperito", where the player works as CIA black ops agent Rico Rodriguez in a guerrilla war to overthrow San Esperito's dictator, who may be in possesion of weapons of mass destruction. The game draws its premise (and name) from the real-life United States invasion of Panama, code-named "Operation Just Cause", which involved United States military action to overthrow military leader Manuel Noriega.

When I first saw the big Che Guevara-ish ads, I thought for sure the game would be about playing as a militant revolutionist trying to topple his own country's evil dictator. Instead, we get the tried and true American soldier sent to topple some other country's diabolical regime. I think the game would be cooler if the main character was an actual resident of the country he was trying to overthrow, but I guess that would subconsciously promote thoughts of revolt in players and be less patriotic.

Not playing as your own country, less patriotic. Huh.