Intermission

I have three different half written blog posts staring at me from my desktop crying out to be finished and they will be up on here soon, promise.

But 'til then, have this comic that I drew for 1up over a year ago.



I had a whole series of these sketched out, but the staff members that I planned to use as "characters" left the company faster than I could finish comics about them.

I clearly remember thinking to myself at the time
"I'll come back to this idea once the staff turnover levels out a bit"


With that kind of forward thinking, I should get a job on wall street.
(ooh current affairs zing! oh no I didn't, oh yes I did.)

Street Fighter IVgot to get my 360 fixed in time.

I found myself wandering into my local Gamestation this afternoon only to be confronted with signs and empty game boxes screaming about tomorrows Street Fighter IV launch.

Street Fighter is one of my all time favourite franchises.

My xbox red ringed last month and it's going to be with Microsoft for another week at least.

Which means I have no game system to play it on.

So I bought some SFIV action figures instead...

...and you know, squinting at these overpriced, super-poseable lumps of plastic through the tears in my eyes, It's not so very different from the real thing.

I guess.


*sigh*

Land of the setting sun

This story did the rounds the other week but didn't attract too much comment on the sites that I lurk on:

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/japanese-videogames-market-in-decline

My first thought is that it would be very interesting to see what those figures would look like in a Wii-less alternate universe. My guess is that they would be downright apocalyptic.

But if my pesonal experience is anything to go by, I'm surprised the figures aren't worse in this universe.

Here's some random numbers generated by my game shelf.

Sega saturn collection: 85% Japanese developed games.
Playstation one collection: 70% Japanese developed games
Sega Dreamcast collection: 91% Japanese developed games.
Playstation 2 collection: 93% Japanese developed games.
Xbox 360 collection: 15% Japanese developed games.

I don't own a ps3, (as I'm not one of the seven richest Kings of Europe) but judging by the games that interest me, the figures would be in line with the 360 figures.

(I'm ignoring nintendo's home systems at the moment, because when you really get down to it, the only games really worth playing on those are made or published by nintendo...

...and that goes double for the Wii)

So what gives?

I'll come back to this later,
where I'll try and share the blame between Japanese developers, Sony, Nintendo, Microsoft and the japanese otaku.

But not me.
I'm blameless and innocent.