Recent Happenings–Me at VGW and StreetPass Meets

Well, besides that book review, I've been a little MIA as of late, huh? Time to fix that!

As I mentioned in my previous post, I'm now a member of the lovely, inspiring team at www.videogamewriters.com! I'll be covering news and some reviews, with a slight angle towards Japan-only releases and news fresh from the land of the rising sun. I believe my first review for them will actually be of Grand Knights History for the PSP in September, and I'm looking forward to it! (thanks to The Gay Gamer for making me aware of this game in the first place!) So far I've written a few news articles, and most notably an opinion piece on Nintendo's decision to exclude DVD playback capabilities while pursuing possible social network connectivity in the Wii U, so if you're at all interested, I'd love if you gave it a read! If you want to be a real pal, show your support for me and the rest of the team at Video Game Writers by following us on Facebook and/or Twitter! And I highly suggest you check out some of the other articles on the site, it really is a pleasure to read (and there was absolutely no mention of booth babes in any of their E3 coverage!).

In other news, we had another StreetPass Brisbane meetup last weekend, where one of our members was kind enough to pass on her copy of Alice in Wonderland for the DS to me! It's one of the only movie/game tie-ins that ever looked any good to me, so I'm excited to check it out.

Another one of our members ordered the giant AR card from Nintendo Club Australia, and he brought it along to the event so that we all could take some snazzy 3D photos of giant Mii's and Nintendo characters. We got a lot of questions and interested passers-by. Here's what we looked like:

Nothing like a bunch of 3DS fans gathering together, I say! In fact, this Saturday has been declared 3DS StreetPass Day by none other than Nintendo, and to show StreetPass Brisbane's support we'll be holding an event on the day, too. I'll be trying my hand at hosting a Super Street Fighter IV 3D Edition tournament (wish me luck, I've never done something like this before!).


I'd love to write more but since this post is long overdue, I think I'll leave it at that for now and save the rest for subsequent posts. I don't like how dead things are getting around here!

Recipe for a Very Nerdy Weekend: StreetPassing at the Mana Bar and More!

I don't often do weekend recaps, but this time I think it was sufficiently nerdy enough to merit this post. That, and I wanted to do write-ups on both the Mana Bar StreetPass event I attended as well as the CG animated film Resident Evil: Degeneration, so I figured why not do one big weekend review?

On Saturday, Shaun and I headed into the city for some major window shopping and general bumming around; I, of course, had my 3DS in tow so I could collect some StreetPass hits. For lunch we swung by our favorite Japanese restaurant, Kadoya, where I had their delicious mackerel bento set. We made sure to play a few rounds of Animal Kaiser while we were in the area and had high hopes of scoring a rare card for our efforts, too. Sadly, we did not (and are beginning to think we need to take a break from the whole thing, it's quite the money sink and we haven't gotten any good cards in a while), but Shaun did get a funny picture of me in action:

I think I was captured mid-exclamation

 We spent Saturday evening at home with a family-sized chicken (2 kilos! What can I say, it was on special) and Resident Evil: Degeneration (2008). Both Shaun and I were pleasantly surprised that the CG movie, which takes place between Resident Evil 4 and 5, was actually quite a bit better than we had anticipated. I'd say that if you're a fan of the video game series, you should definitely check this movie out, if you haven't already! Neither of us are huge RE fans, as we've only actually played Resident Evil 5, but the movie was fun and I think it's at least worth a rental.

Expect to see the sequel, Resident Evil: Damnation, sometime in 2012!

 The graphics didn't strike me as particularly impressive, like they did when I first saw FFVII: Advent Children back in 2005, but a couple times during the movie I did notice some pretty well-done effects, especially in the water. The plot was intriguing and pretty well-paced, though I had a hard time understanding what was going on at a couple of points during the movie (I think that's because I'm slow on the uptake sometimes; Shaun didn't have any problems). It definitely is a good fix for anyone waiting for the next Resident Evil game to come along.

There are plenty of shots of Leon being super-cool

Next, we have the StreetPass event at the Mana Bar, an awesome video game-themed bar located right here in Brisbane! Though the event was planned for the slightly-unfortunate time of Sunday evening, Shaun and I decided it was worth checking out, so we hopped on the train to Fortitude Valley and arrived sometime around 4:30 pm. I thought this would be a nice opportunity to spread the word about StreetPass Brisbane and check out this funky venue!

Loved their decor! The Mana Potion was a novel drink, but I'll probably give it a skip next time

Unfortunately, I only got 5 StreetPass hits altogether during the hour and a half we were there, but that may have been due to the fact that we arrived so early. 2 of those were from members of StreetPass Brisbane that attended our event last Saturday, so it was great to see their Mii's level up! Mana Bar also has their own 3DS for StreetPassing, so if you attend the bar regularly, that would be a great way to get a higher level Mii for StreetPass Quest.

The bar itself was smaller than I had expected, but it was pretty cool to see all the TVs with games set up and ready to go (I believe there were 5 in total). Shaun and I played some Mario Kart Wii, watched a bit of Marvel Vs. Capcom 3, and Shaun did a couple of songs on Guitar Hero. Later on we picked up this intriguing XBox 360 game called Raskulls and did a 3 player race with Natasha, who we know from StreetPass Brisbane. That game was fun for multiplayer, and I would definitely check it out again if it's on the next time I'm at the Mana Bar. Little Big Planet was also available to play, but I'm not a huge fan of that so we didn't bother giving it a go.

All in all, it was a great weekend! Albeit a little more eventful than usual, so things might be a little more low-key next weekend to make up for it. Though I'm chafing at the bit to see the new Pirates movie, so hopefully we'll be able to fit that in! 

What about you all? Do anything fun over the weekend?