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…

Just when you think Capcom’s Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney can’t get any more ingrained in Internet pop culture (or popular for that matter — as of today it’s #35 on Amazon.com’s Computer and Video Games Sales rankings), something else pops up.

Thanks to the ever intrepid (or bored) sp0rsk on NeoGAF comes this find: a make-your-own-objection tool using animation straight from from the game. I really don’t know what’s a better way to pass the time (as many on the board have already)… by creating your own objections or by changing the resulting URL to see what other people have come up with. You’ll have to crack the “code” to get the alternate versions of these animations, which include Edgeworth and versions of Phoenix and Edgeworth with music.

Again I got chastized for spending nearly a week away from Dr. Kawashima’s tutelage. I didn’t do too well this time around, but better than my initial assessment, which good I guess. I feel really stupid that Word Memory was harder than it looked, I missed some really obvious words. Lizz probably does a better job at that one than I do, she’s always had a super sharp memory.

Day 3 - May 27, 2006

Brain Age: 42
Stroop test
Speed Counting
Word Memory

Training
Calculations x20: 32sec (Missed 1 = 5sec)
Calculations x100: 3min 33sec (Missed 5 = 25sec penalty)
Low to High: 31points (6 correct)
Reading Aloud: 5.1 syllables (1min 29sec)
Syllable Count: 1min 12sec (Missed 0 = 0sec penalty)

Recapping a week’s worth of E3 isn’t as easy as I thought, so that’s still int he works. And Dr. Kawashima had the nerve to chastize me for spending two weeks away!

Day 2 - May 16, 2006

Brain Age: 30
Stroop test
Connect Maze
Speed Counting

Training
Calculations x20: 36sec (Missed 0 = no penalty)
Calculations x100: 2min 54sec (Missed 5 = 24sec penalty)
Low to High: 33 points (6 correct)
Reading Aloud: 4.2 syllables (1min 54sec)

In an effort to keep updating regularly, I will take the cheap way out and keeping a running status of my Brain Age successes, failures and progress.

I will cataloging everything I do and don’t do — although I’m not going to post on a day and say, I didn’t turn it on, nothing happened. We’ll see how long it is before I get bored of posting something nearly every day.

Day 1 - May 4, 2006

Brain Age: 46
Stroop test

Training
No training completed.

As if I hadn’t mentioned it a million times over, I got a Nintendo DS Lite for my birthday. In Enamel Navy. It’s very nice, I do like the color even though I had originally wanted Ice Blue. I have no games except for Nintendogs, which hasn’t been turned on in over six months. This was a pretty nice surprise, pretty unexpected really, especially since I already have a handheld (PSP) which I hardly use anyway because I don’t do too many things that give me the opportunity to concentrate for any length of time on a game. I like it so far, the size, everything is far better than the “normal” Nintendo DS, which almost feels more like a children’s toy than this in some respects. I guess that’s part of the point of the redesign beyond the improvements. Regardless, it was a nice present and I look forward to getting the couple games on my “to purchase” list I made in February sometime in the next couple of months. I need a second job with all these quality games coming out right now. I also want to go by one of those download stations and see what Brain Age is all about.

April bodes to be a good month, even though not as packed with releases as March. I guess that will make it a bit easier on the pocketbook.

First off is my birthday, for which I am the grateful recipient of what came through the following path:

Live UPS shipping data
Apr 07, 2006   10:18:00   US  SEATTLE   DELIVERED
Signed by: XXXX  Location: OFFICE
Apr 07, 2006   06:34:00   US  SEATTLE   OUT FOR DELIVERY
Apr 07, 2006   06:00:00   US  SEATTLE   ARRIVAL SCAN
Apr 07, 2006   05:44:00   US  SEATTLE   DEPARTURE SCAN
Apr 07, 2006   04:54:00   US  SEATTLE   LOCATION SCAN
Apr 07, 2006   04:47:00   US  SEATTLE   OUT FOR DELIVERY
Apr 07, 2006   04:23:00   US  SEATTLE   ARRIVAL SCAN
Apr 07, 2006   02:11:00   US  ONTARIO   DEPARTURE SCAN
Apr 07, 2006   01:26:00   US  ONTARIO   LOCATION SCAN
Apr 07, 2006   01:01:00   US  ONTARIO   IMPORT SCAN
Apr 06, 2006   22:21:00   US  ONTARIO   ARRIVAL SCAN
Apr 06, 2006   17:28:00   HK  CHEK LAP KOK   EXPORT SCAN
Apr 06, 2006   17:27:00   HK  CHEK LAP KOK   ORIGIN SCAN
Apr 06, 2006   16:35:00   US  ANCHORAGE   DEPARTURE SCAN
Apr 06, 2006   15:39:00   HK  KWAI CHUNG   PICKUP SCAN
Apr 06, 2006   14:10:00   US  ONTARIO   REGISTERED WITH CLEARING AGENCY.
SHIPMENT RELEASE PENDING CLEARING AGENCY REVIEW;SHIPMENT SUBMITTED TO
CLEARING AGENCY, AWAITING FINAL RELEASE
Apr 06, 2006   14:10:00   US  ONTARIO   REGISTERED WITH CLEARING AGENCY.
SHIPMENT RELEASE PENDING CLEARING AGENCY REVIEW;RELEASED BY CLEARING
AGENCY. NOW IN-TRANSIT FOR DELIVERY
Apr 06, 2006   13:19:00   US  ANCHORAGE   ARRIVAL SCAN
Apr 06, 2006   01:57:29   HK     BILLING INFORMATION RECEIVED

Which was a Nintendo DS Lite in Enamel Navy.

I’m also looking forward to the April 18 release of Final Fantasy XI on the Xbox 360. I’ve kind of fallen off the FFXI wagon since about January when I had worked up a backlog of Xbox 360 games to plow through. Of course having experienced FFXI in HD through the Xbox 360 beta also spoiled me a bit and made it difficult to settle for the lower resolution from the PS2 version I play on. I played the beta a little bit, but I got pretty tired of having to start over when I knew I didn’t have to. It was nicer to just run around and go exploring with the better quality graphics. It’s just a little over a week away at this point however. I can’t wait to jump back in. I will, however, lament the loss of being able to use my Logitech Netplay controller to control and type with ease. I’m going to look into seeing if I can get a wireless keyboard going though, so I can play with comfort.