Chuck Norris does not sleep, he waits

So what is this day of Awesomeness about, well check out  http://dayofawesomeness.com

So get out there and do something Awesome today.

FF XIII

Just so you know Final Fantasy XIII comes out tomorrow, but tonight there are various Game Stops and Best Buys having Midnight releases. You will have to look up your local stores as not all the stores are doing the midnight release.

We are going to Game Stop near by us, but I heard if you Cosplay a Final Fantasy character at a Best Buy tonight you could win your copy for free, though this is a rumor.

I’ve been curious to play this game, I want to feel and see what it has to offer. Many reviewers love it, and many fan boys hate it for being too linear. I want to play it and find out the truth.

Just a heads up, I hope to have a review of the game sometime in near future.

Logo

Radish feels like us

Leeks

We decided to follow the schedule to a few more events, do some browsing of the artist alley, and troll the dealer’s room for any last minute purchases. I found some must-buy stationary, a bento, and a really weird looking plush radish.

As things go we stumbled into the end of Uncle Yo’s late morning panel and then a few of us stuck around for Choices-presented by SHOE. Uncle Yo is always great, laughter is the best medicine. The SHOE show was fantastic as well, this show was slightly different then the improv show but still had a similar feel.

Some of the staff members were pretty tired and not feeling so hot from the long night of partying, and thus we packed up and left shortly after 4:00pm. I really wanted to stay till closing ceremony but the eyes of my fellows said I’m leaving you if you don’t go now. So I packed up and called it day, plenty of writing to catch up on later.

Not much to say but wow what an interesting and good Wasabi. I or one of the other staff of AnimeRoot will be writing a general review of the con as a whole. Also, I will be posting my favorite cosplays.

:)

Looking forward to next year’s AnimeLand Wasabi.

Our first stop was the artist alley and the dealer’s room where there was lots of good stuff to buy. Import items alongside fan made items of every kind were abundant. A wide selection of DVD’s, books, figures, posters, music, and more could be had from many of the merchants within the main room so we did our share of purchasing and browsing. The selection is big, but nothing compared to the majestic whale of a dealers room at Anime Expo. To put this in perspective the entire Red Lion Hotel could have easily fit into the dealer’s room at AX.

Busy Hallways

If the convention could have a mood I’d say it would be swinging wild on Saturday. People dancing, talking, and showing off their cosplay, pictures being taken and connections being made, social networking at its best. Words can’t describe the lobby of this hotel, so we took some photos instead.

The AnimeLand Wasabi AMV Contest was short but good. I was not expecting a huge production as this is a very small local convention. I was not disappointed with the AMV’s, but the order in which they were played could have used some shuffling. It is great that this show is primarily local editors; this format gives the locals a chance to compete with similar editors on a level playing field. This sort of environment also gives editors feedback and helps with their growth, learning from mistakes, and improving. We must all learn to crawl before we can walk.

Phone in your Vote

The voting system at first was very basic, raise your hand for your favorite video, out of three presented to you choose one. Then those top videos with the most votes moved to the finals where a cell phone vote was used. This was a really cool system, but I’m not sure it will work with a multi category audience vote if that is ever needed. Still a very cool system and I like the idea.

There is  a lot more article click the Read more text or select the article itself.

We decided to keep our seats and check out the “Happy Project” performance after the AMV Contest. Happy Project is a J-pop group comprised of female members who sing and dance to J-pop. It’s a very upbeat show with a blend of pop from various artists. The dancing is organized and uniforms match and this kind of group is definitely not something you see often. They are based out of Dallas Texas, so welcome to Colorado! Overall I enjoyed the performance; we took some photos of it and a short video clip so you too can enjoy it.

Happy Project

Shortly after the Happy Project concert was over, the guest panel to meet and greet the guests of honor and get autographs was held in the same room. This session kind of evolved into a question and answer session that was fairly entertaining and most definitely funny. We chatted with a few of the guests and the people in line to meet the stars of the show. I learned that the term\noise “wark” can be used to replace bad language. For example, “warking off” was something I’d not heard before but what the wark it was tons of warking fun.

Guests

Uncle Yo’s live standup comedy hour was very hilarious. It’s amazing to find standup comedy that relates to anime and gaming so well. Uncle Yo is most definitely one of the best of the acts at Wasabi if not the best comedy in the building, and his late night panels are even better to boot. This panel was held in the main events hall and was packed, with people filling in any available space, a smashing success if I ever saw one. I died when he started doing his “yo mama” jokes, trust me these “yo mama” jokes are different on an intergalactic scale.

Uncle Yo

Chairs, you sit on them after a while they make your bum sore but that that’s not the point. The cool people of AnimeRoot are always willing to help staff with events so we pulled up a chair or two for the costume and cosplay contest that was waiting in line to be seated. Between us and the rest of the volunteers we relocated an entire rooms worth of chairs in under 10 minutes, go team work.

Sweet Picture

A big shout out to the staff and volunteers who put in their time and effort to make this convention function, thank you for your hard work!

Joe!

The costume and cosplay contest was the main event of the evening. The evening consisted of three segments; first the judged costume contests, then the skit portion of the show, finally followed by the open walk or masquerade portion of the show. The run time on the entire show was about 40 minutes shorter than I thought it was going to be. I saw many amazing cosplay costumes over the weekend but only a small few entered for judging, and even fewer put together skits. Once again much like the AMV contest this is a small convention and I know if you give it time and love it will grow bigger every passing year. We took many photos of the cosplayers who proudly graced the stage; make sure to check the gallery for their pictures and more (Coming Soon). I think another big shout out to the judges for bringing prizes and Gimme Anime for donating prizes for our winners is due again. Thank you guys!

Dragon Ball Z team

A short break was due for us as we had been working non-stop all day so late dinner and more Red Bull and back at it for the long late night haul. We don’t stop for sleep, we Omni-bussing this boat.

We like to Move it, Move it!

The party gets good at 10PM because that’s when the all the 18+ panels begin and the rock gets rolling at the live concert. Pretty rocking concert overall and a really random late night panel that sort of digressed into a yaoi panel. We enjoyed the rock and roll more than the panel which both fought for the 10PM time slot. The adult panel with guests was not bad but it was very slow, had way too many technical break downs, and was just poorly planed. I must also add that both the karaoke and rock band were both very loud and made this panel even harder to hear let alone enjoy or understand. After a while it simply broke down to furry porn and yaoi which is not so much in our interest, so at that point it was rock on till “Late-Night Hentai” with your favorite Uncle.

More Yo

The shirt came off, did not go back on, and then the pants followed. Yes indeed this panel with Uncle Yo was outstandingly funny. Words of advice: “Never go to Hong Kong!” – Uncle Yo. This late night panel was my favorite among the others, and was completely shameless, sometimes less is more and sometimes hentai can be more hilarious then it is sexy. That is what this panel aimed for and I vote that it succeeded.

The Saturday Techno-sabi was really good; I enjoyed the club and euro more than the happy hardcore of Friday’s rave\dance. Good DJ’s, lots of glow sticks, and plenty of water were available; it was a good dance floor and the beats just kept coming, the Techno Viking approves.

More Techno

After the late night panels and the dancing was over, the AnimeRoot team did a little bit of partying, good times were had, and the hangover was guaranteed.

It was a wild night throughout the hotel; both the convention and hotel staff were pulling their hair out looking for trouble makers, lost children, and out of control parties. Again a major props are due here, thank you guys for keeping things under control.

Wow that’s Saturday’s write up in a nutshell, trust me check-out seemed to come way too early.

Friday night dance

It has been a very busy day, lots of hustle and bustle all over the hotel. Parking is bad;  to say there is not enough spots does not do justice. This will get worse by tomorrow rest assured. The Red Lion is a decent hotel, and though it is a bit pressed for space lets just call it comfortable for now. Check in went fairly smooth with events starting at 3:00 and check in at the same time. One of us made it to opening ceremonies though just barely. We are looking forward to the coming events. We call this con the grass roots con, most people are on a first name basis.

The visitors of this con are all a little odd in a good way, but there are a few that creep me out. The stuffed hallways full of goods and art for sale made it feel like a mad market in a distant land. I could only imagine the thoughts passing through the minds of the poor souls staying at this hotel that are not going to the con. “What the hell is going on here?” is the first set of words that comes to mind. I don’t blame them as they were not expecting this anime convention since it sort of fell on them. I was very disappointed that Rock Band presented by the Death of the Arcade folks got canceled last minute because it was a smash hit last year, and regular karaoke is just so dry.

Happy hardcore on day one is radical, and a few us really like it.  Some of us think less of it; as for me I can handle it in small doses. After the happy hardcore some good trance set in for a change in pace.

Unfortunately our female member is not present.  As a result I have no one to send to the yaoi panels so I will not be writing about those. The group of us wandered over to The Shoe Show, Super Happy Otaku Entertainment, and the Late Shoe. The Shoe show was entertaining; taking 1 part anime, 1 part hentai, and several audience members to partake in the improv. We did group skits, dubbing, and questions to random people games, and a few funny songs were played. Overall it was a fun experience.

Late Night SHOE!

The B21+ lounge is what we wandered to next after a few drinks, we arrived at about 12:15 am to the promise of beer, dancing, and a large party. What we got was no beer, a couple of groups of people, and a really good DJ. This was disappointing as we were told by several staff that there was to be beverage on hand, but there weren’t even cups to serve people with. So we decided to do our own thing.  We found some people, broke out some drinks, and got a little loopy.

The Stale Song

Watch first then read article below.

Censorship FTW

Is the advertising false? Is the advertising appropriate for a teen rated game? This is a topic up for some debate, as I’ve seen scoring the net for others thoughts and comments on this exact subject. What I find is a very mixed result, with many what seem to be average gamer type folks posting that they are confused about trailer saying things like “How is this going to be teen rated” or “What is the game play like” or “Censorship, this game looks like bad news”.

Now take a big step back and think about it, the Censorship in the trailers is put there to create the illusion of naughty your mind does the filling in part. The fact stands though this is a T-Teen game and you will not find any nudity in it what so ever but you might find some sexual themes and humor. I know what you’re going to think next “But the trailer leads me to believe that this game is pure sex”, rest assured Aksys games is not ready to commit game suicide in North America just yet.

This topic beside lets dive into some of details and history of this game and its style. This game is far from the first game to merge dating and turn-based RPG together, and this is definitely not the first one to touch the word naughty.

Thousand Arms for Ps1 – This was the first game I ever played that merged JRPG with dating. The goal of thousand arms was to date women and build a strong relationship with them, then using your hammer and her spirit to forge better weapons, and that is the short theory. This game was under the radar, but a classic in my book. To hammer the point that this game and Agarest are very similar I point out that they are both anime based character design, both T for teen rated, both have a dating system that helps forge the best warrior, and both are turn based fighting. The difference is that Thousand Arms follows the more Final Fantasy approach of combat while Agarest take the turned based grid approach.

Back

Front

And

Under water ray ramano

Utawarerumono for PC and PS2 – This game for PC contains adult content and the Ps2 version does not, much like Fate/Stay night series the game itself is about 80% teen friendly and about 10% adult and 10% mature content. The story is amazing, engaging and addicting, if your forte is not strategy and thinking several steps ahead this game will best you.

This is where I point out that this is not the first turn-based ero game produced but it is one of the more successful ones. It was a hit PC game that spawned the Ps2 port, and that then spawned the anime series, that recently got and OAV and a movie. This is one of the few games that Is both classy and adult, engaging thoughtful game play with strategy lures the player in and rewards his victories with story progress and dating progress. The characters are very likable and art is very simple yet unique, stylish but never over the top. Overall this game sits in the same bin as Agarest, and the Ps2 port puts it in the same rating bracket of teen.

What does this all mean? Well if you like turn based JRPG’s then chances are you will like this game. If you buy this game based on the current advertising for the sex appeal you will be disappointed if you’re not into turn based grid games.

I myself enjoy these games, as I highly enjoyed thousand arms and Utawarerumono I will be pre-ordering. I would pull the trigger soon if you have any interest in this game, as I do not believe it will be popular enough to keep in production.

Now that you have thought about buying this game lets point out your options.

You can purchase this game on your choice of two systems the Xbox 360 and the Ps3.

If you get it for the Ps3 it is only being offered as a direct download, no box, no extras, no fun.

Cover

If you pre-order for the Xbox 360 you not only get the game but you get the sound track, a bumpy boob mouse pad, and a pillow case with one of the main love interests printed on it.

This very special edition is dubbed the “Naughty edition” cost only $60 bucks. Really it’s a deal for just the extras alone. A worthy investment for those interested.

Oh Gigidy! Goo!

_

VHS vs VideoDisc

Turning points of the anime Industry

The legs of any entertainment industry would be distribution, when new ones are invented and become standard the old set are cast off. Let us take a moment and look at a few of these classic formats that are long forgotten. Many kids of modern times may not know of any these obsolete formats, but for history sake I must say I can better appreciate current technology as I have used and lived through the days of VHS, Beta-Max, LaserDisc, and VideoDisc.

Remember that old saying “Be kind, Rewind” I bet your kids have no idea what that means. Well Anime Fans I grew up on VHS, I first encountered Anime on VHS and that’s when I fell in love with it. I have so many good memories from the VHS laserdisc days, and I must say without these formats the American anime industry would not be here today. Thanks Retro! If you’re asking yourself the question “Why is the past so important this second?” Ah, that is a very good question to ask. You might say the reign of DVD is at its end, though it will live on for a long time, but it has passed the torch to the High-Def king Blu-Ray. And that is a good thing, the industry as a whole needed it, and once again your anime collection will change and grow.

Classics once found on VHS are being reborn in their full glory, finally being able to display raw film has empowered artists and directors to re-create and restore classics. Future anime that is already in High def has a home alongside forgotten friends and timeless classics, all on one format. It’s a beautiful thing, and I will be writing more in-depth about it soon.

I will be breaking down some formats, and their impact on the world, including the anime industry in the coming weeks. And reviewing some new and old releases as related to topic and format on hand at time of review, let’s face it I don’t own Beta-max and have long parted with Laserdisc so VHS, DVD, and Blu-ray will be the formats.

DVD vs Laser disc

Why you might ask?

PS3 was to expensive, lacked good titles, and still has terrible online service. But now its much more affordable, has many worthy titles under its belt, and is a bargain BluRay player on top. But to be honest my favorite system overall is the XBox360 because of the games. Fan boys of Sony claim better graphics and better load times, well now that I own all the systems I can tell you, it’s pretty much a lie.

The graphics are the same, the load times are the same, and for the most part I’ve yet to see something that the PS3 can do better than the 360 short of playing BluRay.

Hey whoa slow down there Xbox boy, why the hate. Ok I can admit to a bit of bias but to be honest the PS3 is a great system, has good games, and is not a gimmick like the Wii. Don’t get me wrong I like the Wii for Zelda, Mario, Metroid, and Smash bros, and not much else. Its graphics are joke, sound quality almost as bad as a netbook, and the motion of shaking looks like masturbation I’m sick of the Gimmick, but if it pleases the masses please Nintendo feed the hardcore gamers a bit more often.

Ok that’s enough picking on the Wii, it’s not a bad system in any way, but it is not next gen or even current gen, but it is fun and cheap, and is a great way for grandma and grandpa to get in on some gaming to, so it is hard to hate on. Ok I’ve jumped around a little bit but come on you don’t want waste your time hearing fan boy rants you want some points. Well here you go.

Console war standing
1. Nintendo Wii
2. Xbox 360
3. Playstation 3

Xbox problems: Red rings, dead charge and play kits, cost for LIVE
Xbox Pros: Is next gen, Solid online Play best in the industry, Biggest and most diverse gaming library, great customer support.

Wii Problems: Not even current gen system, Gimmick controls, lack of core gamer titles.
Wii Pros: It will never die, cheap, family friendly, decent spread of games and lots of extras.

Ps3 Problems: Expensive, but way better since launch! Drives die, and the system runs hot trading lower temps for silence. Sony Home is BAD and creepy, don’t waste your time with it. Online play sucks, gamespy arcade style. Bad loading times and you have no choice to install games!
Ps3 Pros: Nice menus, BluRay playback, clean graphics with emphasis on textures. Better sound then Xbox or Wii, the game lineup has become much better since the slim came out.

So where does this leave me standing, what should you buy? If I had to recommend just one I’d say go Xbox if you are looking to game most of the time, due to its amazing library of games. If you want the best movie playback and a fairly wide game library go for the PS3, if you own a PsP even better. And if you’re looking for a fun cheap time go Wii, great for the kids, and yet still satisfying for adults, but no video playback and a  step backwards in graphics. If you are real gamer you need all three, and trust me none of these systems are bad.

Oh man I forgot PC gamers, well PC’s at the high end are more powerful then any console out there, don’t lie to yourself fan boys, but the game selection is limited and it is expensive for a good gaming PC. I would say build it yourself is the way to go when it comes to PC, but if you must have someone do it for you, go with AlienWare or IbuyPower, cheaper then Falcon Northwest and better parts then HP or DELL. I PC game often, MMORPGS and Shooters are best with keys and mouse. Nothing wrong with controllers, it’s just a matter of preference. I love Halo and Gears more on Console then on PC just as a quick example. PC gaming is sweet, and LAN parties are so much fun. Yahoo I’m rambling now.

Get out there and game!

Walls of TL;DR Here

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