i.justrealized

Haa! Final Fantasy mod for Starcraft 2. Very convincing:

Starcraft 2 Mod – Final Fantasy 0.2

As you all likely have known, Starcraft 2 is out but it is not within my financial comfort to make purchase of the game. I was in a game shop last week and came really near, like 20 cm, to purchasing the hugely popular game that I have been attracted to for, well, nostalgic reasons. However at almost a hundred dollars, it just strikes me as a rip off and I hate having the feeling of being ripped off.

Perhaps I am not that a big gamer to begin with; I love games but I love my $100 more.

Take a look at this video presentation where Peter Molyneux and his coworkers at Lionhead Studios made:

What is an even greater portent of things to come for RPGs and adventure games, is the fact that Peter Molyneux and his team at Lionhead Studios, an RPG-centric game studio, are the ones developing the Milo API in the first place. And if that was not awesome enough for you, consider this. At a recent private play thru of Milo, it was revealed to Joystiq, that Lionhead would indeed be including Milo in a real game to see release around the same time as the Project Natal launch. Still no official date on Project Natal’s release, however judging by the polished state of Milo, I’d say definitely sometime in the next 12 to 18 months. Putting it firmly sometime within the 2009 – 2010 calender years.

E3 2009 – Project Natal – Milo Demo with Peter Molyneux 720p HD

This technology supposedly is available in Xbox 360′s Xbox Kinect. I just haven’t seen something like this and the idea continues to fascinates me. Still, Lionhead Studios need to deliver the product, just a video demonstration means little.

A good presentation by Jesse Schell where he discusses the future of game design and the possibility of it entering the real world. Even if you’re not too much a gamer, you should stick check this video out if you have half an hour to spare. You can level up in the process:

Two top grandmasters, Maxim Dlugy and Hikaru Nakamura, battle it out in a 1-minute blitz game after the U.S. Championship. These guys are amazing. They play chess so quickly.

Speed Chess Game

I hardly know chess and pretty much suck at games that require me to think. Who wants to play snake and ladders with me?

Want to know the story behind Up Up Down Down Left Right Left Right B A Start? It’s sometimes referred to as Konami code and is implemented in many games, even those not from Konami.

Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, B, A

First executed on an NES game (not Contra!) developed by Konami in 1986, the Konami code (and slight variances of it) can now be inputted in more than 125 different computer, video, and arcade games—some of which aren’t even developed by Konami, the company that created the code in the first place!

Because Contra was one of the more popular NES titles in the day and basically required the Konami code for the average player to complete (the code granted 30 lives from the start, instead of three), most people associate the code’s existence with it. In reality though, the Konami code first appeared in Gradius in 1986, two years before Contra.

In Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty on PS2, entering the sequence at the end of the game has the main character, Snake, barking, “STOP FOOLIN’ AROUND KID!” At the end of Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater for PS2, Snake confirms “One More to Go…” referring to the fourth and final installment in the series on PS3.

There are a number more of hilarious consequences for using the code, like it causing your main character to self destruct in Contra 4 if you use the code more than once per level to power-up your guns or in the Dog-developed NES title 3-D World Runner, a message pops up that exclaims, “I AM NOT KONAMI.” The code can even be used in Google Reader of all things, enabling a different background color for the left-hand navigation and updating all unread counts to 30 (a homage, no doubt, to Contra’s 30 lives). You know the code has reached pop culture when Google starts using it. (Source: Game Informer)

There you have it, this is what happen in Google Reader, you get a ninja and your unread count becomes 30. Refreshing will return your unread count to the original value. Pretty cool I say.

(Press Up Up Down Down Left Right Left Right B A in Google Reader and get Ninja!)

The code is even in a song by The Moldy Peaches – Anyone Else But You (of Juno fame).

One thing I learnt from Ridzuan’s potluck party is that you should never leave your laptop unattended. If you do so, you’ll return finding you declared yourself a new lover in Windows Live Messenger, a change in your sexual orientation in Facebook and a Plurk exclaiming some guy’s pretty hot.

I played this game called Fluxx and that was the hardest card game I ever touched. I guess I don’t like games that need brains, prefer stupid good games. I left his place at 1 a.m. with the others still playing games. Really tired and there’s school the following day. The potluck’s awesome.

Mario finally overcomes his enemy and rescues the woman he has been fighting to save. Too bad the princess is not impressed by what she sees.

Super Mario Rescues The Princess

This video is by the creator of Family Guy.