September 8th, 2009 by The Grey Ghost
I know this is a couple of weeks late, but I just received my copy of GameSpite Quarterly #2. This issue focuses on the top 40 (according to their message board polls) games of all time.
I pimp this book because my friend, Ben Elgin, wrote a piece for this issue, specifically the one covering Shadow of the Colossus. I’m ashamed to say that I’ve yet to play Shadow of the Colossus (or Ico, for that matter), but I hope to correct that foolish mistake soon.
Other games that made it to their Top 40 list include Resident Evil 4, Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, Earthbound… Throw in some Metroids, Final Fantasies, Marios, and Street Fighters… And of course, Chrono Trigger.
Did your favorite games of old make it to their list? There’s only one way to find out, and you can order your own copy here.
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June 5th, 2009 by The Grey Ghost
My buddy, Ben Elgin was recently published in the first issue of GameSpite Quarterly. He’s been writing articles for the GameSpite website for a couple years now, but now his work has been given physical form! (Tangible media FTW!)
This debut issue covers the 20 year legacy of the Nintendo Game Boy. Ben’s articles review Final Fantasy Legend III and Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia; both great stuff! They also make special mention for rival handhelds like the Atari Lynx, Game Gear, and (my old flame) Neo Geo Pocket.
You can order your own copy here.
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April 18th, 2009 by The Grey Ghost
The man, the legend.
Daigo Umehara, the Michael Jordon of Street Fighter, was honored with a fan-run website ( BeastDaigo.jp ) as a tribute to his influential role in the fighting game community. Daigo has been a noteable Street Fighter competitor for years, but it wasn’t until this video that his name became world-famous.
Nicknamed “The Beast” because of his unstoppable skill, Daigo had previously retired from the tournament scene due to a lack of competition. Fighting games no longer held their charm for him once his mastery of the games offered him no new rivals to challenge him. It wasn’t until the recent release of Street Fighter IV, that the competitive fire within him sparked anew.
The website itself is currently in Japanese only, though you can still enjoy streaming videos captured from some of Daigo’s matches. Daigo has been an inspiration and role model to competitive fighting game players all over the world. This new site is the community’s show of appreciation for his achievements in the community.
If you’d like to learn more about Daigo, he’s mentioned heavily in David Sirlin’s competitive gaming book, Playing to Win: Becoming the Champion, and is extensively interviewed in Brian Ashcroft’s Arcade Mania!, a book dedicated to Japanese arcade culture.
UPDATE: Daigo has just
won the
Street Fighter IV International Title!
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July 9th, 2008 by The Grey Ghost
A friend of mine just got a short story published! You can get the book here. I haven’t read it and if I may be honest, I may never. Heh, though the title is undeniably charming. The theme of the story collection is not my cup of tea, but it might be yours! She’s awesome, so check it out…
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July 7th, 2008 by The Grey Ghost
Since I’m taking my writing and this website more seriously as of late, I hit the local used book store to check up on some books that might help me improve on my composition skills. While there, I saw one book that at first glace I found just silly. I almost tossed it back up onto the shelf, but then I realized that while the idea behind the book was ridiculous, the form which this idea had taken was so much more so that it circled back around to awesome.
What I’d found is a 300-page hardcover vernacular guide that lists, breaks down, and examines the slang used in Buffy The Vampire Slayer. The thought that not only did someone get paid to meticulously research and compose this lengthy guide, but then the publisher felt it worth to pull all the stops on its presentation. Decent sized, hardback, and a snazzy dust jacket… I’m happy to give it a home on my bookshelf.
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March 23rd, 2008 by The Grey Ghost
This week I got my hands on a copy of the new book by Scott Kurtz and his fellow cartoonist buddies over at HalfPixel, How To Make Webcomics. Is it because I plan on producing my own webcomic? Alas, no… I gave up on that flight of fancy years ago. I took it as a sign that I ran into creative blocks after writing about four strips.
All the same, I’ve been listening to their podcast, Webcomics Weekly for the past few months and have still found it quite informative. After listening to their discussions over the webcomics industry, it’s not long before you can apply their insights toward just about any kind of online business. Just substitute the word “webcomic” for “blog”, “software”, “cthuhlu plushes“, or just about any form of web-based product or service and their ideas still apply. You’ll learn about web hosting, connecting with your audience, advertising, dealing with criticism, and the like.
The book is very reasonably priced; you can get a signed copy from the HalfPixel site for $20, shipping included.
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October 10th, 2007 by The Grey Ghost
I’ve always been a poor reader. I don’t read books as often as I should, or even as much as I’d like. And when I do, I’m ashamed to say that I’m also a slow reader. I read at about the pace of if the words were being spoken. It hasn’t been until recently that I’ve acquired a taste for reading, but that’s something that I mostly blame on my school system growing up.
Throughout my elementary school years, we were assigned to read constantly. It doesn’t sound much like a bad idea, but it was given an attitude that affected how I built my relationship with reading. That attitude was that reading was the superior platform of media. Neither the most artistic piece of cinema nor the the most informative educational television program could never compare to even the worst novel. Reading was the key to brilliance. You have to love books. All books were great, simply by virtue of the fact that they were books. It was exactly the way that the South Park episode depicted.
What made the experience most frustrating was the emphasis on novels. Routinely, we were told to read a novel and write a report on it. Only rather than produce a review or a simple synopsis of the book, we were lead to practically write promotional pamphlets for them. Every report that we gave (at least the ones that were graded well) carried on about how we loved it and how awesome the story was. We weren’t encouraged to critically examine it. If we didn’t like a book, then well, we must not have understood it, so fail. If you didn’t like that one, you must not like books. How dare you!
As if peer pressure when you were a kid wasn’t hard enough, what you read became just another means for other kids to judge you in my classes. Amazon.com hadn’t been invented yet and there were no used book stores near where I grew up, so while all the cool kids read classic titles or the popular books by Judy Blume, my folks would buy these value packs of books that were like, 3 for $7 or something. And they were all garbage. Our library wasn’t much help since I went to a pretty lame public school with a limited selection. And my folks weren’t about to drive me to the real library downtown. Twice, if you count then returning the books I’d borrowed.
The one thing that I did enjoy was whenever the entire class would read a book together. We’d not only read aloud in class, but we’d discuss the book’s contents. This would nurture us to grow mentally by exploring the concepts within the book…and in an open forum! When we were simply told to read a book and write about what we’d read, we’d be left to our own devices. Either ideas would be missed, misinterpreted, or glanced over.
Not enough attention was given toward encouraging us to explore our tastes in reading. Maybe some of us (like myself) didn’t care for fiction as much as maybe reference material. Maybe instead of frolicking through Narnia, I would have preferred to dive into some physics or philosophy. I think that pushing me into novels and dictating that I must like them more repelled me from books than attracted. If that pressure were not present, I might have been more open to explore fiction, as my peers were.
I was relieved once I entered 6th grade and I was blessed with a more relaxed teacher. Typically, the first 30min of class were designated as our quiet reading time, where we read to ourselves. Previous teachers set limits on what types of books we could read, but my 6th grade teacher understood that the goal was to encourage us to read, not what to read. For her, the sky was the limit! We could read our book report book, a newspaper, a magazine…even comics! I’d bring in a stack of Groo The Wanderer and even share with the kids at my table! If I had more teachers with that kind of open policy, rather than preaching propaganda, I think I would have been more receptive toward giving books a chance.
I think that sometimes, it takes one platform to act as a stepping stone into another. A lot of times, I’ll see a movie based on a novel and I’ll give that a shot. Sometimes I’ll find the book was better (like The Da Vinci Code) and sometimes may even prefer the movie (such as Fight Club). I found Fast Food Nation to be quite fascinating, which ironically I wouldn’t have even tried if not for a movie, Super-Size Me! (Although don’t see the movie version of Fast Food Nation…it’s ass.)
These days, I’m still not much of a novelist. I think it would take someone who really knew me and my tastes to sell me on trying a novel. But most of what I enjoy reading is non-fiction. Currently, I’m working my way through Dreams Of Love And Fateful Encounters, a book exploring love and attractions; as subject I have a passion for. What’s great about it is that I find it not only informative, but it’s challenged my vocabulary with every paragraph. It’s books like these that I wish we’d been encouraged to explore when I was a kid.
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