3... 2... 1... Let's jam!



It made me play with myself. In a good way. A very good way.

For some unknown reason while I was surfing through YouTube for a trailer for Squeenix's The Last Remnant, a spoof of a School Days (bad)ending showed up. Its morbid cuteness warrants a post here, for reasons I still can't put to words. Here's the vid:



For those who don't know, School Days was an eroge that was notable for having a whole lot of anime cut-scenes in it. In fact, the anime cut scenes were so good that some folk who run into clips of the scenes on YouTube mistake the scenes as part of the anime adaptation of the eroge. I know, I could've just provided a link to the wiki page, but I felt the need to type. So there.

Anyhow, the ending that was spoofed is a bit of a downer, so I won't post the video here. Instead, here's a link.

That's that.

The MMO scene in my country is saturated with generic Korean creations. Not that it's bad all around. The community's quite healthy actually. I guess what's really bugging me about it is that most of the really "cool" games, games that have the rep of say WoW or FF Online, are too expensive to for most of the local service people to carry. Or at least make a profitable business out of.

So I guess gamer folks in my country will have to rely on credit cards and worry themselves with monetary conversion rates to play the good stuff, like say, EVE Online. So, thanks to our gloriously bad economy, folks will have to settle with stuff like Ragnarok (and its upcoming sequel), Granado Espada, RF Online, Silk Road Online, Perfect World, etc...

Hmm. Looking at that list, maybe there isn't much "settling" at all. (I hope that's not the evil spirits of "meh" talking)

Speaking of making MMOs profitable, here's a nice article on how the business of online gaming works in my country.

*Cool photo of cosplaying geeks taken from them genkigeeks. Apologies in advance to them because I didn't properly ask for permission. But hey, I credited them so that counts right?

Punctuation is bad for your health
Rambling has always been a problem of mine. So yeah, I basically suck as a writer. Thank God that I finally encountered Yahtzee Croshaw. He proves that sometimes rambling can be a good thing.

Archaic Sealed Heat makes my loins burn
No. I don't have a rash.

I am terribly frustrated that the Nintendo DS has become a gamer badge of sorts in this country of mine. Meaning, that if you don't have one, you're basically lame. Consider this awkward hypothetical conversation with another gamer:

"You've got a gaming blog?"

"Yeah."

"You've got a PSP?"

"No."

"Oh, that's okay. I understand. You've got a DS?"

No.

"Oh man, you suck. You suck bad."


Now this isn't because you're not a good enough gamer, it's because you're missing out on a lot of content.

Months ago I was longing for some sit down time with Revenant Wings, now it's Archaic Sealed Heat. Why does the game have to look so damned hot?

Sigh.

So yeah, there's this annoying Chinise sociologist that says that it's 4chan's (teh intarwubs) fault that their kids are killing themselves and stuff. They say that addiction to electronic online gaming causes their youth to have a lower IQ. Whatever.

Since they're sociologists and all that, perhaps they should take time to consider how their culture in general handles agonizing frustration and defeat. Here's a nice precept to start with: they tend to kill themselves or people they know because their "honor" or their "face" has been defiled. Here's another one: their adolescent females are starting to get so materialistic that they see no problem with selling themselves for monetary advancement, even if they aren't experiencing monetary problems (not in poverty).

Scrap those last two presumptions. Maybe their social life just sucks so much (I wonder why), that when their virtual one (presumably the one in WoW) goes sour, they go batshit insane.

Yeah, I know I'm going with stereotypes here, but stereotypes permeate for a reason. Here's what Tracy Spaight, project writer for the MMORPG documentary Alter Ego, had to say to someguy named Max at a gaming news aggregate (made to milk advertising revenue):

"In Asia, few people were willing to talk candidly about what their avatar meant to them, or to discuss what they found so compelling about life in virtual worlds. Many didn't want to be photographed because they feared their parents, teachers, or colleagues would see them and disapprove."

Oh, and if in case you're not convinced that they're capable of doing crazy stuff (I'm not saying that western folks aren't capable of doing the same, look at them crazy Germans), here's a little more from Spaight:

"We wanted to interview the guy who killed his friend over a virtual sword in China, but the Chinese authorities weren't too keen on us visiting the prison to interview him, so we decided to drop it."

Perhaps a Chinese Destructoid would help all the asian gamer-crazies blow off some steam. STFUAJPG won't help them since it seems that that's all they get to do.

All play and no fun, turns you crazy son.

Before I forget, here you goes:

#include <iostream.h>

main()
{
cout << "Hello World!!!";
return 0;
}

Yeah, I'm new here.