arne360

A couple of weeks ago I headed to Japan for about ten days, give or take. I don’t really write about personal (non-video gaming) subjects here on the blog, so if you want to know more about the trip, just check out my Flickr stream about the trip. On to video gaming related stuff…

My first purchases were at the Yodobashi Camera store right by Osaka Station and my hotel and included Mother 1 & 2 and Archaic Sealed Heat — which I just found out will likely be released in North America soon. Drat!

I also spotted the ultra nice gametech cases that I had been coveting for quite some time and found a pattern I liked. Somebody import them please!

In my last full day in Tokyo — and in Japan for that matter — dcharlie from NeoGAF was nice enough to take me around to Akihabara for some video game browsing which lead to video game shopping. I didn’t go looking for anything in particular and didn’t even expect to pick anything up. I know, I must have been out of my mind to think that. It all started after spotting a copy of the not-so-great yet limited Club Nintendo copy of “Game & Watch Collection. That reminded me of the Bit Generations series for Game Boy Advance which Nintendo released in 2006. After about 5 stores, we found one that sold five of the seven games at the bargain price of ¥500. I had no luck finding dotstream or Orbital unfortuntely. I’ll have to find a way to complete that collection at some point. We noticed that it does seem like a lot of the stores are starting to pare down their GBA stock quite a bit.

The rest were fairly random purchases during the walking around (Raiden Fighters Aces, OneeChanbara VorteX and a cheap copy of Senko No Ronde Rev. X — which came to the US as WarTech). Sad thing is, I don’t have a Japanese Xbox 360, just figured I would get one eventually. I think…

Spotted this off of Joystiq today and knew it was worth the repost…

Flickr user Matthew Johnston has put together a pretty sharp photoset showing key Liberty City landmarks and their real-world versions around New York City. I still haven’t spent much time at all in Grand Theft Auto IV yet but this is great stuff!

Matthew Johnston’s “Sightseeing in Liberty City” photoset

I’m in South Beach, Miami, today. I arrived late last evening to a surprisingly mild evening — for some reason I expected it to be warmer even though I should know better.

The Winter Music Conference is in town, as evidenced by many of the clubs mentioning the WMC in their marquee and by the folks I see walking around — I think. However, I’m here for work. The event I’m flew out to staff is one of the few official WMC events on Tuesday to kick off the conference. Ben, one of my colleagues has put together quite the event: Paul Oakenfold is playing with members of the Florida Classical Symphony and a three-piece band, featuring the soundtrack he did for our game, The Bourne Conspiarcy, while Cee Lo makes an appearance as a special guest. The entire thing is being streamed live on Yahoo! and you can get there from the Bourne Sessions web site.

If you happen to live in Florida, or near it, and want a guaranteed entrance to the show, enter Joystiq’s Joyswag giveaway for a chance to get in — note that entries close at 12:00 PM ET.

Word came out that the Sundance Film Festival 2008 is doing something really cool and right up my alley — they are making the short films from their festival available digitally. Some will be free to watch on the Sundance Film Festival web site and you can download up to forty-five of them via Xbox LIVE Video Marketplace, iTunes or Netflix. In short, this is simply amazing to me, especially when there are films by directors such as Leighton Pierce (Number One) — one of many favorites from my limited classes in art school — among the films to be released. I can’t wait to purchase some when they finally make their digital debut on Video Marketplace (since I don’t have a fancy new Apple TV HD).

I hope some other festivals pick up on this idea, as it makes sense — I don’t expect the Chicago Underground Film Festival to have that kind of budget or pull with the digital distribution services, but I can dream can’t I?

Back in early December, the Xbox 360 dashboard update brought with it some extra things to flesh out your Gamercard — the ability to enter your name, location and a short bio — as part of an enhanced online profile. So I figured I’d make the most of it, only to find out that my current city of residence contains “a word or phrase that isn’t allowed.” Perplexing as I don’t exactly live in a disputed territory in the Sea of Japan.

So, fellow Santa Monica residents, perhaps Microsoft knows something we don’t: Los Angeles is set to annex a neighboring city yet again. Of course, I’m kidding, and this is just a minor, yet amusing, situation — I’m going to guess that “Santa” is the likely culprit here for the many holiday and religious uses it could have.

As a result, I settled on a slightly more accurate location to reside: in ur xboxs, steelin ur gamerscores

In the absence of any real update, I present to you the Xbox Live Status Advisory System chart. Courtesy of Keyser Soze on NeoGAF.