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Arcade in the Sky Blog: October 2007

Wednesday, October 31, 2007

Happy Halloween

Hi, guys. This is quite possibly the scariest Halloween I've ever experienced. I'm not being chased by ghouls or anything, but I am failing miserably in my attempt to run a video game development company.

I should have had playable code at the beginning of this month, but here I am at the end of the month with no code to show at all. This leaves my publisher disappointed in me, and It leaves me disappointed in myself.

The scary part is these credit card bills that keep piling up from running this business. Their scarier that Freddy any day of the week.
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Wednesday, October 24, 2007

Stop. Server time.

I'm migrating my haze-studios.com server today. I've might be down or weird for the next few days.

I'm sure you're all broken up about this. :(
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Thursday, October 18, 2007

The Grudge 2

I love collecting DVDs. In particular I like collecting comic book/ video game movies and Stephen King related movies. Where normally I'd buy a movie because because I'd want to watch them, comic book and video game movies are fun because they can be so bad (Alone in the Dark) or so good (Spider-man 3).

This explains why I have anything on my shelf directed by Uwe Boll.

A good place to hunt down the worse offenders is the "4 for $20" bit at the local Blockbuster. The only problem is that you HAVE to get 4 titles at once, so I have to wait until there are 4 things I need to see. Usually I can pull together 4 titles that I'm interested in, though most of them are bad (the good ones I inevitably already own).

Last week I got a title that I've been eying for some time, though I couldn't find 3 counterparts to buy with it. The Grudge 2. I was not a fan of "The Grudge" but I am a huge fan of the original Japanese "Ju-on". I eventually grew to like the Sarah Machelle Geller version, but not enough to see Grudge 2 in the theaters or home video. My gripes about The Grudge are another post, however.

The surprise is, I actually liked Grudge 2! It was a welcome surprise, as I was seriously bracing myself. I'll go into why I liked it, but be wary of SPOILERS.

First off, they fixed the problems I had with the first flick, namely the opening. The first Grudge opens with Bill Pullmen waking up and explanationlessly jumping out of his 8-story balcony to his grisly death. On paper, I'm sure the seemed creepy; but having the death so early without establishing mood just made it ridiculous. In fact, when I saw it in the theater, the opening got laughter from nearly everyone. Not a good way to start a horror movie.

The Grudge 2 opens in a similar way, showing a man waking and getting murdered by his wife with little explanation (he accuses her of an affair). It sounds similar, but the murder is so cold and gory, that it totally gave me the heebie-jeebies. Granted, I saw this movie alone and not with a crowd, but I'm thinking their reaction would have been somewhat better.

Second off, they movie structured itself around the elements of Ju-on that didn't make it into the remake. Namely, the episode with the Japanese Schoolgirls and the ending. This made the movie great for die-hard fans of the original Ju-on, like myself.

All in all, the movie stayed true to it's Ju-on-ity and that was great. I'm not sure I want to see Grudge 3 or Ju-on 2, but I'm glad I have this disk in my collection!
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Lagging

Well, it says I haven't posted since the 3rd. That sucks. The truth is I've been in a lull for the past two weeks. I'm stuck between a rock and a hard place. I'm working on the animation and art for my new video game, but until the programmers get back to me with the first build of the code, I'm not sure I'm heading in the right direction.

I know, I'm wining. Whatever. In the meantime, I'm really happy with how the animation is going. This game is going to be something special.

Unfortunately, I can't talk about it until we have the first build, so you'll have to wait.
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Wednesday, October 3, 2007

Well, that sucks.

They shut off my website, haze-studios.com.

Well, isn't that just peachy. I know who did this. It's the squirrels! They're on to me!
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