Sunday, August 28, 2005

Off to Japan!

I’ll be in Japan for the next two weeks exploring the countryside and eating delightfully squishy foods. Once a year I try to get outside of the US and I always follow the same rules of thumb. First, I try to have at least one good meal. Second, I try to sketch the local population. If you haven’t been by the galleries, there’s a good collection of past sketches from Bali, Peru, etc.

This time, I’m adding a bit of blogging to the mix. In theory I’ll have a solid internet connection and will be able to upload several bigger essays that I have halfway finished. I’m hoping that there is the equivalent of a café that I can plunk myself down at while the lovely fiancé is off gift shopping with her mother.

Here are some essays currently in queue:
  • Advergames: I’ll cover some of the implications of designing a game to support a marketing campaign. There is a fun example I can use from the work we are doing on Anark Gameface that should be quite pertinent.

  • Design review of Advanced Wars: Dual Strike: This is a rather classic example of traditional game design and offers a good balance to the Nintendogs review I did earlier.
I’ll be just missing the Tokyo Game Show, which is unfortunate since I’m quite curious to see if Nintendo will be announcing their new controller. Instead we’ll be taking the bullet train out to Nagoya to check out the World Expo. I am a huge sucker for robots, especially the overly cute humanoid ones that the Japanese companies seem to create in such vast numbers. This is an entire school of product design that I find quite inspirational. I’ll bring along my sketch book and see if the sensory overload sparks any fun concepts.

Take care
Danc.

5 comments:

  1. If you take the wrong train and find yourself stranded in Toyama Prefecture, be sure to drop an email, and I'll buy you a Ramune and give you a futon in exchange for an indepth explanation of the mechanics of Ouendan.

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  2. I think it's now pretty much confirmed that they are announcing the Revolution controller at TGS. Sadly, I'm not at TGS this year... :(

    Have fun in Japan! I've not made it into the countryside yet, but both Tokyo and Kyoto impressed me. Kyoto is the most beautiful city I've ever been to, and I'm pretty widely travelled. :)

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  3. I think it's now pretty much confirmed that they are announcing the Revolution controller at TGS. Sadly, I'm not at TGS this year... :(

    Have fun in Japan! I've not made it into the countryside yet, but both Tokyo and Kyoto impressed me. Kyoto is the most beautiful city I've ever been to, and I'm pretty widely travelled. :)

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  4. I eagerly await your review of Advance Wars: DS. Me and my friends were on vacation in Wildwood this past week when it came out. We went to the only EB in town on Monday and then again on Tuesday until the game came in. I've never bought 6 copies of a single game at once before. Needless to say we racked up about 20 hours each on the game in about 5 days. Wireless multiplayer is the greatest. If you ever played the first two Advance Wars games with the link cables you will agree.

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  5. Cheers Danc! I'm so excited for you. Sondra just discovered you were engaged this weekend. It was one of those "bad spouse" moments, when she was asking me something about you, like how you're doing, and I said, "Yeah, he's doing great! Now he just has to start having kids!" And Sondra says, "Well, when he finds a girl."

    I give her this sheepish look, "He's been engaged for a while now."

    She hates it when I do that. She sends her love to you and your fiance. Good luck meeting the parents! Talk about culture shock!

    Huggers!!

    --Ray

    PS> Oh yeah, on the game front, I played AoW all this weekend... I am trying to get through the campaigns. The game is great, if a bit slow on my old PC... I do feel a bit guilty for neglecting the family... guilt of which is wholely justified... ;)

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