And the major players have revealed the plans for the gaming landscape for the upcoming months.

Microsoft - Good show, can't wait to see how the new UI errr... XBOX Experience, works out. Gears Of War 2 looking good. Would really like to get excited about Rock Band 2 and Guitar Hero 4, but hmmm... that all depends on wheter or not we can actually get it here. Other things really didn't matter to us over here in Asia since it had everything to do with movies and other licensed products. Surprisingly the one thing that I'm most looking forward to Geometry Wars 2, wasn't even shown during the keynote, but at least I got a date.. Aug 6th 2008. Mmmmmm... more polygonal destruction. Final Fantasy XIII on the 360 was an interesting announcement, too bad.. unless there's a RADICAL CHANGE to the turn based combat system.. NOT GETTING IT!

Nintendo - New Wii Motion Plus adapter is VERY interesting, this is perfectly shown through the sword fighting demo where to block an attack you hold the Wiimote against the direction of attack. Lucasarts... we'd like that Lightsabre dueling game now please. Wii Music and Animal Crossing both should make some pretty interesting things to play with when they launch. But... nothing was announced from Nintendo which made me want to play on the Wii. But.. like they slogan.. every game put a smile on my face when I saw it and, while I might not have a heavy urge to play on the Wii. I know I DO want to play with WZ on the Wii.

Sony - They showed an impressive line up, but nothing that has yet to give me that I need to get a PS3 like RIGHT NOW!!!! reason. Little Big Planet? Sure... let's wait for it to be released then let me figure out how I actually play it before I make the decision. The big news to come out of the Sony conference was of course the announcement of "MAG : MASSIVE ACTION GAME" which promises online FPS action for 256 players. While I do not doubt the console's capability of rendering a battle between 128 people on each side, I DO doubt that the majority of gamers will have the bandwidth to deliver player data of 256 people, along with their ordinance. But since this is just an announcement, we'll see how things turn out when it's released.

Here's what I've just got.

Granted that buying these 2 things together would seem to be some sort of a paradox.

Maximum weight allowance of 150Kg, cool means that it'll work for me! Didn't have much time to spend on it yet but after the initial weight in it says that my BMI is.. normal but of course there are many schools of thought out there that say that BMI isn't accurate since it doesn't take into account muscle mass, etc. etc. But heck I don't have much muscle mass to begin with anyway!

Nothing much to say about the game other than if you feel like kicking back and running a few laps around a circuit on a lawn mower or scooter bikes, this is the Wii game to get. I'd like to talk about using the plastic shell that came with the game.

It surprised me.

After the horrible horrible experience with Ridge Racer on the PS3 I was really worried about how terrible the control would be, but.. it really surprised me. From the get go, I started the game, selected the beginner level and I was off, no calibration, no sensitivity tweaking, nothing! And I was driving with a plastic in my hands. And I was surprised how well it worked.

Nothing beats the exact, responsiveness of an actual joystick. But so far (haven't left 50cc yet) even when racing online, I haven't had the feeling that the wheel is punishing me for using it.

Oh.. here's a video for all of you to see how well the wheel works.

For all of you wondering how I did the video recording to be synchronized? I had my video camera focusing on the wheel and the Pinnacle Video Transfer unit hooked to the TV. I started the recording on both ends then I yelled 1,2,3, MARK! and made a circuit selection at the same time, so that became the sync point for the video. Of course there's bound to be some margin of error since it's such a crude way of doing it.

As to how I overlaid the videos? The process is a bit complicated to be repeated here but the tools used were. AVISynth, FFMPEG and VirtualDub. I'm gonna need some sort of a REAL video editor if I'm gonna do complex stuff like this again. :P

On a side note, after seeing me play without the shell once. WZ now will hold remote controls horizontally between his hands occasionally. ;)

ps. Why did I use YouTube instead of Soapbox? Cause I felt this video needed public exposure. But for comparison's sake, here's the SAME video uploaded to Soapbox.

Main difference here is that each service uses different levels of compression. With the one using a higher level of compression able to deliver the video quicker but suffers with image quality with the other having the reverse trade offs.

As mentioned I watched at the PLAY! symphony on the weekend in Singapore. It was held at the Esplanade Concert Hall.. or what most Singaporeans refer to as... the Durian due the it's exterior shape design.

I really enjoyed the experience of listening to some of my favorite tunes being played by a live orchestra, but.. since I regularly seek out game music, most of the themes were very familiar to me already but still it was fun to hear a live orchestra play it.

Some notable highlights during the show

It was very exciting that while I was using Pictochat on my DS in the event hall... SOMEONE JOINED THE CHAT ROOM!!! And then another... then another.. it was just like how the bloggers would use the DS's bulilt in Pictochat to communicate with each other during a news conference. And it was also the first time I actually got some use out of the Pictochat app! of course.. once more people starting joining in the chats started drifting to DS r0x and all those PSP users behind me suck territory!

When you have a performance of music that's not dedicated to one particular game, the audience might not be able to relate to it. So while I was blown away by the Super Mario Bros suite, the music from Chrono Trigger while familiar to me just didn't invoke any particular feelings for me.

When they played the music from Lost Odyssey it felt that most of the audience was a bit errr.. unresponsive since.. the game hasn't come out yet at all. And the most funny thing about the performance was, they choose to play clips from the M rated trailer during the performance, I could see the 8 year old in front of me tense up and his guardian adopting an Oh my god, why they heck are they showing this? look. Somehow I think the symphony directed should make the video clips as PG as possible since people of all ages would come to their performances.

The most interesting performance of the night came when they introduced Takenobu Mitsuyoshi to the stage, I wasn't familiar with the name but I was very familiar with his works which included Shenmue and Daytona. And he was there to play on the piano the theme to Daytona. I was wondering if he was going to SING the theme as well but the MOMMENT he opened his mouth and english words came out from him I knew it.. HE SANG ALL THE SONGS IN DAYTONA!! And the momment he started off with Du Du Du Du Du Duuuuuu... DAYTONAAAAAAA!!!!! It's Gonna Be.. DAYTONAAAAAAAAA!!! Oh.. all the memories of power sliding with my friends started rushing back to me!

Ahh.. it was an very enjoyable night indeed.

 So I'm holding down to Singapore for the Play Symphony tomorrow. According to the venue's webpage there doesn't seem to be any strict dress codes that I need to follow ie. jackets, tie, etc. etc. So that's good.. since less clothing restrictions means more people can be exposed to such cultural performances. It also means I get to wear whatever I want.

Yup.. this looks good.. makes a nice statement too. :P

An interesting item on the venue's webpage states that.

Due to artists' sensitivity and copyright issues, cameras, image capturing and recording devices are prohibited within the venues. Patrons approaching the venue with any such recording devices are required to deposit them at the Deposit Facility at the entrance of the venues or at the Mezzanine level Cloakroom.

Err.. there's a seating capacity for 1,811 people in the venue, do they have sufficient logistics to store and retrieve 1,811 mobile phones?

I always find it difficult to recommend people on what things to buy, cause when the stuff doesn't work out well for them I eventually get blamed for it. Same goes for recommending where someone goes to buy the actual stuff.

The problem is that when the shop does a 180 turn on their policy and how to treat their customers, not to mention sell the same item at various prices to different customers it just pisses me off on how they can do it in the name of the community and yet screw them over at the same time.

So now when people ask me where to shop for stuff, I'm just gonna say I buy it at this particular shop but I sure as HELL ain't going to recommend the shop just like I sure as HELL don't recommend Streamyx to people even though I use it every day.

One of the first games I ever got for my Nintendo DS was Ouendan, it was basically the only game which after I saw a video on the web I knew.. I just HAAAADDD to get it!! And it was a brillant rhythm game, so fun and exciting, and fast paced!!! So fast that the game also served to be a DS screen killer since you had to spin the stylus on the screen like hell! Fast forward to today...

When I saw the Mario Hat Cushion on sale in Play Asia I was cursing the fact that it wasn't the real hat, but rather a cushion in the shape of Mario's hat. After contemplating buying it for a whole 5 minutes I dropped both the Mario and Luigi hats into the shopping cart.

Then my sanity slapped me in the face and asked me to disregard Luigi like the forgotten 2P which he is.

And after spending a few weeks in an economy class box.. here it is!!! The Mario hat cushion!!!!

Now how do I get WZ to pimp this product?

Previously there was only 2 kinds of people you'd meet when you were playing online in say.. on XBox Live.

The people who play games, or the people who heckle/sneer/curse while trying to play games.

More recently there's an additional bunch of people who like to let the other gamers on their teams know about their views of the current geopolitical issue. So you got people who are ganging up on people from certain countries, or just being an ass to people from certain countries.

Come on people!!! We're trying to have some fun online here I don't care what your polictical beliefs are, if you're on the opposing team I cap your ass, if you're on my team I cover your ass, that's unless you're a bad teammate, if not THEN I'll cap your ass.

Hey.. I've been posting quite a bit of video haven't I? So.. here's another piece of video that I did over the weekend with a friend, will it turn into something regular? I guess it depends if I have the time for it or not.

Click on the pic to go to the Soapbox site.