Anime and Video Game Insight

I flew out to California early August this year to Ani-Jam 2008. 

 

Their website is here: http://www.ani-jam.com

I didn’t really know what to expect since it was also around the weekend of Otakon, EVO, and several other conventions.

It was definately a smaller, “homelier,” convention.  Both days at the convention was only 25$ entree, which I found to be a great price.  The Radisson Hotel lobby was amazing (so was the room rate, which was around 99$’s a night for two nights), with a two story indoor waterfall.

All of the standard fanfare that you would expect at a convention was there from panels and AMV contests, to concerts and cosplay.  The dealers room had very solid variety of merchendise. 

The staff at this convention was very laid back.  All of them were friendly and a lot of fun to hang out with.  The guests were also equally awesome.  I got to meet DJ Jinnai, Kristine Sa http://www.kristinesa.com/, and Stephine Yanez.  Ms. Sa was definately the most personable person I’ve ever met, she has the outgoing personality that’ll let her get along with pretty much anyone. Other than that, I saw the LYV and Stephine Yanez concert.  Here’s a youtube video of a song: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=96aJLNZX_Uw and that’s Ms Yanez below.

 

They had about six video game tournaments during the two day event.  They were very well run and the turn out to each game was about 12-14 people (Super Smash Brothers: Brawl had over 25 people).  I must admit, out of all the conventions I’ve gone to, they had the best prizes.  All of them were 25-50$ gift certificates to Best Buy.  How very awesome (more awesome since I took the win from the GGXX tournie)!

The Cosplay Masquerade was pretty good.  Honestly there were a few skits I could have been without, but the crowd was very supportive of all the acts, unlike in many major con’s where something less friendly would happened.  This is one of the benefitsof a smaller con, since people can’t hide in the crowds of anonymousity and being rude.

The Dance hall was a decent size, but in comparison to how few people there was in the dance room, it felt really big.  There just wasn’t too many people dancing (or even in the room, the count was probably around 40 people).  The music was was very upbeat and familiar thanks to DJ Jinnia. Like other conventions, this dance had no real ventelation and it was really hot in there after awhile.  None the less, I’m rather easy to please and had fun too!

Lots of people were cosplaying (like any convention).  The dominant  theme was Misa from Death Note this trip, which was kinda weird to me, I was expecting more Code Geass, Bleach, and Naruto (not that there wasn’t a lot of that, because there was!).  At one point, I counted about seven Misa’s.

 

By the end of the convention, I was almost reluctant to leave Fresno, but we had places to be and things to see.  (Ironically, I ended up at a natural park and a place called “Japan Garden” shortly afterwords, a story for another day.)  Ani-Jam was a lot of fun, if I have the funds to visit again next year, I’m going to make sure I do so.  A quick shoutout to Ray for hanging out with us in San Fransico after the convention!  I want to thank everyone at the Ani-Jam for contributing to such an awesome experience.

The Guy From NJ.

~Fei

I wrote a little while ago that I was likely getting a PsP and so, I got one.  I chose to get the 200$ core pack, a USB cord, and a 2 gig stick.  I tagged a few accessories and I was good to go.  A few things to note is that my PsP is came as firmware 2.60 with a TA-082 motherboard (which means my system isn’t very mod chip friendly, can’t be downgraded, and only has one option for exploiting the firmware).

With what I have right now, the biggest gripe about the PsP I have is how easy it is to make smudges on the entire surface of the PsP (I compulsively try to keep it clean and shiney), I mean you can make smudges on the D-pad and the buttons for gods sake.  My hands are pretty clean, but it doesn’t matter, you touch it in any fashion and you’ll get fingerprints, wipe them and they’ll make smudges.

Other than that, the system is pretty awesome, sound is crisp, screen is sharp, and all the buttons work (I’ve read countless people talk about how they’ve had dead pixels on their screen or buttons that don’t work etc, so mine seems perfect).  I can put pictures, movies, music on it (2 gigs of space lets me put quite a bit).

~Fei

This is more random than usual, but Otakon is coming up (http://www.otakon.com/ August 4 – August 6 at the Baltimore Convention Center, Maryland) , and this topic kind of just came to mind since of the 22,000 people going, I’m sure there’ll be plenty of people dressed up for it. 

Quick bit on Otakon, although, if you know about it, than nothing I say here will be new to you anyways.  It’s probably the biggest Anime gathering on all of the East Coast.  There is a lot to see there, lots of dealers selling pretty much anything remotely East Asian’ish, and lots, and lots, and lots, of people.  It’s going to be like 60$’s for the three day event.  At the time of this writting, looks like finding a place to sleep for it is going to be a pain (tag another 150$ish to the price of going there, on top of gas, three days of food, and whatever else you buy outside of that).

 I may or may not go this year (it’s only four hour’ish away from me, but that’s still FOUR hours away…), regaurdless, there’s my support for it.  Anyone going this year?

So, back to cosplay.  I’ve never actually dressed up for anything outside of Halloween, but that’s always been fun.  I’m pretty sure I’d be way too embarassed to be able to put myself in an outfit and wander about with thousands of people staring.  But that’s not to say that people don’t do it well.

   

Above, cosplayers dressed as Yuna FFX-2, Tira Soul Calibur 3, and Rinoa FF8 (I’m still learning WordPress and don’t know how to get the full sized pictures up… working on it).  I think those were done really well and actually look like the characters they represent.  I wonder if people actually get into the character mindset like actors do, when they cosplay.  Or do they just dress up to mess around?

You hear a lot of people poke fun of Cosplayers (well,… only as much as random people would poke fun at someone who really loves Anime and Video games I guess), I wonder what do they have against it?  Making fun of other people going to have a good time is kinda,… eh…  Atleast people tend to keep it to themselves though.

Anyways, maybe going to Otakon, maybe going to Cosplay,… maybe not.

~Fei

I remember when the controller was first introduced to have “pressure sensitive” buttons. Back then, when I first heard of it, I thought it was the most amazing thing. I thought about how fun it’d be for games to make use of a variety of “moves” with just applying different pressure to the same button. My mind raced with all sorts of random thoughts and what if’s… like “What if codes in new games required percision from pressure sensitive buttons on top of quickly tapping multiple keys (think MvC2 dial-a-combos).”

Years later, the reality of it is rather depressing to me. I look at the titles available that make use of these buttons and I’m not pulling many out… Some racing games incorporate it into their acceleration and break buttons. The Bouncer made use of dual layered moves (albeit only hard presses and light presses for different moves), the coolest thing was in the configuration you could actually see how hard the game thinks you’re pressing buttons. Overall, this feature that’s apart of every official Ps2 controller just doesn’t see much use and that’s just a shame.

I really like the Ps2 controller, it’s light, percise, comfortable, has so many buttons, it rumbles, there is so many good features to it. I just kind of wish developers put more thought and work into something as basic as taking advantage of the hardware and peripherals of the console they make the game for, instead of just looking at their own games.

~Fei

What did you play when you were younger?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oetVlhCPRKA

He’s pretty adorible isn’t he? I wonder if I could have been that good when I was five… I wish DDR exsisted back then,… I think I was learning how to play Super Mario for the Nintendo.

I don’t think I even heard about DDR until like second year in highschool,… And when I first started, I was pretty bad (and that’s being generous).

The gamer inside of me wonders still, what would it be like if this exsisted back then… Would I even play DDR?

~Fei

I got my hands on a little bit of money and decided to binge spend on myself for the first time in a bit.

What am I going to try to get? A Sony Psp (A little late, but saves money too =p ).

Target goal: Get everything I’d need for 300$’s.

So lots of ways to try this.

Let’s take a look at a few routes.

The obvious approach would be the mostly risk free way of going to the story, 250$’s + 15$’s NJ Tax). 300 – 265 = 35$’s left for a game. Note, the 32 meg memory stick that comes with this set is too small to take advantage of the PSP. This option just isn’t appealing.

The other local way would be to buy the new core release, that comes with nothing but the system and AC adaptor for 200. 180 used. That’d give you a more reasonable 100′ish to get a decent memory stick, games and accessories. Going this way has no real penalty if you regret the purchase, mainly because the cloth and case are 15$, the remote and head set is 25$, and a 32 meg Memory stick is around 10$, rounding you back to 250$ anyways.

If I were doing the buying online. No clue how it’ll turn out. But the prices are amazingly cheap.

http://www.hyperhardwaresl.com/index.php

The site above gives different offers for Psp bundles and stuff. The core system, no frills, no cloth, no memory card. Just the system, power source. For 132.10$’s USD (They sell the normal bundle for 158 USD). That’s over 120$’s saved (And gives about 170$’s floating to cash in on games and accessories) on the spot. The promotion on the site is “Free shipping” and no import tax. The catch? Odds are ordering from this site would mean the system would be a UK Psp, meaning region 2 UMD reader. Region 2 is pretty cute if you were into importing Japanese UMD’s since Europe and Japan are both region 2. Other than that, it should serve the same exact functionality as a Psp, from firmware, to how it’d play games sold in the US.

The biggest bulk of time spent while doing this reseach came looking up memory stick facts. Let me list a few key notes. SanDisk shares the patent with Sony for the sticks, but sell better quality stuff, cheaper. Buy SanDiskbrand.

SanDisk

Price to shoot for is more or less 20$’s for each 512megs. So 2gig for 80 is pretty decent at the time of this writing. Don’t go any cheaper or any brand that isn’t SanDisk. As it seems memory stick speeds differ. It’s pretty important that you get your memory stick online, since it is definitely cheaper in 90%+ of cases as opposed to buying retail.

Random accessories I looked into.

USB adaptor. Need a USB cord for the computer, it’s like 5$’s buying a more expensive one would probably mean you have a higher quality one that’d allow faster transfers from PC to Psp.

Protective cover. Looks like another 5$’s, paying 10 would probably mean you’re paying too much.

Case. The big brick like thing, or the travel stuff. The starter “sets” that give all sorts of items ranging from car charger, to another headset (if you don’t buy the 250 bundle) seems to go from 20-30$’s.

Games. This is a gaming system after all, I don’t have my eye out for too many games.

They’re still a little pricey for a portable game at 40$ a pop (the new / good stuff). Metal Gear Ac!d and the sequel, Legend of Eternia, Legend of Heroes, and Valkyrie Profile are on my personal to watch for lists.

Head Set. I’m a little unsure about this. The 250 bundle has this and the remote, which I thought was rather cool. Stand alone, the Sony brand one costs 25$ give or take.

Completely not necessary, but I dunno.

PSP WiFi Max. If you don’t feel like getting a new router, this device lets you surf the web, with a cable connection. Just connecting this to your computer and letting your existing connection connect your Psp. The idea sounds cool, but I wonder how the latency would be like having yet another medium to go through before reaching your Psp. This is like 40$’s.

http://www.ebgames.com/product.asp?product%5Fid=802259

On the other hand you could get an actual wireless router too. Something like this for 50$’s is pretty good.

Wireless Router

Extended Battery. The Psp battery life is rather short, two to three hourish. The battery boasts that it’d give up to 20% more life to the playtime (Like maybe half an hour ish more, but over charges and time, it’d probably be more fun to charge your Psp less, depends on how much use you put into your Psp).

With all that aside, let me sum stuff up and give a few opinions. There’s a lot of frill’s that I don’t need. But US UMD’s are an option I’d like to have (they’re selling so horribly in the states, it’s only a matter of time before you can buy them by the handful REALLY cheap). So if I get the UK system (the cheapest option), I may regret that my Psp would be unable to play this bargain UMD’s in the future (and should Sony change their mind about region coding their actual games, buying a US one would be safest, if you lived in states). So finding a core US no frills pack for 200 or less is what I’ll do. In my opinion, the only two other essential items are the memory stick (1 to 2 gig’s) which are a lot cheaper now than when they were released (they’re up to 4 gig’s and Sony says they’d be released an 8 gig one soonish). And the last item being a USB cable for your computer to connect with your Psp (some bundles have this). With these three items, you could make your Psp the versatile media machine that people claim it to be (which is what I want).

On the other hand, on bare bones basics, you could just order the UK one for 132$, spend 10$ on a 32 meg stick, and just commit to buying games. So start up cost would be about 142$ total, which is pretty hot.

So yea, random urge to get a Psp, and that’s what I looked into.

~Fei

PS This doesn’t fit too well anywhere, but if you import a firmware 1.0 or buy a 1.5 ish firmware Psp, you have an exploitable system (in a very good way if you want to pirate stuff, firmware is the Psp OS, so to speak). Later versions fix this, and you can’t go down in versions. However updating from them is free. Good luck finding it if that’s your thing.

PPS Yea, at the time of writting this, no pictures, to save space for words… o.O

I remember way, way, wayyyy back in my elementary school days (I’m thinking first grade), there was this time this kid came up to me and asked me what 10 times 10 was. I remember clearly saying 100 (I know a lot of Chinese households teach their kids multiplication at an early age). But the story goes on! I followed up, suspecting he only tried to memorize the biggest multiplication pair and that he didn’t know anything else, “What’s seven times four?” The other kid gave me a blank look. GG, I win.

I was reminded of this story because it just came to me while playing one game online or other that day. Some random person goes “Ohhh I have this and that…” another person chirps in, “Ohhh, so what? To be pro you have to do this, and that! You n00b!” Granted outside of the “You n00b!” part, the rest of the lines were close to hypothetical, I found this argument, and many others I’ve seen in the past, really similar to that one test of … wits (?) I had in my earlier years.

So what’s the big deal? I’m comparing adult behavior to that of mine when I was seven years old? When you take away the binding unspoken laws of social behavior and realize you’ll never meet any of these people, nor are you bound by social ethics and morals. People are such immature asses. What is it that make people act like that? Why do people log on just to give other people a hard time? What’s with this serious inferiority complex people have with online gaming?

My excuse was that I wasn’t even at the age where I knew what modesty was… but what’s everyone elses?

They’re probably millions of this kind of rants about how people act online, so I’m just going to stop mine early,… like now.

In summary, watch the video below.

Link of it: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5829962112288504909

~Fei