n0wak

This might be true, but the music industry manages to churn out really nice packaging and cover designs for soulless and mediocre albums about as often as it does for the good albums. The problem with the game industry, I think, is that there isn't enough appreciation for good design. This might be the legacy of a predominantly geek dominated industry.

Even worse than lousy box art is relatively decent (the precedent for what is "decent" is pretty damned low in this industry) box art smeared with some lame quote or ugly review or promo garbage (ala Psychonauts, or, worst of all, Ikaruga ) North American box art is the worst of the territories, though. Really attrocious at times... even when they have perfectly good art to draw from a game's Japanese release. I mention this one particular piece of box art so often, it has secured a permanent stop on my server, ever ready to be thrown out on a whim Compare that to the North American release...

Merchandise? You don't need no stinking merchandise. Just ASK people for support (though, in this case, you need more readers instead of buyers) and you might be able to support yourself like this dude: http://www.kottke.org/about/patron/support2005.html

Explain to me how "...what we're choosing to do is abandon 100% in-house development for games..." equals "cancelled", cause otherwise I might be missing something here.

No.

*cough* Majesco has the rights to publish the next oddworld game, as read on this site here (you might have heard of them). I'm not sure as to what I think of Majesco... on the one hand, they *are* publishing these games that didn't have a chance elsewhere, on the other hand, they are peddling Bloodrayne in Playboy So, I don't know. The UBI comparison is good though. They could become a good publisher, like UBI 2 years ago; or they can become a crappy eXtreme publisher, like UBI now.

I think he wants to kick out the Normans

Quick observation. The orientation of the eject button in the mock-up is different from how it is in the ourcolony photo, despite the "memory unit" being oriented the same. Personally, I think the mock-up looks ugly. It looks far more interesting in the angled side views that are coming out from ourcolony than the supposed front view (which is idiotic as you'll always be looking at the front). They are, supposedly, going to have face-plates for the thing -- but I would bet that with everything that is skinnable, the skinnable options will be even uglier than the default one (which is already quite ugly).

I think it's a great game for quick pick-up and play. Save for the marathon mode, you can turn the DS on, load up, play a full game, and shut it down in about the same amount of time it would take you to get to the main menu in WipeOut Pure (ok, I'm exaggerating, but not by much). It's a really bad game for the expecting-a-long-40-hour-quest type gamers, though, a large number of which seem to be employed as game reviewers. But for a willing to repeat for a high-score quick play gamer, it's quite good. Yes.

I generally just stick with the "coming soon" section of EBGames. They're pretty much accurate for two months, I find -- barring the odd delay or overlooked title.

Well excuuuuuuuuuuuuse me princess. http://www.wellexcusemeprincess.com/ (insert whiny-Link smiley here). BTW, you can actually view a lot of the episodes of the Mario Super Show (oh god that intro rap) and Legend of Zelda over here -> http://yahooligans.yahoo.com/content/tv/ (scroll down) You piezanos

This weekend, I saw: (the new) Zatoichi -- it was OK. The pacing and structure of the plotline was... odd. I didn't like that much. Sideways -- it was a good movie. Quite good. But not as deserving of the Oscar hype that it had going. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind -- I saw this before, and it's still great. It seems slightly less great on second viewing, but still damned good. This deserved more Oscar attention than Sideways had. At least Kauffman won the freaking screenplay award... finally.

Trent Reznor did a good enough job of it himself. Actually, to be fair, The Hand That Feeds is alright... it's just the rest of the album that blooooows

Only if Microsoft's product designers are 15 year olds with a warez version of the 3D-app du jour. But I wouldn't be surprised if the console will end up being "Dreamcast white" (no, it's not "iPod white"). Wouldn't be the first time Microsoft ripped a design element off of Apple.

FUCK YES. The only ones I really bother with, though, are http://boasas.com/ and http://cigarro.ca which used to be updated more regularly... and those PA guys. You might have heard of them. Sometimes PVP, too, but I'm getting bored of that. Or rather, "got bored".

Just to break from the crowd: Typedrawing is far cooler http://www.storyabout.net/typedrawing/

Yeah, and I can't figure out why that is. Tech savvy companies with a whole armada of artists... and most have shitty, shitty websites. Firaxis now becomes one of the few exceptions. Nice site. (They lose a few points for the unnecessary and gratuitous flash on the front page. I don't mean the large splash image, but the smaller call-outs... which are not only excessive but broken -- hand cursor breaks over them sometimes.)

Lumines: Shinin shinin shinin shinin shinin... arggggg. Shinin shinin...

preamble = sardanapalus one = suitcase woman = women trousers = water if = moustache 2 = three stick = perhaps after = sightreading irritant = emerald vice = screw october = periscope

No. But money is!

"It looks like you are trying to write a stupid April Fool's joke..."

Maybe they weren't talking about Jak per say, and instead were talking about Jason Rubin. So a Ratchet and Clank game without Clank? Isn't that sort of like a BLT without any bacon?

Kind of like game development. Any old game plan sounds sexy... until you throw managers (slightly less than people) into the mix.

Weird. I had the same thing, except for me it was ... OH IT'S BY SPIELBERG I MUST AVOID IT!