Posted by: Ryan





I had forgotten about the lag. See, old-school TVs just take what ever images they get and throw it up on the screen, but these new HDTVs have to re-scale the image and run filters on it, which makes the image lag a little. And I mean only a little: we're talking like 65 milliseconds. That's less than a tenth of a second, which doesn't matter at all when you're watching TV, or playing an RPG... but it turns out that a tenth of a second of lag is enough to make me miss every other note in a Rock Band song.

So I spend a good amount of time yesterday calibrating the lag on Rock Band 2 and on my DDR game to match up with the lag on my new TV. DDR was particularly exhausting, because I had to change a number, play a fast song to test how accurate it was, and then adjust it again until I was getting mostly perfects. To be honest, I was actually really tired by the end of getting my DDR game calibrated correctly.

And so, since I was already going through my music games, I took a look at the new Rock Band 2 songs available for download (which I haven't done in a good while). And later that day when I was with Noelani, I mentioned that I happened to see "ABC" by the Jackson 5 on the list of downloadable songs. Boy, did I underestimate the reaction I was going to get from her. She lit up, and immediately suggested that we go out and find a Rock Band microphone, and go download that song.

So we did. After getting something to eat, Noelani and I went to a used game shop, she bought a microphone, and then we went by my house and downloaded some songs: including "Hey Baby" by No Doubt, "Sprode" by Freezepop, "Don't Stop" by Fleetwood Mac, and of course "ABC" by the Jackson 5.

"Sit down, girl! I think I love you!
Get up, girl! Show me what you can do!"
                                                                                                            - From "ABC" by the Jackson 5

Why yes, Noelani really did sing that at my house yesterday, and it was awesome. She and I switched off between singing and playing guitar for a good few songs, and it was much more fun for me than it probably should have been. Noelani seemed to be enjoying herself quite a bit as well.

When people are singing, they just have more license to be silly for some reason. All I have now is a mic and a plastic guitar, but I know that this game has the potential to make me as stupidly happy as Samba De Amigo used to when I would bring it to Allison's parties back in the day.
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Posted by: Ryan


Public Service Announcement for Wii Owners:

Just so you all know, I updated to Wii System Menu 4.2 this morning, and found that immediately following the update, my Homebrew Channel had been deleted. After looking at the report from WiiBrew, it looks like Nintendo really went to town with this one. The changes include:

+ Homebrew Channel automatically deleted
+ Bannerbomb hack is now patched (although there are two new hacks to replace it thus far)
+ boot2 has been updated, so that means no more BootMii in boot2

Sorry guys, but if you really want to keep the hacks on your Wii, either don't update, or you'll have to wait for a new version of the HackMii installer that can get around the new changes.

EDIT:
Wow, that was fast. You can now download a new version of the HackMii Installer (release notes). You'll have to use Indiana Pwns or Smash Stack instead of Bannerbomb for now, but there's even a Bannerbomb fix coming as well.

As for me, I'll give it a few days to see how the new installer does, and if there's no reports of anything terribly wrong, then I can just reinstall my Homebrew Channel and carry on.
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Posted by: Ryan


Well speak of the devil. I was just playing some Beats of Rage on my Dreamcast last night because I couldn't sleep. And just in time for the Dreamcast's 10th anniversary, the devs at Senile Team have announced that their next Dreamcast game is releasing in October: only a month from now.


Rush Rush Rally Racing





At this rate, I don't think there will ever be a "last" Dreamcast game, but all finality aside, this game looks pretty good. If you're interested, you can preorder it off of the publisher's website for only about $22. (And since when do indie games for 10-year-old consoles get publishers?) The homebrew Dreamcast scene hasn't turned out the best games in my opinion, but if Beats of Rage is anything to go by, then these guys know how to make really fun, simple, and worthwhile games. The fact that I was still playing it even yesterday is enough to prove that.

But if you're not convinced that Senile Team knows what they're doing, why not give Beats of Rage a shot in the meantime? You can download a nice collection on dcevolution.net.

Long live the Dreamcast!
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Posted by: Ryan






Gaijin Games just announced the third entry in the BIT.TRIP series! There's more info (including a video) up on the site: http://www.explorethevoid.com/, and it looks like the game will be playable at PAX.

I can't wait to play it!



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Posted by: Ryan


My younger sister has been addicted to Art Style: Rotohex lately. A lot of the guys I know seem to think that girls don't play games, but from my perspective, they play plenty of games. My sister (and my girlfriend both) play lots of RPGs, and my sister's puzzle game addiction has gone from Tetris to Frenzic to Planet Puzzle League. For the past two nights, she's been playing Rotohex for hours straight.





The day before, I had spilled some soda on one of my Wiimotes, and so I was wiping it off again with some Windex to make it less sticky while she was playing Sprint mode on Rotohex. At that moment, we discovered that Sprint mode can be played co-op. While cleaning it, I had pressed a button on the Wiimote, turned it on, and I now had a cursor on the screen.

Growing up together, my sister and I were no strangers to co-op play. We played Sonic 2 and Sonic 3 & Knuckles together on the Sega Genesis, and she always preferred playing as Tails. There was something amusing to her about being able to continually die, and just have the game bring her back. She could quite literally fight boss battles for me, since she'd never really die. As a kid, I always had to call her over to help me play the special stages in Sonic 2. Our room has two pairs of Sonic and Tails figurines, and we even plan on getting Sonic and Tails tattoos together.





And even now, after hitting a controller on accident, we find ourselves playing games together. She had been stuck on Rotohex's 5-color Sprint Mode for hours, but playing together, we made it all the way through 8-color. And the whole time, we were working together. Or at least we were trying to; calling out which color we were going for so as not to wreck each other up, or moving a piece from one side to another so the other person could get that last piece they needed. 8-color mode took quite a few tries, but it we finally beat it before the end of the night.

It felt good for my sister and I to be playing games together again. We haven't done it in a long time, and to be honest, it probably won't happen again for a while. My sister is getting married in less than a week, and she's moving out really soon. I'm going to miss playing games with her. I have my girlfriend to play co-op with, but it's really not the same. She loves Animal Crossing and the Sims. My girlfriend isn't the kind of person who would play Power Stone 2 or Marvel vs. Capcom 2 with me. She won't stay up through the night trying to finish Skies of Arcadia. She's a great girl, but she's not my Player 2. Not like my sister is. This week, we close out an era of my life's local multiplayer. And I'll miss her.
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Posted by: Ryan





I made a game! It's not a terribly good game, but that's okay. The Experimental Gameplay Project has started up again, and this month's theme was "Bare Minimum." When I think of "Bare Minimum" games, I think of the black-and-white, line games like Asteroids and Tempest, so I kind of riffed off of that, but I also did my best to keep within the theme. "Bare Minimum" meant that I wanted the controls to be simple, so I didn't want extra buttons for jumping or shooting or anything like that. I also intentionally don't have any text in the game, so there's no title screen that says, "Press Space to Start" or anything like that either.





In short, the Experimental Gameplay Project is awesome, I made a game for this month's theme and it's probably horrible, but you should play it anyway, and you should play all the other entries too.
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