aristotle

I'm absolutely loving the game keeper advert.

Hmm... is it possible for advertising not to offend the user much? The entire premise of an advertisement is to capture attention to promote a product or service. When I am playing a game, the last thing I want to be is distracted by product placement (yes, Guitar Hero is one of the newest franchises guilty of this) or other various ad promotions. But I guess we'll see what they can come up with.

Wow, the only time I ever watch TV much is at my parents' house, and Monk is one of my dad's favorite shows, so I've become quite familliar with it over the last year or two. I'm also a huge fan of the Daily Show and Colbert Report, but as I don't have cable, I barely ever see them.

Wow, it looks incredibly beautiful. I might never shake my nostalgia for the original SNES Mario Kart release (even with all of its flaws and weaknesses), and of course the widely received N64 version, which I continue to play, but I'm quite excited for this game.

My first was Nintendo Power... Tetris was my first issue, though I remember the Dragon Warrior supplement in far more detail. That's probably because I read it cover to cover no less than twenty times. I loved that game (and gaming guide!) Looking back through the old NP issues, it's amazing to see how the sophisticated marketing angle was built into the mag... using pictures of "cool" looking kids about 4-6 years older than the target audience, using polls and rankings to shape gamer perception, and of course, Nintendo had final editorial say on every last word. Amazing to think how much power they had in the millions of subscriptions this mag sold. Of course, recognizing this, I still retain fond memories of this magazine. There was nothing so exciting as receiving one of these in the mail. Especially around the cornerstone shift from the 8- to 16-bit SNES console. It seemed like the industry was just exploding, there was always so much new exciting news, and it was a rush to get the new issue and feel like I was on "the edge" of it all.

I am a lover of many types of music. And I had an epiphany the other day: I've said for the longest time that I hate country music. But I realized that I don't really hate all country, but only "popular" country that gets radio play. And in fact, I must admit that I really stinking love bluegrass and folk. Anyway, now that that's out in the open... My favorite bands (no longer country-related) are Radiohead, The Decemberists, Matt Pond PA, Iron & Wine (SUCH beautiful guitar playing), and "the Sea & Cake" (not to be confused with "Cake").

I have to agree that the original Final Fantasy soundtrack by Nobuo Uematsu ranks among the best of classic music. With no disrespect meant to the fans of the later soundtracks (I myself adore FFIV (II) and FFVI (III) soundtracks), the original FF soundtrack laid the musical groundwork for much of what followed. You can pick up snippets of thematic material from this landmark game even in music composed years later. I have especial fondness for the Matoya theme, the Earth Shrine theme, the overworld music, and *of course* the arpeggio'd game theme that was endlessly reused in sequels. What a great soundtrack.