New Yu-Gi-Oh! Cards :D

Well while I was at Best Buy yesterday I saw out of the corner of my eye some new cards. They were in fact Anniversary edition Yu-Gi-Oh! cards! At first what seemed to be a cheap gimmick to make you spend more money was realized to be an honest way of showing fans appreciation for their support of the series. Each pack comes with the same 10 cards and they are all illustrated by the creator of the series himself. If you are a big fan of the franchise i suggest you go buy them as they are only $10 for the pack and for some reason they go for $20 on Ebay. Silly scavengers never know what to sell.

Making up for lost blogging

Since I forgot to write something yesterday I will be writing twice as much today (that means two posts). Since I rarely write about the otaku culture I thought today would be a good day to start as I've been reading a lot of manga recently. I have just finished reading Wish and Lupin III which might sound odd to anyone who actually knows what both of them are. Lupin III is about a thief who is a master of disuise set in the 1960's who likes to get his action from the ladies after a good days work. Wish on the other hand is about a cute little female angel who who owes a debt to a handsome young doctor (single) who saved her from being attacked by a crow (yes you can laugh now). While the two demographics may seem to be completely different I appreciate both enough to read more on in the future.

Prinnies!!

I've gotten Prinny Can I Really Be the Hero for the PSP and yes it is very hard. I doubt that that Nippon Ichi Software accidentally made the controls for the game hard. I think it just makes it funner as you see countless prinnies die under the absurd difficulty level. I do get sad though as I see the adorable penguins die countless times and I feel a bit that it's my own fault. Whoops.

The House of the MA-Rated Dead

I was playing the House of the Dead Overkill for my Wii today and oh gosh there is so much cursing in that game. Since I'm used to the vulgar remarks that they make I don't feel too uneasy about it. I actually thought it was a very funny and clever take on the House of the Dead formula which in my eyes had become very stale. I was bored of hearing the character I play say something as ridiculous as "I wonder why everyone is acting this way" or "I have a bad feeling about this." I loved the more in your face attitude of Detective Washington and how he's going to "cut your balls off." I actually went out and bought the game after previously renting it because I just thought it'd be a fun game to pass the time by with some friends and I sure hope they laugh at it's cleverness as I did.

Working at Gamestop :(

So I worked at Gamestop until 9:45 today and yes it is a Sunday. Oh well what can I do right? I did cure my sadness with a little bit of Street Fighter 4. It's funny even when I'm losing at that game I'm still having fun.

Street Fighter IV EX plus @ HUGE SUCCESS :D

I purchased SFIV on Tuesday expecting to find a game that not only brought back some of my favorite 2D fighter back to life, but also made the genre fun again. This past summer I played many games of Virtua Fighter 5, Soul Calibur 4, and Dead or Alive 4. This fall I purchased MVC 2, CVSNK 2, SF@ Anthology, SF Anniversary Collection, Arcana Heart, Fatal Fury, King of Fighters Anthology, and some Tekken games. The old games were fun until the nostalgia factor left and the games were just plain outdated and the more recent 3d fighters were either too button mashy, too complex, or just boring to play. I missed the good old days when someone could do a hadoken and it actually was a big deal (a hadoken in MVC2 means NOTHING). This game brought it back for me, it brought it ALL back. I was able to not only be familiar with 80% of the cast immediately, but since their movesets were hardly changed able to jump into the game as if I had been playing for years. It was because I have.
Street Fighter 4 doesn't have a 3D and isn't trying to compete with 3D fighters. What it is trying to do is evolve the current genre of niche 2D fighters with pick up and play controls so that any casual fighter can have fun with it and think they're playing fairly, while keeping a layer of depth hidden underneath it so that die-hard fighting fans can learn all the necessary frame data and combos they need to conquer all. I usually wouldn't mention anything other than the gameplay, but I must comment on an amazing feature of allowing online gamers to request a fight with you while you're playing the arcade mode...brilliant! A problem with the 3d fighters I've been playing is simply you do the arcade mode until you unlock whoever you want then you go into the lobbies and wait it out. It seperates the two things that most arcade goers loved into two seperate ways of thinking thus weakening the overall excitement of playing the arcade while someone walks up and puts a quarter in the slot next to you. In SFIV currently there are so many people playing and challenging each other that most of the people I try to fight in the lobby have already been challenged in the 2 seconds that I'm looking at their gamertag. My solution is to play the arcade mode just like in the early 90s and wait it out for someone to come challenge me. The result is that my average time of me fighting someone before being challenged is roughly a minute. I love it and hope that it doesn't dwindle too much in the coming weeks after the fact. This game does have its flaws, but I'm not here to point them out as I'm not a professional reviewer yet so until then Capcom you have done a fine job. ^_^

Please Escapist Pick Me!

So the gamer in me has been rather lazy as I'm only waiting for Street Fighter 4 right now, but I have ben reading quite a lot of manga lately. From what I can remember I've been reading Getbackers, Air Gear, D. Gray-Man, Black God,Tokko, and GTO. Yes the otaku in me is still flourishing, but that may be because the manga that I've been working on has been coming along quite nicely in story. Also I have submitted my first query to the Escapist magazine in hopes of my story being chosen for publishing. Here's to my good future!! ^_^