You changed it. Uh, good job!
Please don't use the stereotypical, Chinese chop-suey restaurant font for your anime button. Anime comes from Japan. It's a whole different country; look it up some time!
This is the best blog post I've read in recent memory. It's Tino talking about the Kindle and the undeservedly bad reception it's gotten so far, a reception I let myself get caught up in. I find myself wishing to stumble upon 400 bucks.
Background: So, some of the old games I played on the Mac Plus as a kid had a "boss key": some key combo you could hit to make it look like you were working instead of playing around. At a job I had in Chicago, one of my coworkers made a wallpaper image called BUSYBEE.BMP, a screenshot of a bunch of Excel windows, which he'd expose with the handy Windows 2000 "Desktop" button when someone important walked by.
My boss from the computer lab job I had in college five years ago just IMed me out of the blue to ask me a Mac question. We caught up a little, and when I told him I was the User Experience Lead at the Omni Group, he came back with:
Hmmm, is that corp speak for "help desk?
iPhone Software
- Please use the serial comma. Omitting it is asking for trouble.
- Please don't start a list of one type of item and then change the type of item partway through. Your sentence seems to say, "...includes additional new features, includes bug fixes, and includes supersedes...".
Mac OS X's new Cover Flow feature seems to be doing some interesting analysis of your icons. Normally a Mac OS X icon has a shadow below it; if the icon were drawn normally, there would be a gap between where the main element of the icon ends and its reflection begins. Instead, Cover Flow apparently analyzes the bottom of your icon, looking for the beginning of pretty opaque pixels, and then cuts off everything below them. In most cases, this results in finding the bottom of the icon's imagery and chopping off some shadow:
It's here, it's glorious, it's in my PS2 right now. Few things can convince me to get up at 6:30 and come in to the office, but I did it today to have some hours with the game before work began. Here are my impressions, as impulsive as Croche suddenly pulling her sword on someone:
- As soon as I heard Chroah speak, I was worried I wouldn't like him. He seemed a bit arrogant. But that faded quickly. (Was it Chroah? However they spelled it; I have to keep an eye out for romanizations in the UI to find out what all the katakana names are supposed to be)
- I was having some trouble keeping characters straight, what with ルカ and レイカ and レイシャ and クロア and クローシェ, and only two hair colors among the five main characters so far. I'm guessing that purple hair is characteristic of the common class in Pastalia, and blonde hair is a sign of nobility? But then I don't know about Luka's mother. Bleh, and come to think of it, a bunch of Chroah's knight buddies have blonde hair (in fact I think they have the same head as the announcer from Mana-Khemia). Now I need a new Theory Of Confusing Hair Color Choices.
- The battle system is time-based. This has me worried. I play games like this to go into a state of leisurely button-pushing. On the other hand, I suspect that this game might present a challenge, unlike the first one. Maybe actually having a chance of losing will make the experience more fun.
- Croche is unabashedly ojousama-kei, while Luka is thoroughly shujinkou ni muchuu. This is going to be fun.
- No jumping, and no HUD map. I won't miss jumping puzzles, but I will miss randomly jumping around for no reason.
- Also hey, how about a main character with glasses! Yeah!!
- The castle you visit at the beginning feels so much like the Ethos from Xenogears... :D
This is a (rather amateurish) translation of Dengeki Online's report of the Ar tonelico 2 event in Akihabara last week. I have included only the images which are unique to the article; screenshots and other such official materials have been left out.
"Enta-matsuri" — Popular Divas Brought Together!
PS2 Ar tonelico 2 Premium Event Exhibition
On a special stage at the currently-running "Akihabara Enta-Matsuri" festival, a premium event was held on October 21 for the PS2 RPG Ar tonelico 2: Sekai ni Hibiku Shoujotachi no Metafalica (hereafter Ar tonelico 2).
On sale from Banpresto starting today, October 25, Ar tonelico 2 is the continuation of January 2006's Ar tonelico: Sekai no Owari de Utaitsudzukeru Shoujo. Set in a harsh world without solid ground, the story of those who travel around a verdant utopia "Metafalica" and battle with gods is told on a grand scale. Its unique system is that of singing in the emotive language "Hymmnos" in order to invoke magic.
Ar tonelico 2 cover (left) and limited preorder item "Official Visual Book" cover (right).
Today's event was divided into two sections: Section 1 "World Part" and Section 2 "System Part". Part 1 was presented as a talk show with members of the development team and the female artists, while Part 2 was an explanation of the system while playing the game itself.
Part 1
In Part 1, the female artists who worked on the musical compositions appeared: Shimotsuki Haruka-san, Shikata Akiko-san, Ishibashi Yuuko-san, and Mitose Noriko-san. In addition to these four, the director of Ar tonelico 2, GUST's Tsuchiya Akira-shi, the producer, Banpresto's Kawachi Atsunori-shi, and Banpresto's public relations manager T-san, presented a talk.
Members of today's event. From the left, director Tsuchiya Akira, Ishibashi Yuuko-san, Shikata Akiko-san, Shimotsuki Haruka-san, Mitose Noriko-san, producer Kawachi Atsunori.
In this work, as director Tsuchiya "wanted to involve the singers deeply in the worldview," there is an artist responsible for each of the main characters. Songs for the heroine "Ruka Trulyworth[?]" are by Shimotsuki-san, those for the other heroine "Kurôshe Rêteru Pastarie" are by Shikata-san, those for Ruka's mother "Reisha Trulyworth" are by Ishibashi-san, and those for the secret character are by Mitose-san.
Ishibashi-san divulged a little-known episode in which it took her four days to record just one song, and she thought her heart would break in the middle of recording. Also, Mitose-san related the story of how she recorded in a booth for hours in midsummer heat of over 40 degrees Celsius, then ended up dreaming in the Hymmnos language.
From there, Shimotsuki-san revealed the story of a request from the director Tsuchiya, "This song is a really apathetic song, so I want you to sing apathetically." Director Tsuchiya engaged the crowd strongly, saying "It really did turn out apathetic! Look forward to it!"
Part 2
In Part 2, the development staff actually played Ar tonelico 2 while explaining the battle system. In the demo, they focused on powering up "song magic", and presented the powerful "Replekia" system which combined item collection and Powered... Or they were supposed to, but failed twice. On the third try it finally went well, and the staff were visibly relieved.
At this point director Tsuchiya called out to the audience, "Let's have someone in the crowd try actually playing. If you want to play, raise your hand~." For some reason, Shimotsuki-san raised her hand and said "Yes, yes, I would like to play!" Shimotsuki-san apparently started wanting to play while watching the demonstration, so director Tsuchiya gave her instructions while she challenged the battle part.
Shimotsuki-san immediately activated "Replekia", but before she could benefit from its effect, she crossed swords with the enemy and won in melee combat. "I won by throwing myself at the enemy. I kind of feel like I lost..." she said, seeming unsatisfied.
Next was the explanation of "Dualstall", sometimes called the "Bath System". Dualstall is a system by which you submerge a Dualisno crystal into a bathtub, then the heroines bathe together, warming up their bodies and gaining power. When the sexy image of Ruka and Kurôshe wrapped in bath towels appeared on the giant screen above the stage, voices around the grounds rose up, "Ohhhh."
After that was the question & answer session with the development staff. Those on stage received various questions such as, "What song of Ar tonelico 2 is in the highest key?", and "Has a miracle ever occured while you were singing?" Such contentious questions as, "Is there a character in this game even more annoying than Lyner was in the previous game?" were also asked. Director Tsuchiya responded to that question with a grimace.
At the end, producer Kawachi ended the event by strongly imploring, "This game is certainly even more fun than the previous one. We hope to go on to make part 3, part 4 and more, so please lend us your support!"
