Inside the thoughts of an average gamer.
Archive for May, 2009
E3 Is Upon Us!
May 29th
It’s that time of year again. Starting Monday morning and continuing until Thursday night, the biggest and longest running gaming convention gets underway at the LA Convention Centre. E3 is here!
Since I’m just an indie, upstart blog, I couldn’t even hope to get into E3 if I tried. However, our friends at Gaming Union are preparing to head down to SoCal as I type this and will be covering the event from top to bottom. As well, you can find live feeds of the big 3 conferences on Gametrailers and probably Gamespot as well. I will also be summarizing the day’s big stories here, as well as giving in my thought on the big 3 conferences depending on whether or not I get around to getting to all three. (My eyes will obviously be on Nintendo and if they can redeem themselves from last year’s poor showing.)
However I will be missing a good chock of the event, as my DSL line will be offline for at least all of Wednesday to allow the installation of IPTV in the house. This wasn’t my decision, and it couldn’t have come at a worse time as far as gaming news is concerned, so my summary for Wednesday (and maybe Tuesday) will likely have to wait until Thursday morning at the earliest. (Either that, or hopefully there’s a neighbor who wants to be “generous” with their WiFi that day.)
IT’S JAPANESE MAHVEL BAYBEE! Tatsunoku vs. Capcom Confirmed for US release.
May 20th
Yes, I’m a bit slow on this.
By now, if you’ve been following this, you probably know the runaround. Sometime late last week, a scan of the latest issue of Nintendo Power showed an article showing Tatsunoku vs. Capcom, the latest in the “vs. Capcom” series that was made famous by Marvel vs. Capcom. The article specifically hinted that the game was coming to North America, which is something that a lot of people were expecting to never happen due to the nature of the characters on the Tatsunoku side.
Well, CAPCOM thought differently on that, and Capcom Unity’s Twitter account confirmed that Tatsu vs. Capcom was one of two or three “mystery games” that they were showing at E3 next month. That being said, not only is CAPCOM surprising us with this Wii game that we never expected to come outside of Japan, but they also have two more that they’re going to spring upon us.
But this is why we all love CAPCOM. They’re one of the few developers that actually listen to their fans.
In the meantime, you can find some TvC gameplay footage after the jump.
Updated: Recent Server Issues
May 18th
Over about the past couple of the weeks, the server that A Gamer’s Mind has been hosted on has been suffering from intermittent load spikes that occur anywhere from a bi-weekly to an hourly frequency. So far the host has had no luck in trying to solve the problem and their efforts seemed to have come up with nothing, though. I have to give it to them, though, they are looking into this to the best of their abilities and they still remain the great host that they are.
These spikes will not affect the general operation of the site; However when these spikes occur you will find the site inaccessible in upwards to 30 minutes. (Some load spikes have been so bad that it has required a server restart.) I am trying to work with them to the best of my ability to see if I can hopefully point them in the right direction, and with the way things are going I may also change things around in order to see if I can help reduce server resource usage on my end.
In the meantime, the gaming world still chugs on. E3 approaches, Nintendo releases their redone classic Punch-Out!! on the Wii, Capcom announced Tatsunoku vs. Capcom (Basically a Marvel vs. Capcom with manga characters) for a US release, which they will also be showing at E3, and Sony once again proves that they can’t keep a secret for their lives.
Also, try inputting the Konami Code. I dare you.
UPDATE 5/19: So it seems that the host has pinpointed something that could have been causing the problem and has disabled it. So far the server seems to be running even better now but it may be a few days before we see whether or not the issue has been resolved.
You should also still try entering the Konami Code. 
The Official Announcement for Pokémon Heart Gold/Soul Silver is Super-Effective!
May 9th
You know, if it’s something I still take to heart, it’s Pokémon. Although it doesn’t rank that high on my to play list anymore, I’ve been faithful to the franchise since the original release of Red & Blue back in 1998. It’s the RPG that got me hooked on RPGs. Then in October 2001 came the high point of my Pokémon “career” with Gold & Silver. Although I found it to be much, much easier than the first generation games ever were, I played the absolute hell out of it. By far, out of all the Pokemon games my gold version has the most hours logged. There’s just too much to do; The first real ever implementation of a real time clock meant you had to play the game at different times in order to complete the game. The fact that you could go back to the first region also meant there were a staggering sixteen badges for you to collect.
2004 saw Fire Red and Leaf Green recreate the original experience. Now, the second generation gets its turn as Pokémon: Heart Gold/Soul Silver for the DS was officially announced by Nintendo of Japan yesterday, with a fall 2009 Japanese release. (This probably translates to Q2 2010 if you live in the US.) Both games will be a remake of Gold and Silver respectively with the obvious graphical upgrades to Diamond/Pearl standards, touch screen functionality which I would assume would be used in the same functionality as DP, with the Pokégear replacing the Pokéetch on the bottom screen. Not to mention there’s always a chance of new content like what they did with Fire Red and Leaf Green.
Although I’m much older now, I honestly can’t wait. I’m sure that when I get my grubby hands on this, I’ll be playing the hell out of it.
It’ll be just like old days.
UPDATE: Apparently serebii.net got a hold of the first screenshot from the game, which can be seen here. It’s currently unknown whether or not the screenshot is legitimate, though.
PSP redesign/PSP2 Rumor Fuel: Why else would it say this?
May 8th
I’m no gossip.
I don’t like saying things if I can’t back them up. However, something caught my eye today when I bought Patapon 2. Yes, Sony’s trial “PSN-only retail game” which has already caused quite a bit of speculation that Sony’s testing the waters for a possible digital distribution only handheld is even moreso backed by what the actual download ticket says on the back of it. Upon turning the ticket over and reading what’s on the back, I came across this:
“Memory stick required for PSP 1000 – 3000 series. (610MB required)”
But why would it specifically say “1000-3000 series?” The only PSPs that are out are the 1000, 2000, and 3000, right? For now, at least…
You can’t really confirm anything for this, obviously. As far as we know, this might have been something to tell DBZ fans that their PSP is not a PSP-9001 series for all I care. (Rim-shot) But really, I don’t really see the need to specifically state which PSP models require a memory card if all current models of the system require one, which could mean one thing…
…Sony’s E3 this year might be a bit interesting on the handheld front if this keeps up.
A Gamer’s Mind on Twitter
May 4th
In the first few months since the blog’s start, I’ve been tweeting updates to the blog through my personal twitter account. Unfortunately it seems it’s become somewhat susceptible to a massive amount of spambots in the past couple of days, so I’ve gone and protected my personal account for the time being.
Because of that, I’ve gone and made the blog its own separate Twitter account, so if you want the latest updates as they happen on the blog, be sure to follow gamersmindblog.
