Hibernation is over

Quietly about 6 months ago we just put our heads down and worked nonstop on God of War 2. While there are a handful of things left to finish up the end is completely within grasp and I feel like when a bear wakes up from hibernation. I'm starting to see the sun again, leave work at a normal hour, starting to eat healthier and hell, I even went running the past couple of days trying to work this crunch weight off.

The insanity of this project came with a lot of laughs though, I can't lie. Such terrible ideas as, 'babies by may' and 'pancakes and pie' where all we did was go to those old people restaurants for lunch such as denny's, carrow's, coco's, norm's, marie callendar's, etc and just ate nothing but obscene amounts of breakfast food then finished it off with dessert. Which is why I need to start running again. Watching Eric/Todd battle over the norm's breakfast challenge and Eric getting hives immediately although was fucked up, was pretty damn funny at the same time.

So now I need to figure out how to rejoin life - how to interface with my girl again (I don't know why but that totally feels like a Sirlin line right there), how to eat healthier, enjoy the small things and even get back to playing games. I haven't touched Zelda since November so I'm hoping it will be easy to get back into. I have a stack of games all in shrinkwrap that I would love to start playing as well - such as Lost Planet, Call of Duty 3, Tony Hawk Project 8, Hotel Dusk, etc. I also have a few books that I want to catch up - I recently got Geek Mafia which was written by a Game Designer.

Speaking of Game Designers - what is arguably one of the best threads ever on SRK is going on - one of the designers from Street Fighter The Movie is talking about making the game and what not. Definitely worth checking out - click here to go to the link. For some reason I can totally relate to this guy. Him and the peeps making Ghost Rider.

Young NKI is in LA this week, so i'm going to try to hang out with him. It's funny - now almost everyone I grew up playing SF with in the midwest is gone. Even Seth Killian is in Nor Cal wearing big boy clothes working for Capcom. It's like our little community of players who set out to take over the world are slowly doing it. Proud of all y'all.

Time to go do some 'normal' things that i've been neglecting to do - get a haircut, fix my glasses, get my car washed, etc.

Checking in

In all honesty it's probably going to be a while before I update again. I will try my best so that it won't be this way, but as Cory Barlog's blog let the world know - we hit beta. Which means the next 2 months are going to be 2 of the most important months as we try to polish EVERYTHING and make it fun. Lets hope in 2 months we are all still alive and that videogame magic has once again returned to Sony Santa Monica.

Over the holiday break I thought I would play a ton of games. That really didn't happen. Although I played 2 really great games. The first being Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin. I played it on the plane going back home to Indianapolis then played it there while adjusting to the time change - aka being up at 4 a.m. when no one else was. Castlevania at this point has become Cheese Pizza for me. It's completely and utterly my comfort food. I know exactly what I'm getting when a new one comes out, I know it's going to be good - sometimes even fantastic but most important I know it won't be terrible. As I sit there playing I'm always amazed by how much love goes into these games and the latest did not disappoint. I'd say it's better than Dawn of Sorrow but not as good as Aria of Sorrow (which to me was the best GBA version).

I also got a chance to play Rhythm Tengoku - a Japanese import of a GBA game, yup a gba game. I'm almost willing to call this my favorite game of 2006 and thats not a joke.

I *think* it's made by the same team that made Wario Ware. I really suck at keeping track of which internal Nintendo team makes which game. Paging Omar as I'm sure he will know.

Basically imagine the art style of Wario Ware but instead of playing a one second micro-game you instead push the A button based on the rhythm of the song that is being played. Of course what they have you pressing the A button to is absolutely insane and half the fun.



2006 was amazing for rhythm games - Elite Beat Agents, Guitar Hero 2 to a certain extent and now Rhythm Tengoku. Hopefully 2007 will be just as exciting.

I was hoping to finish up Zelda but I didn't touch it at all. Instead I just played a ton of SF with Peter, James, Vic, Eric and Maj which was far more therapeutic.