Fighting For Reasonable Wakefulness

Today we took a stand against advancing sleeping hours and actually tried getting up earlier, which was mostly successful. We might even try something similar today ’cause we’re Just That Wild N’ Crazy.

Once again, writing continues. I finished up an article for IGN which I’ll be sending them tomorrow, and sent off my resume to GamePro, who, it turns out, are looking for Freelancers. So I dropped them a line, showed off some links with GameAxis and IGN and will see if they bite. It would be nice to do even MORE game writing, since this will feed my bottomless habit of questing for game knowledge and bitching about games on the internet anyway…

Speaking of games, once again, I continue my love affair with Rock Band. Here’s the latest list of songs, with songs in bold being original master tracks.

• “Are You Gonna Be My Girl” – Jet
• “Black Hole Sun” – Soundgarden
• “Blitzkrieg Bop” – Ramones
• “Brainpower” – Freezepop
• “Celebrity Skin” – Hole
• “Cherub Rock” – Smashing Pumpkins
• “Creep” – Radiohead
• “Dani California” – Red Hot Chili Peppers
• “Detroit Rock City” – Kiss
• “(Don’t Fear) The Reaper” – Blue Oyster Cult
• “Enter Sandman” – Metallica
• “Epic” – Faith No More
• “Gimme Shelter” – Rolling Stones
• “Go with the Flow” – Queens of the Stone Age
• “The Hand That Feeds” – Nine Inch Nails
• “Here It Goes Again” – OK Go
• “Highway Star” – Deep Purple
• “I Think I’m Paranoid” – Garbage
• “In Bloom” – Nirvana
• “Learn to Fly” – Foo Fighters
• “Main Offender” – The Hives
• “Maps” – Yeah Yeah Yeahs
• “Mississippi Queen” – Mountain
• “Orange Crush” – R.E.M.
• “Paranoid” – Black Sabbath
• “Reptilia” – The Strokes
• “Sabotage” – Beastie Boys
• “Say It Ain’t So” – Weezer
• “Should I Stay or Should I Go” – The Clash
• “Suffragette City” – David Bowie
• “Tom Sawyer” – Rush
• “Vasoline” – Stone Temple Pilots
• “Wanted Dead or Alive” – Bon Jovi
• “Wave of Mutilation” – Pixies
• “Won’t Get Fooled Again” – The Who

I’m particularly happy about Gimme Shelter being on there. The Stones. Yeah. And only three covers so far, not too shabby at all. Bring it on. And now, back to that children’s novel.

The Very Dislocated Saturday

Sleeping/Waking hours continue to be nomadic, meaning that days begin now with only a little bit of sunlight left. It’s just a quiet day, with a little bit of writing going on anyway.

And, on a totally unrelated note, here’s a little medley of tunes from Rock Band. The animation on each of these randomly created musicians is amazing, and the way the lights and the audience go crazy when you really nail the song is one step closer to really making you feel like a God O’ Rock. But probably the most amazing thing? It’s hard to hear in this YouTube video which has a lower sampling rate for the sound, but the higher res version of this video, downloadable here, shows off one of the COOLEST things about this game; for the Foo Fighters song, “Learning to Fly” when the guitarist nails the song, THE CROWD SINGS ALONG! OH MY GOD, THIS GAME IS SOOOOOO COOOOOOOOL.

I need this game…

Anniversary Tonkatsu

Today was spent in a remarkably Japanese way. Never mind the fact that we woke up at our usual obscenely late hour that would probably have qualified as morning in Japan anyway, the Wife decided that since we’d been satisfying many of her Asiatic cravings (such as proper Dim Sum) It was now time to do the same for me. Although I don’t actually many Asian cuisine cravings, one thing in particular I developed a fondness for in Singapore was a dish known as Tonkatsu Curry, which is essentially breaded, deep fried pork cutlet with rice and some of that unique Japanese curry that does NOT kill my tongue for hours afterwards the way normal Singapore spices do. Back in Singapore, there was a little restaurant in the basement of the big Japanese department store Takashimaya, and they happened to have Tonkatsu Curry as their house specialty, offering it both as a dish with rice and as a sandwich. It was VERY tasty, and I’d obviously not had any of it since coming back to Canada. It turned out that further into the downtown core was a restaurant that had Tonkatsu, and they even offered Japanese curry as a side order, it just never occurred to them that this particular combination was, in fact, an actual dish in Japan. So though they were mighty confused about my wanting both, when we arrived, they did indeed serve it to us. It wasn’t as good as the stuff in Singapore, but then you have to make allowances when you eat Asian food in the West.

Other than that, the Japanese theme continued with playing some Gran Turismo Prologue (now that the demo for this game is finally available in Japan; thank you internet, and thank you Sony Playstation Store dummy account) and it’s good. And HARD. It would probably help if I had a steering wheel, but we’ll worry about some other day.

The only other thing of note is that I finally have an IGN article out that you don’t have to be subscribed to IGN Insider in order to read. Whoo hoo, I’m finally in the free, “normal, mainstream content” channel. The article is essentially just my impressions after finally getting a chance to play Rock Band on the Playstation 3, a particular concern for me since I obviously have one, and I wanted to see whether or not the game was going to be butchered on the PS3 the way Guitar Hero III has been (it looks like the Xbox 360 version is the one to get, Neversoft/Activision have pretty much given The Finger to owners of Sony consoles past and present) and it turns out… IT’S NOT! Whoo hoo, Harmonix still has a place of respect and affection in their hearts for Sony consoles, so I was relieved when I tried it… and it didn’t suck.

The full article is here.

Thursday Of Dullness

A little bit of work, some IGN related e-mailing, and an otherwise quiet day. Don’t expect much in the way of a post tomorrow either. It’s the Second Anniversary, so it’ll be just me and The Wife, being boring and hanging out together. Not like we don’t do that all the time anyway, but now with a specific occasion in mind…

Gobble Gobble Mark II

It was not too long ago that the last of the Thanksgiving turkey for Canada’s Thanksgiving celebration was finally polished off, and I thought that would be the end of the turkey flavored saturation for the rest of the year. Now, I find I am wrong. What I failed to take into account was that the In-Laws, now celebrating their American Thanksgiving next month, would suddenly invite us down on a trip to Maine to see what their American rural Thanksgiving celebrations will be like. And we have accepted. Meaning there is more turkey in the offing.

I’m actually curious to see what it’s like, having never actually had an American Thanksgiving dinner, and having never been to Maine before. However, there is also a potential dilemma in the offing.

It has recently come to my attention from my talks with Harmonix representatives that Rock Band will not, in fact, go on sale in Canada at the same time as it does in the USA. The reason for this is somehow they forgot about the bilingual requirement for Canadian packaging and are now sorting that out, but the end result is, they now have NO estimated date of sale for Canada although they are “shooting for as close as they can get.” In addition to this, they refuse to comment on what the price will be in Canada. Although the US version has already been confirmed to ship on November 23rd, at $170 for the full bundle, Harmonix won’t comment on whether or not their pricing will take Canada’s stronger dollar into account, or simply play it safe and do the usual gouge of pumping up the price For No Damn Good Reason At All Now, as still happens with DVDs and games.

Which leaves me with a situation where I am now perfectly aware of the fact that I will now be in America at the same time that Rock Band goes on sale. I won’t be reasonably near a game retailer (the town in the in-laws live in is close the New Brunswick/Maine border and has a population of less than 4000), but thanks to the miracle of mail order, GameStop has an overnight delivery policy which, if you splurge for it, guarantees you get your game on the same day that stores do, provided you are shipping somewhere in the continental USA, which Maine just barely qualifies as.

So now I have to debate risking the possibility of a defective Rock Band set which I might not be able to rectify should that scenario play out, or wait for it to arrive in Canadian stores, which–if the Guitar Hero I fiasco for Canada was anything to go by–could take upwards of five months, as the game went on sale in November 2005, and some places in Canada didn’t get it ’till March 2006.

I gots me somes thinkin’ ta’ do…

More Work

Finished off a GameAxis review, wrote a bit of Lost In Loveless, that’s about it…

Another Quiet Day

Aside from starting on another IGN article, all that occurred was messing around with a demo for some Japanese horror game (which still managed to creep me out despite the fact that I had no idea what was going on) and bought some donuts. Yup, exciting stuff…

Sunday At Home

Wrote a bit more of an IGN article, did a bit of shopping, and talked extensively with the Wife about an idea for a new book. But not fiction. This could be interesting, but it’s going to take a little more thinking (and begging and pleading a lot of people in the gaming industry) to really take off.

Saturday The 13th

Just another quiet–albeit noticeably more chilly outside–Saturday. The Upstairs Neighbor came down to hang out, play a little Skate and decide he wants to come back when he’s got several more free hours to play A LOT of Skate, and a little bit of re-watching of Battlestar Galactica (the pilot) occurred, and some writing of the children’s novel. Yes, I actually wrote a little of it today. Not saying I’m completely back on track, but I’m going to try to be more regular about it in the weeks to come and at least write my way back to what was lost in the hard drive crash a few months ago.

Also for completely gratuitous reasons, here’s a video that only means something to people that have played Final Fantasy X-2 and the Dead or Alive series of fighters. Done by one geek with a lot of time and talent to burn:

The Days Of Sandals Are Over

The weather finally cooled down enough that I actually needed to once again don shoes when we ventured out to do a little bit of shopping around the neighborhood. The trees are still mostly green, although a few of them are beginning to show some reds and yellow, so it’s gonna’ get awful pretty looking here in the next few weeks.

Aside from that, the only other thing of note was that we got a card from The In-Laws wishing us a happy anniversary, which will actually be next week. That kind of floored me for second because these are the kinds of things that I normally associated with having to buy for your stuffy old relatives, and now I pretty much have to admit that as emotionally stunted as my growth is, we could still very well qualify for that description ourselves. Except that I play video games and write articles and comics, and the Wife draws comics and other assorted neat things.

I have also realized, after checking out Amazon, that buying Rock Band from either Amazon.ca or the original Amazon.com is a no-go. For some puzzling reason, the Canadian version of Amazon is only offering the game, not the full bundle with all the peripherals, whereas Amazon proper is currently ignoring the official retail price of $170 and charging $200 for it.

Looks like it’s time to place that pre-order with EB Games. Unfortunately, it’s doubtful that we’ll be able to get the game on the same day as our neighbors in the USA for the simple reason that the Harmonix rep I spoke to at the Sony Holiday Preview Event told me that they were still working out some design/legal problems with the packaging, ’cause they forgot they needed to stick French on there somewhere, and this is slowing down the plans for distribution in Canada as they take this into account. BLEAH.