There was never a Mega Man 9.

The trailer is showing a brand a new game that is coming out (as a downloadable WiiWare title -- you can see this info on the last slide of the trailer), but they did it in the style of the old classics that fans are so fond of, instead of "upgrading" all the graphics/sound.

I thought this was a really interesting departure from what usually happens to cult favorite series that have been continued on modern consoles. Games like Prince of Persia, Metroid, and Final Fantasy have all become louder, flashier, and more complicated to play... presumably to appeal to a mainstream audience and to grab more fans.

But Capcom decided to release the next Mega Man (undoubtedly a popular series for some) without all the bells and whistles that are expected on new games these days. They're totally ignoring the new generation gamers and directly appealing to the old... and it's almost definitely going to work!

Why don't more companies do this? I realize you might not expand your market to new gamers, but on the same token, it's probably quite a bit easier AND cheaper to do 8-bit games than in full 3d glory. I still love Final Fantasy 6 and Chrono Trigger more than almost any other modern RPG that I've played...

Just thought it was neat. :x

The society we live in clearly values efficiency and convenience: if we can do it faster and neater, then we should. Not only do we manufacture a great many items in rectangular shapes for quick and simple storage, we make use of a great many technologies that hasten the process of entering a premises or exchanging information. The number of “cards” one carries around seems almost absurd – my wallet had far more items in it than the rest of my bag combined.

From identification to “frequent buyer” cards to regular transportation passes to simple paper cards with contact information on them, you would think that these little items would be pretty easy to lose track of, but in fact people seem to stockpile them in their wallets and forget to clean old items out. Cards are definitely a standard way to compile information.

Also in this category is my car’s Smart Key, which is automatically detected by my car when in range and allows me to unlock the car door just by putting my hand on the handle. Another similar convenience item is the BART EZ Rider card, which can also be swiped without needing to remove it from the mini-wallet that I keep it in.

Preparedness

Four different mediums for money (cash, credit cards, an ATM/bank card, and two paper checks) implies an extremely well developed economy where the exchange of cash for material goods has become both extremely complicated in its excessiveness and oversimplified in process. Depending on what one is looking to purchase, one method of payment may be more appropriate than another and some institutions have rules about accepting this but not that. For an individual to be carrying all variations of payment at the same time suggests a need to be prepared (or at least feel prepared) for any situation in which one may be required to “buy” themselves out of the crisis.

A freshly purchased blank notebook and palm sized moleskin, along with a variety of pencils and pens, have two associations. By keeping such items, we place value on information and – especially – the task of giving it a permanent form. At the same time, we demonstrate distrust of the functionality of our own human brains. We acknowledge that our memories are fallible and that we are not always able to remember all things we hear or see reliably and accurately, so we are more comfortable in writing/noting down the things that will be important to recall later.

Communication

There is only one item that ends up falling into this category, but it implies a whole boatload of possibilities. My cell phone (which happens to also function as a pretty decent camera in brightly lit areas) contains a list of friends, family, and other contacts I deem important enough to merit storing their phone numbers. This single item suggests a dire need to be connected with other people, or at the very least a need for the ability to become connected to any of the people stored in the address book. Conversely, as the item is left on all the time and only turned silent during meetings (i.e. class time!), the cell phone indicates a willingness to be contacted by others, to be available to their queries and concerns.

I find it interesting that I actually make very little use of my cell phone, and yet I feel rather vulnerable without it. Just having the ability to contact others goes a long way in making me feel more secure. The fact that the cell phone has become an increasingly common item for everyone to carry around is telling of the sort of society we are becoming: increasingly dependent on nearly instant access to just about anyone.

My messenger bag also comes with a pocket especially for a cell phone, which is something that many bags are doing these days, making it easy to access when it needs to be answered.

Workaholism

The laptop suggests that our society values technical proficiency and that we enjoy widespread technology that is relatively advanced and available to us at all times. The portability also implies that people value the ability to get work (and play) done anywhere and everywhere we might find ourselves. The power adapter suggests that it is not unusual, or that individuals are at least prepared, to spend extended hours away from wherever home is and will want to keep busy for the duration.

The iPod shuffle, another increasingly common technology item in society, can mean a number of possible things. One idea might be that people use music to avoid from feeling idle when walking or waiting. Another is the distaste for silence and requiring music to fill it in. Yet another theory is the desire to isolate oneself from unknown others: a stranger is much less likely to approach and make small talk with you if you are wearing those signature white ear buds. (Here’s a paradox in the making: we are tightening the bonds with those we consider friends while simultaneously increasing the gap with those we want no connection with.)

I've no idea if the glasses are actually effective, but it got me reading about eye health and taking how much do you know quizzes at any rate... which ended up being kind of scary. (Apparently humans blink their eyes five times less often than compared to reading printed material.) The website All About Vision does actually recommend that people get glasses specifically for computer use because normal glasses are designed for a different range of vision.

No one says anything about contacts. At any rate, seems kind of smart. Plus apparently the company intends to produce these same glasses soon with special stems that are more comfortable to wear with headphones. Now that I could definitely get behind, since I find it extremely uncomfortable to wear glasses + headphones and I often put in my contacts just to avoid it. :P

The plot of the film apparently called for Sandler's character to be more or less obsessed with a video game as a coping mechanism for dealing with his family's deaths... and Shadow of the Colossus was chosen for its particular gameplay and story, over some other more generic video game footage or MMO!

"You could see where someone who was dealing with 9/11 would be engrossed by a giant that keeps collapsing over and over again," he says. Charlie's therapy was Shadow of the Colossus ... As the game was demoed, the filmmaker saw how it worked thematically. And when Adam Sandler finally came on board, the script was changed so that it specifically mentioned the game's title and sent to Sony Computer Entertainment to get the game's lead designer, Fumito Ueda, to approve of Shadow's inclusion. Weeks later, his reply came through: Greenlight.

Full article here: The Colossus and the Comedian.

xkcd's Horribly Wrong.

The idea of using games to train doctors is nothing new; a study in 2007 also showed that doctors who spent time playing video games showed better performance in laparoscopic tests than even doctors with more experience in those procedures. The test used three games, Super Monkey Ball 2, Star Wars Racer Revenge, and Silent Scope, to "score" doctors on their gaming skills, and the correlation was strong: the surgeons who scored in the top third in those games performed surgical tests in 40 percent less time, with 50 percent fewer errors. The next time you're going under the knife, it might be smart to see what games your doctors play. If they say Solitaire, get a second opinion.

Full article on Ars Technica.

Originally I wanted to take them on a field trip, but the only viable candidate (the San Jose Tech Museum) was prohibitively far away. So instead, I came up with the seemed-sane-at-the-time idea of designing an alternate reality game for the students to play, revolving around the UC Berkeley campus. The class would be split up into groups of 4-6, each led by a TA, and given a laptop from ATDP's mobile computer lab for accessing the online portion.

It took me about two to three weeks to come up with the entire game, from the puzzles to storyline to actually planting online hooks and goals. I looked at some existing ARGs for inspiration, but for the most part I think the game is fairly original (at least I think so -- I admit I did not do very much indepth research).

The day before yesterday (07/18) was the make-up session where the game actually took place and I was relatively pleased with the results. In general, I think the puzzles might have been a little on the tougher side, but that did not stop a couple groups from steamrolling through it anyway.

Some notes on the process of designing TAJA (TIC And Java Adventure -- the instructor of the Java class wanted his class to do it too, since he was afflicted with the same make-up day woes as us)...

This was my final project for CTIN 544. Basically I just had this idea for a maze of elevators, with famous characters running amok within... and whenever you encountered said famous person, you'd hear their theme song, only it'd be "elevator muzak" style. I originally used this idea for the "movie map" assignment, but because what I came up with was so completely lackluster compared to the original concept (which I really liked), I revamped the whole thing and made it my final project, since the last assignment's instructions were kind of free-for-all.

I was pleased with it, but didn't have time to do stick figures (had little blocks) and had a bizarre bug with some of the Rider logic.

After the semester was over, I vowed to remedy these things and finally got around it. So I fixed the bug (had to rewrite allllll my Rider logic in order to pin it down, grargh) and put in some extremely mediocre walking stick figures, so now it's at a state in which I don't mind posting it. There's still some weird behavior with Riders, but very few and far between now... and not quite worth tracking down. >_<

Considering I don't know jack about animating in Flash (or... in anything else, for that matter), I'm relatively satisfied with what I learned. x_X (Thanks Brandi, for helping me figure out what I was doing wrong with multiple animations in one movie clip. :x )

For the record, I did not do the music arrangements... my friend Sam Pierce did, incidentally the same guy who does the WoW machinima that I've plugged previously.

Good defender, not so good at offense. But the most interesting thing was how it plays completely differently from a human. Because a human would be moving their paddle back and forth depending on where the puck is... that's just how we work. But you can see that the robot automatically moves its paddle across to the other side from the puck, just because it knows it's going to be after it bounces off the wall.

Web regulators Thursday voted to allow the creation of thousands of new domain names, from .paris to .Pepsi, in one of the biggest shake-ups in Internet history, a French web official said.

Under the new system, the web's 1.3 billion users would be able from 2009 to buy an unlimited number of generic addresses based on common words, brands or company names, cities or proper names.

Internet body approves domain name big bang.

That's going to be just insane...

Three Wishes: Game Genie Grants Developers Their Hearts' Desires.

"Dear developer," our offer went, "if you could, at the wave of a magic wand, overcome some technological hurdle in game development, what would it be? And more important, what would it allow you to do that you can't do today? Ultimately, this is about you making the games you want to make. You can make one wish, or you can make three." Seventeen prominent gamemakers wished away, and in the process, revealed what troubles they face today as well as the trajectory the medium might take tomorrow.

[edit] Actually not as fantastic as I thought it would be, though still a decent read. Too many of the developers wanted brain-imaginings-to-reality tools (come on... who doesn't want that...).

But leave it up to Will Wright to want something as mundane (?) as perfect pathfinding. O.o

Now he just needs to build a big maze and fill it with glow in the dark dust-bunnies.

3D Sidewalk Chalk.

I love how their Flash demo only shows the "popped out" versions of the sidewalk, instead of letting you see both glasses on and off. :P The commercial's cute, though.

Creating objects that tell stories.

This one is from designer Yves Behar, who designed some stuff I don't recognize, but apparently are somewhat iconic in our new millenium... Leaf lamp, Jawbone headset. Okay, whatever.

But apparently he was also on the team for the XO laptop, aka the $100 laptop. Cool!