Ok, I just got back from Armageddon, the fancy pants name for an annual Geek Convention. It used to cover pretty much just comics and cards, but with the pulp culture now covering much more, it has huge areas dedicated to trading card games, video games, and general exciting stuff for geeks and kids (like a Weta area with lots of King Kong and LotR polystone casts and the like).
Anyway, random things I checked out:
GBA Micro - Pure yumminess. I want one. Looks like we'll be getting five colours on launch, all solid (faceplate and bnody the same colour) - Black, Silver, Blue, Red, and Purple. Comes with a cloth bag, and an extra faceplate. The box looks different to the US one (much more plain - kind of like the Japanese DS box, but for some reason, larger). They had copies of DK Country 3 on it, and it looked gorgeous. I wish the blue lights on the Start and Select buttons were also on the L and R. The D-pad and buttons feel very 'spongey'. THey were good, and reminded me of the original SNES pad. Still, I actually like the clickiness of the DS/SP, so I may miss that. God, I still want one though. And all the colours look great - I could take any one, but I'll probably opt for silver just to go with my SP, DS, PB, and vacuum cleaner.
Mario Kart DS: They had this on a twin plasma screen, showing it in all its pixelly gloriness. Actually, it looked fantastic - I didn't really want to give it a go there, but it looked like fun, and the moving tree obstacles were anmated quite well. And for the record, I did hang around until I saw a redshell - it looked like it shot forward, THEN homed in on the next racer. Could be mistaken, though, and it was the demo version.
XBox360: I spent a while in a line to get a sneak peek at an XBox360 presentation, which consisted of rolling video game footage of Call of Duty 2, a marketing piece proclaiming all the features of the XBox360, and a gears of war demo. Also an XBox360 set up with DoA4 on the start screen. Yeah, I'm sure you have all seen the footage before, and probably spending time at kiosks actually playing the thing, but the footage I saw was pretty underwhelming. It looked higher poly and detail in that regard from stuff now, but gameplay looked more of the same. Given DoA4 in person looked very solid, in terms of HD and general smoothness. Funny, the marketing cideo was talking about the XBox360 being the hub of your home multimedia set up - and it showed a PSP being connected to it.
Also picked up some ultra cheap copies of PN03 and Viewtiful Joe 2. I had PN03 before, but traded it in to get something (I liked it, but I was trading it in for MORE money than I had paid for it - and I bought it this time for even cheaper). I never finished Viewtiful Joe 1 (damn fire leo). Don't even know if I'll even plug these games in.
Oh yeah - I saw copies of Yoshi's Gravtron or something - a Yoshi tilt game. I don't think I've even heard of it before, but after I looked at some pictures on the back, I remember seeing them somewhere here. It's on sale here now, I think. Graphics like Yoshi's Story.
Um yeah, you US people have seen all this before, but this is about as exciting as it gets for NZ.
One last thing, for the record - there are too many smelly people at these conventions.
Anyway, random things I checked out:
GBA Micro - Pure yumminess. I want one. Looks like we'll be getting five colours on launch, all solid (faceplate and bnody the same colour) - Black, Silver, Blue, Red, and Purple. Comes with a cloth bag, and an extra faceplate. The box looks different to the US one (much more plain - kind of like the Japanese DS box, but for some reason, larger). They had copies of DK Country 3 on it, and it looked gorgeous. I wish the blue lights on the Start and Select buttons were also on the L and R. The D-pad and buttons feel very 'spongey'. THey were good, and reminded me of the original SNES pad. Still, I actually like the clickiness of the DS/SP, so I may miss that. God, I still want one though. And all the colours look great - I could take any one, but I'll probably opt for silver just to go with my SP, DS, PB, and vacuum cleaner.
Mario Kart DS: They had this on a twin plasma screen, showing it in all its pixelly gloriness. Actually, it looked fantastic - I didn't really want to give it a go there, but it looked like fun, and the moving tree obstacles were anmated quite well. And for the record, I did hang around until I saw a redshell - it looked like it shot forward, THEN homed in on the next racer. Could be mistaken, though, and it was the demo version.
XBox360: I spent a while in a line to get a sneak peek at an XBox360 presentation, which consisted of rolling video game footage of Call of Duty 2, a marketing piece proclaiming all the features of the XBox360, and a gears of war demo. Also an XBox360 set up with DoA4 on the start screen. Yeah, I'm sure you have all seen the footage before, and probably spending time at kiosks actually playing the thing, but the footage I saw was pretty underwhelming. It looked higher poly and detail in that regard from stuff now, but gameplay looked more of the same. Given DoA4 in person looked very solid, in terms of HD and general smoothness. Funny, the marketing cideo was talking about the XBox360 being the hub of your home multimedia set up - and it showed a PSP being connected to it.
Also picked up some ultra cheap copies of PN03 and Viewtiful Joe 2. I had PN03 before, but traded it in to get something (I liked it, but I was trading it in for MORE money than I had paid for it - and I bought it this time for even cheaper). I never finished Viewtiful Joe 1 (damn fire leo). Don't even know if I'll even plug these games in.
Oh yeah - I saw copies of Yoshi's Gravtron or something - a Yoshi tilt game. I don't think I've even heard of it before, but after I looked at some pictures on the back, I remember seeing them somewhere here. It's on sale here now, I think. Graphics like Yoshi's Story.
Um yeah, you US people have seen all this before, but this is about as exciting as it gets for NZ.
One last thing, for the record - there are too many smelly people at these conventions.
