Petezah

The last day of the convention was pretty cool. I hit some exhibits that I completely overlooked yesterday, including a pretty big Korean game exhibit. As part of the show, there was a band comprised of three girls playing an electric violin, an electric cello, and a keytar—all very skilled, so it was cool to watch. After watching the show, I explored the exhibit and talked and exchanged cards with a bunch of different representatives. It was pretty interesting, since I hadn’t heard of any of those games before checking out the displays.

Somehow I also totally missed Konami’s exhibit yesterday, and I’m not entirely sure how that happened. So I checked it out today, and saw some interesting stuff. If PSP ever comes down in price, I may have to get one so I can get their new Silent Hill PSP game. Though, they didn’t seem to have any information on it outside of a little sign saying that it was coming out, displayed underneath a screen showing the trailer to the Silent Hill movie. They did have a couple of DS systems set up for the new Castlevania game though. I’ll be picking that one up, definitely.

And I didn’t end up going to the Wii exhibit, because I didn’t feel like waiting in line for 3 hours. I figured it was better use of my time to look at stuff I haven’t heard of already. That’s what a marketing expo is all about right? Plus, I’m just not that excited about it—maybe that’s why I should have gone in, but whatever. Besides the Korean exhibit, one of those things was Rule of Rose. I’m always happy when new horror games come out, so this is no exception. It was all in Japanese at the show, so I mostly just watched one of the exhibitors play the game so I could get a feel for it; and it looks pretty nifty.

I got movies of the violin band, the keyboard guy, and a bit of skateboarding, but unfortunately, the hotel’s connection doesn’t have a fast enough upstream for my liking, so they’ll have to wait until tomorrow I guess. The convention could have gone on for another day and I wouldn’t have minded either, but I guess I’m exhausted enough for one weekend. So it’s back to Phoenix for me, and if you missed the convention, check out my pictures.

After getting a bit dislocated because of some bad website directions, I got better directions from a gas station attendant in Montebello and ended up at the convention center around noon. Unfortunately, parking was pretty retarded by that point, so I ended up in a $25 lot. Yar.

Because of more misinformation, I ended up wandering around in the convention center trying to find the registration area. Though, in the process, I did run into Erhardt, one of my professors from DigiPen. So that was cool, in spite of momentary irritation from not being able to find registration. Anyway, I finally did get registered, and started wandering around the exhibits about 12:30 or so. In the South building, I ran into Elliott, another friend from DigiPen who now works for Concrete Games, also THQ. Small world.

Anyway, I wandered around a while, as one expects to do at these things, took a bunch of pictures, played a bunch of games, including Guitar Hero 2—very cool with the bass guitar thing—and the New Super Mario Bros for DS—also very cool. And I finally ran into Jon and Andrea. So, all in all, pretty cool first day. I’m hoping to hit the Wii exhibit tomorrow.

I’m in my hotel room at last. It was a long, arduous, and slightly contrived journey; so I’m writing it down before I forget the details.

I was on amazon today looking for DS games, and came across another empty product entry—fairly typical in commercial sites this large. But I was slightly bored and clicked in for a peek at the entry, wondering if there were any vestigial clues left behind as to what the product might have been before it was pulled. Nothing about the product remained, however, it had been reviewed three times already and had received a fairly high rating. Fairly amusing.

Now, one of the reviews—the last one, actually—seems like an intentionally facetious review by a real person who has actually written other real reviews from time to time. Having titled the entry “The Best Game Ever Made”, the writer goes on to say that he had been waiting a long time for “Deleted Title” to come out, and was not disappointed. Another, much longer, and probably automated review, in my opinion, said roughly the same thing. The first review, however, went on to talk about how their son had modded the game and made it similar to Hot Coffee from GTA. So I wondered, do anti-video game people just randomly go around and make reviews like this to try and help their case? Or what? I don’t know. I just thought it was odd, so I posted it here. Search for “Deleted Title” on amazon and see for yourself.