Arcade in the Sky Blog

Hi. I decided to enter this contest for fun, so everyone please grab this widget so I can get a screening of this cool movie. I don't have a lot of friends so I'll have lots of tickets left over if I win.

Once again I find myself hosting a huge Christmas party at my house; whether I want to or not.

Lots of people will be descending on my place tonight. I have the place decorated and the road salted. I just hope the ice melts in time, or there won't be enough places to park.

If all goes as planned, I'll get everyone together for a big Christmas cheer and record it for Youtube. I have lots of nice "drunk footage" of my friends from the last part. I'm debating uploading it on Youtube now. Perhaps I'll save it for blackmail material.

Merry Christmas!

I've got my own Youtube channel up now. I'm doing a show about Anime. I wish more people would get into it. Does anyone have any suggestions?

Anime Advent Calender

As a Christmas gift to all friends of anime, I've created an Anime Advent Calendar. Similar to James Rolfe's Monster Madness-I'll be posting a short video every day in December leading up to Christmas. Tune in each day to see a new Anime highlighted.

I am a very mild mannered man. I have never been known to get angry, and I'm certainly no James Rolfe. There are things that occasionally grind my gears.

Case in point. Gamasutra reported today that Greenpeace gave Nintendo a zero score in greenness. Essentially they declared Nintendo the worst in the world of home electronics in terms of recycling and use of toxic chemicals. I am a lover of Nintendo it's true, but I'm not above reprehending them for doing something irresponsible. What raises my ire is the way they judged Nintendo. If you look up the PDF on their website the cite the reasons for their scores as "no policy" or "no information". There are links embedded in the PDF that claim to have "more information", however they all point to the same place-the FAQ on Nintendo.com.

Did they do any research for this report at all? Did they just read the FAQ on Nintendo.com and decide to write a slanderous report about them because they didn't like what they read? Apparently Nintendo doesn't get to decide what information belongs on their own FAQ page-they need Greenpeace to do that for them.

Who the hell died and made them god?

Another thing they criticize Nintendo for is not having a takeback or recycling policy for their products. Hello, who would throw away a Nintendo? Weren't we all just trampling each other on Black Friday to get them? Not for nothing, but my Nintendo from twenty years ago is still in working condition and get used regularly.

The people at Greenpeace are a bunch of the worst environmentalist whackos that make Al Gore look like a villain from Captain Planet. They give decent eco-friendly citizens a bad name.

I've uploaded another "How to Draw" video to Youtube. It's weird, I get a lot of mean and angry feedback when I post my video, but when I do my workshops in person, I get nothing but praise.

I guess it's easier to criticize someone when you're anonymous. I have a think skin, however, and the comments don't bother me. I know there are a few people out there who will learn something and appreciate what I'm doing. I remember how frustrating it was for me to learn how to draw, and I'd like to make it easier for the next generation.

Line of Motion

Step by step

Saturday night I found myself hosting several guests at my house. The ticket apparently called for Gin and Guitar Hero III, which I was happy to condone.

At the moment in question, however, I had my old Super Nintendo hooked up, as I was playing my latest prize, a Super Scope, which I had gotten two weeks prior at the vgexpo.

As it turned out, one of the party-goers was a wizard with the Super Scope, and put on quite a show of Metal Combat: Falcon's Revenge ( game that has nothing to do with Falco, Starfox, Mortal Kombat, Captain Falcon, or F-zero).

After the show-just as a joke- I popped in another of my treasures, Sailor Moon S, a Japanese import only Sailor Moon game. This one is a clone of Street Fighter II, but with all girls in sailor uniforms. To my surprise, the drunken jocks asked me to fetch the other controller, and soon a full-scale tournament was on. They must have spent more than an hour going over each of the Sailor Senshi and perfecting their special moves and combos.

I was on site to provide translations, but none were needed. The idiom of the game was known to all. I just sat back and marveled on the oddity of the scenario, wondering how much of a part the Gin played. I was also amazed that no one made a "Sailor Uranus" joke.

  I apologize, there was a problem with that link.

Steve Pearl

Anime News Network

This will be the most difficult blog post I'll have to write.

Last weekend, a good friend and hero of mine passed away; Steve Pearl. Those who have been in the anime fan community long enough will know of Steve Pearl, the American Otaking. There's a posting on anime news network that gives his background, but I wanted to remember his as a friend, and not just an anime fan pioneer.

I met Steve at the Rutgers anime club, the Japanese Cultural Association (JCA) , during my college years-1998-2001. Steve was like a special guest star. He would visit our weekly meetings and give sage advice about anime. Having him there was always a treat. We ended up going on several road trips together to anime conventions.

There were, however, many such anime-related friends I've met over the years. Steve Pearl stood out unmistakably. What made Steve a great fan and a great friend was the extraordinary parts of his character. It wasn't his wealth of knowledge about anime, nor was it this legendary VHS collection which blotted out the walls and most of the ceiling of his room. Nor was it the tireless dedication to the Anime Alliance or the newsgroups. Steve was a man alway putting others before himself. No drive was far to bring anime cheer to a fan in need. No hour was too late to tape a TV special for a needy enthusiast.

Never a complaint or cross word would emanate from this perennial Santa Clause. He always had enlightening news and antidotes for anyone who would lend an ear. He kept his unbridled optimism to the end, no matter how dark his situation became. If ever a man deserved to be called a king among his peers, Steve Pearl would be it.

I feel bad about falling out of touch with him these past few years. The solace I can gather in this dark hour is that the world has changed since our fan days in the 90's. America is now a country where any adolescent can walk into Best Buy or Borders and have access to all the anime and manga they could ask for.

This the the America Steve Pearl was fighting for; and it's the America that he achieved.

There may never be another Otaking, as the county now has little use for a crusader of Japanese pop-culture. But wherever there are new ideas and media that have yet to strike into mainstream success, small groups of dedicated fans will ban together, form clubs and websites, and fight to bring the things they love to others. Though they may not be aware of it, they owe a debt to a trailblazer known as Steve Pearl, one of the finest human beings I have ever met.

http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2007-11-13/american-otaking-steve-pearl-passes-away

Things are not going well at my game studios. I'm having my first employee vs employer spat.

I have a programmer who isn't following orders. I asked him to transmit his code-thus-far last week, and he still hasn't done it. I've been repeatedly leaving voice mails and email, but he still hasn't given me that code; it's been almost a full work week. He just replies with how unreasonable I'm being.

Now, I am not in the wrong here. He is blatantly breaking his contract by not delivering the code in a timely manner, and despite the fact that it would only take 5 to 10 minutes to give me something, I still have absolutely no work from him.

I'm really at a loss here. I want him to keep working, but if he won't let me see his work when I ask for it-how can I continue?

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.

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. :(

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!

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.

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!

Hey everyone. I'm still more than a few weeks away from being able to reveal anything new about my latest video game or update the main website.

But I will say that I'm working on more Youtube videos, including a new show.

I wanted to just make a note here about something odd I saw yesterday as I took my morning walk. There are many squirrels in my town, but that day I saw one doing something very odd.

I was strolling down the street when I caught a glimpse of a squirrel on the far side of a tree trunk. It had a cigarette in it's mouth.

Now I now what you're thinking, it just picked up a cigarette but and was carrying it in it's mouth. This is indeed likely, but I find it unusually for squirrels to put objects in their mouths if they are not nuts. I never saw the squirrel again, so you can draw your own conclusions, but I know what I saw.

Sorry I've been gone for so long, but all will be revealed in due time.

I'd like to take a second to point out a tragedy on the Wii Virtual Console. Dragon Spirit. The NES game was my favorite when I was a boy. I loved that game line no other. However, the version that appeared on the VC is the Turbo Graphix version, the arcade port.

While not bad, the arcade version was overly difficult and focused on trying to suck as many quarters out of you as possible. The NES port had branching paths, characters, cinematics, faster moving levels, lots of fun power-ups and a user-friendly difficulty curve. The Turbo version had none of these.

It saddens me that we might not get to download the NES version because the Turbo version has been released.

If you can find this NES cart, and if you're any friend to shooters or games with dragons in them, pick it up!

There seems to be an opinion floating around my fav webcomic vgcats.com that the Transformers movie was no good. This is a heinous lie! And remember kids; heinous rhymes with anus!

The Transformers movies was better than a hot date with a supermodel and a smack in the face with a kitten rolled into one! I hate when cartoonist only focus on the negatives.

But yeah, the game was a little... yeah.

Another kickass anime convention in Baltimore, MD. This was my tenth anniversary; Otakon '97 was the first anime convention I'd ever attended. I had a total blast this year, even though I didn't get a chance to meet Peter S. Beagel.

Thanks to my friend Dan the man, we had the rockin'est party over in a suite at the Hyatt. Totally awesome. And the workshops were awesome, too. You know why? Because I did them all! Many workshop instructors failed to show, so I ended up doing 3 extra workshops this year. Can't complain, though, I love being on stage at Otakon.

I can't wait to see what my next 10 years of anime fandom will bring. It's a bright future for all Otaku!

This is a dark day for Hayesman. I had a terrible weekend. All I wanted was a simple RAM upgrade, but when I went to the Micro Center on Rt. 20, they said they don't make that type of ram anymore. That lead to buying a new motherboard, then new RAM, and on top of that, new Processor and a new box!

If that wasn't bad enough, the Motherboard crapped out on me mid-build and I had to go back and get ANOTHER one!

You ever want to stab yourself in the eye with a 7-11 spoon-straw?

Anyway, MSI motherboards suck and don't buy them.

If you're wondering why it took so long to post this, see the post below.

Anyway, Transformers was awesome. It was so filled with awesome, it was in danger of bursting at the seems. I've already posted a video on youtube, but I'm saying it here too.

This was the best movie of the summer, even better than Pirates 3.

Transform and Roll out!

http://www.youtube.com/v/3NcHFtyQ5ls

Test. I think there's an error here.

Greetings everyone. I'm still busy, but thought I'd take a moment to rant about something that's been bugging me for many years now. I was in BORDERS last night, chillin' out, when I picked up a copy of "Krull" from the discount DVD rack. Awesome movie, but the packaging said something odd under "Special Features".

It listed "Interactive Menus" as a feature that is special. Now, let's look think about this, shall we? Is an interactive menu a "special" feature? If I hit "play" on the menu, and the DVD does not react to that, the movie would never play, right? Doesn't that sort of make an interactive menu a "necessary" feature as opposed to a "special" one?

Thank the lord that I got the "special feature" of interactive pedals on my car, otherwise I wouldn't have been able to drive to BORDERS. More importantly, it's awesome that my keyboard that that super-special feature of interactive keys, otherwise I'd not be able to type this!

I have alot to say this week, but I'm short on time. I will take a moment to comment on one of my favorite VC releases on the Wii. That's right Ninja Gaiden. Of all the games that have come to VC, NG is the most suited for the media.

Why, do you ask? Because Ninja Gaiden, being years ahead of it's time, has a continuous story played out in brilliant cut scenes. Cut scenes that seriously pushed the 8-bit technology of the time. The only problem is that there's no continue function here. That means you have to play through the entire story again the next time you play. Bullocks to that!

With the VC, however, I can suspend play by just hitting the home button on my Wiimote. The solves the save game problem and turns a legendary game into a perfect legendary game. Brilliant!

I won't even go into the graphics, gamplay and story of the game, because everyone knows they're awesome.

Well, I'm back from Anime Mid-Atlantic, and what party I had. This is truly my favorite con. I have to give it 5 stars. Am I bias because I'm a guest? Yes. Yes I am. I have been thou roughly bribed with free food, great entertainment and brigade of cat-girl gophers to do my bidding.

And that's exactly what makes the con so great. If they treated ME like a king, they treated the other guests and con-goers like royalty as well. That small-con friendliness and hospitality is rare, and always welcome.

Through in some great anime, cosplay, AMV contest and a totally kickass artist alley, and you're #1 in my book. I can't wait for next year.

Thanks again to Ed and everyone at AMA.

I'm off to a corporate training seminar for the next two days, and right after that I'm driving to Richmond, VA for an anime convention. It's Anime Mid Atlantic.org, and It's one of my favorites. The sad thing is that I've had to miss the last 3 or so, because there was a NJ convention that took place on the same weekend. Being a Jersian, I couldn't very well justify all those fuel and hotel costs of going to Virgina for a convention that was the same size as the one down the road.

But for the first time, the conventions are being held on separate weekends, and I finally get a chance to motor on down for some fun times. I can't wait to get there.

While I'm here, I might as well post my Wii address:

3623 9199 0795 0485

send me your addie by posting a comment, or email me hayesman at haze-studios dot com

Well, I got my Wisdom Teeth pulled yesterday. I thought I'd share the experience. I actually liked it! I dunno, there's just something about having people crowd around you. We all want to be the center of attention, right? I've always been a fan of the dentist, so this want too much of a stretch.

I'd have to say it was the most fun I've had all year! Of course, that might be the painkillers talking.

I went to Wendy's yesterday for lunch; something that I've been trying to curtail for health reasons, but when I was there, I noticed something bizarre.

Wii is the theme of the happy meals. Not a video game character from the system, per se, but the SYSTEM itself was the theme of the toys. Good god, when has this ever happened?! When has a game system itself been such a cultural phenomenon?

Holy crap, that was a great movie. I'm sorry, but I just can't contain myself. I loved the first one to death, and I reserved judgement on the second, because it left at a cliffhanger--but now that I've seen the third Pirates of the Caribbean movie, I have to say this is the greatest trilogy ever.

To anyone who says otherwise, let me state my case. Point 1: New Transformers trailer. The movie is actually looking good! Holy crap!

Point 2: Solved all of the problems in Dead Man's Chest. Not just plot-wise, but movie wise. Like the over-played fish men? They've been relegated. Killed Jack? Well, he's back. Overpowered Kraken? He's been sent packin'. And most of all, you know those two guards? You know the one's Jack was outsmarting in the beginning of film one? They're back! I missed them!

Point 3: Great action, in great quantity and variety! Sword fights, Canon fights, swinging, more swordplay, ragin storms, giant sea-goddesses, fireworks, scuttling ships where does it end? At the worlds end, that's where!

Let me close by pointing out what I believe the best part of the movie; the little things. Small visual gags and character beats that make the roller coaster ride all the sweater. Dropping cannonballs on water ghosts? Firing a monkey out of a canon? Snapping off of a frostbitten toe? Crazy! --and that's just to name a few, and a few that don't involve jack!

Top all that off with a great ending and you have what may be the greatest movie trilogy of all time. Screw you, LOTR. Up yours, Star Wars. Yo ho ho all the way, baby!

Well, Saturday was a complete washout. Both literally and figuratively. I skipped out on the IGDA meeting to do a play test at THQ for there new Frontlines game. When I got there, their system was down, and there had been delays. Long story made short: I didn't get in, and I didn't get to play the game.

So now I had given up my chance to network at the IGDA meeting and I had nothing to show for it. Bullocks to that.

Well, c'est la vi. A new week begins today and I'm about to kick some ass with some great game programing. Giddy-up!

I'm still working feverishly on my DS game, but I'm working on something for Saturday. The IGDA of Northern New Jersey is having a meeting and I'm presenting the club project, Zombie Pong.

I've been working on it for a while and It will finally be done and said this Saturday. I'm using this week to put as many tweeks as possible. I'll show my progress tomorrow.

I've finally done it. I've done the one thing on the internet I swore I'd never do. I've started a blog. I'm afraid I couldn't avoid it any longer. I have since dedicated my website haze-studios.com to my video game production business. So, this death of my old personal website is also the glorious sunrise of a new world. A world where the Haze-man actually has a job making Nintendo games, my lifelong dream.

Sufice it to say that maintaining a business website, as well as the promotional websites for each individual title are too much for me. I have relagated my fun stuff and fan works here. Enjoy!

Monday, December 24, 2007

Friday, December 21, 2007

Sunday, December 16, 2007

Tuesday, December 4, 2007

Tuesday, November 27, 2007

Sunday, November 25, 2007

Monday, November 19, 2007

Friday, November 16, 2007

Tuesday, November 6, 2007

Wednesday, October 31, 2007

Wednesday, October 24, 2007

Thursday, October 18, 2007

Wednesday, October 3, 2007

Saturday, September 22, 2007

Saturday, August 25, 2007

Thursday, August 23, 2007

Thursday, July 26, 2007

Monday, July 23, 2007

Monday, July 16, 2007

Friday, July 13, 2007

Tuesday, July 10, 2007

Thursday, June 28, 2007

Tuesday, June 26, 2007

Monday, June 18, 2007

Tuesday, June 12, 2007

Thursday, June 7, 2007

Tuesday, June 5, 2007

Wednesday, May 30, 2007

Friday, May 25, 2007

Monday, May 21, 2007

Wednesday, May 16, 2007

Tuesday, May 15, 2007