Sumo Respects Fair Play...

12:50 am: Ghetto Booty
So I have created a monster...not just out of DD but out of myself as well. Let me 'splain. Saturday, I went to Lazer Blaze to meet a coworker of mine whose 12 year old daughter had been talking a lot of smack about my Lazer Blazein' abilities. Needless to say, I demolished her and her dignity (or was it my dignity?...oh well). DD was with me, and she discovered the Dance Dance Revoultion arcade game there and became hooked. For those of you not familiar with it, it is a dance game where you step on arrows on a floor pad along with the music and arrows on the screen. Later that day, DD had to goto Whole Foods, and I ran into Toys R Us where I found the PS2 version of Dance Dance Revolution Extreme 2 (sounds flashy). I knew she would like it, but I never knew how much I would like it. Between Sat and Sun, we have had to have spent 10 hours or more shaking our butts. We even invited a couple of friends over to play and stare in awe of my mad dancin' skillz. So, if any of you out there want to come over sometime and show of your stuff, drop us a line and we'll break it down.

12:19 am: Just a post
Just posting to try and keep this thing a runnin'. I finished watching the first season of Babylon 5 and aside from some of the cheesy acting, I must say I enjoyed the story. I had seen bits and pieces of Bab 5 but never from the start to finish. Netflix should deliver the first season of Star Trek : DS9 next so I am looking forward to that. Not a big Star Trek fan, but I always liked DS9. Well, I am going to go read a bit more on God-Blooded in one of the Exalted books (1st ed), play some Suikoden V, and then goto bed.

01:26 am: Console RPG Goodness
Even a tornado warning couldn't keep me from my new game for long. Just picked up Suikoden V after reading reviews stating that it is back to its roots, and didn't suck like IV did.

I have a special place in my heart for Suikoden III because it was the game I played back when I had the plague (aka Mono) for like five months. There was a character in III that allowed you to loop all the music from the game in a jukebox, so when I wasn't feeling good, I would leave the music playing while I slept. Anyways, when IV came out, I immediately bought it, and it was crap. Never have I been that disappointed in a game...(that's not entirely true...but let's not bring up FF VII. Not that I was disappointed by the story line in VII by any means, but I was/am still a FF purist and nothing will ever beat the super-deformed characters of FF III/VI in Japan). Back to the point at hand, I had feared that after IV, Suikoden was doomed, but it looks like I maybe wrong. It is a bit slow in starting, setting up back plot and story, but I don't mind that so much. I feel that between this and Kingdom Hearts, I will have a lot of console RPGing to keep me busy.

Speaking of Kingdom Hearts, DD and myself went ahead and bought KH 2 (I refuse to use anymore roman numerals). We are still playing the first one, but I traded some games into a local gamestore and got a lot more back than expected. Two used games, eight dollars, and there you go. Really can't wait to play that one, but KH has turned into one of those together games that we only play while the other one is there. I know that reeks of cute, but oh well.

07:56 pm: The Great MMO Purge of 2006...
I realized that I have been paying monthly fees on three MMO's, that I haven't touched in at least a month. The Great Purge has begun. Farwell CoH, WoW, and EvE, and why do you all have three letter acronyms and names? Looks like the only game I'll be keeping is Guild Wars, and mainly because there is no monthly fee and digitaldurga likes it. I think I'll stay away from the MMO scene for awhile, or at least until something really cool comes out. Rumor has it that Star Wars online is being stripped from SoE and given to Bioware. Mmm...Bioware...KoToR goodness.

01:19 am: Sangokushi Taisen - The game that will cause financial ruin to many a gamer if released in the USA
I am trying to start off LJ by posting pretty regularly just to sort of get into the habit of doing it. Whether the said posts are relevant, that is another matter entirely.

I don't have the brain power at the moment to gush about my vacation to Japan, or to gush well enough to do it justice. I did however mention a game that I played there in my first post, so I'll talk about that.

The game is called Sangokushi Taisen, and let me start off by saying that this game has so many addictive properties that it should have a warning label. It is an arcade game, that is based off of Three Kingdoms (go Dynasty Warriors! Sidenote : Lu Bu is an ass). I am not sure how long it has been out, but I would guess under a year. Anyways, the game is a tactics game where you control armies on a battlefield and the main goal is to breach your enemy's gate before they breach yours. The arcade game iteslf is a screen at the top, with a flat playing area that represents the battlefield and some buttons. Now here is where the game gets devious. In order to start playing, you buy a starter kit which includes a personal id card that saves your data, 4 playing cards (that's right, playing cards in all of their collectible glory) and sleeves for the cards. Now the cards you get represent a general in your army who has their own unit type (Calvary, Spearmen, Archer, and a special type Swordsmen) their own stats, and their own special power. How they are used is that you put the cards on the flat playing area, and the game recognizes the cards. During the game, you move the card on the playing area to move the corresponding general's army on the screen. The game play is fairly simple but addictive. You move your army to attack your enemy and their gate, retreat when you are hurt, and unleash specials as you build up power. The game tends to use a paper/rock/scissor method in that calvary beats archers, archers beat spearmen, and spearmen beat calvary. The swordsmen that I saw, tend to have relatively weak stats but cool specials like healing. Another thing that makes the game so addictive, is that as you play and win battles there is a dispenser on the game that gives you new cards to add to your collection and to give you more choices on which generals to use. The game also seems to be hooked up on a large network because other players can challenge you to battles from other arcades.

When I first saw the game, I sat for couple hours just watching other people play before I even attempted it. Once I figured out where to get the starter deck, I started playing and was instantly hooked. I can only imagine how much more fun it could be if I could read the stats on the cards or even the onscreen text to know what I was actually doing. The only downside to this, is that I doubt this game will ever see the light of day on US shores, which is a shame. Oh well, if you want to see the game's official site, you can check it out here : http://www.sangokushi-taisen.com

10:49 pm: Future Vacation Spots, Beware....
I am not sure what is going on, but it seems that everywhere that digitaldurga and myself have gone to (or tried to goto) on a vacation has something bad happen to it. For our honeymoon, we planned on going to Mexico and staying at a nice resort. About five or six months before we were supposed to go, a hurricane ripped through that area and destroyed the resort. We then decided to move our reservation to another resort in an area that was not hit by the hurricane. Then a few weeks before the honeymoon, another hurricane showed up and destroyed that one too. At that point, we said to heck with it, and went to Brown County, IN (which is an small art colony and has a lot of woodlands). I now just found out that a day or two after we left Japan, a 6.0 earthquake happened off the southern shoreline and was felt all the way to Tokyo. So let's revisit, Mexico hit by two hurricanes, Japan hit by an earthquake. I have heard rumors of a swarm of arts and crafts devouring locusts descending on Brown County, but have not confirmed that yet.....

02:06 am: And Away I Go...
For some unknown reason, I have avoided starting my own Live Journal like the plague, and have only occasionally read someone else's journal. I am not sure why I have started now, but I can only assume that something has snapped in my head and now it sounds like a good idea.

For the longest time, I have used the handle Kid Niku, which was based off of a Muscleman figure (those little pink wrestling guys) which I had growing up, and still have. I have decided though to change that slightly since getting back from my vacation to Japan, by dropping the Kid for Gaijin, which means foreigner in Japanese. Just for the record, I think Niku means muscle and/or meat in Japanese, but don't quote me on that.

As I mentioned before, I just got back from Japan on Sunday night, and it was an incredible trip. I went with my wife, digitaldurga, and we visited Osaka, Kyoto, and Nara. I have always wanted to visit Japan since I was a kid, so needless to say I was very excited. I would have to say that one of the coolest things that I was able to do while in Osaka, was actually attend a Sumo Tournament. One of the six major tournaments was being held in Osaka while we were there, and we were able to get tickets. It was amazing to watch men that large be so quick, agile, and that powerful. More than one fat man got tossed out of the ring that day. It was also interesting to see the ritualistic side of Sumo that you hardly get to see if watching it on TV. Matches were under 5 minutes long, with the first 4 minutes spent performing rituals and trying to psyche each other out. The english handout that they provided us at the tournament really helped to explain everything that was going on, so to me, Sumo Wrestling is no longer about large men running into each other with their butts showing. Remember, Sumo respects fair play.

Anyways, work comes early tomorrow, so I better wrap this up. I am sure I'll go into more detail about my Japan trip as well as talk about the incredible arcade game I was able to play there called Sangokushi Taisen. I also just bought Exalted 2nd Edition, so I am sure I will have some words about that as well.