Games! Games! Games!

I fear knitting may go on hold for a little while…We Heart Katamari is now available for PS2. As soon as I hear the katamari music, chemicals start to fire in my brain, and I’m in a state of excited rapture. Mr. Xls picked up a copy of it at lunch, and tonight we are having a date at home of tasty drinks and PS2. I’ve started making some sketches of my katamari halloween costume already. The royal we, that is me, loves Katamari.

Teamxbox.com also has some screenshots for Amped 3 for the XBOX 360.

I didn’t think I would be able to do it. I had ceased all frivolous spending for this month and put the money that I would have spent toward hurricane relief. Since Ken’s company was doubling donations to the Red Cross, I threw mine in with his. I really didn’t think I would be able to go a month without buying videogames, renting anime, or renewing my game subscriptions.

I just listened to Bill Gates and Steve Balmer discuss the state of Microsoft at their company meeting. They sound like that annoying high school friend who won’t shut up telling you how great he is. Gates says the Xbox 360 is the “coolest product being done in the industry” and he doesn’t sound like he believes it himself. It’s funny to see these old guys discuss games. I’d love to ask them what “cool” games they have played lately.

Welcome to the brand new Weblug! This website and blog will focus on five main categories: Computers, Mp3 Players, Video Games, Books, and Musical Instruments. Why choose these categories? I choose these five because they are topics that really have peaked my imagination. Who knows when you will see the first walking computer that can listen to an mp3 Player while enjoying a video game and book and plucking the strings of guitar. It’s going to happen!

Whatever Nintendo’s given up in the main console market to Sony and Microsoft, it’s firmly in command of the handheld world of awesome.

In case you haven't seen it yet, here is the Nintendo Revolution controller. There's lots of heated discussion about it all over the place. Personally I think it's a neat idea, and I'm still planning on buying a Revolution. Of course, I'm a die-hard Nintendo fan.

I gotta tell ya, the SuxBox360 and the PlayStation 3 may be getting all the buzz, and the world may be moving on to the sexy little PSP and the wacky NDS (which I will be acquiring before X-mas, this I swear!), but most of my time this weekend was spent quite enjoyably with the GameCube and GBA SP. And when I look at the games I want to play right now.. They’re all on the Big N’s platform. I’m not becoming a Nintendo fanboy, but…

To reassure people that I’ve not suddenly moved away from my usual interests, which would be a worrying sign indeed, here’s my solution to the “omg iPod or PSP it’s so confusing” dilemma. Yes, it’s a handheld that runs Linux. No, it’s not just because it runs Linux; it’s arguably more powerful than the PSP for a start, it’s certainly cheaper, and while only a few dodgy penguin types may be writing games for it it can already run all of the open-source emulators out there, allowing one to run original arcade games, (S)NES titles and so on. If you own the original games, of course. It would clearly be illegal and reprehensible to emulate a Double Dragon machine unless you owned a Double Dragon† arcade machine. Which I do. Look, it’s right there. Can’t you see it?

Ninteny Nine Nights, despite the Mizuguchi name attachment, sounds like it might actually be a bit disappointing. What is it with some early Xbox 360 games (Kameo being another) throwing hundreds of characters at the screen as the only way to use the full power of the console? Cheaper and quicker I guess but I hope it doesn’t become a lazy trend.

First, the decision to put the Xbox 363 at two price points seems to have caused plenty of agro. Which is bizarre. Like, every new console has been really expensive, so it’s weird that everyone’s complaining about the price again. And even though Microsoft has really made an effort to make the console more affordable, all the Internet wants to do is complain – about how it’s going to be really expensive to buy memory cards so you might as well get the premium version, or about how you won’t be able to play your old Xbox games unless you buy the expensive version etc. etc.

When Microsoft was coming up with a name for its next generation console, it was hesitant to name it Xbox 2 because it would be going up against the Playstation 3 and as we all know (well, most of us, at least) 3>2. So Microsoft did what any male would do when faced with a situation where their product doesn’t quite measure up — overcompensate. Sure, they may have went a bit overboard by calling it the Xbox 360 — where I’m sure some gamers will expect it to be 120 times better than the PS3 — but they weren’t the only ones. Ginormous game retailer Gamestop has announced their Xbox 360 Ultimate bundle which includes the premium console, 11 games, and an assortment of accessories. Final cost: $1200. Ouch.

There ya go, now you can play your favorite game and when you get stuck, you don’t even need to get out of your chair to surf for game cheats. Or check your email for that matter.