The Coolest Thing You'll See Today

g-speak overview 1828121108 from john underkoffler on Vimeo.

[ Video ] Unhealthy Love for FF:Dissidia EX Mode

If you're a Final Fantasy fan on any level, watch the video below. Colette Bennett from Destructoid squeaked when she saw Squall. I'll admit that I squeaked a bit when I saw that last combo he does and saw Zidane going to town Kuja's face. Enjoy!

[ News ] DJ Skywatcher - - Life after the END Event Starts Tonight at 8 PM PST

It's Tuesday night, you got off work a few hours ago. You've got nothing to do but sit at home and watch reruns of The Simpson's. Why not jump onto your computer and head on over to Frank's Basement? DJ Skywatcher will be streaming live his 'Life After the END' set tonight at 8PM PST.

If his previous work is anything to go by, it'll be good times. I'll be there, hope to see you there too. Feel free to spread the word as well.

[ Rant ] November is National Gaming Month

So, if you're anything like me, you're having a really hard time decided which games to save up for and which to pass up until later. I'm also actively considering opening up a Gamefly account for the first time. These are desperate times indeed.


I've already destroyed Fable 2, and was pleasantly surprised by it. Though, without spoiling the ending, I will say that Fable 2 reaffirms my belief that developers who release half a game and charge full price and crooks that should be tarred and feathered. The part that really gets me is that I will most certainly purchase the inevitable expansion to come.

I will not playing Fallout or Gears, because frankly they just don't interest me in the least. Not to mention the unexplainable levels of blood and gore. However there are more than a few high profile games releasing this month that I are on the top of the list of products to purchase. Among them are the first expansion for Sins of a Solar Empire, Chrono Trigger DS, The Last Remnant, Mirror's Edge, Rock Band 2, Penny Arcade:On the Rainslick Precipice of Darkness: Episode 2, and Sonic Unleashed. I will also add Prince of Persia to this list though the release date savvy will note that it doesn't come out until December 2nd. Close enough, in my opinion.

Fortunately, I only have an Xbox 360. Otherwise I would have to add the unavoidable Little Big Planet to that list. This is probably for the best seeing as how if I owned LBP, I would probably never come out of my living room again.

[ Query ] What are you playing this weekend?

A week into Fable 2, it's about time I finished the main story and really getting started on my $2.5 million real estate empire. So far it's up to a half million so I've got a ways to go. There's a good chance I'll be trying my hand at the last 10 or so Portal:Still Alive challenge missions.

So how about you, what are you going to playing this weekend?

[ News ] Lack of Updates and stuff

So I guess I kind of need to explain some stuff seeing as how I haven't been posting lately. Frankly, life got more than a little crazy there for a little bit and I honestly just didn't have any time to devote the blog. We've had friends and family from Texas come up and staying with us and siblings getting divorced, custody battles, baby sitting, supervising visitations for sister in law's kid, and on and on.

Long story short, I've been too busy to do anything with the blog lately. Fortunately for everyone those crazy days seem to be coming to an end. Prepare yourselves for an onslaught of awesome posts and such. Also, some changes are coming to the site here in the next couple months, so be watching out for those. I'll keep you posted as things are finalized, or at least closer to completion.

Ninja Cat

I know I know, we've all seen this. But this is MY version, yes I finally got around to doing a proper soundtrack for this amazingly hilarious video. Hopefully with a bit of promotion I can exceed the current views of the original? Asking too much? You be the judge...

Apple Macbook Event Announcment Roundup

As you may have heard, Apple has a Macbook event going on right about now. As it progresses I will report on the various pieces of news that come out. I guess you could call this the OFFICIAL APPLE MACBOOK RUMOR SMASHING/POSSIBLY CONFIRMING BLOG POST... thing. Anyway, check out the new shiny Macbooks below. (Note: Most of the info I'll be getting is from Gizmodo's Liveblog, so thanks to the guys over at Giz)

-Apple has definitely taken advantage of the fact that Vista was such a bomb and Leopard was such an overwhelming success.

-Wow! The Mac now represents 17.6% of unit sales in the United States. If you look at "revenue share", because Apple sells "fully features systems" they actually have 31.3%. Holy cow that's a lot bigger than I thought!

-They have an entirely new manufacturing process for the Macbooks. Instead of using a thin piece of aluminum and adding things to it, they're going to use a big chunk of aluminum and take things away, making the end result much more solid and rigid.

-Nvidia came to Apple and proposed a product that would include both the chipset and the GPU. It's called GeForce 9400M. "This combimes both the Chipset + the GPU, 70% of the die is the GPU. It has 16 parallel graphics cores, pushes 54 Gigaflops and runs up to 5 times faster than Intel Integrated graphics." It's up to 8x faster than the previous iteration from the current Macbook Pros! Holy crap! There's also the big daddy version called the GeForce 9600M GT. 32 parallel graphics cores, 120 Gigaflops and 512MB video memory. My brain just exploded.

-The new Macbook Pro has a Glass Multi-touch trackpad. The trackpad is 39% bigger than before. The entire trackpad is the button now. New multi-touch gestures all the way up to four finger gestures for switching between Apps.

-New Macbook Pro stuff: It's curved and sexy. It's very sleek. All the connectors are on one side. It has instant on LED-backlit display. Not to mention it screams at graphics performance. It's one piece of aluminum. Environmentally safe.
$1999, 15.4-inch LED backlit display. 2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo with 3MB L2 Cache, 2GB 1066MHz DDR3 Memory, the two GeForces, 250GB hard drive and SuperDrive.

Second config is $2499. 2.53GHz, 6MB L2 Cache, 4GB memory, 512MB video memory and bigger hard drive.

-Macbook Air gets a slight upgrade. They're putting the 9400M into the Air and you have a choice between 120GB HDD or 128GB SSD.

-New 24 inch display coming in Novemeber. It's an iMac minus the computer. It will be $899 in November.

-One more thing.... Macbook! It's the best selling Mac, ever. Entry price will be lowered to $999. It's getting the 9400M as well. The display is completely glass from corner to corner. It's also completely aluminum. Two models: $1299 (lower than the $1999 for the MacBook Pro). There are going to be two models. 13.3-inch LED backlit display, 2.0 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 3MB L2 Cache, 2GB 1066MHz DDR3 memory, 9400M GeForce, 160GB hard drive and SuperDrive.
Second model, $1599, adds 2.4GHz processor, 250GB hard drive and a backlit keyboard. They ship today and are in stores tomorrow.

Hatsune Miku: Project Diva Trailer... Just for You, Frank

Xbox 360 Core/Arcade Owners Get Cheap Memory Solution

Keeping up the Best Year Ever, Microsoft announced a few months ago that the Xbox 360 Dashboard update would come this fall with a whole new look. This is now called the NXE (Next Xbox Experience). Along with the NXE comes the requirement for at least 128MB of storage space. For some, this isn't really a problem, but for those with the Core/Arcade system, it's a huge problem. They only come with a 256 MB Memeory Unit. That doesn't leave a whole lot for making a million different awesome Miis avatars so you can show them to all your friends.

So, Core/Arcade users, Microsoft has the answer to your prayers! Just go to the website and give them your Xbox serial number and they'll give you the option between a free 512 MB Memory Unit or a $20 20GB Hard Drive! Awesome!

[Source--D-toid]

levelHead = DO WANT!

Read about it here. Watch the video below.

Short post, I know. But I don't want to spoil what is you're about to see. It's awesome, I promise!

[Source]

Nintendo Announces the Nintendo DSi

It seems the rumors were right. According to Nintendo it's 12 percent thinner than the DS Lite, a direct result of getting rid of the GBA slot. Both screens are seeing an upgrade to 3.25 inches each. To give you an idea of how big that is, the iPhone/iPod Touch screens are 3.5 inches. There are two cameras, one on the face of the DSi and one in the hinge to, presumably, take pictures of you. The cameras are VGA quality.

More interestingly, the DSi also has an SD card slot and built in memory. (How much has yet to be announced) The SD slot will be used in conjunction with the camera and with the newly announced DSi Shop that will be accessible directly from the DSi. (Note: It's super weird writing DSi) The DSi shop will utilize Nintendo Points (formerly called Wii Points) to allow you to purchase games and such.

So, while this sounds all neat and everything, I have to wonder how much time Nintendo really spent creating this thing. I mean, the camera is a great addition and they've definitely just made some software pirates super happy with the SD slot built right into the handheld. But I have to ask, is this all Nintendo can come up with? Has the Big N finally run out of ideas? Or are they nervous about making another leap of faith, "innovative" console/handheld? I really do hope they have something cooler than the next Zelda game up their sleeve at next year's E3, because these lame announcements are getting old.

Anyway, here's a promo video of the DSi and some new games coming out.

[Image:Source]

New DS might be announced tonight

File this one under the rumors and speculation heading, but MCV has announced that according to an "impeccable source" in Japan, Nintendo will announce the fabled "multimedia" version of the DS tonight. Here's the quote:

Nintendo will announce a new, updated version of its DS console at a press conference tomorrow morning, MCV has learnt.

According to our impeccable source in Japan, Satoru Iwata will make the announcement at 5am UK time – as first predicted by MCV last month.

Little is known about the machine's exact extra functions, but we do know the product will be the ‘multimedia’ model mentioned by Nikkei this week – with an MP3 player and camera function.

Yeah, so take that with a grain of salt and all, but if it's true, it should be pretty dang awesome... or not, we'll see.

[Source]

Mega Man 9 on XBLA

Today, October 1st, marks the release of Mega Man 9 on XBLA. It will cost a cool 800 MS Points. I've waited patiently this past week as the internet goes nuts for the Wiiware version. Believe it or not, the Wiiware version sold a surprising 140,000 copies in the first week in America alone! I'm genuinely eager to see how the 8-bit masterpiece does on XBLA. My guess is considerably better than that even. 250k copies perhaps?

For those interested in seeing one last video before forking over the 800 points to delve into the 8 bit world of gaming once more, here you go.

Rock Band 1.5?

Well after picking up a copy of Rock Band 2, on account that I couldn't wait any longer, I sadly feel a little let down. There are lots of annoying quirks from RB1 that are gone, thank god, but still has a few of them. Everyone can still screw up the song selection screen, especially the drummer, which we all know they HAVE to hit them ALL the time... The new interface is annoying at first, but quick to learn, and exactly like the in-game DLC store. The mechanics have been tweaked a lot. The guitar and bass now have a hammer on chord ability. Which is VERY nice, although I still wanna see some open notes (yeah yeah Guitar Hero 4 has that I know).

They have seemed to change the way getting gold stars is judged. It's alot easier now. The difficulty of the songs ranges from "this is too easy and not fun", all the way to "what just happened, did we actually fail that fast? This is not fun". And everywhere in between... The RB1 song export is nice but I want the 3 songs they cut due to the owners being tards about a new license.

All in all it just feels like I've done this before. It's still a great party game. I'm sure the 20 free songs you get as future DLC will keep me busy. And with 500 songs by years end it may still prove to be the king of music games. But as Rock Band 2 I can't help but feel let down, there just isn't enough NEW things to warrant the #2 title. I agree with some of the other review sites saying it just feels like Rock Band 1.5, nothing more. Now let's hope Rock Band 3 changes the mood and re-invents the music game like the first one did, and get back some street cred.