This got released a couple weeks ago, but I think it’s noteworthy to post it anyway. A two-ish minute trailer for the upcoming 2009 movie, Watchmen!!! One of the most popular graphic novels is making its way to the big screen headed by Zack Snyder (300 anyone?). Give it a watch, it’s really exciting to watch and the detail of the scenes shown in the trailer compared to the graphic novel is wonderful.

Now that E3 is behind us, I guess I should say a bit about it. First, I’ll go through the Nintendo showing this year.

They had a very casual-centric showcase this year (and even apologized about the lack of “hardcore” software later on). For me, the highlights were Animal Crossing: City Folk, the Wii MotionPlus accessory, and well, that’s about it. I think I’ve talked enough about Animal Crossing in a previous post, but the Wii MotionPlus is very intriguing to me. Basically it adds more gyroscopes to the existing wiimote so you can get 1:1 motion detection. In the game Wii Sports: Resort, the showcase its use in different games, much like how the original Wii Sports showed what the basic wiimote and nunchuck could do. The obvious standout to all the press seemed to be the swordfighting game, which let you realistically slash, stab, and block with the wiimote and motionPlus attachment. Exciting. Hopefully that Star Wars Clone Wars game with lightsaber battles will be good enough to warrant another go/sequel when the MotionPlus comes out Spring next year.

Was intense! 90ish minutes of great animation, writing, and acting to end a wonderful series. I wonder if the creators ever realized when they thought of the franchise how popular the show would be outside the 6-11 demographic (which was the target according to wikipedia)? Anyways, hopefully there’ll be some sort of spinoff series later on and that Shyamalan’s movie adaptation (out in 2010 I believe) will give the franchise some justice. Apparently Shyamalan and his kids or something are fans of the series and the movie will be based around Book One (Do I smell a trilogy? I hope).

So we’ve given my aunt her MSI Wind laptop (netbook, as some kids like to call these kinds of laptops), but I was able to use it enough to think of a few pros and cons of the Wind.

PROS

The size is wonderful. The Wind is meant to be used to quickly access the internet wherever you need to (and wherever there is a useable wifi network). They’re meant for the masses, and Intel thinks millions of these ‘netbooks’ will be sold a year, or so my dad says. Anyways, the size makes it easy to carry without making it hard to type or read what’s on the screen.

It basically comes with everything one would need for this kind of laptop: windows xp(which most normal users will be most comfortable with compared to vista and linux), a fair sized hard drive (80GB), and internet ready right out of the box. After the initial XP Setup we were able to get right on internet explorer and start surfing the internet

CONS

The wireless adaptor isn’t amazingly strong, and is prone to disconnects. However, after using it for a few sessions the frequency of disconnects has lowered, which is a good sign.

The stupid mouse bar! It supports right and left click, but there is no divider at all. So you click the left of the bar for left-click, and the right of the bar for right-clicks. It’s a small con, but it does seem a bit awkward.

The Wind comes with a webcam, but it’d be nice if some software that uses the webcam like an iPhoto-equivalent program came with it. To test if the webcam worked, we had to download yahoo! messenger and test it on a friend.

CONCLUSION

The cons are few, and the pros are pretty good for what it’s worth. At 500$, it’s a pretty good bargain for those trying to get a quick internet fix without lugging a bigger laptop around. So if you’re looking for a netbook of your own, you can’t go wrong with an MSI Wind.

Today we shopped at one of the popular IT centers, Gilmore. It’s an area in Green Hills where there are lots of IT stores, and is the place Intel uses whenever it releases new products in the Philippines. Our goal: buy a notebook for my aunt.

The first notebook we looked at was the 29,999 Pesos (a bit more than 600 dollars) Neo Empriva. Intel Core Duo, 2GB RAM, 160GB HD, Vista, DVDRW Drive. Sounds pretty good right? TOO GOOD. We had the employee test it, and he went into the BIOS to prove the specs were legit. Upon first glance, all of the spec listings were all screwed up. The employee pressed a few buttons, and tada! The “specs” showed up. Hmm….upon closer inspection we checked the Genuine Vista Sticker at the bottom only to find out it had holes in it where the screws are. Tsk tsk, not buying from you!

The next laptop (at a different store called foxcom) we looked at was the MSI Wind. At about 500$, it’s a fairly basic laptop, runs the new Intel Atom processor, 1GB RAM, 80GB HD, and Windows XP. No optical drive. All my aunt really needs is some basic word processing and internet access, so we went for this. Upon testing it at the shop, it didn’t boot.  So he went into the setup menu, and changed some options, and tada! It worked. Pleased, we bought it and went home. However, we couldn’t get the damn thing to turn on! Suspicious, my dad and I went back into the setup menu and put everything to its default setting. Tada! It once again worked. Looking back, it did seem that the employee was tampering with a bit more options than it seemed like he had to. He was probably hoping to sabotage our hopes of using the laptop so that we’d have to return it and lose some money in some warranty loophole. TAKE THAT SUCKA! Anyways, the MSI Wind is working fine so far, and we’ll be passing it on to my aunt tomorrow.

Moral of the Story: Don’t shop at Gilmore unless you know what the hell you’re doing!

Ahh yes, Runescape. The guilty pleasure of many a gamer. I was once highly addicted to it. I don’t remember what it was about the game that made me love it so much, but I just did. Anyways, this week they released Runescape High Detail for free players, along with other game updates. I just finished watching a trailer comparing the regular graphics with the High Detail ones, and the difference is incredible. Seriously, if you ever needed a reason to go back to Runescape, this is a pretty good reason. Actually, tomorrow I’m planning on giving the game another try. It had some charm to it, and it did have a lot to do. I know I used to find myself look at the screen and wonder wtf I’m doing when I could be playing with something that doesn’t look like utter shit.

Anyways, read up more on the update here and watch the trailer at Jagex’s Youtube Page.

Well, since most of my page views have been about Animal Crossing, i thought it’d be nice to do a quick history of this Nintendo Franchise.

Animal Crossing started it’s run on the Nintendo 64, with the Japan-only release in April of 2001, Dōbutsu no Mori, which literally means “Animal Forest.” The game was marketed as a Life Simulation game, and gained attention for its unique gameplay. December of that same year, Nintendo re-released the game in Japan for the Gamecube, and made use of the real-time internal clock to keep track of time in the game.

Animal Crossing made its debut in the US September 15th, 2002, and recieved great consumer and critical reception. X-Play dubbed the game the 7th best game on the Gamecube, and was given high ratings by most game reviewers.

The success of Animal Crossing on the Gamecube and the popularity of the Nintendo DS prompted the creation of an Animal Crossing port for the DS, Animal Crossing: Wild World, which released worldwide in the fall of 2005. It was the first true sequel for the series, since all the versions before it were ports and remakes of the original game. The game added new features which expanded the current village layout, and made use of the NIntendo Wi-Fi Connection feature for the DS by allowing a player’s friends to visit their village.

Memorable characters such as Tom Nook and Resetti, slow-paced but rewarding gameplay, and a unique environment have all helped make Animal Crossing one of Nintendo’s best-selling franchises of this decade. According to the Nintendo site, a November release for Animal Crossing: City Folk for the Wii is planned for the US release.

Today, Thursday July 17th, Dark Knight is released in Philippine cinemas. That’s right, we’re getting it a whole day before those Stateside! Ha! Anyways, not only am I excited to see the film but I’m also hoping that they’re going to reveal the trailer for Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. I’ve heard some rumors that the Dark Knight release is going to be when they are going to premiere the trailer for that movie.

I’m a fan of Harry Potter, so any news I hear about the movies make me all warm and fuzzy inside. The movie series has had its ups and downs, but I think the last three specifically were splendid. I’m quite excited to see the scene where *spoilers highlight to read* dumbledore dies! So yeah. That’ll be interesting.

Yep, Miyamoto disclosed that good ol’ Ninty is working on a new PIkmin game AFTER their Nintendo E3 Conference. For those that don’t know, Pikmin and Pikmin 2 were games that were released on the Gamecube where the player controls an astronaut who can order around these little alien things called Pikmin to do his bidding. There are different types of PIkmin that could do different sorts of tasks, so the gameplay was a mix of strategy and puzzle solving.

Pikmin 2 was a lot of fun and the gameplay interesting from what I remember, and the multiplayer (was that in 1 or 2? Or both? Iforgot) was surprisingly fun. So i’ve got some high hopes for this next Pikmin. No release dates or anything have been released so far, and I don’t even think there are screenshots anywhere. But we all know Nintendo, they don’t show anything of their games until it looks like a hit.

This literally just in within the last half hour or so! The original Dead Rising from XBOX 360 is going to be released on the Wii. Details on 1up say that Capcom is looking to stay as “faithful” to the original, which is totally fine by me. Only thing I’m worried about is how drastic the graphical decline will be. But the game already was kind of campy, so I’m not going to try to worry about it too much. But damn! Hot damn! Dead Rising on the Wii!

Seriously, i’m pretty excited with the possibilities. Obviously I’m expecting the obligatory tacked on wii motion actions. Imagine mimicing throwing plates, swinging those clothes models figures (the name escapes me at the moment), and, here’s the best one, cooking food! Sweet dog!

pic from 1up

Link to the news here