Playing in 3D

So it is finally here. I remember posting about the 3DS after E3 of last year. I have been able to play with the system for several hours now and I can say that the 3D is awesome! However from the 4 people that I personally know that have played the 3DS half said the experienced a motion sick feeling. Those two often claim to suffer from motion sickness so I think there might be a correlation. I however have had no problems at all using the 3D feature turned all the way up.

There are a lot of cool features in the 3DS right out of the box. I will cover a few in this post.

The 3D needs to be seen to be believed. There is a mini game called Face Raiders that uses a form of augmented reality and has you fire projectiles at pictures of yourself or whatever else you decided to snap a 3D pic of. The game has you spinning and turning to find the next enemy to shot out of the sky as they taunt you with weird faces.

Next is the QR code (below). After making a Mii (3DS Avatar) you can transform it into a QR code and post it on the internet for example. Anyone with a 3DS can hold the camera up to the code and pull the Mii you created off the screen and into their system. Pretty awesome. There is so much potential in that feature alone that it makes it very exciting to see what developers might do with it.

Next post I will talk about the amazing AR cards. I will even post some pics. The only bad thing I can say about the system right now is that it is a dust magnet. How many times do I have to wipe this thing down?

This is about Sports, ask Watson

There are no less than three clips that made me feel like this is how all football should be announced; those would be, "Here's my buddy," "That adds to your lead," and "Yahoo!"

Update

Here is an update on my XBox case mod. Still need to get some LEDs and some other painting on it. I also need to get some plexi glass to add as a window and the center part of the cog will go on top of that.

Projects!

First things first, teach Logan about classic gaming. We start first with the Gamboy Pocket.

Next an XBox 360 Case mod. Based on the Logo from the up coming Super Giant Games game Bastion. Work In Progress! It will be red with some LEDs thrown in there.

Logo for Bastion.

Then we have the Vigilant have been working on. I ended up dipping the model to speed up the painting process. Erin's new camera is really good so it made my shading look brown, well it is but it is darker in real life.

So tell me what you guys think and what projects are you guys working on?

Its madness I tell you! Madness!

Ok, so Michael handed out a NCAA Bracket on Sunday, and I was actually stoked, cause, yeah, I like to participate in all kinds of stuff. Now, obviously, I don't know much about.. sports, but no matter right? Its random stats and data. So, Google got their B-Ball on and built this site.. which I guess is no ESPN, but is rife with data and maps of where the games are being played and where the teams are from. So the Bros started a bracket, and at posting... I'm winning, for now. Bracket 1 is Barry, 2 Kevin, etc.. As the tourney progresses the scores and points will update. And we can double check the official NCAA as we go. That being said, we are an eclectic bunch, so here is another kind of bracket, to add to the madness. So, get filling and voting! Lets see which one of us needs to work in Vegas.

Link

Thought I would try out something different and got some inspiration from A Link to the Past that I was playing on the emulator I have. I am planning to do Sabin from FF6 next and eventually a Disneyland map for Mike.

Video games as art

The Civilization series is one that i have loved for a long time, we're talking back when it was still an extremely complicated board game. Me, Tanner, Brain and Mr. Burrows, my high school Spanish teachers husband, spend many long weekends playing it. Unlike Star craft I was pretty good at Civ and was stoked when it came out on PC. While I haven't played Civ 5 the above trailer is a beautiful piece that, in my opinion, easily qualifies as art. And as a small first step to that end, the song which playes over the video won a 2011 Grammy. It's things like this that can lead gaming to a great position in our culture, things like this need to be held up as shining examples of what the industry can do.

While I love the above video this one which puts English lyrics to the music is pretty good too.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aL6wlTDPiPU