Rush: An Adrenaline Shot In Movie Form

When I heard there was going to be a "Rush" movie in 2013, I nearly pissed myself.  They're making a shitty movie adaptation for San Francisco Rush the game, a la Need for Speed?

Actually, no, this has nothing to do with video games, cause this is "based on a true story."  A really good story about two rival Formula 1 drivers, James Hunt (England) and Niki Lauda (Austria).  And thank you Ron Howard for being an actual petrolhead and not f***ing up this movie like Hollywood usually does (the movie cynic in me enjoys poking holes in things, like this).  88% on Rotten Tomatoes isn't bad!

As you can tell, this was in the 70's when safety was of little concern and musicians actually made decent music.  No seriously, they actually play Gimme Some Lovin' in the first racing scene which proves Ron saw Days of Thunder, or something, so tack on an extra star to the final score!  Rubbin' is racing!!!  Boogity boogity!!!

Here you have the two protagonists, Lauda and Hunt, who are Formula 3 rivals that moved up to Formula 1, and they totally contrast in personality.  James Hunt is a raw talent, a brash driver who loves to party.  He defied F1 driver tradition that a driver must behave and be treated like royalty.  Hunt loved the lady parts, as you can see right away within the first 30 seconds of the movie, Hunt is banging the nurse.  So thank you James for turning this movie into a porno.  He's also bulimic because he throws up before every race.

Mim-bo (noun) - a male bimbo.

On the other hand, Niki Lauda is the MAN.  More reserved, cool, calm, and calculated, he could tune cars like no one's business.  He has a cool-ass name and actually stayed faithful to his wife (at least for a little while).  Niki is what's great about racing.

Pictured: my new man-crush.

So quick rundown of the movie.  Hunt and Lauda are in Formula 3, Hunt wins the championship and later gets a Formula 1 ride with Hesketh, some crappy race team that thought driving a bleached white car with no sponsors is a good idea.  On the other hand, Lauda "cheated," denounced his father's boring-ass businessman lifestyle, took out a big loan, and swooned the Ferrari people by building a superior car that outdid the previous ones by several seconds.  Lauda would then later race a coupe through rural Italy to impress two fanboys and his future wife, proving that he's a baller.  At this point, the HEAT WAS ON between the two gentlemen...

Both sweet whips with that vintage 70's camera tint.  Notice the lack of #hashtags on their names (#twitterblows).

Both drivers took turns having strokes of life-changing bad luck.  Hunt was first.  Hesketh ran out of money and fired Hunt, leaving him to sit at home and watch his wife cheat on his scummy ass.  Hunt would later bang the flight attendant in the restroom to showcase his libido.  Lauda would go on to win his first championship, something that is skimmed over in the film.  The 1976 season is when Hunt gets a ride at McLaren and the two begin their duel.

Season begins in Brazil with some damn hot Carnival babes and quick 10-15 previews of each race of the season.  Lauda would take a commanding lead in the points as Hunt's car would frequently explode.  Hunt goes into Hulk mode and strikes back, winning a few races of his own, making them 1st-2nd in the points.

Later it's the German GP at Nurburgring.  Yes, THE Nurburgring Nordschleife with 154 turns.  And to make things worse, it's raining.  One racer was already hospitalized during practice.  Lauda then holds a driver's meeting and tries to call the race off as too dangerous, Hunt basically calls him a pussy, and the drivers race anyway.  Both Hunt and Lauda opt for wet tires at the start only for the track to dry up quickly and both to go to the pits for dry tires after the first lap.

And here's where Lauda's bad luck strikes.  Obviously way behind from the leader, he pushes the car so hard the suspension breaks on one turn as he goes careening into the wall in a blazing inferno as some other guy wrecks into Lauda's flaming casket.  Lauda suffers paralyzing burns and smoke inhalation while Hunt laughs his ass off as he wins races while Lauda is on the hospital bed.

This wreck seems oddly symbolic to my recent woes that I teared up in the theater.  One morning in May 2013, while racing to work on the wet pavement, I push the car harder than I should in an attempt to make up ground.  Eventually the wet pavement gets the best of me as I slide into a dumpster, smashing it up in the process.  Three days later, I would be fired from my job and sit unemployed for five months as distraught me has to watch my friend and rivals move up the career ladder without me.  My story isn't as bad as Lauda's but the similarities are there!  Fuck wet blacktop parking lots, put up a friggin sign or something.

Eventually, Lauda would go through accelerated therapy, have the junk sucked out of his lungs and the bandaids peeled from his head.  A month passed and Hunt nearly caught up to him in the points.  Lauda gets back out there (a burnt up disfigured mess, no doubt) and after giving the best "fuck you" I've ever heard to an asshole reporter, puts up a solid 4th place at Monza with fans running at his car after the race while Hunt DNF's again.  Which meant one thing...

NIKI LAUDA

IS

BACK

Final race of the season!  It's at Fuji Speedway--PREPARE TO QUALIFY!!!  Oh, and it's raining.  F1 cars can drive in the rain but in the storm that you see here?  Well...yes they could back in the 70's, when they had big balls and the rides were high enough to make wet racing possible.  After one lap of driving through dense fog, Lauda does the most admirable thing a driver can do--goes to the pits and retires from the race.  It's too dangerous, he said, it's not worth risking your lives over a stupid trophy!  Tell that to Hunt who needs to finish 3rd or better to beat Lauda for the grand prize.  It was a nailbiter for Lauda as all he could do is watch and pray Hunt doesn't win...

Obligatory F1 car in the rain shot.

SHOCKER--Hunt finishes 3rd, wins the championship, and Lauda has no regrets.  It wasn't racing, Lauda said, it was stupid of Hunt to risk his life like that.  After a bunch of TV appearances and booze, drug, and women sessions later, Hunt meets Lauda again, Lauda having taken up the hobby of flying planes.  They tip their hats to each other and the movie ends.  Lauda would go on to win two more championships and live to see the premiere of this movie (which he admired, BTW) while Hunt would go on to be a race announcer and die of a heart attack in 1993.  While Hunt turned out to be a washed-up loser who won his only championship cause his main competition was hospitalized by a near-death experience, Lauda later admitted Hunt was the only driver he was ever jealous of.  Which means a lot from the man, myth, and legend that is NIKI LAUDA.

Great movie, would see again.  Very accurate and gives you a sense of what vintage Formula 1 racing was really like  Only disappointment is that there's too much talking in the first half of the movie (come on, I wanna see some racing), plus there's no final race between Lauda and Hunt to settle the score once and for all.  But a final race would be unrealistic.  Also at no point do they play a Rush song in the movie though that would be cheesy as hell.  So I'll give you some Rush right here.

Oh well, I give this FIVE out of FOUR stars (remember the additional one cause of Gimme Some Lovin').  Just go watch the movie, seriously, right away, race in an F1 car to the theater or Redbox now.

1976, same year Fleetwood Mac would release The Chain, best F1 song ever, no question.  I WANNA GO FAST!!!

I can't tell you how many times I typed "Nikia Lauda" while writing this post, lol.

Bass Pro Shops, Scary Malls, Dave & Busted's

PLEASE NOTE: I will post pictures I took on my iPhone really soon but since I'm typing this at work, I can't do that just yet.  Later today...

Last Saturday was very strange to me.  And it's not cause it was 4/20 (I don't smoke, SORRY KIDS).  It's because my brother (2 years younger than me) and his girlfriend were driving to Orlando to come visit me for the day.  It was a treat since it gave me the incentive to do something besides sleep in all day to make up for my lack of sleep during the work week.

Whatever, so we're off to go do stuff.  First, we stop at Chipotle to eat tacos.  I throw around a lot of jokes, get a bunch of laughs.  Then after we eat, we want to do something fun.  Since we're near International Drive where all the tourist traps are, we think "Hey, let's go putt-putt."  So Brother searches for "putt putt" on his iPhone and we're off to some place called "Putting Edge."  Strange thing is it takes us to the Festival Bay, a gigantic mall near the end of International Drive (by the Fun Spot and the terrible outlet malls that sell clothes I'm not interested in).  We don't see a sign ANYWHERE for a Putting Edge but we do spot a Bass Pro Shops which served as an anchor to a large mall!  Because Brother and Girlfriend are into outdoors stuff, they inexplicably want to go in.  And I obliged.

In case you're like "dafuq is bass pro shops", it's basically a giant log-cabin department store with a shiatload of ourdoor merchandise--hunting, camping, fishing, boats, ATV's, an aquarium-esque fishing tank, "homemade" candy prepared an log cabin (yo dawg we herd you like...), NASCAR toys, Cabela's silly light-gun games (which reminds me, where the hell is Sega Bass Pro Fishing???), and old-timey red-state stuff.  A far cry from Academy Sports (from my hometown Slidell, LA) which is basically a white box with some sporting goods in it.  Since this place is so big, it was like an amusement park of its own.  Brother pushed Girlfriend around in the shopping cart, checked out the lousy light-gun game, tried on hats, looked at poor taxidermed animals, took pictures next to the Tony Stewart sign, also checked out the stuffed toy animals (I bought a coyote and a brown thrasher, I like little toy animals, I think they're cool so STFU), and sat in comfy recliners.

But after we've had our fun for about an hour, I glance at the other exit to Bass Pro Shops--the one leading to the actual mall.  Now the last time I was at this store, I hadn't gone into the mall.  But here, there was a sign leading to the "Fantasy Arcade" or something.  It was too alluring not to go so I told Brother and Girlfriend, "I'm going to check out that arcade, see ya later."

What happened next was rather surreal like a Twilight Zone or Creepypasta (at least to me anyway).  See, I had walked into....a dead mall.  It was a big, vacant hallway.  All the stores were boarded up except for a few stragglers like a sporting goods, Smoothie King, and the indoor glow-in-the-dark Putting Edge that took us to this very building in the first place.  As I was wandering around looking for the arcade, I felt like I had been here before...  Visually, this building is nearly the same as some of the macabre dreams I had before--ones where everything was dim, the building was on its last legs, and a shoddy arcade.  I did find the arcade and not to my surprise, it was a bunch of poorly aligned arcade cabinets with a bias towards American games (as usual).  No Sega racers but they had Cruis'n World (dumb) and San Francisco Rush (better).

I didn't play any games though.  Didn't feel like it.  Was too weirded out by the place.  I sort of wandered around aimlessly as I nearly crawled up into a ball to cry.  Pains of going to the Northshore Square Mall in Slidell, LA to play Daytona USA 2 wrought me with misery.  I feel like those dreams were just self-fulfilling prophecy of the death of malls (see this informative site), arcades, and Sega in general and that the happy times were never coming back.  And how my journey thus far was really a dramatic one--that malls like this is where my "life force" came from and I'm trying to bring it home for racing game fans everywhere but I been shut out from being able to help for so long.  Drama, I have it...

And like any good Creepypasta story, I didn't simply "run away" when things got weird.  I stuck around and wandered some more and took pictures (Frank West style, speaking of Dead Rising, yeah this mall looks like it).  Eventually, Brother & Girlfriend walked to the mall too but I ran back to Bass Pro Shops.  What would happen is 30 minutes of us trying to message each other in order to meet up again but to little success.  When I finally found them, in a cold I bought a bag of malted milk balls, munched on 'em in the car as I took off uneasy.  I told Brother & Girlfriend that I felt ill but they didn't get it.  I was very talkative up until the moment I went into the mall but afterwards, my energy was drained.

Well, what else is there to do on a Saturday night in Orlando?  Eventually, we agreed to go to Dave & Buster's, the one that I went to twice already (once, twice).  My mood lightened up once we got there.  We paid $25 to play some games and, obviously, I had opted to play Daytona USA (no really?).  Brother & Girlfriend stood on and watched but were mostly interested in getting in petty debates over dating stuff (which is why I'm currently single--no debating with girls and more time to play games).

While I shed a tear and was slightly healed from experiencing the cathartic effects of a Sega racer, the problem was the pedals were defunct.  If you floored it, the car only accelerated 70-90% of the way, varying on the different machines.  Like on Expert, I couldn't even pass a single car on the starting straightaway which is not supposed to happen.  After playing a couple of rounds to much disappointment, I spotted an arcade attendee repairing a House of the Dead 3 machine.  Told him "the pedals on those machines are off," he said okay but was mostly uninterested.  I highly doubt he fixed them.  Judging by how content people are from playing Beginner with the AT car bouncing off the walls with no skill, I highly doubt it was in Dave & Buster's interest to even repair the machines.  That is depressing.

The day did end on an okay thing.  We played this little football game where you score points by throwing tiny footballs through some holes.  I got the worst score of us three and, in three plays, got consecutively worse scores.  I Tebowed in the middle of the place.  Girlfriend got the highest score of all (WTF indeed), plus she also beat me at Daytona USA on beginner (a first for me) but only because my cabinet had busted pedals and hers didn't and she used rubber banding to win.  Was shitty but she didn't rub it in.

We go home to my apartment, I convince Brother & Girlfriend to watch a few Top Gear UK clips on YouTube, they go to sleep on the crappy Target futon, wake up early and drive back home.  It was an interesting Saturday but in many ways depressing.  It makes me think that over the last year or few, I sorta missed out on the pain that Sega & arcade games were going through and that I opted to spend my time on personal projects that had nothing to do with Sega, really.  I couldn't help but cry a little.

Man, the reason I'm going through this "journey" to Sega is to bring back the good times for everyone who was in my boat.  And we're making progress but still, I always feel I could've done better.

Good news though and that is my dad is coming up to visit me today.  I get to see my dad again, it will be fun.  Hopefully we don't get in any stupid situations like I did with Brother & Girlfriend, heh.  I just want to be at peace, that is all...

I love you, Dad.  I love you too, Sega, for your games fathered me like a real father would.  You convinced me to be this way so I'm trying to spend time with you again.  Just don't shut me out, please.  And yes, I do have a habit of spinning media about missing family/friends/loved ones into missing Sega games and now you know that.

Real Life Sega Racin'--Plus Poor, Poor Peter Moore :(

Well guys, last Friday was one of the greatest days of my life.  What happened, you say?  It was morning time and I made the 15-minute drive up the highway to try to get to work on time.  The pavement was wet from rain.  As I was traversing the offramp to take one of those nifty 180-degree banked turns, I always instinctively punch it and hit the racing line.  Seriously, it's little things like "go 50 mph around a sweeping turn" that really help me get through the day cause seldom does anything else.

And as I throttled on around the turn, I started to drift.  Not hydroplane but DRIFT like in Daytona, OutRun, Initial D.  The little blue FWD coupe started to slide at (I guess) 15 degrees for about 3 seconds.  But what makes this even more exhilarating was that I handled it like a mother f***in champ.  Didn't panic like "OMFG I'M GOING TO DIE", just sort of eased off the gas, counter-steered and whoomp--car straightened out and I was on my merry way.  Just like Captain Chelsey Sullenburger (with ice water in his veins) as US Airways Flight 1549 made an emergency landing in the Hudson River with no casualties.  Sorta like my brain snapped and said "I got this bro," as I realigned the car without a sign of panic.

The drift goes on my repertoire of things a race car driver must do to to become a bonafide driver.  Things like trade paint with the wall (thanks wooden fence), spin out on the highway, survive a wreck on the highway (no damage to either cars, I'm that good), floor it 10 times trying to beat the red light, do a 3-point turn, parallel park once, have a 95% success rate (min. 25 attemps) doing a right turn into a parking space, beat every Sega racing game, start a blog and talk about race cars, and so forth.  Most legit driver ever, watch out Travis Pastrana.

By the way, listen to some cool ass music:

Anyway, this is kind of a hilarious story.  We know about our beloved Peter Moore, right Sega fans?  Well, Peter Moore is now the new Chief Operating Officer of EA.  Basically, he's the Master of the Domain.  And he posted an editorial in EA's defense titled "We Can Do Better."  Obviously it doesn't mean jack shit to the legions of angry Redditors out there but still kinda funny to watch EA become self-conscious of their behavior.  Will they change?  Meh, not counting on it...

Head of EA: Our cheeky m8 took AGES to get dis good, wot u say bout him nao???

But after reading it, to be honest, Peter is kinda right, partially cause he's not scumbag John Riccitiello with the microtransaction quotes.  The thing that is most telling is "The tallest trees catch the most wind."  Yeah, EA, as much as they suck ass, still has a few good games to their name--Battlefield, Mass Effect, Madden, The Sims...QQ all you want about them but that doesn't change the fact they're at least decent.  The fact that they're so famous means they'll catch the most crap.  Fairly certain there are smaller companies just as scummy but you'll never hear people mocking them.  Plus I was reading a Cracked article yesterday called "6 Harsh Truths That'll Make You A Better Person."  Here's a good segment at the article's conclusion that you should probably read:

Remember, misery is comfortable. It's why so many people prefer it. Happiness takes effort.

Also, courage. It's incredibly comforting to know that as long as you don't create anything in your life, then nobody can attack the thing you created.

It's so much easier to just sit back and criticize other people's creations. This movie is stupid. That couple's kids are brats. That other couple's relationship is a mess. That rich guy is shallow. This restaurant sucks. This Internet writer is an asshole. I'd better leave a mean comment demanding that the website fire him. See, I created something.

Oh, wait, did I forget to mention that part? Yeah, whatever you try to build or create -- be it a poem, or a new skill, or a new relationship -- you will find yourself immediately surrounded by non-creators who trash it. Maybe not to your face, but they'll do it. Your drunk friends do not want you to get sober. Your fat friends do not want you to start a fitness regimen. Your jobless friends do not want to see you embark on a career.

Just remember, they're only expressing their own fear, since trashing other people's work is another excuse to do nothing. "Why should I create anything when the things other people create suck? I would totally have written a novel by now, but I'm going to wait for something good, I don't want to write the next Twilight!" As long as they never produce anything, it will forever be perfect and beyond reproach. Or if they do produce something, they'll make sure they do it with detached irony. They'll make it intentionally bad to make it clear to everyone else that this isn't their real effort. Their real effort would have been amazing. Not like the shit you made.

Geez...no doubt about it, I'm sick and tired of people who complain but don't contribute anything to society.  BUT I DO.  I'm a game designer/blogger of 2.5 years and what EA does is garbage.  Like God's Honest Truth, Reddit Gaming, if you hate EA so much, go do something proactive about it besides sit in your corner of the Internet and circlejerk over it as you continue to suck at the teat of EA by buying all their crap.  Your site is almost 4chan bad now.  Oh, that's right, you stole all the good stuff from 4chan (like every meme there is) so, as the Brits say, go sod off...

EDIT: Wait, more to say about Reddit.  As I continue to skim over /r/gaming/ (Lord Jesus Help Me), I'm convinced I found the template for every top post, a shitty meme-pic as such:

EVERY POST HAS BIG IMPACT FONT

*le picture*

AND CONTRIBUTES NO THOUGHTFUL CONTENT*

* - Bear in mind that this was at the top of /r/gaming/'s front page.  What passes as "quality" content on that site.

But one choice quote from Peter Moore, just for fun:

Many continue to claim the Always-On function in SimCity is a DRM scheme. It’s not. People still want to argue about it. We can’t be any clearer – it’s not. Period.

I don't care if SimCity's Always-Online function is a DRM or not, it sucks.  I don't want to be forced to play online with other people when I play SimCity.  The server downage, lack of user mods, and constricted gameplay make it simply untolerable as it is.

Oh, and speaking of Always-Online, check out the new Xbox which is rumored to function the same exact way.  The one that makes the Kinect a mandatory feature.  Yeah, that's two strikes by Microsoft--always-online and Kinect-required.  And then you have this Microsoft guy talking smack over Twitter against people who can't stand the Always-Online connection.  Apparently the guy was joking (smart move, especially with angry Redditors trying to pounce on any EA/Microsoft/Activision employee they can get) but it really gets me thinking about Always-Online and how this kind of stuff is "perfectly okay" according to these people.  I'm joining the PC Master Race if this is the case.  New Xbox is looking more like shit every day.

-----------

I just felt like throwing this in here for fun.  Super old but I don't care.  Here's Richard Garriott (of Ultimate fame) saying that "most game designers really suck."  I've never cared about Ultima and I think Richard is an arrogant asshole but I do agree with over-infatuation with the game designers and how they trot up on stage and give the same-old self-aggrandizing speeches and soak in all the attention like they're gods among us mere pawns & peasants.  You guys would be nowhere without the programmers and artists who helped you get there.  Yeah, power to the programmers (and artists too, although they don't like drawing cars so boohoo), you guys are the best.  Now go shave your neckbeards.

------------

One more thing.  I keep hearing about these guys called the "Game Grumps" from all my ex-FIEA classmates.  And how they talk about the Game Grumps playing Sonic '06 and how astonished they are at how bad that game really was.  Um, welcome to the life of Sega fans seven years ago.  I beat Sonic '06 from  start to finish and everyone's like "NO WAAAAYYYY."  Yes way.  It was like eating prison food while fans of every other company got to eat 5-star steak and lobster.  As a bitter Sega fan, I want every non-Sega fan to suffer with us.  Ok, adios guys.

Rest In Peace, Rock Band

I know a lot of you probably don't give a crap about Rock Band (the game), but I do.  For a good part of '08-'12 I poured more money into that game than pretty much everything else.  Like you guys would go to the store and buy multiple games--Mass Effect, Assassin's Creed, BioShock, etc.  I would just get Rock Band, Rock Band, Rock Band.  Makes sense, no?  That's how much the series apparently meant to me.

Every week for the last FIVE YEARS, Harmonix would release at least one new song for DLC.  The average for each week was about 3 to 6 new songs but sometimes they would release massive albums/song packs of 10 or more songs and those were fun days.  Always checking the websites each Friday to see which songs could be purchased the following Tuesday.  To put things in perspective, I currently own 1,500 songs in my library, plus three RB2 guitars (with third-party strum bar and lots of WD-40 to make the buttons click), two RB2 drumsets (one with cymbals), three RB mics, a RB3 keyboard and a RB3 Pro Guitar..  All of that must cost at least $2,500.  So Rock Band was a pretty big deal to me, don't you think???

Well, apparently, over the last year, the amount of weekly DLC dwindled...it was obvious the game wasn't as popular as it once was and that Rock Band was on borrowed time.  AC-DC/Lego/Beatles/Green Day Rock Band (plus Blitz) were great to tack on additional songs/features but it wouldn't last.  Last Tuesday, they released one last song--Don McLean's American Pie.  It's not one of my all-time faves but it's a great golden oldie to end the 281 week run on.  Dammit, this can't be true...there's so many more songs and bands to get in the game.  Where's Van Halen, Led Zeppelin (I know they are picky), ZZ Top, Bruce Springsteen, The Eagles, etc?  Where's all the keyboard wishlist DLC I wanted?  It's not coming...it's all over...

Rock Band is dead.  I'm utterly depressed but you know what?  It gives me faith in this generation of gaming.  Because Rock Band really was a game that should've faded away much earlier than it has now.  The fact that the series has over 4,200 playable songs is because the people working on the game actually genuinely cared about the damn game they were working on (list of all the DLC)!!  I can tell that they held out for as long as possible even though it was obvious the weekly DLC became less and less profitable.  Honestly, I wish game devs actually stuck to their guns on great convictions like these.

Boy, I'd love to see a racing game get as much DLC as Rock Band did (Forza 4 with its car packs and one DLC track barely comes close).  Thank you Harmonix for the inspiration.  Rock Band 4 is super unlikely IMO cause there's not much else to add to the series (we got pro guitar/drums/keys, what now???  saxophone???) aside from the ability to create charts from any MP3 you own (which is absurd, I admit)?  Now I can't listen to any song anymore without drumming my fingers to the notes, like I'm imagining a bunch of green-red-yellow-blue-orange notes coming down the lane as I press them like piano keys.  So Rest in Peace, Rock Band, you will be missed...

The first DLC song I bought for $2.  It started a Rock Band avalanche for me.

FAREWELL, SWEET PRINCE... ;_;

Announcement About The Future Of This Blog

Hey guys, how are you doing.  It's an okay day for me, kinda tired but this has been on my mind for the last month or so and it must be said.

In the near future, about a month, I'm going to sunset this blog.  Two-and-a-half years and 700+ posts later, it's time to call it quits.  It's become too arduous and trivial to do so here for a multitude of reasons which I will state...:

* I'm a working man now.  I have a legitimate job that's not an internship or other joke of a career.  I'm working 9 hours a day, possibly more in the near future, and after my week, I'm practically burned out after doing that and whatever other things I need to do to take care of my young adult self.  And on top of that, rambling about video games and saying controversial things as someone in the game industry can come back to haunt me, big time.  A few things I've said on this blog could get me fired from my current job.  A while back I caused a mutiny by criticizing a game behind my grad school classmates' back (Plushy Knight) and it caused problems.  I don't want anything like that to happen again.

* There's simply little to nothing going on with Sega anymore.  Well, there is, if you're into cheesy Sonic sequels, more Yakuza, Football Manager, Total War, and the occasional Sega nostalgia piece they toss the fans for a quick buck.  We've worn thin on Daytona 1, 2, Scud Race, OutRun 2, Crazy Taxi, even Sega All-Stars Racing, etc.  Those games aren't going anywhere anymore.  We got the emulators, we got XBL/PSN ports, we got the Hornet in Sega All-Stars Racing, we got a cool new fangame coming up (The 90's Arcade Racer), but other than that, aside from talk about some oldies like Power Drift, Rad Mobile, and Emergency Call Ambulance...we're kinda toast here.

* And as for other things, I can't criticize Need for Speed and Burnout forever.  There's nothing left to say about those franchises that hasn't been said.  It's crap racing all about wrecking expensive cars and terrible cutscenes--it's a done deal and as long as people still piss themselves over it, nothing's going to change about it.  As for things like real-life racing like NASCAR and such, no one really cares, do they?  The sport is awash with phony controversy and regulations, plus when I post about these things, people usually don't read it at all.  So what's the point?

* All great adventures I've embarked on, whether it's Counter-Strike Maps, Super Sprint, posting on various message boards, etc. always have a lifespan.  At first, it's all I ever dream about--wake up, do activity X, think about it in your free time, go to sleep.  But eventually, I just lose interest in it altogether.  And no amount of motivational talk can really get me to work on these things again.  This blog is just a victim of it.  It's getting more painful to write these posts that I reluctantly put them off for too long.  And when I do, the blog just gets more and more disorganized.  Look at sites like UK Resistance and Shenmue Stare--they called it quits eventually so it's not so shocking I do so as well.  Well, better to just call it quits now than force myself to tend to this blog for the two or three serious readers this gets each each day.

* Most of all, I'm starting to realize that this whole infatuation with wanting to work for Sega, meet Yu Suzuki and the AM2 team, and make Daytona USA 3 is a total wash.  It's like a childhood dream you have--you want to assume an extraordinary career like a professional athlete, a musician, or an astronaut.  But when you get older, you realize those things are stupid for numerous reasons--it's incredibly difficult and unlikely you'll ever get that job and once you do, you realize it's not what it's not what you imaged.  After being exposed to the REAL game industry over the last year or so, I now realize how much it actually sucks and how vulnerable I really am.  You have to be some "god among men" like Miyamoto, Suzuki, Kojima, etc. to be heard and even still, who's to say that Daytona USA 3 isn't somehow horribly botched?  It's time to stop pretending I'm on a "mission from God," that's all.

That's...really all there is to say about it.  I still hope great things for Sega, Sumo Digital, racing games, etc. but really, it's time to give it a rest.  I'll get in touch with you guys later but all I have to say is this...  To be this good takes Ages and it's been ages and now I'm good.  Thanks for every subscriber, reader, and good comment that's make this all worthwhile over the years... ;)

We Apologize For The Downtime

In the meantime, please listen to our choice of waiting music!

Today Was A Good Day

I recently got a job offer at a studio in Orlando, FL as a Junior Software Engineer (fancy name for "Game Programmer").  I can't tell you what company this is but I may do so eventually.  Again, it's not a racing-centric studio nor is it related to Sega so throw out Firebrand and Sumo Digital.  A handful of my classmates will be working there too so I'm not alone like I was at my previous internship.  I will hopefully be more motivated by this workplace too (unlike last one which left me out to dry, really).  Seriously, being able to hang out with many of my classmates (including those working at other studios in Orlando) is a big deal for me.

It's strange...I don't know what game I'll be working on until I accept the offer.  I have a feeling it'll be an FPS or adventure/puzzle game.  It's like Let's Make a Deal...I can harass that 90's Arcade Racer guy and work with him.  Or work on Super Sprint.  Or I can make a ton of money on some mysterious video game.  I think I'd go with the money.  I need that experience so we can go to Sumo Digital and make Daytona USA 3!!!

I'm starting March 4 (possibly later) which is kind of good since I wanted the assurance of having a job on top of getting a long break.  So I'll hang out with my family, work some more on personal projects, drive my car around Louisiana, possibly go back to Florida for the Daytona 500 on Feb. 24th and chat with friends until I work again.

Today was a good day.

Rock Band Blitz: Series On Life Support

Well, I know this ain't a racing game but it's something close to my heart so let's talk about this months-old game.  Rock Band Blitz.

Rock Band Blitz is a $15 game you can buy off of Xbox Live/Playstation Network.  It does not require instruments.  Basically, you pick a song as four/five lanes of notes come at you.  You only need four buttons to play this game.  Down arrow/A to hit left/right notes in your current lane, left/right shoulder buttons to switch lanes. Hit notes in each instrument lane to max out multipliers for the greatest possible scores. You might say "hey that's Frequency/Amplitude" well, yeah it is.

This game is friggin brilliant for a few reasons:

* It is the quintessential "Programmer Game."  Basically I get up here and say "Games have too pretty graphics & cutscenes, not enough gameplay," well guess what.  Look at any generic screenshot of the game.  THIS IS THE WHOLE GAME.  There are no "characters" in the game.  You move through a seemingly endless city (a.k.a. "New Jersey" as Harmonix describes it) as buildings pulsate to the beat of the song.  The only goal of the game really is to play songs over and over again trying to get high scores.  Great game, huh.

* You take a look at every single song in Rock Band's history and there are MANY.  There are over 3,000 SONGS you can download and play in Rock Band 3.  And guess what, you can play all of those in Rock Band Blitz too.  Basically, it gives your library a little more life...you can play songs on Guitar, Bass, Drums, Vocals, Keys, and Rock Band Blitz which is like its own instrument.

* At the end of the day, you will have worn out your A button which is kind of cool yet sad at the same time.

* Play enough notes in a row to enter "Blitz Mode." Camera drops back a little as you start to haul ass through the city. Yet the notes stay in the same place (you still travel the same speed). Can you say SENSE OF SPEED at work here???

* On top of a new Rock Band experience, you get 25 songs to add to your library.  That's 25 songs for $15.  Usually, the average Rock Band song goes for $1 or $2.  What a super deal.

Speaking of deals, I'll tell you some great news.  If you've on the fence about buying some Rock Band DLC, then you're in luck because all pre-RB3 DLC (anything without keys/harmonies/pro guitar/pro bass, about 2000 songs in total) is half-off.  Forever.  You wanted to play some Megadeth, Iron Maiden, Ozzy Osbourne, Pantera, Foo Fighters, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Pearl Jam, Alice in Chains, Nirvana, Boston, The Cars, Queen, Jane's Addiction, Guns n' Roses, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Stevie Ray Vaughn, Jimi Hendrix, Grateful Dead, Tom Petty, The Who, No Doubt, Bob Marley, Weezer, Disturbed, System of a Down, The Offspring, Avenged Sevenfold (aw hell naw), well you're in luck cause they're basically giving away these songs.  Before you would have to pay about $2 per song (song packs would reduce that to about $1.50 a song).  But here, you can get songs for less than a dollar on average.  So to repeat, GO BUY SOME ROCK BAND DLC IF YOU HAVEN'T ALREADY.  Go buy the DLC that I bought at full price.  Yeah, I'm happy dancin' right now.

But there are some problems with the game and I really don't want to get into how to play the game because you can basically download the demo which comes with the full game but only three songs unlocked (All-American Rejects, Foo Fighters, Barenaked Ladies) so you can play that and come to your own conclusions.  Here's my nitpicks:

* The "perks" are rather unbalanced.  Note, these perks are out of order.
For the first perk, just pick the instrument with the most notes (usually the guitar or bass).  Second perk, Road Rage is good for wiping out tons of notes easily but Jackpot is clearly the best (3x as long as you don't miss) for getting high scores.  Third perk, Blast Notes are the best since it hits notes from all lanes, a very useful, predictable bonus. I can't see any use into turning the purple note into anything else, especially a pinball that bounces around Breakout-style which is distracting enough when trying to fill all the lanes in the first place.  But there's on exception in which Pinball reigns supreme:

Harmonix QA, where were you?

* Playing held notes is kind of stupid.  Assume you hit a held guitar/keyboard note.  Holding a long note "fills" the lane just as much as hitting a lone note in an empty void.  Think about some crap Tier 1/2 keyboard songs where the keys' only purpose is to chime in with some weird BG noise during the chorus.  And you're trying to fill the drums lane.  Okay, now you have to sprint to the orange lane (keys) every 5 second to hit that held note, run back to green lane (drums), hit a bunch of notes, run back between the two again and again.  And because you didn't hit enough of the orange lane's notes (which had about 5 in a minute-long section), you don't raise your instrument multipliers to the max.  Aggravating as s***.

* Switching notes to another lane counts as "missing" notes if you don't play them.  So you are in Blitz Mode or have Jackpot activated.  Good luck trying to "not miss" when switching lanes since if you move to another lane while a note passes, you miss and are penalized.  It's pretty ridiculous especially when the game preaches "It's not about hitting every note, it's about getting a high score."

* A minor complaint but you can't play Rock Band 3 songs in Blitz.  You can play everything else though because it's already on your hard drive.  Yet I have RB3 installed on my hard drive too so the songs are sitting there idle yet Blitz can't play them...yeah, it's stupid programming but the option to play stuff like Caught in a Mosh and Fly Like an Eagle in Blitz would've been nice.

Review-wise, I give this game a typical 8 because it has some replay value if you have a large library.  But after a while it gets repetitive and hurts your thumbs.

This leads me to my final point and it's about Harmonix and HOW THEY ARE TRYING TO EUTHANIZE THE ROCK BAND SERIES.

I always keep track of Rock Band's weekly DLC.  DLCQuickplay is a good site to do so.  Now in case you don't know about how Rock Band DLC works, basically it's a 3-to-6 month process.  Harmonix gathers data on what songs are popular.  Then they get the rights to the song, pass them through a machine that bangs out the song charts (notes), QA them, and plan to release them some time in the future along a time table.  Great.  But the stream of new songs have gotten weaker and weaker.  Used to be that HMX was proud to release a 10-pack of some awesome band like Billy Joel or Bon Jovi every other week and we would be stoked.  Next they toned it down to 5/6-packs and we were happy.  Then they did 3-packs.  Now they do 3-packs with songs that already exist in the Rock Band library.  Sure, it's great that you would release "We are Young" or "Pumped Up Kicks" a month after I imported that garbage from Rock Band Blitz.  It's like they're trying to wean us off of the DLC rather than go cold turkey and kill us all.

Because I am such a lazy bastard and because some other guy detailed our thoughts perfectly on this DLCQuickplay site, I'm just going to copy & paste what user "Riles" said:

Nevermind the facts that Harmonix has never gone out of their way to support Wii before, or that one of the songs this week is a song Wii already has so they only get two songs this week, or that purchasing eight of the 25 songs would cost more money than just buying the pack (which doesn't include when it was on sale for $7.50), or that any songs released now will most assuredly not have retroactive pro support,

this marks the first time that no new downloadable content came out for a week, and that's huge. And it's a complete bummer. And it's asinine the way Harmonix has tried to disguise it as saying this is a result of community feedback that they're doing this, because if that were the case, these Blitz songs would be released as a supplement to regularly scheduled DLC, or as one big release week like the FIRST time they released these songs and claimed it to be DLC for that week, and not the only focus for a DLC week. There have been controversies before about whether or not the DLC streak technically ended with country packs or Green Day, but if it didn't happen before, this is the definitive broken streak. And that sucks, and it gives us every right to complain. Because none of us are complaining about the song choices this week - we're all complaining about there not being any song choices this week

If you need any hint that the Rock Band series is dying, just go to Amazon and search for a Pro Guitar, Pro Keyboard, or Drum Set.  Cheap as it ever has been.  It's a shame too since I poured a ton of money into Rock Band but if the series goes away, then at least it's understandable.  We'll still have loads of Rock Band Network songs (custom songs people submit...most of it novelty/metal trash) but if you're expecting "real" songs like these bunches of requests that I wish I could play on Pro Keys (actual fun Classic Rock songs), well...I've lost all hope.  Rock Band Blitz was basically chemo before the series' eventual death which gave us a little optimism but not much longer.

A toast to my dear Rock Band friend, thanks for keeping me sane during this racing game drought that we've been through for so long.  Who knows how much longer you'll actually be relevant?  A year, two years, three years?  You have no idea how much this sucks for me, but at least Harmonix isn't "Sega-bad" at this point so I cannot complain. They had a really good run with the series--they didn't quit and actually managed to release more DLC than Sega ever will ever.

Adios!  I rocked this song on Pro Keys.

LOL JK GUYS, we'll all wake up tomorrow and HMX will release a 16-song Muse pack and everyone will be happy, DAE believes with me???

The Need For The Sense Of Speed

And a happy 2013 to you...when everyone else was shooting fireworks, I was shooting a Remington 12 Gauge and an AR-15 (at nobody, don't worry kids).  Tell me that those things aren't more impressive (and louder) than sparklers & Roman candles.

When we talk about racing games, I hear this term thrown around a lot--"sense of speed."  Well, what exactly is it?  "It's the feeling that you're going fast."  Well duh, that's what everyone wants.  But other than that, people really don't know what it is.  They just want something that feels good.  Well how do you make that good sense of speed?  I'm going to try to define it the best I can.

First of all, notice the term--sense of speed.  It's the human body's five senses.  It's like trying to explain what and why does certain art is pleasing to look at, why certain food is delicious, why certain scents elicits positive moods.  It just "does" somehow.  Like try to explain what constitutes "good" art or something.  "It's pretty and detailed."  Okay, well what's "pretty" or "detailed."  Besides, there's abstract art which is neither of these and is hugely popular.  You could consult a biologist, anthropologist, or psychiatrist for the answers to these things, but I'm going to explain this sense of speed nonsense as best as I can:

Go back to when you were in a fast vehicle, be it a car, truck, motorcycle, airplane, boat, or roller coaster.  You're sitting there then it takes off.  You start moving, but you're moving faster than usual.  It's "foreign" to you as your body begins to experience weird sensations.  G-forces pull you back.  Then you start turning as this heavy contraption leans in and out of turns, pulling you along with it.  You experience the dopamine rush as your stomach starts to turn and your hair stands on edge.  You rest in-between a state of hopelessness to complete control--you can't predict what'll happen next as you attempt to will the car to your bidding.  You're doing something super-human--the human body was never meant to go faster than, say, 25 mph.  And accompanied with the g-forces are some rumbling as the vehicle trades blows with the road and the engine lets out a hollow roar.  Maybe you're in a cool piece of machinery like a Ferrari or an F1 car.  Maybe there's some token fast-paced music similar to AC/DC or Metallica.  In other words, you're experiencing something out-of-this-world and sense of speed just takes you to that seemingly foreign world.

F1 car of speeds over 200 mph.

Suspension cam of stock car at Daytona.

Mindblowing rally racing!!!  So kinetic you can feel it!!!  Skip to 1:22.

Go to 2:50, man that's some serious horsepower.

Now...how do you get sense of speed in a video game?  Well, I'm sure if you were actually in the cockpit of those cars, yeah, the sense of speed would be really easy to pick up.  But you're actually not there (shocker).  Looking at racing sims like GT and Forza, they do a good job of transmitting real-life imagery on the screen, but if you're sitting on your couch looking at a regular TV/speaker combo playing a racing game with a regular video game controller, it's not the same thing--you don't feel the same rush as a real life driver.  So what do we do?  We have to embellish the video game.  Obviously, this is one huge advantage that video games have over real life but often, for the sake of "authenticity," racing games (particularly simulations) don't add anything new and thus the games become boring and people lose interest.

"Hello everybody, we're here in the boring world driving a boring car around a boring track at a boring speed using a boring video game controller.  You're gonna love this game."

So what should we do to improve the sense of speed?  Here, let me throw some suggestions out there, another Top 10 (err, 12) of things:

1. There needs to be some "tactile" feel of the car.  The suspension is a great thing since as the car is flung in certain direction, so do you.  Sometimes, the car trembles at a high speed, which isn't realistic, but the faster you go, the more you shake, the more you "feel" you're moving.  And when the car does some sort of hard cornering, it leans and you can feel yourself being pulled along with it.  And not just cornering to the left or right--elevation changes (going up and down hills) is great too since the car is rocking in all directions (track design is crucial).  If the car doesn't react to steering, then it might as well be a curling puck on ice--no emotion, no feeling at all.

2. Tire smoke, tire tracks, just other parts of the car that react to physics of the car (car damage, perhaps?).  I really cannot think of a good racing game that doesn't have tire smoke/tracks at all--it's mandatory.  Exhaust fumes and car damage can be a plus as long as it isn't too distracting for the player.  When it comes to Burnout, I'm not "anti-wreck" but I want it to be about fast cars, not smashing them to pieces.

Tire smoke on display as the car's rear bumper starts to kick up from excessive rear-wheel torque.

3. There needs to be a lot of easily-identifiable stuff flying by the car.  They give us scale that we've gone from point A to B in X amount of time.  Sparse environments with nothing to drive by is boring and doesn't feel like you're really passing anything.  The original OutRun does this well--there's tons of crowds, palm trees, dotted lines, overpasses, buildings, signs, even stripes in the road that just whip right past you.  Small objects are generally better than large ones since you pass those quicker.  Seriously, I talked about this in June 2011, this is a video game not a real life world.  We want stuff in our worlds.  We want to pass that stuff really quickly.

Colorful, easy to identify objects like clouds, palm trees, traffic, and white lines.

4. Camera angles.  There is no such thing as the "best" camera angle, but typically, you want the camera to hover close to the pavement and get a good view of both your car and environment you're passing by.  It really helps too if the camera doesn't just stay fixed on the car's rear bumper but rather captures the sides of the car as it is cornering to further emphasize that the car is hauling ass in a certain direction.  Ridge Racer violated this rule many years ago and I call it out today.

Should be staring at the driver-side door!  Here, I feel like the camera is fixed in place--it's weak.

5. What about the actual speed of the car?  There really is no recommended limit but going by what my Sega racers say, a good range would be between 180 to 20 mph (290 to 385 kph).  You can get away with going slower or faster if you abide by the rest of the rules...sort of, anyway.  F-Zero goes up to 500+ mph but going too fast can get really nauseating.  People can only intake so much stimuli before they get profusely ill, even if it's just a projected image and not real life.  EDIT: As for going slow (like Mario Kart slow, oooo burn), then you can't have that "sense of speed" if there is no speed in the first place.

Two radically different racing games.

If you DO go outside the speed range, then your game will have to compensate for it.  Like F-Zero GX (made by Nagoshi-San, one of the only few people who can actually handle such a beast), has huge environments with wide, gaping turns.  On the other hand, you look at something like Club Kart at its low speeds and you have to think "put the camera way close to the ground and make really tight, compact courses."  You have to play into the hand of your game's speed range and scale the "size" of the world up/down from there to make sure each is equally difficult yet still playable by the demographic you're aiming at (racing diehards?).

6. 60 Frames Per Second.  I don't care what anyone says--60 FPS is better than 30.  The best analogy is the log in the fireplace--you're gonna go with the smooth, rounded one or the rough one?  The more surface area the log puts on, the faster it will burn (in other words, the smooth log will not burn as quickly).  If you're playing a racing game at a lower FPS, then you're not catching as much of the action as you want to--you're only getting, say, 50-60% of what your brain can actually absorb.  However, with a 60 fps game (the "rough" log), you get to experience more frames of the action and it just caters to your visual senses better.  But if you MUST have 30 FPS or less, then make the frame speed consistent.  Inconsistent FPS just f***s your brain all up and isn't fun to play in any genre of action video game.


7. Control response time is paramount.  You talk about "fast" games nowadays like Super Mario Bros. or Call of Duty and when you turn, jump, or shoot, you do it INSTANTLY.  It makes you feel like you're in charge of your own destiny.  When making a racing game, if the car just slowly flops around or you have no real control over where you go, not only will you get pissed off at it, it feels more like the game is trying to usurp control over the car from you.  That's why I chew out "slow" games like Need for Speed and (now) Forza because I don't get that feeling like I'm 100% in control of the car if it's so sluggish to do anything.  This doesn't mean "make the game piss easy to cater to casuals," but I believe responsive controls are a must.


8. HUD stuff.  You don't need to stray away from HUD pieces.  As a matter of fact, they can top off the sense of speed.  For instance, Daytona USA 2.  The "slot machine" position counter, the tach needle which has a motion trail, the track map which rotates to match your car orientation, how everything shakes when you collide with something.  It blends in with the rest of the gameplay and at the same time stays out of the way of the action so no complaints.

A decent HUD interface, providing meaningful information and giving a clear shot of the car and what lies ahead.

You don't necessarily need fewer HUD pieces to be "immersive."  Split/Second is a great example of this as they chose to include very limited pieces of info in select parts of the screen.  Great.  But taking away the speedometer (only to replace it with that stupid burnt "border" that blocks parts of the screen) doesn't make the game any faster IMO and can be really annoying for racing "diehards" like me who want simple information like "where am I on the track" and "what's my current lap time?"  Is it that hard to ask?  Did Split/Second (and Ridge Racer Unbounded as well) need to reinvent what a racing game HUD needs to look like?

Oh Split/Second, how I missed thee...

EDIT: I should mention that I really do love that lap counter.  Just the flickering numbers, it's great.  Times should be down to the milliseconds (if possible...I know Daytona 1 or Scud Race didn't have three digits).

9. Motion blur is something that isn't necessary bad but I tend to frown upon.  THIS IS DEBATABLE but IMO, the more effects you introduce to the game, the worse it gets.  Some games feel the need to obfuscate part of the screen when going fast to make it seem "edgy."  Yet I don't think that is necessary.  Particle effects and whatnot that "prevent" you from absorbing the environment (and possibly cause the game to lag) just piss me off.  If you're running at 60 FPS as it is, cruising down the road at 200+ mph, you're going to have a hard enough time trying to understand your environment as it is so motion blur will come automatically.  Don't need to force these things on the user.

I searched for "motion blur" and all I got was this scrambled mess.  Don't do this.

10. Sound is phenomenally important.  After all, visuals are only 1/5th of the human senses so you have to cater to the other ones (hearing is another 1/5th).  If you're playing a racing game for about 20 hours and you have to listen to some whiny piece of crap sound effect for that entire 20 hours, it'll suck.  Get some deep, hollow engine sounds so you can "feel" the horsepower.  Makes it feel like you're situated in a tin can with that loud motor.  Get great tire, transmission, suspension, collision, EDIT: and wind sound effects.  See NASCAR suspension clip for heavenly "air tunnel audio."  You can add "contrast" to pictures to make them more colorful so do the same with sound.  Get some stereo speakers to surround you.  Easier said than done since not everyone can afford that setup.

11. Now about how you physically feel the game.  That's another 1/5th right there.  You play a racing game and there needs to be some tactile feedback like a real race car driver would.  Here's where Sega's state-of-the-art arcade cabinets come in to play.  The force feedback of trying to fight against an aggressive car (much like a cowboy tries to ride a bull) is something you really have to play into.  Not as relevant on home consoles (just make the controller shake) but something you can't discount if you're going for 100% perfection.

12. Last but not least--a racing game NEEDS great music.  It needs to be exciting and fit the tone of the game.  Sega does a great job at creating their own tunes as I've mentioned here.  Great lyrics to accompany fast-paced beats.  But if you can't create your own music, then use licensed music!  Problem is many producers (not just in games but TV & movies too) pick pretty lame "racing" music.  Like I think Coldplay is alright but it sure as hell doesn't inspire me to get up and race cars.  I can think of 100 better bands--AC/DC, Metallica, Tom Petty, Lynyrd Skynard, Powerman 5000, freakin Papa Roach (releases an album for racing game tracks), you get the picture.  But this is a pretty heavy conversation I will probably discuss in a future post.  It'll be great.

TLDR version, here's five bullet points:

1. Work on making the car display "emotion" as it drives. Stoic cars = bad, dynamic cars = good.
2. Use camera angles and track environments to catch as much detail as possible.
3. 60 FPS. Don't get too fancy with the HUD and avoid hindrances to the driving.
4. Go for solid, responsive gameplay that errs on the side of arcade physics.
5. Iterate upon sound & music until it is rich in expression.

That's my list.  You think about these things and say...which racing games are fast and which ones are not?  Do they follow these rules?  Even "bad" racing games (IMO) like Burnout and Need for Speed do some of these things properly but the ultimate ones have to be Sega racers.  Now you know about putting better sense of speed in your video games.  Click on the games on the right panel bar to look at fast game footage.  Now to go to sleep and dream about cars!

Sonic And All-Stars Racing Tunes

Just cause I'm too lazy to post anything of substance, here's three of my favorite songs from Sega All-Stars Racing.

Damn you guys don't know about Shibuya Downtown...THAT'S MY TRACK, I ALWAYS WIN AT IT.

Oooo, I really like this Afterburner remix.

Also like Burning Rangers...gonna go put out some fires!!!  Hell if I can make an FPS level out of Sonic Adventure 2 they can make a race track out of Burning Rangers.  That's why I should work for Sumo Right Now.

Graduation Time!!!


Well, good news is I graduated from the Florida Interactive Entertainment Academy today.  Hey, let's go to commencement...loads of fun but it made my parents happy.  Went to a showcase for our capstone games then went home.  Of course, graduating was a foregone conclusion starting in the 3rd (of 4) semester.  From then it was all about ramping up to jobs and getting fired and sitting on our ass in bewilderment.

I have mixed emotions.  It's good to achieve a milestone but change is coming (again).  I no longer have any obligation to go to FIEA ever again.  I no longer have school to rely on (even if it's just some place to hang out).  But worst of all I think I'm going to lose most of my friends.  Just about every friend I made starting in first grade, once we parted ways, that's it--we just stopped talking to each other altogether.  And yes, there's Facebook, Skype, all that crap but unless you're talking face-to-face, it's does little good.  The reason why this really sucks more than ever before is because for the first time in history, I knew multiple people who understood what I was talking about.  People I could talk to without reverting back to "crappy old Eric" who couldn't socialize his way out of a wet paper bag.  You go through high school & undergrad and most people are like "you want to make vidya games, lol, I'll be a more sophisticated person at my lawyer/doctor/businessman job."  I can always make new friends, I know...

But those guys are cool...and some of them are reading this and well, you always know where to find me.  On this lousy blog nobody reads, rofl.

Now about jobs.  Well, I'm still unemployed.  A month ago, I sent out applications to two places.  Sumo Digital turned me down for the second time quoting my lack of experience and I was seriously bummed but not shocking in the least.  Firebrand went "full retard" and has yet to reply to any of my e-mails.  Why they wouldn't hire me I don't know.  Then there's some local studio which had offered me an interview in a few days (again, won't say who but it's in the Orlando region) and because their folks are on such good terms with my school, unless I go there and you-know-what the bed, I will probably get the programming job.  If not, then I'm temporary up the creek without a paddle but I can still talk with the FIEA people so not all hope is lost.  After the interview, I'll make the painstaking 9-hour drive home for Christmas, make the usual pilgrimage to the mall, look at Christmas lights, etc.

My long-term Plan A is this.  Stick around the Orlando/New Orleans region (well NO has Gameloft but I don't like em too much) and get experience.  In this experience phase, I don't plan on moving unless it's a studio I really, really like.  Then spamming Sumo (or any other Sega-related offers that pop up).  Get the job offer then we're "in" with Sega.  As for Plan B, well...if Sumo flat out doesn't want me for a multitude of reasons (I'm not smart enough, they onto my Sega antics, I can't drive on the left side of the road, etc.) then I'm s*** outta luck.  What do I do then...I do some soul searching.  Maybe I will have a change of heart and love to work elsewhere but I'll probably do something drastic like start an indie studio or roll back on programming altogether and attempt a "career" at auto racing or some other nonsense.  I just don't see the point in working into my 30's-40's on games I have no interest in.  What's the point?  Patience, yes, but at some point, enough's enough.

I hope it doesn't come down to this and I'm probably in worry mode...that's not good but I'll probably shake it tomorrow after I get some rest.  Running against the wind...it's gonna be fun and exciting anyway.  Whatever happens, it's gotta be part of God's plan somehow.

Seriously though, I've said this many times but if it weren't for Sega, I probably wouldn't be in the game industry in the first place.  I mean I'm tired of playing cheerleader..."ooooo racin gaems!!!"  I'm always candid with my readers.  If not then this blog will flat out suck.  So let's go make some f'n games already.  I'll get around to more Sega All-Stars Racing stuff as well as Super Sprint...maybe as a Christmas present for you all.  Again, thanks to the all the FIEA guys that gave me fuel to persevere.  Later....

Christmas Time!!!

Holy s***, is that Mannheim Steamroller????

I'm not one of those "bah humbug, Christmas sucks" people.  I want cheesy contempo-Christmas music in December.

MERRY CHRISTMAS*
IS
BACK!!!!



* - no matter how many commercials say "Happy Holidays" or some half-ass politically correct derivative

Can't Be Mad At Nagoshi-San Anymore (Call To Arms)

I know I haven't posted anything of substance recently so here goes something...

Nagoshi-San won an award for Yakuza 5 at the Tokyo Game Show.  I'm happy for him.

"...He said with each game in the series he strives to have each part of the game equally polished: enthralling and well-performed drama, satisfying exploration and interaction in the adventure sections and a combat system that’s challenging while accessible."  TLDR: He works his ass off on these games.

It's become a running gag over the years to call out Nagoshi-San for his wacky antics.  Like this or this.  But I cannot be angry at Toshihiro Nagoshi anymore.

Why???

First of all, what if judging by his dedication to the Yakuza franchise, isn't that what his true passion is?  Yakuza games?  To me, I love racing games.  But to him, he loves Yakuza.  And it's his dream come true to make many of these games.  So who am I to interfere?  After many years of service to SEGA, he is basically the Chief Creative Officer now and he makes games that make Sega money.  And when Sega makes money, it's good for ALL of us.

And another thing.  Hasn't he done enough already?  He made Daytona USA 1, Daytona USA 2, Scud Race, and even F-Zero GX.  Why should I beat up on him for not doing more?  He basically brought them into existence and without him, we'd probably be in a much worse position.  OutRun and Virtua Racing were great but Nagoshi advanced the ball further down the field for us.  If he didn't who else would?

I'm reminded of a conversation I had with my dad.  We were talking about Drew Brees, quarterback for the New Orleans Saints NFL team.  One of the best QB's in NFL history, he brought a Superbowl victory to New Orleans post-Hurricane Katrina.  After 43 years of the Saints being perennial losers, they finally won the Lombardi and lifted the spirits of the entire city (read my recap of the season here).  In other words, Drew Brees = Gulf Coast Hero & Class Act.

But last year, he held out for a bigger contract and basically hindered the team from signing better players like Pro Bowl offensive lineman Carl Nicks.  This hurt & distracted our team in the long run.  This I talked about before.  Drew would settle for a $100 million contract over 5 years.  My dad said something interesting in response and that is, "He could never play another snap and that $100 million would be worth it.  He's done more than enough for the city."  And that's true.  The fact Drew is still playing is just a bonus.

So you know what.  If Nagoshi wants to make Yakuza games, hit the tanning booths, drink alcohol, and have nice little conversations with Japanese mistresses then fine.  I can't hate on the guy.  He's deserved it.  He's my hero.  There, I said it and I mean it.

So, what about Daytona USA?  I'll tell you what for the 100th time, it's down to the FANS to get that s*** back up and running.  Assuming there is a new Daytona (or Sega racer in general), there's no guarantee Toshihiro Nagoshi will be involved as well as includes Yu Suzuki, Tetsuya Mitzuguchi, Makoto Osaki, Takenobu Mitsuyoshi, the whole crew.  So you GET ACTIVE, talk about racing games, learn about game design, favorite all the Sega racer YouTube vids and fan art, just do whatever you can to promote this stuff.  Cause that's what Sega fans have done for the last 20 years, promote the heck out of a garbage company known as Service Games for no reason at all other than that they've moved us in some way.  Like a stupid little arcade game like Daytona USA with 3 tracks and only one car.  Or a Mario "clone" called Sonic the Hedgehog.  Or Space Harrier, OutRun, Crazy Taxi, Virtua Fighter, Jet Set Radio, Shenmue, even for the most miniscule reasons like "I think the music's cool."  So GET MOTIVATED!!!!  Cause Sega does what Nintendon't.  Or what Microsoft don't.  Or Sony don't. Or Namco don't.  Or all those other wannabe game devs.

I propose that September 29th (Saturday) is official "Talk About Sega Racers Day".  You have two days to get ready so if you're reading this on Friday, you're given the heads up.  It's on a Saturday so it's the weekend and you should be feeling it then.  Just go to a message board, chat room, or meet someone in actual real life and say "Hey, you know about Sega?  You like racing games?  You ever played OutRun or Daytona USA?"  NOT THAT HARD.  Let's start doing this cause I'm getting sick and tired of the Sega fanbase drying up all around me like a dying oasis in the desert.  So talk, talk, talk about Sega and don't be scared.  Trust me, I already look like a bigger fool on this stupid blog than you could possibly be in real life so go do it.  THE END.

Listen to them all at once and there's your 5 Hour Energy for the day.