This game is going to be sick. Fellow butler kid Zach struck up a conversation with me about video games on the flight from Auckland-Christchurch-Dunedin, and let me know that the creator of the best computer game ever, Grim Fandango, was finally coming back. Tim Schaffer, who had hands in Monkey Island 1&2, The Day of the Tentacle, Full Throttle as well as Grim, is the lead developer and largely the promotional base of this new title. There’s this really cool old interview that explains the new game and his long absence (Grim, his last game, was released in 1998). Schaffer also gave a speech at GDC trying to figure out why the millions of old-school Lucas Arts adventure game fans have gone unfulfilled in the past near decade. My take on things is that good stories, which Schaffer excels at, are a) hard, and b) only for really cool people, of whom there are not many around when you need them. Psychonauts just came out on ps2, xbox, and pc — I’ll buy it as soon as I land in back in the states (the playable demo is out for those who have really good broadband).
I started the Wednesday Night Dunedin Disc Sports Indoor League last night, and boy, is it held indoors. At Bowdoin we play ‘boot’: to cones on both sides of the court, two teams of four, a team must cross the line with the disc then can go for any of the four cones, and you get to keep the disc. Here, indoors is exactly like outdoors: the basketball key is the endzone, there are pulls, 7-second stall counts, and of course boat races at halftime. What helps here is the fact that the basketball hoops are not suspended from the air, but are attached to walls (they don’t mess the air-game up). Last southern-hemisphere summer, Dunedin’s own took on the country, as ‘Deadpoint’, and won Indoor Nationals 2004.
Last Night I had the pleasure of meeting Simon McCallum, a CS Lecturer at Otago who is fairly obsessed with game developing. I hadn’t last night because he’s apparently been on the west coast of the states attending the GDC and visiting Bungie Studios. He’s well into the NZGDA, the New Zealand Game Developers Association, and last year chaired the first-ever New Zealand Game Developers Conference. The website for the conference is down, but you can still access it via the Way Back Machine (archive.org). Hopefully we can shoot shit on various games in the future.
Hitchhiker’s hysteria is out and about. The movie, premiering this week, has its first reviews: not bad but not great. Moreover, the grand citizens of New Zealand have been treated to some trailers. This one, I’d say, is froody.
What’s infinitely more important than the buzz surrounding the movie is the coinciding announcement of the Quandary Phase BBC Radio Series appearing in the UK on Radio 4, May 3rd. I’ve cried to the previous installments numerous times. I realize that I’m notorious for crying, but that really doesn’t have anything to do with it. Can’t wait for this to hit the web.
This posting is entirely devoted to my furry friend, future flatmate, and fellow supervisor of the FOURTH DIMENSION. Him and I control the fourth dimension because we won the Bismark! first annual KBB-weekend disc golf championship last spring. Proudly smiling off the walls of Red Brick House next year will be our booty: A Clock, or otherwise known as the fourth dimension. We will maintain the dimension through next year’s Bismark! second annual KBB-weekend disc golf championship.
It was my surprise that deep in Fiordland National Park in rainy, southern New Zealand, I found the mountain range obviously devoted to Raymond Abbit’s (R. Abbit == Rabbit) ancestors. O.K. that’s all I got. Cheers, Rabbit.
Good news from flickr: I’ve got a year extra’s worth of service and two pro accounts to give out (one goes to flower, other goes to Kate?). But really, this post is trying to test out some new ‘blog this!’ stylizing.
Finally finished commenting/tagging my set from this weekend. Went with about 60 butler kids and had a generally great time. Highlight was watching “Gossip” with Josh Jackson on sat. night; low point was the continual force-feeding of boring scenery from a fundamentally ugly country. Here’s the set page, with comments in chronological order.
Concerning flickr: a cool way to look through photos is to browse my “tags” by clicking through to this link. Keep experimenting with all the options, they’re all pretty cool. Em: post some of your photos with your new account!
Pops ran his 42nd Clyde’s American 10k in Columbia, MD this weekend, which is fairly impressive because this is only the 27th Annual Clyde’s American 10k Run . Experts place his age somewhere between the jurassic and triassic periods. Besides from being overly proud of him for accomplishing this feat, I’m also glad because apparently he had a good time as well. Finishing in at 60:58, a volunteer on the side exclaimed to him and his pack “you guys are phemonenal!” My dad asked his fellow runners “If we’re phenomenal, what are the guys up front?” Someone responded: “Runners.”
Congratulations, phenomenal Dad!
Juggling photos were the sole purpose of the trip, beyond the sheer exuberence experienced being along with 60 other bloody americans touristing around fiordland national park.
