As always, there's a new ROM comic. As for Pebble Version, remember to vote and donate if you have a few extra bucks. Also, be sure to check back tomorrow for PV's 2nd anniversary! There'll be a special bonus comic, a new rant, and possibly some guest stuff as well. Meanwhile, I'd like to apologize to the people who have e-mailed me lately. I will reply to you, I just haven't had much time with all these final projects to work on.

And that's pretty much it for now. I spent all day fighting with the Neverwinter Nights editor (yes, fighting is probably the most accurate term) so I'm a little out of it at the moment. See you tomorrow!

Josiah

Don't forget to vote and see friday's bonus comic. Also, remember that Pebble Version's second anniversary is this thursday. More about that on on wednesday, although I am accepting guest comics and fan art if anyone wants to submit some.

Well, I'll be going on a vacation in about a week and a half which means it's time to buckle down and finish all my final projects. For instance, I spent a considerable portion of sunday working on an interface design mock-up. Which, essentially means spending a heck of a lot of time in Photoshop making menus, dialogue boxes, and the like. Fortunately, I'm nearly done with that one. Of course, the next project involves Neverwinter Nights and, considering past experiences, I may be better off making those dialogue boxes. And that's only the beginning. Sigh... I hate finals week.

Josiah

As usual, there's a new bonus comic so please vote! There's a new ROM as well. Something else is new as well, check out the links page. No, it's not a link. See the new banners I made for Pebble Version? There's one for Brendan and May and one for Xain and Cali. You'll even get a glimpse at some of the pokémon they'll be getting later on. Hope you like them! And remember that the 11th is PV's second anniversary and if you want to send any fan-art or guest comics for the event that would be great.

If you've been reading this news posts you probably know that I'm in the middle of finals for my summer semester of college. There's lots of work to be done so I decided to spend most of thursday working on some of my final projects. I just had to go to one class then swing by the post office. Hardly an exciting day but at least I'd be getting a lot done, at least that was the plan. Class went by normally enough then I swung by my apartment to pick up a few things and headed for the post office. Got there, waited in line, mailed my stuff, everything was going just as I'd expected. Until I tried to start my car... Seems it decided to just die during the twenty minutes I was in the post office and I hadn't left the lights on or anything. Fortunately, I have AAA so I give them a call. Unfortunately, there's nothing nearby except the post office, I have nothing to do, no water, and it's nice and hot outside. An hour later someone arrives and trys to jump my car. It turns over but won't start so he calls a tow truck. An hour and a half later the tow truck finally arrives. He tries to jump my car and it works (why couldn't it work the first time?). He drives off, I try to drive away only to find that the car is stuck in park. After several minutes of jiggling things around in an attempt to get it moving, I decide to try restarting the car, which promptly died again. So I make another call and wait forty five minutes for the tow truck to come back. He jumps my car again and tries the shift which naturally works perfectly for him. Now that the car is actually working, for the moment, I drive to the repair shop and hang around for another hour while they put in a new battery. In the end, my car was fixed and it didn't cost me all that much but nearly the entire day was wasted as I spent somewhere around five hours bored out of my mind and getting nothing done whatsoever. Great, just great...

Enjoy the weekend people!

Josiah

Where to start... First off, new ROM. Secondly, Pebble Version will be two years old on the 11th. If any of you want to submit guest comics, fan art, etc for the event feel free to do so. Also, I'm having a bit of a voting drive to see just how high we can get Pebble Version this month on the top 100 so please vote everyday! Speaking of voting, Buzz Comix has returned from the abyss. I've looked over the new Buzz Comix and I have to admit, it has some pretty cool features but that doesn't mean I'm just gonna switch back. My current plan is to remain with Top Web Comics this month and keep an eye on Buzz Comix to see how it does. Then, come September, I'll decide if I want to stick with TWC or return to BC. If you have any opinions on the matter, please let me know.

On a sad note, one of my favorite web comics, A Modest Destiny, is coming to an end. Fortunately, Sean hopes to continue the story in some sort of off-line form. But, either way, I'll still going to miss it. The original pixel art was great as were the humor and stories. Goodbye AMD, and Sean, good luck with whatever you do next.

One more thing for now. To all drivers in the Phoenix area, contrary to popular belief, there actually is a speed limit on highways 10 and 17. It's 55 miles per hour. That's was all those signs that say 55 mean. That's the maximun speed, not the minimum speed. As such, you can get away with 60. 65 is pushing it a little, and 70 is way too fast. And, if 70 is too fast then it follows by simple logic that 75, 80, and 90 are even worse. Now most of you will probably say that if you follow the speed limit you'll never make it to where ever you're going in time. Allow me to propose a simple solution. Leave five or ten minutes earlier and stop being a safety hazard.

See you friday!

Josiah

I don't think I've ever shone the characters this small before. Of course, their size in relation to the dock and boat isn't consistant with the game where the boat is barely larger than Brendan, but it looked too weird when I did it that way so I made the sizes a bit more realistic. Anyway, the new bonus comic is finally up (sorry for the delay) so make sure you vote. Meanwhile, there weren't enough donations in July to get and bonus content during August but that doesn't mean september has to be the same. If the donation bar reaches only $25 you guys will get a month worth of commentary on old Pebble Version strips and a chapter of ROM the Novel. At $50 you get all that and five new Pebble Version strips every week for the entire month! $75 also adds a new Zelda page (the old ones can be found on the Extras page) and at $100 or more, a special mystery gift.

One last piece of site news... The 11th will mark Pebble Version's second anniversary. That's right, two years. I could reminesce a bit but I think I'll save that for the actual anniversary. Meanwhile, if you feel like celebrating feel free to submit fan art, guest comics, and the like. Also, vote! Pebble Version ended July at a very respectable #24 on Top Web Comics but it sure would be cool to go higher... Can Pebble Version make the top 10, or at least the top 20? We'll never know unless we try.

As for me, I'm finally caught up on things (more or less). It's gonna be a busy couple of weeks with all the projects I need to work on but nothing I haven't done before. Look for actual rants to resume later this week.

Josiah

Really sorry but today's bonus comic is going to have to be delayed until monday. On the bright side, there's a new ROM comic. I'm wearing a tie in it. Now that's something you don't see often. I never wear ties if I can avoid it.

If you want to know the reason for the delay, blame Neverwinter Nights. I'm leading a team doing a NWN mod in one of my college classes. But a due date got moved up a little forcing me to do a marathon session of design work which involved taking everything the others have made so far, combining it, and adding some key events and scripting. I spent wednesday evening and nearly all of thursday working on it and it worked, for a while... For example there was that one way door that consistantly worked wrong on every single setting. And the guy that mysteriously immune to the death command. Then there are the perfectly good scripts that refuse to work for no reason what-so-ever and just drive me insane because I can't find any way to get them to activate... I hate the NWN editor and, judging from the way it loves screwing up my mods, the feeling is mutual. I am never taking a job that requires scripting of any kind. NEVER! I don't mind building areas, modeling, or art and I enjoy writing and overall design but scripting and/or coding... Anyway, suffice it to say that I had a pretty crappy day and really need a break over the weekend. But it's not going to be much of a break. With final projects coming up I'm going to have a couple of really busy weeks...

Well, I'd better go. See you monday.

Josiah

There's a new ROM up and a new link on the link exchange page. And that's about all I have to say... Well, one more thing. If you live in or near Tempe AZ you can buy my book at Changing Hands bookstore. If you can't make it there you can order the book directly from me for $10 (includes shipping if you live in the continental US) which also counts as a Pebble Version donation.

Meanwhile, I'm still behind on PV stuff and something just happened to make this week a whole lot busier. I don't really feel like elaborating but it's a school project. I am not looking forward to the next few days...

Josiah

Well, mudkip has finally evolved. I'm not too happy with the dialogue in the fourth panel but I was tired and in a bit of a hurry when I made this strip. Actually, I've been a bit behind on PV strips for the last couple weeks, which is pretty unusual for me. But I needed some new sprites and that took a while and I'm nowhere near done on all the Xain and Cali sprites I need to do...

Well, I should probably get going. Remember to vote! I'll write more on wednesday if I'm caught up.

Josiah

There's a new voters' bonus comic up and a new ROM! And remember the donation special, if you donate ten dollars or more you get a free signed copy of my book, Guardian of The Stone! Please note, however, that if you don't live in the continental US, extra shipping charges will apply. And this is in addition to all the usual Pebble Version donation bonus content.

The title of this news post is in relation to Guild Wars. Monks are the healing class of characters (although some do specialize in protection spells or holy attacks instead). My current character is a primary warrior. That means my job usually involves charging into the middle of the battle and keeping the enemies busy so the spell casters can do their thing. Despite my high defense, there's only so much damage I can take, especially when I've got four or five enemies on me at once. I can tank practically forever if I have a good healer backing me up. Without one, well, it isn't pretty. Of course, not all monk players are created equal. I've had some guys that've been able to keep me alive and fighting in even the worst situations. On the other hand, I've also had ones that charge the enemies themselves and get slaughtered and ones that just stand around and heal themselves, leaving everyone else to die. Then there are the parties that have no dedicated healer... Actually, sometimes those work fairly well, proving that the best defense really is a good offense. Speaking of Guild Wars, I just reached the Crystal Desert.

On a completely different topic, I have to wonder what some companies are thinking when they decide where and when to show their commercials on TV. I'm getting really tired of seeing the commercial for that Ultimate Love Songs CD collection when I watch Dragon Ball Z. I can just imagine the marketing meeting that planned that. "I know! Let's advertise this collection during a fighting show!" "Yeah! People watching over the top martial arts fighting shows are bound to enjoy sappy love songs!" Not the smartest idea...

Well, have a good weekend everyone!

Josiah

Nothing much to say about Pebble Version, aside from there being a new ROM comic.

You know, sometimes it's just good to go do something different, even if it's just for an afternoon. Stuff like that is even more important when you're really busy. If I'm working too long without a break my brain tends to bog down. In that condition, things take much longer to do and the quality definately suffers. Taking a break and doing something fun or different really helps clear your head. That's what I did yesterday afternoon and man did I need it. I even picked up Munchkin Dice and some Yu-Gi-Oh cards. Fun!

Not much to talk about at the moment. I've just been getting some work done. See you guys on friday!

Josiah

First off, the usual Pebble Version stuff. Remember to vote and see friday's bonus comic. Also, I'm running a special. Anyone in the continental US who donates at least $10 to Pebble Version gets a free signed copy of my book (just include your name and shipping address when you donate). Plus, all the money goes toward the usual collection of donation bonuses. Not a bad deal. As for today's strip, was I the only person who found this trainer profile a little disturbing? Certainly seems like an odd thing to say for an introduction.

Well, I got my copy of Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince on saturday. Started reading around 8 PM, kept reading until it was really late and I was about to fall asleep, got up early, and read until I finished it. Unfortunately, I can't say much of anything about the plot without spoilers so let's just leave it at this. Harry Potter is my favorite series and have constantly impressed me with extremely good writing, deep interesting characters, and shoking plot twists. Book 6 certainly does not disapoint and, while I was expecting some of the events in it, other caught me completely off guard. If you're a fan of the series you probably already have HBP, or are planning to get it soon, but if you're new to Harry Potter make sure to start with book 1 and go in order or you'll be completely lost. Unfortunately, now I have to wait who knows how long till book 7. Sigh...

Yawn... Tired... Well, it's my fault for not getting enough sleep but it was worth it. Anyway, I have to get some sleep before class (I'm taking an extra semester of college over the summer).

Josiah

There's a new ROM comic up and a new bonus you can see by voting for Pebble Version on Top Web Comics. So far Pebble Version has been doing really well on Top Web Comics, which is great. Too bad there still aren't any donations this month... Remember, donations lead to cool bonus content like extra updates, commentary, and ROM the Novel.

First off, an important Pebble Version Announcement. For those of you who are having trouble with the menu on the archives page, it seems to be due to a glitch in newer versions of Internet Explorer. However, it works fine in Firefox and Netscape browsers and, since they're free, you may want to download one and give it a try. If the archives aren't working for you and you want to stick with IE, you can always click on the first comic or previous comic links then replace the number in the web site address with the number of the strip you want. If the archives work fine for you, feel free to ignore this entire paragraph.

If you've been reading these blurbs you may remember that I'm a writer. So far I've written seven full length fantasy and sci-fo novels. I self published one called Guardian of The Stone (see the books page). Speaking of that, if you'd like to order a copy directly from me, I'm having a sale! $10 for an autographed copy (includes shipping if you live in the continental US). Plus, the money you spend on my book counts as Pebble Version donations! Anyway, I'd really like to find a normal publisher. I had one but they suddenly went out of buisness so it's back to square one for me. I decided to try sending out a different book this time, it's called Bends of Time and it's a fantasy/sci-fi/comedy. Thing is, most people don't realize just how hard it is to get a book published. Even if you've managed to write something good enough to publish, there's a lot of work left to do. Basically, unless you have connections, which I don't, it boils down to lots of tedious letter writer and a heck of a lot luck. Trust me, I've been doing this for years. You send in a short letter and pray that whoever you sent it to actually reads it and sends you something besides a canned reply. And even if they do, the chance of them actually wanting to read a sample of your work is even smaller... As long as I'm talking about this, if any of you know someone who works at either a publishing house or literary agent that handles teen novels please let me know.

Have a good weekend everyone!

Josiah

The new ROM comic up up. It's been a busy few days but I'm just about caught up on on all my work, school and otherwise. Should only take another day or too. That'll be a relief. Admittedly, if I hadn't taken those web design jobs I'd have a lot more time but I do need the money so I don't mind.

So... I've got nothing... Really. It's been work, work, work lately with an occasional break for reading and video games. I can't think of anything to talk or rant about right now. Maybe friday.

Josiah

Remember to vote to see friday's bonus comic. And if you have a couple extra bucks there's no better way to help support Pebble Version than donating. Ok, enough of that. As promised, Xain and Cali have returned. Not to say too much but they'll be hanging out with Brendan and May for a little while. Not too long of course. They'd kill eachother if they were together for very long.

I am so glad for sundays. After the last few days I really needed to just relax for a little while. Ok, sunday wasn't entirely work free. I had to take a quiz, do a reading assignment, buy groceries, cook some stuff... But I had time to read a bit (still rereading the Harry Potter series in preperation for book 6), sell a bunch of extra items I picked up in Guild Wars (made 5000 gold!), and play some Front Mission 4.

Let's see, what else? Um... Any of you guys watch Monk? The new season just started on USA. While I'm mostly into fantasy and sci-fi these days, I started out as a mystery fan and still like them (my favorite being the original Sherlock Holmes stories). Monk is a little like Holmes in the way he solves crimes but he's also a major neat freak and has just about every phobia in the dictionary, which adds a lot of humor to the show. In a nutshell, Monk is pretty good show and worth checking out even if you're not a big mystery fan. While you're at it, here's some other good mystery series I've been getting into lately. First off is the Kindaichi Case Files, a series of graphic novels that will keep you guessing all the way till the end. Another mystery series from Japan is Detective Conan (aka Case Closed), an entertaining anime series following the adventures of a master dective who was accidently turned into a child by an experimental poison and has to try to find a way to get back to normal while keeping his identity a secret and solving all the other mysteries that keep popping up.

Well, later everyone!

Josiah

The new bonus comic is up so start voting! There's also a new ROM comic up as well as a special ROM related item as well, both of which you can find on the ROM page.

If you've never played Munchkin, you really should. I know I've talked about it before, but recently I've been playing with some friends of mine from school. You need at least three people but it's so much fun. Be sure to look for Munchkin and its various spin offs (Star Munchkin, Munchkin Fu, and Munchkin Bites) at your local game store. There are many games that strike such a great balance between humor, luck, skill, team work, and back stabbing.

Well, I'll have to cut this short as I'm still behind on next week's PV strips. See you monday!

Josiah

New ROM, as usual. So I started working on next week's strips which are going to have Xain and Cali. Problem is, I realized that I'm going to need more poses for them. And, as long as I'm doing a couple new poses I figured I may as well do them all and finish up Xain and Cali's sprite sheets. Then I realized just how long that was going to take. Even worse, I'm stuck using MS Paint since Photoshop, oddly enough, seems to lack a good color replacement tool. So, while Xain and Cali will be around next week, those new poses might not be since I'm not sure I'll have enough time to finish them and I can make do without if I have to.

Well, I could rant about something or I could work on next week's strips. Chances are, you guys would rather have new comics next week than a rant today so I'd better get to work. Later!

Josiah

As always, remember to vote and see friday's bonus comic. As you can see, the comic is moving back to Brendan and May for the time being. Although for all the Xain and Cali fans out there, they will be making an appearance in the not too distant future.

Now that that's out of the way, I'd like to wish everyone in the US a happy Fourth of July! To everyone who does not live in the US... Have a happy uh...nothing I guess. I've always liked Independence Day, mainly because of the fireworks. I love fireworks.

I've spent most of my break doing stuff with my parents, which has been fun, although it left me with a little less time to work on things than I'd planned. Oh well, I should have another month or so before school gets really busy. But I did finish my Final Fantasy VII replay (got everything, beat all the optional bosses, etc). Now I just need to decide what to play next (besides Guild Wars), right now I'm thinking Front Mission 4... I also saw War of the Worlds, which was pretty corny and had a lot of blatent plot holes although the special FX weren't bad. Finally got some spending money as well, a good chunk of which I used to get caught up on some of my favorit graphic novel series like Rouroni Kenshin, Beet the Vandal Buster, and Hunter X Hunter.

Hmm... Feels like I should rant on something. Well, maybe wednesday.

Josiah

300 comics!!! Yay!!! I decided to cellebrate this monumentous event by giving you an early look at an important character. Who is? What does he look like? Will he have the lights fixed in time for his next appearance? All those answers and more will be revealed...eventually. Anyway back to strip 300, Opal (who is also known as Celebifly on the forums) made a little guest strip just for this occassion.

Also, there's a new bonus comic up for everyone who votes. Pebble Version made it all the way to #33 on Top Web Comics during June. Pretty impressive considering it got that it got there in only half a month. I can't wait to see how high PV can get in July so please vote! You can even do it every day if you'd like!

Disapointingly, June was entirely lacking in donations. But hopefully July will be different. Remember, the more donations I get during a given month, the more cool extra content you guys get during the following month including extra updates, commentary, and chapters of ROM The Novel, just to name a few.

As for me, my parents are visiting for a few days and I'm enjoying a much needed break from school. Have a great weekend everyone!

Josiah

New ROM today. That's about it as far as site news goes. Just remember to be here friday for Pebble Version's 300th strip.

As for me, I had my last class yesterday and, after I finish up my last couple assignments today, I'll be free to enjoy my break. A few of the things I want to do include finishing my FFVII replay (just need to kill the weapons and beat the game), read more Harry Potter (I'm rereading the series to get ready for the upcoming sixth books), and putting some time into a couple of projects of mine.

I would like to say that whoever designed the Hunt Bar adware/spyware and anyone that puts it on their website should be shot, and stabbed, repeatedly, while being burned by acid. That is one of the worst non-virus programs I've ever run into. Not only does it seriously mess up computers its running on, it is also nearly impossible to get rid of and even manages to start itself up in safe mode. I had to get rid of it once myself and talked my brother through the process yesterday only to find that since I first saw it, it's gotten even harder to remove. In the end we had to go to safe mode, run the anti-spyware program, shut two two background processes that managed to start themselves up in safe mode and proved particularily difficult to terminate, and finally manually search for and delete all the remaining files. Ugh...

Well, that's it for now. See you friday!

Josiah

Pebble Version's 300th strip is coming up this friday! What's going to happen? Well, you'll just have to wait and see... Meanwhile, remember to vote for Pebble Version on Top Web Comics, especially if you haven't seen friday's bonus comic yet. Donating would be nice too... All that aside, there's a new ROM comic up and a new ROM bonus comic.

I get a short mid-term break from wednesday thru monday and it can't come soon enough. Between school and a couple other things I've been working almost non-stop. I haven't even got to play and video games since last wednesday... I did get to take a short break yesterday and hang out with some friends, which was fun even if it didn't help my workload any. Fortunately, the end is in sight and that's something I'm glad for. I really need a break, even if it is only for a few days... I'll talk more later, after I finish all this work.

Josiah

There's a new bonus comic up for everyone who votes. So please click the banner or button. Pebble Version is already in the top 50 on Top Web Comics, pretty good for one week. Can't wait to see how we'll do next month. Anyway, in case you didn't know, the old bonus comics can be found on the Extras page. In other PV news, just one week until the 300th strip...

My school had been having a Tech Forum this week. Basically they get various people who work in fields like network security, game and software design, special FX, and the like to come and speak. It's very interesting but also kinda time consuming, which means I'll probably have to spend most of the weekend finishing up my midterm homework. On the up side, I got to spend thursday evening haging out with some friends afterwards, which was a lot of fun.

Well, I'd better get going. See you monday!

Josiah

Pebble Version is quickly climbing the ranks on TWC so please keep voting! Donating would be nice to if you have some cash to spare. Oh yes, be sure to check out the new ROM comic (the second one this week).

Been watching a lot of anime lately. I just finished watching the Arc the Lad complete collection. For those of you who've played the Arc the Lad video games, the anime is based on the events of Arc the Lad 2. For those who haven't, ATL 2 follows the adventures of Elk, Arc, and their respective friends as they fight to save the world from evil. By itself, ATL is a decent series although I wouldn't say it's particularily amazing. But, since I'm a fan of the game, I have to compare it to that. The first few episodes follow the game pretty closely but the further the anime gets, the more it changes. First off, the game had a lot of main characters. To simplify things for the anime many of those characters have greatly reduced roles and a few were cut entirely, which was kinda disapointing. Many have had their personalities changed as well. As the story goes on you'll notice quite a lot of changes compared to the game. There's even a new main villian and the ending has been changed significantly as well (although I never was crazy about ATL2's ending). The american voice acting isn't bad although the translation isn't exactly consistant with the game's translation so some of the names have been changed slightly. The animation is ok although Poco looks about ten years too young and Kukuru ten years too old. Overall, the ATL anime isn't bad, but the game is far better and there are plenty of better anime out there as well so I wouldn't recommend buying the anime unless you find a really good deal.

In other anime news, there's playing the classic Dragon Ball Z on Cartoon Network again (weeknights right before Adult Swim). DBZ is a great show, especially when it comes to over the top action, and if you haven't seen it yet this is a good time to start since they just started replaying it from the beginning on monday so you haven't missed much yet. It looks like they're doing the unedited version this time too. Well, I haven't seen enough yet to tell if it's completely unedited but at very least it has less editing than the version they used to play.

Later everyone!

Josiah

If you missed friday's post, I've finally signed up for Top Web Comics. Which means you can now vote again and see new Pebble Version Blooper Reel strips every week. Just click the TWC banner or button to vote and confirm it to see the bonus comic. New bonus comics will be added every friday but you can vote once a day and, since Pebble Version got a late start this month, it'll need a lot of votes to catch up. In other site news, Shauni is trying to do two new ROM comics this week. The first of which is up.

Sales are great because you get stuff for cheaper. On the down side, they also tempt you to spend money because stuff is cheaper. I stopped at Fry's Electronics the other day because they were selling off their extra copies of the Guild Wars preorder disk (which gives you a special item) for a dollar so I figured I may as well pick one up. While I was there I happened to walk past a rack of games that were on sale, 2 for $30. I couldn't resist taking a look and spotted several games that I'd been wanting. I didn't really need any new games (I already have a couple I'm working on) but it's hard to resist a good deal, especially when you're actually in the store instead of just looking at an add in the newspaper, which I rarely get down here. So... I ended up with Sonic Adventure 2 Battle and Front Mission 4. I have a couple things left to do in my Final Fantasy VII replay before I start on them though.

Another thing I did over the weekend was see Howl's Moving Castle, the new Miyazaki (Princess Mononoke, Spirited Away, etc) movie. Oddly enough, Miyazaki didn't actually write this story. Instead it's based on an book by an author from the UK. Quick story summary... Sophie is an ordinary girl in a sort of 17th or 18th century British fantasy world. She's kinda a loner always thought of herself as rather plane. A chance encounter with the flamboyant wizard Howl rouses the jealously of the Wicked Witch of the Waste who see Sophie as a rival and turns her into an old woman. Wanting to find a way back to normal, Sophie leaves town and ends up on Howl's magical moving castle where she meets his young apprentice, a goofy fire demon, and a helpful scarecrow. Unfortunately, a war has just started with the neighboring kingdom and Howl is called upon to help fight by turning himself into a monster (something that could cost him his very humanity). The animation is spectacular, the voice acting is quite good although I haven't seen the Japanese version so I can't compare the two, and it's very interesting to see how the main characters change over time, often ending up far different from your initial impressions. The ending, however, it a little weak. I'm not sure if the book itself was that way or if it's just the movie but several rather important things that happen are either explained poorly or not at all. Basically everything work s out, but you aren't exactly sure why. Even so, Howl's Moving Castle is an excellent movie and definately worth seeing even if you're not a Miyazaki fan.

Josiah

Six more strips till 300... And I still haven't decided what I'm going to do for it. As you can see by the new button and banner, I've finally switched over to Top Web Comics. Like Buzz Comix, you can use the TWC button or banner and vote up to once per day. And when you vote you get to see a special Pebble Version Blooper Reel comic! It's the middle of the month so PV will be starting off at a bit of a disadvantage so please vote a whole lot to make up for it!

Well, setting up that TWC account took up all the time I was going to spend on a rant so I'll see you all on monday!

Josiah

And the skitty have been caught. Now back to the plot. Meanwhile, I'm pleased to announce that this week's ROM comic is up.

I'm also pleased to announce that I finally have a digital camera of my own, which is good since my brother wanted his back. Big thanks to my grandparents for giving me the money as an extremely late birthday and holiday present. While the end results were good, actually finding an getting it were a major pain. Now, I know a lot about computers so there's no way I'd trust the advice of some sales person so I pulled up my favorite website, read some reviews, and wrote down about ten different cameras that looked promising. My mom and I decided to get a camera locally instead of over the internet. After all, Pheonix is a big city and there's tons of electronic stores nearby. So I take my list to the giant Fry's Electronics by my school only to find that they don't have any of the cameras on my list. Unlike with many other types of electronics, there's no one brand that always makes good cameras. Just because Brand A's XZ-PSQ9000 model is good doesn't mean their ZA-T8500 is any good. And yes, most cameras actually do have names like that. Would it kill the companies to give them real names instead of long model numbers? Anyway, I went home, looked up some of the cameras that they had at Fry's, found a couple good ones, and went back to Fry's... Only to find out that all the good cameras in my price range were out of stock... Note to Fry's: if something is out of stock either take it out of the display or put up a sign saying that it's out of stock instead of wasting peoples' time. Since the weekend was coming up, my mom and I waited till sunday, bought a paper, and checked to see if any good cameras were on sale. Luckily enough, Staples just happened to have a very good deal on one of the cameras on my list. So we drove to the nearest Staples that morning and...they were out of stock too. But, on the up side, the guy there offered to sell me the floor model for 10% off. Plus compact flash cards were on sale too so in the end I managed to get my camera (a Cannon PowerShot S500) and memory card and get a good deal on them too. Maybe I'll start putting more pictures on the site now.

Later!

Josiah

Looks like Brendan still hasn't quite perfected the fine art of pokéball throwing. Will he ever stop screwing up? Eh, maybe.

Although the banners are back up, Buzz Comix itself still isn't working. FYI: I am currently planning to switch over to Top Web Comics. I've just been too busy lately to do it. Unless Buzz Comix suddenly starts working again, you can expect the switch to take place sometime over the next week or so. For now, remember that donating this month can lead to all sorts of cool stuff next month like more commentary, the second chapter of ROM the Novel, and five comics a week instead of three so if you have a few extra bucks please consider tossing them my way.

Today is Shavuot, which you can google if you don't know what it is, but I really don't have much to say about it. My mom will be leaving tomorrow so, by wednesday I hope to be caught up on things once more and get my schedule back on track. In other news, I actually have a topic to rant about now. But I don't have time to do so now so you'll have to wait until wednesday. See you then!

Josiah

This week's ROM comic is up. The delay seemed to be an e-mail glitch this time around. Hopefully ROM updates will resume their usual wednesday schedule next week.

My guests are leaving today. All except my mom who is going to stay a few more days. All in all it was a nice visit but it's left me a bit behind on homework, the place is a mess, and I'm really tired for some reason. Too tired to type any more. See you monday!

Josiah

So, Brendan did know what he was doing. Looks like May isn't much happier with her slakoth than Xain was with his though. And, if you haven't figured it out yet, I don't like slakoth. I mean really, what's the point of a pokémon that can only move every other turn. I guess it's second form (vigoroth) isn't so bad but its third evolution (slaking) brings back the uselessness. Ok, it's not completely useless, you can always skill swap it. But without skill swap there's no good reason to use one.

Meanwhile, we're drawing close to Pebble Version's 300th strip. But that presents a problem, I need to think up something special to do for the 300th strip. Hmm... As for ROM, there's a new version of last week's strip up. It's essentially the same thing only this time my name is spell correctly. Yay! In regards to this week's strip, I haven't gotten it yet so hopefully friday. Although, I can't say if it's just late or if it was a problem with my e-mail, which was acting up earlier.

In other news, the combination of school work and Guild Wars is keeping me pretty busy. I really like Guild Wars but it's a bit too easy to lose track of time when you're playing and get into that mentality where you just want to do one more quest or find that one last item before you stop. You just start playing and poof, there goes the afternoon. I need to be more careful in that regard. Also, my mom, grandparents, and cousin are out here visiting for a couple days. It's nice to see them but having five people in my apartment is kinda cramped.

Well, I don't have time to write any more so that's it for now. See you friday!

Josiah

Did Brendan bring out the wrong pokémon or does he really have a plan? Guess you'll find out on wednesday. Remember to donate if you want lots of cool extra content in July. Now for a review.

At first glance you might think Guild Wars is just another massively multiplayer RPG but you couldn't be more wrong. It makes a lot of changes to the genre. And best of all, there's no monthly fees. Once you buy the game on-line is totally free, forever!
Story: MMOs have always been more about the gameplay than the story and that's one tradition that Guild Wars doesn't depart from. Although there is a decent story that you follow as you progress through the main quests, you're going to keep coming back to Guild Wars for the gameplay not the story. In a nutshell, the Guild Wars had been raging for years, trapping the kingdoms in an endless war that few wanted. Then the Charr, a beastlike fire worshipping race, launched a sudden assault. The kingdoms were forced to band together to fight them and for a time it looked like they might win... The game starts in the kingdom of Ascalon which has so far succeeded in repelling the Charr. But, before long, the Charr use a devastating new weapon and burns Ascalon to the ground. This event is known as the searing. The game picks up two years later. Ascalon has been reduced to a wasteland as has much of the world but the kingdom still continues its battle against the Charr.
Graphics: From the forests to the catacombs to the wastelands Guild Wars look really really good. And it even manages to do so with pretty modest system requirements. It runs great on my two year old latptop, although not at its highest quality, and the graphics are gorgeous, especially for an on-line game. The characters and monsters animate nicely and the the variety of magic spells are suitably impressive as well.
Sound: The sound effects are suitable if not incredible. The music is good but rather sparse and can be hard to notice at times. There isn't any speech aside from an occasional grunt or scream during battle.
Gameplay: GW actually reminds me a bit of Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles. The main game consists of going on quests given you by various NPCs. Quests can involve fetching items, escorting NPCs, killing certain monsters, delivering messages, and all that kinda standard stuff. Completing quests earns you things like experience points, gold, items, and new skills. The game world you'll be travasing is huge, fortunately, you can use your map to instantly warp to any towns, cities, and outposts you've previous visited. One of the biggest draws in any MMO is taking your character and building him or her into a powerhouse. Guild Wars uses a job system. There are eight jobs and you can choose a primary job and after completing a certain quest early on, a secondary job. There are six jobs which makes for 30 combinations. And how you combine your jobs matter. For example, you can only wear the armor of your primary job and when taken as primary, each job gives you a special stat. The jobs are Warrior (the standard strong melee fighter), Elementist (standard black mage), Monk (standard white mage), Ranger (bow using hunters who can train pets to fight alongside them), Necromancer (they can hex opponents, raise zombies to fight for them, etc), and Mesmer (big on hexing opponents and screwing up enemy spell casters). All the jobs are balanced incredibly well so there's no ultimate job or combo and each job as 75 unique skills. So you have the potential to teach a character a full 150 skills. But... You can only carry eight with you at any given time (you can switch in towns), which makes for a lot of strategy. Weapons are mostly won from monsters but can be customized to suit your liking. Armor is forged from raw materials that you can salvage from a variety of other items. You can also dye your armor different colors, if you can track down dye, which is rather rare. Gameplay takes place in two areas. Town areas and dungeon areas. Towns are pretty self explanitory. They're good places to shop, rest, trade with other players, and look for people to quest with. To keep them from becoming over crowded, towns are broken up into multiple copies called districts. Each is identical except for the players inside it. But, if you want to meet a friend, changing districts is as easy as opening a menu and clicking on the district you want to go to. Dungeon areas are everything that's not a town. But dungeon areas aren't shared. Each time you enter a dungeon you're put in a unique copy. The only player characters in it are you and your party, which eliminates, camping, item stealing, etc. Even your party members can't steal items since the game automatically divies up all the money and loot that enemies drop. And traveling in groups is very important, especially after you reach the post-searing part of the game. Enemies start to travel in large groups and the chances of a single character surviving are rather low. Parties (depending on where you are in the game) can range from 2-8 characters. The best way to play is with a group of friends but you can usually find some random people who need to so the same quest or even grab some NPC characters to help (although they're rather weak). Naturally, gaining enough EXP raises you a level. But levels aren't everything. They give you more HP and some points you can use to learn new skills and pump up one of your stats (which mostly effect how powerful various skills you use are). And, with the level cap set at 20, you don't need to spend forever leveling. Combat follows the traditional PC RPG style of click on enemy and watch your character and the enemy trade blows but GW makes it most interactive since you'll be using skills almost constantly throughout most battles. If you die, no big deal. Chances are someone in your party can revive you. If the whole party gets killed you'll be warped to the nearest revive point, which usually isn't a big problem. Although dying does impart a penalty to your max health and energy (HP and MP, which automatically regenerate over time) this penalty can be removed by killing enough enemies or by going to any town. And, while players can't normally attack each other, there are a number of arenas were you can do PVP team battles if you wish. You can even create a level 20 PVP only character right off the bat although it'll be lacking in skills and items until you unlock them with a normal character in the main game. The last thing I want to mention is Guilds. At some point during GW you'll almost certainly either join a guild or start your own. Guilds are a collection of people (1-100). Your guild is often where you'll find people to play with. It's always easy to see who in your guild is on-line and send private messages to your guild only. Many guilds also compete in worldwide PVP ladder tournaments. Each guild (guilds are pretty cheap to start) starts out with a name. But that's not all. After investing a little gold, a guild can design its own cape that all members wear. Really rich guilds can even buy guild halls that only their memebers can access.
Overall: Guild Wars isn't your average MMO. While it may not have quite the same massive crowded feel as the others, it fixes most of the problamatic gameplay issues that are often associated with them. Even better, it's just fun to play no matter what your job or level. All in all, it's very balanced, very addicting, and will keep you coming back for more without forcing you to spend hours upon hours leveling or looking for that must have ultra-rare item. Even if you've never played an MMO, GW is a great (not to mention cheap) game to start with. It's easy to pick up with lots of strategy later on. If you have friends that are that play, or plan to, by all means grab a copy and get ready for many hours of fun coop questing. If you don't have friends who play, get it anyway. Join a guild, you're sure to meet people. And with no monthly fees how can you go wrong?

Josiah

This week's ROM comic is up, although Shauni misspelled my name in it. Not sure if she meant to do that or not. Either way, that's now how it's spelled. Speaking of ROM, if you didn't see wednesday's announcement, the first chapter of ROM The Novel is available on the Extras page. And, since Buzz Comix is still down, no bonus comic. Once I have some extra time, I plan to look into switching over to Top Web Comics, unless Buzz Comix manages to get its act together first. Also for those of you that missed wedneday's news post, due to lack of donations, Pebble Version is reverting back to the old monday, wednesday, friday update schedule.

Let's see, I'm still playing Guild Wars and beginning to get into the whole party thing. Now if I could just get some of my friends to start playing... I'll try to do a review of it in the coming week. As for the laughing, I'm watching a really good Whose Line episode.

Hmm... I should rant about something. And I would, except I really need to work on next week's PV strips, not to mention my homework. I've got a few projects that I should start on.

Have a great weekend! And look for Keen Anor on Guild Wars!

Josiah

Due to the lack of donations in May, Pebble Version will go back to updating on monday, wednesday, and friday. No bonus content during June either. Sorry. Shauni said that this week's ROM comic would be late so nothing today but it should be ready in time for friday's update. On the bright side, I finally finished the first chapter of ROM the novel. But that's barely the beginning. Things don't get really interesting until chapter 2. Anyway, chapter 1 is on the Extras page and and more chapters will be written every month the donation guage reaches at least $25.

Well, my little school break is over so back to work for me... I went to Big Surf yesterday, one of Pheonix's three water parks (two of which are pretty close to my apartment). I had fun although as far as water parks go it was pretty average. Nothing wrong with it, just nothing special either. Then again, after Water World in Denver, it would take something pretty incredible to impress me. But my new season pass gets me in all three water parks, which is pretty cool. And I heard that Sunsplash is suppossed to be better so I'll have to check it out next.

I also got a bit further in Guild Wars. Still not far enough to give the game an actual review though. Anyway, I just made it to the post-searing. The pre-searing was fun and I did most of the quests but I was a mostly solo event and I'm ready to get on with the main part of the game. From what I've heard, most of the quests in the post-searing require multi-character parties to survive and I'm not really interested in hiring a bunch of computer controlled henchmen so I'm looking for people to quest with (not sure if I want to join a guild yet or not). Look me up (or e-mail or check the PV forums or whatever) if you're interested. My character is Keen Anor and I'm a Warrior/Elementist. Right now I'm in Old Ascalon and will probably be there for a while looking for quests and people to do them with.

Well, I got stuff that needs to be done. See you friday!

Josiah

If you want to get any donations in for May you've only got a couple days left to do it. Not much else to say about Pebble Version except that Brendan and May will be leaving the tunnel soon, which is good cause I've gotten pretty tired of that green overlay. Speaking of green, Pokémon Emerald is out. I've never gotten any of the 'special edition' pokémon games since I already spent so much time on the first versions that I just wasn't interested in doing it again. Still, after reading up on Emerald on-line, I have to admit that it does have a lot of cool editions. Now why couldn't they have just put those in Ruby/Sapphire to begin with? Emerald has some interesting story changes and new areas but, since I don't plan on getting it, those change will probably not effect PV. Speaking of Pokémon, I wonder if Diamond and Pearl (when they come out) will let you trade in Pokémon from the old versions. I kinda doubt it. Seems like a good time for them to reset it, again. I was pretty disapointed when I couldn't trade my pokémon from Gold into Ruby. Catching all 250 was fun the first time and I didn't mind catching the new ones but I didn't really feel like catchin all the old ones again. And I really miss my old battle team. What I'd like to see is Diamon and Pearl is all 386 (or whatever number they're at then) pokémon catchable between both versions and some sort of on-line mode. If you think about it, Pokémon would make an awesome MMO.

Speaking of MMOs, I finally decided to get Guild Wars (I've been thinking about it for the last month and Best Buy had it on sale so...). I just got it and I've only played a couple hours so far so I can't say much about the game yet. Right now I'm a level 4 warrior (I'm gonna set my secondary class to elementist soon) running around doing sub-quests in the pre-searing world. I'll probably finish that up and move on to the post-searing world (the main part of the game) in another day or two. I've never played an MMO before (the monthly fees being one of the main reasons) so I'm curious to see how the how coopertive questing and stuff goes. Although I haven't done much of that yet. Most of the pre-searing stuff seems to be set up pretty nicely for a single player. But, if anyone has Guild Wars and doesn't mind questing with a new player feel free to look me up. My character is named Keen Anor and I'm be glad for some help on all those quests.

As for the waterpark, I'm going tomorrow. Should be less crowded then. Besides, tomorrow's supposed to be hotter anyway.

Josiah

No donations so far for this month. It's looking like the update schedule will be reverting to monday, wednesday, friday in June. On a completely different topic, if you couldn't see the new ROM comic on wednesday it is working now.

If you haven't seen Star Wars III Revenge of the Sith yet you should. It finally completes the circle and perfectly connects the two trilogies. The action is incredible, especially the two final battles. The story is good too although it lacks any real surprises. If you've seen the other Star Wars movies you already know how things have to end. That said, the movie ends on a bit of a downer but that's to be expected. Even so, you can't help but hope that Aniken will do the right thing and resist the call of the dark side. Anyway, Revenge of the Sith is an excellent movie and a must see for anyone who ever liked Star Wars.

Oh yeah, I mentioned four day weekend didn't I? Monday is Memorial Day which means no school! Even better, there's some sort of staff meeting on tuesday so I get it off as well. This should give me a chance not only to catch up on stuff (I've been a little behind ever since the E3 trip) but also to check out one of the nearby water parks (it's been getting pretty hot here). Yay! See you monday!

Josiah

So, it's time to introduce a new battle system to Pebble Version. Some people will continue to use the traditional battle style (mostly random trainers) but the more important battles will be conducted using the advanced rules. In case you wanted to know, the advanced rules are based off the Pokémon Adventures manga. Basically, battles take place in real time (no more turns) and pokémon can move around, dodge, and all that good stuff that the games won't let you do. Also, in PA the trainers put themselves in the middle of the battle. Because of this, they often become a target, especially when fighting with the bad guys. It really makes the battles much more intense and exciting and would have been awesome if they'd done it in the anime. It really what pokémon battling would be like in real life. Anyway, as far as Pebble Version goes, the advanced battle rules won't play a huge roll in the comic immediatly but they'll get more and more popular (and the battles will get much fancier) as the story goes on. Let's see... There's a new ROM comic up. As for ROM the Novel, I will have it done before the end of the month, really. The E3 trip screwed up my schedule a bit but I'm nearly caught back up and I get a couple days off for Memorial Day next week so I'll have time one way or another.

Hmm... With Metal Gear Solid 3 Subsistance the Mega Man X Collection coming out later this year (both of which I'll definately be getting) it looks like it's time for me sell off a few of my old games. MGS3 Subsistance will have the complete version of MGS3 Snake Eater plus enough extra stuff to warrant a purchase and MMXC will include all the MMX games I have plus a lot of the ones I don't. Unfortunately, since I rarely trade in my games (I keep all the ones I like), I have no idea where I can go to get the best deal. If any one has a suggestion e-mail and let me know.

Josiah

If you missed the first part of my E3 report just scroll down the page to see it. Today I'll be talking about some of the more interesting games and systems I saw, organized by platform.

Microsoft
The Xbox is the only current generation system I don't have so I wasn't very interested in the games that are coming out for it. However, I did take some time to check out the Xbox 360. It's certainly a lot sleeker than the original Xbox and the controller has been modified a bit so it's more similiar to the PS2 controller which, from my limited experience with Xbox controllers, seems like a good thing. The games on display were certainly a couple steps above what we're seeing now and there were a lot of characters on screen. Overall though, it really didn't look that much better than what you could do with a good gaming PC. The graphics were nice, I won't deny it, but they didn't totally wow me either. Like all the other systems, the 360 will have wireless networking and internet gaming. The standard version of Xbox live will be free but you'll have to pay if you want all the good stuff.

Sony
The PS3 wasn't playable but there was a video of tech demos and I got to see the system itself. The system looked a lot like the PS2 only shinier and smoother. Ditto with the controller. In most of the pictures I've seen the controller looks to have a bit of a boomerang shape but, in real life, it's actually pretty normal looking. The controllers will be wireless, the PS3 will have a wireless internet enabled gaming network, etc. As for the graphics, I can only judge by the tech demos but wow were they amazing. A lot of the scenes approached photo-realism and the sheer amount of characters and details was unbelievable. If the actual games look anywhere near that good the 360 doesn't stand a chance (graphically speaking I mean). But the PS2 is far from dead. Here's a few of the cool games I saw coming in the near future.

Kingdom Hearts 2: I'm a big fan of the first Kingdom Hearts which blended characters from Disney movies and Final Fantasy games. Kingdom Hearts 2 continues the story two years after the first KH (play the GBA game KH Chain of Memories to find out what happened in between). Little of the story itself has been revealed so I'll talk about the game play. Like before, you'll be visiting the worlds from various Disney movies. Some worlds from the first KH are making a return in KH2 including Aladin's Agrabah, Herculese's Athens, and Nightmare Before Christmas's Halloween Town. Three new worlds have been revealed as well, they'll be based on Beauty and the Beast, Mulan, and Pirates of the Carribean. There's probably lots of others as well. Onto the gameplay. The demo had a level with Sora, Donald, Goofy, and FFX's Auron fighting their way out of Hade's lair with Cerberus waiting at the end. Sora controllers about the same as he did in the previous game although he has some new tricks. If he gets knocked back he can recover by performing a quick flip jump before hitting the ground. The triangle button is now used to perform a variety of context specific actions. For example, he can use it to perform combination attacks with Auron and Mulan if he's standing near them. It can also be used to dodge certain attacks or stun bosses if your timing is right. The other demos were from the Mulan level. The first has SOra and the gang battling through a heartless infested village before finally getting set upon by an army of a couple hundred heartless. Yes, a couple hundred. It's one heck of a battle and it's a good time to use another of Sora's new powers, transformation. Only one transformation was available in the demo. Called Valor form, it gave Sora a red outfit, second keyblade, new charging attack, and a significant power boost. However, the transformed state drained Sora's new focus guage and when it ran out he transformed back to normal. The Mulan boss battle was cool as well. Sora had to use wind currents to propel himself into the air to talk on a flying dragon. Overall, KH2 looks to have an awesome story and the gameplay has a number of useful tweaks, some very inventive bosses, and new worlds to explore. I can't wait!

Shadow of the Collossus: Formally Wanda and the Collossus, this very different looking game is made by the guys behind the excellent cult classic Ico. Once again the game takes a fairy tale approach to story telling. To save the girl he loves, the hero must find and slay the collossus that are roaming the land. Riding a horse and armed with a sword, you have to hunt down the towering giants, find their weak points, and figure out how to defeat them. Overall, the emphasis is more on puzzle solving then combat. There was only one collossus in the demo but so far the game is looking to be a very different and immersive adventure much like Ico before it. If you're looking for a change of pace from the usual action games that fill most systems' libraries then keep an eye on this one.

DBZ Budokai Tenkaichi: I love Budokai 3 but the imcomplete build of Tenkaichi at E3 took DBZ style fighting to the next level. While B3 played like a 2D fighter, BT is full 3D with large destroyable environments, free flying, and lots of new characters. The demo was missing a lot of stuff like ultimate attacks and transformations but the the gameplay was fun and really looked and felt like DBZ. At long last you can smash your enemey into a mountain then fire a whole bunch of energy blasts into the dust cloud. If you're a fan of DBZ you won't want to miss this.

Okami: Done by Capcom's Clover Studios (the guys behind Viewtiful Joe), Okami puts you in the roll of a wolf god who needs to save the world from evil. So what's so special? First off the gorgous graphics which are styled after traditional Japanese paintings, giving the game a very unique look. And, to go along with the painting theme, you can pause the game at any time, pick up a caligraphy brush, and paint right onto the game screen. This has a lot of uses including drawing paths over rivers and slashing enemies in two. Okami seems to be a bit slower paced than Viewtiful Joe with more emphasis on puzzle solving but the unique gameplay elements and excellent graphics are sure to make it worth your while.

Square-Enix had a bunch of new RPGs to show off besides Kingdom Hearts including Dragon Warrior VIII (an excellent looking traditional RPG), Radiata Stories (gameplay reminds me of Star Ocean for some reason), among others and is working on a .Hack style project called Code Age that looks quite promising.

Nintendo
Nintendo had a really strong showing, especially where the DS was concerned. Unfortunately, the revolution wasn't playable. There weren't even any tech demos or controllers on display. But it will have a free wireless network, can play DVDs, and is backwards compatible with Gamecube games. Even better, you can download Nintendo's entire library of NES, SNES, and N64 games! Now for the games...

Mario Kart DS: If you've played any of the 3D Mario Karts you know what to expect here. What makes this game special is its wireless multi player gaming which can be played over the internet using 802.11b wireless networks. They had it running on the show floor and it was great. It's certainly going to be a must for DS owners.

New Super Mario Brothers: Only the competitive multiplayer mode was playable but it was great to finally see a new 2D Mario platformer. Althought it played mostly like the old games, Mario has some new tricks asa well like coop mode, new power ups, and the ability to grow as big as the screen. As much as I like the 3D Mario games, it's the old 2D ones that are my favorites and I'm really excited about this one.

Other DS games included Mario and Luigi 2 (this time Mario and Luigi travel back in time and team up with their baby selves, looks every bit as funny and entertaining as the first one), Kirby Canvas Curse (kinda like Yoshi's Touch and Go but a full game, interesting...), Nintendogs (I'm not a big fan of virtual pets but a lot of people really liked it), Metroid Prime Hunters (it's Metroid Prime, need I say more?), and many many others. If you don't have a DS yet this is the time to get them.

The Gameboy Micro is absolutely tiny and very sleek looking. On the other hand, it's just another Gameboy Advance. There's already the regular GBA and the GBA SP. I really don't see any reason for a third version but whatever.

On the Gamecube The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess took center stage. Looks like Link can become a warewolf now. Unfortunately, that part of the game wasn't included in the demo. The new Zelda controlled just like the other 3D Zeldas although Link has a nice new downward stab attack and he can use his sword while riding a horse. Horseback riding seems to be a major focus in the game with lots of large open environments and a cool boss fight with Link and Epona chasing down a boss riding a giant boar. Part of a dungeon was playable as well. And had Link teaming up with monkeys. He also picked up the Gale Boomerang which, aside from being like the regular boomerang, can be charged up to create a small tornado which can blow stuff around and even pick up and carry items. Between my time with it and the demo movie one thing is for sure, Twilight Princess is going to be one incredible adventure.

Pokémon XD looked and played suspiciously like Pokémon Colliseum. The Orre region has been infested with shadow pokémon once more and it's up to a new snag machine equipped hero to snag and purify them all while finding out who is behind the outbreak. Shadow pokémon have some new attacks this time around but other than that there doesn't seem to be much of anything new or different in XD which is both good and bad.

Other neat Gamecube stuff included Mario Baseball and Mario Strikers (I'm not a fan of sports games but anything with Mario is fun), Kirby (finally, a full Kirby adventure on the GC), Mario DDR (interesting idea but it seemed to be a bit on the easy side), Fire Emblem (looks like fun), and more.

Oh man that took forever to type. There's more games I should probably talk about but that's enough. If you have any questions you can ask them on the forums. Later!

Josiah

Hmm, looks like I did miss an update last week. Odd, I could have sworn I updated every day but I still have an extra comic. Well, whatever. On to the E3 report. I'll start by talking about my trip itself then go into detail about the various games and systems that I saw.

Day 1
It was wednesday morning, the first day of E3 and I couldn't be more excited. Got up really early, drove to the airport, parked my car, and found the correct terminal where a group of UAT students were waiting. Surprisingly enough, most of us actually got there before the people in charge of the trip. Once they did get there they gave everyone UAT button down shirts. Nifty! About half the students, myself included, put on our new shirts while they handed out the tickets. After checking in and going through security, always a pain, we got to wait around at the gate for a while. Finally we were in the air. All of us were slightly annoyed that we wouldn't be getting to the convention itself till a couple hours after it opened but we were all too excited to complain. As far as plane rides go it was nothing special and relatively short. I'll save you the rather dull details and just skim a bit. We landed, got our stuff, crammed ourselves into small fleet of taxis, and made a quick stop at the Shareton (our hotel) to drop off our stuff and pick up our E3 bus passes. Oddly enough, the bus didn't stop at our hotel but it did stop at the hotel right up the hill so we found our way up, got on the next bus and, after rather long drive, made it to the convention center and got in line to get our badge holders. Excitement was mounting and the place was a buzz of activity, even on the outside. There were lots of nifty giant banners on the outside of the convention center as well. Fortunately, the line moved quickly so we were soon inside and everyone split up to explore the massive exhibit floors. The place was really crowded and full of loud music, flashy lights, giant video screens, and of course game machines. There were two main exhibit floors and I wondered into the nearest one and ended up in Sony's area where I quickly spotted a bunch of demo stations for Kingdom Hearts 2. Unfortunately, they wouldn't let me take any photos of the game itself. After a short wait I got to play KH2 then continued to look around the Sony area and try different games like DBZ Budokai Tenkaichi. There was a nice view from the second floor, not that you can see it very well in this picture. I probably shouldn't have left the camera on full auto the entire time. And, while you had to stand to play the PS2 games, they had a more comfortable set up for the PSP stations. One of the things I really wanted to see was the Playstation 3 but there was a line that just kept going and going... Since I had left my GBA and DS at the hotel, I decided to hold off on the long lines until the next day. Nintendo's area was right next to Sony's so I headed there next and wow, did they have a lot of great stuff on display. The Revolution wasn't being shown (well, they had the box but no controllers, games, or tech demos) but there were lots and lots of awesome looking games. The Gamecube had stuff like Pokémon XD, Kirby, Zelda, Mario Baseball, and more but what impressed me most was all the stuff coming for the DS. There was Mario Kart, New Super Mario Brothers, Kirby, Advance Wars, Mario and Luigi 2, Metroid Prime Hunters, and that's just for starters. Looks like the $150 I spent on my DS will be worth it after all. After trying out some of Nintendo's stuff I took a look around the rest of the floor and started collecting all sorts of free swag. I didn't get nearly as much as some people but it wasn't long before I began enviously eyeing the people who had already found one of the booths that was giving out free bags. I stopped at Bandai's booth for a little while and played through their latest collection of anime based games which ranged from rather entertaining (One Piece, Inu Yasha) to kinda blah (DICE). And, as long as I was at E3, I figured I should get my picture taken with some of the 'booth babes' that were scattered about the area. I have to admit that Nyko didn't have the most attractive girls at the show but they were giving away free yo-yo balls. Around mid afternoon I finally made my way to the second exhibit floor and began to look around there. There was a lot to see, including more Kingdom Hearts 2, complete with giant Mickey statue. Fortunately, there were also lots of places giving away bags which, due to my ever growing swag collection, was very welcome. For some reason, Sony's on-line game booth was there instead of at the main Sony area. The Sega area was there too as was Namco's. Konami had a fancy set up too and, like several of the companies, featured a live entertainment show. Too bad they didn't invest in some decent dance pads, the ones they had made the new DDR games pretty hard to play. Square-Enix's booth was there but, unfortunately, the tickets to their special preview show were always gone when I got there. But they had more demos and a really cool statue of Sora. After a bit more exploring I returned to the first exhibit hall and checked out some more games at Nintendo's booth before the convention ended for the day. Took me a little while to find the bus back to the hotel, it was hidden around a corner, but before too long I was back at the hotel, dropped of my modest collection of swag, and headed out with a couple other students to find a place to eat. We headed to the City Walk, an out doors shopping area in Universal, and found a pizza place. It was fun and I got to meet some people that I may not have otherwise. Finally it was back to the hotel where I took a few minutes to jump on-line before getting to sleep since it was getting pretty late.

Day 2
Got up early and caught the first bus to the convention along with about half of the other students on the trip. We got there a bit early so we got a really expensive breakfast at the convention center. And I was able to snap this nifty picture before the crowds showed up. I had brought my Gameboy bag and was ready to wait in line. First stop, the line at Nintendo's booth to see the new Zelda. Three hours later I was finally inside. They had a pretty nifty set up complete with fake forest and dungeon areas. I got to spend out ten minutes playing Zelda Twilight Princess before they gave me my free t-shirt and kicked me out. Tired of lines, I went to take a look at Microsoft's area. They had some pretty interesting setups for their demo stations. There really wasn't much Xbox stuff I was intersted in but I did take a look at the Xbox 360 and got some great views of the exhibition hall from the second floor of Microsoft's area. After that it was back to Sony's section to wait in line for the PS3. Fortunately, although the PS3 line was long, it moved much faster than the Zelda line and only took about an hour to get through. Unfortunately, the PS3 wasn't playable but there were some really impressive tech demos and game previews and I did get to see the PS3 itself and get a bunch of pictures of it. Finishing that, I looked around a bit more, stopped by the Lucas Arts booth, and tried out some more games at Capcom, Konami, Sony, and Nintendo's areas before the show closed. After getting back to the hotel and dropping off my new collection of swag I joined a whole bunch of students and went back to City Walk. This time, we found a really nice Italian place (they actually walk you through the kitchen on the way to your table) and had a lot of fun talking about the show, games, anime, and all sorts of stuff while we ate.

Day 3
Not much to say about day 3. The travel package that E3 sold my school was a bit of a gyp since our return plane tickets were for friday morning, meaning that we had to miss the entire last day of the convention. Stupid E3. Oh well, I got to see most of the things I wanted to. Still, another day would have been great. So I got up, somehow managed to smash all my swag into a combination of my back pack and one of the bags I'd picked up at the convention (note to self: bring a suitcase next year) and flew back to AZ with everyone else. Once I made it back to my apartment I unpacked all my swag then started getting caught up on my mail and internet stuff. Overall, the convention was a blast. I got to see and try lots of cool games, made some new friends, and came back with a bunch of nifty swag. Can't wait for next year! Only problem is that, with so many great games coming out later this year, I'm gonna have to win the lottery or something to have enough money to get them all.

Wow, that took a lot longer to type than I thought it would. Hmm... Know what, I need to get going so I'll talk about the games and systems that I saw tomorrow. See you then!

Josiah

Did you ever wondering about the green in the tunnel? I did. Once again, there's no new bonus comic. At this point I am seriously considering changing comic lists. E-mail me if you have any thoughts. In other site news, the new ROM comic is up.

I don't have time to talk now but I'll be flying back to Pheonix today. E3 was a blast and I got to see lots of really cool stuff. I'll have a full report, complete with pictures, on monday.

Have a good weekend!

Josiah

Nope, still no Buzz Comix. No ROM either. I never got an e-mail from Shauni although I'm not sure if she was busy or the e-mail got lost. Not much else to say comicwise, aside from the fact that you should donate if you want more commentary and extra updates during June. Not to mention ROM The Novel, the first chapter of which will be done soon.

Well, this is it, I'm off to E3. I'm a little disapointed that the school trip doesn't include the preshow stuff but hey, I'm still going to E3! I'll get to see the new systems in person, not to mention all the awesome games in development! This is gonna be awesome! Star Wars 3 is about to be released too! If I'm lucky I'll find a theater in CA to see it at, if not I'll just see it when I get back. Not sure if I'll have internet access while I'm gone so I'll post the new strips thursday and friday if I can but no promises. Either way, monday's update will be on schedule.

Ok, I got to get ready! See you later!

Josiah

Still down. Nothing can fix Buzz Comix. It keeps dieing and dieing... Um, anyway it's still down so there's still no bonus comic. Back to the normal comic, can you imagine digging a tunnel without tools? No wonder it never got finished.

Well, it's been an interesting weekend. Friday afternoon my school had a party. No reason, at least not that I know of, but it was a lot of fun. There was a grill and it was all you can eat for $2 or in may case free since I spent awhile helping fill up water balloons. While everyone was eating there was a dunk tank. So I hung out with some friends while we ate and watched the school deans get dunked. After that we used all those water balloons for some rounds of water balloon dodge ball. Lots of fun although it was such a hot day that a lot of the balloons tended to burst in your hand when you were throwing them. After that some of us just hung out for a while and played four square with a jumbo sized ball while a group of people with super soakers ran around blasting random people. There was more stuff going on in the evening but I had to leave a little while before then to get some work done. Anyway, it was a lot of fun. We should do things like that more often. And that was friday. Saturday I had services. Zemar Levav was there which was cool. They're a family music group and a pretty good one at that. Anyway, I've met them a couple times before so I hung out for a while after services. Nothing much happened on sunday. I finally finished up Growlanzer III. I really should review it sometime soon... But I spent most of the day getting ahead on homework so I'll be prepared for the upcoming E3 trip. E3!!! I can't wait!!!

Well, see you wednesday!

Josiah

What the?!? I did post the new comic yesterday but somehow it looks like it only got updated in the archives and not on the main page. Odd, I could have sworn I did the update right. Anyway, if you missed strip #274 you can see it in the archives. Meanwhile, Buzz Comix is down, again. So no new bonus comic until it's working again. Hmm, maybe I should switch to a different comics list...

I'm very pleased to announce that I'm going to E3 next week!!! I've been wanting to go for years, this is just so awesome! They'll probably have all the new systems and everything... Anyway, I'm not sure how my internet access is going to be while I'm away. Monday, tuesday, and wednesday's updates should go normally. I'll try to update thursday and friday but no promises. Either way, I'll update normally and tell you guys all about E3 the following monday.

In other news, school is going ok although I've gotten way too many reading assigments for the first week. I saw Kung-fu Hustle yesterday. While I've been meaning to see it for some time, it was kinda a last minute decision. See, they decided to paint my apartment building this week and I do really poorly around fresh paint. Headaches, lack of concentration, etc... Well, it really wasn't that bad until yesterday when they started painting the doors. I had originally planned to spend the day getting ahead on my homework and some other stuff because of that upcoming trip I mentioned. But then the paint smell got really bad and I had to either get out of my apartment or spend the rest of the day with a major headache. I quickly checked the net and saw that Kung-fu Hustle was showing in ten minutes at the theater down the street so I jumped in the car and made it just in time. As for the movie itself, it's a Chinese comedy/martial arts flick kinda like Shaolin Soccer, if you've seen that. In a nutshell, a gang battles against some kung-fu masters who have been living incognito in a poor part of town. The plot isn't that important, it's just a set-up for the goofy battles. The humor ranges from dumb to pretty funny. If you like that kinda goofy fighting stuff check it out. If not, then don't bother.

I'd say more but I've got a lot to do to make up for all the time I lost yesterday (stupid paint). Later!

Josiah

HP, PP, MP, IP, FP, EXP, SP... There's way too many abbreviations that end in P. Anyway new ROM comic is up. And, if you've been enjoying all of the extra content this month, remember to donate so you can keep it coming next month too.

Well, I've spent the last couple of days catching up on mail and the like and getting back into the whole school groove. I'm not crazy about my schedule this semester (the times could be a lot better) but I'm getting a lot of important classes done and some of them could be pretty interesting. Too early to say much about the classes themselves though. Have to give it another week or two first. Aside from that I got hired to design a web-site so I've been working on that a bit. I'm also finishing up the last couple optional quests in Growlanser III and wishing I had enough money for Guild Wars. At first glance, Guild Wars might not seem like something that would interest me since I'm really more of a fan of console games than PC games, especially when it comes to RPGs. Still, I've always been tempted to try an MMORPG but two things have held me back, the amount of time required and the monthly fees. But now here comes Guild Wars with no monthly fees and much more emphasis on strategy than leveling or item farming. Sounds like fun. Now I just need to get the money together. Times like this that I'm seriously tempted to get a steady job but considering my schedule, a job wouldn't really leave me with any time to play games, or read, or use any of the other stuff I'd buy with the money I'd be earning, which pretty much defeats the purpose.

Well, back to work!

Josiah

Buzz comix is working again so vote, vote, vote and keep on voting! And, if you missed the previous news blurb, the commentary for the first twenty Pebble Version strips is done and can be found on the appropriate archive pages. Speaking of which, if you're having trouble with the menu on the main archives page, it's not just you. The page seems to have developed some sort of glitch but I'm working on it and it will hopefully be fixed soon.

Well, my flight was a bit late, again. But, considering how slow the lines in the airport were moving, that's probably a good thing since I would have missed the plan if it had left on time. Anyway, the end result is that I'm back in AZ and ready to get back to school today. I'm also really tired so I'll see you all on wednesday.

Josiah

And the black suited guys are back! And now they're gone... Well, I'm sure they'll show up again eventually. Anyway, I'd like to apologize to anyone who is visiting this site for the first time. There is just no way you'll understand today's strip unless you've also seen this one and this one and maybe this one too. Sorry about that. But remember that Pebble Version is updating five times a week (monday-friday) for the rest of the month!

In other site news, I regret to inform you that there is no new bonus comic this week. I did make one but Buzz Comix has been down most of the week so I can't post it. Besides, even if it does start working it's been down so long that hardly anyone has seen the current bonus comic. Now for some better news... I've finished the commentary for the first twenty Pebble Version strips!!! To read it just go to the appropriate pages in the Archives. I hope you guys find it interesting. As for ROM The Novel, the first chapter should be finished some time over the next week or two.

Well, it's been a nice vacation but I'm gonna be flying back to AZ on sunday and then it's back to school monday morning (lousy summer semester). Between school, unpacking, and buying food, it's gonne be one busy monday...

Well, see you next week!

Josiah

Heheh... Looks like I forgot to upload yesterday's strip. It's been a while since I did five strips a week I guess I need to get back in the groove, so to speak. Anyway, here's yesterday's strip and today's. And, in case you didn't see the announcement on monday, Pebble Version is going to be updating five days a week all month! Meanwhile, there's a new ROM.

Eh, not much else to say right now. I finally got around to finishing Boktai on the GBA. It's about time. I've been at the final dungeon in the game for months. Other than that I'm just kinda hanging out and getting stuff done. I've been going to a lot of karate classes. I really missed the dojo when I was down in AZ.

And that's all I got for now. Later!

Josiah

It's a new month to remember to vote! Also, thanks to a last minute donation, the total donations for April were...$50! Yes, $50! That means that during this entire month there will be five new Pebble Version strips every day! So be sure to visit on monday, tuesday, wednesday, thursday, and friday! And that's not all! You also get commentary on the first 20 Pebble Version strips and the first chapter of ROM The Novel, both of which will hopefully be completed sometime over the next week or two.

So far I've been having a pretty enjoyable vacation. Had a seder, read, played some video games, did stuff with my friends... Looks like I may even earn some much needed cash. Only one problem, I seem to have developed a bit of a grass alergy while I was in AZ, not fun. I saw Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. I actually haven't read the original books so I can't really compare the two. Taking the movie by itself... It ranged from amusing to plain weird. Now I don't have anything against weird humor, I've even started to get into some or the weirder comedy anime like Bobobo and Cromartie High. Britsh humor, like that in Hitchhiker's Guide, I still don't quite get. Eh, still, the movie wasn't bad so I may check out the books when I catch up on the other stuff I'm reading.

Well, I need to get to work on all that bonus stuff. Later!

Josiah

New bonus comic. It's the 50th Blooper Reel strip. Not the 50th bonus comic, there have been a few more of those. Does it matter? Not really?

Well, despite a delayed flight I made it home without trouble. I'll be here till a week from sunday. Relaxing and catching up with family and friends is the main goal, along with going to my karate class (which I really missed in AZ) although I may be earning a little money as well, which is good since I'm totally broke. Not much else to say right now. I don't have much time right now so I'll see you all on monday.

Josiah

New ROM up. There's new fanart on the Extras page too. I'll be flying home today for my measly week and a half vacation but that shouldn't effect the update schedule.

Aside from the total impossibility of it all, wouldn't it be awesome if life had save points? Want to see what would have happened if you did something differently during the day? Load from your last save and give it a try. Didn't do so good in school? Load and try again. Something lousy go wrong during the day? Load! While it kinda kills the point of making good choices (since you could always go back and try a new choice), it would be so useful... Sigh... If life had save points tuesday is one of the days I'd redo. On the plus side, my group turned in our public service announcement project which turned out quite well. I also finished my last final exam, which seemed to go well enough. Plus I won a couple Smash Brothers games. So why reset? Eh, one of those super annoying things that's bound to happen to you at some point. Basically I went to get a haircut and the lady either didn't hear me right or didn't understand what I said. Either way, by the time I figured out what she was doing till it was too late and the haircut I ended up with is nothing like what I wanted. That's the last time I go there. Sigh... I hope my hair grows fast, I want my old style back and the sooner the better.

Not much else to say. I saw Sin City. It's a very well done movie, I'll give it that. And the visual style is certainly interesting. Too dark and violent for me though. I mean, I don't really mind dark and violent stories but there's a certain point for me where it just gets to be too much and Sin City was way past that mark.

See you friday!

Josiah

Don't forget to vote and see friday's bonus comic. Ok, back to the comic. Torchic has evolved! I have to admit, I'm gonna miss the little guy but pokémon evolve, that's the way things go (unless you're watching the anime). And, as today's comic points out, combusken is now a bit too big to ride on Brendan's head. Unfortunately for Brendan, it hasn't figured that out yet. If you think it's a little early for torchic to evolve, this is about when it happened in my game. Although I do tend to spend a lot of time battling random pokémon and use my starter quite a lot as well so that might just be me. As for mudkip, it won't evolve immediatly, still needs a couple of levels, but it won't be too much longer.

In other site news, look at the donation guage! $25!!! That means you'll all be getting bonus content in May so get ready. First off, I'll be doing commentary on the first twenty or so comics. So if you ever wondered about why I made a certain strip or just want to hear random musings, this is for you. Not only that, you'll also get the prologue and first chapter of ROM The Novel! Wow, I'd better get started. Of course there's still lots of other cool stuff you can get if the donation bar keeps rising. Remember, if it hits $50 that means five brand new Pebble Version strips each week for an entire month!

Meanwhile, Passover has just started to it's matzoh all week for me (if you don't know what Passover is google it or something). Other than that I'm relaxing and wrapping up the last couple of school things before flying back to CO on wednesday (Pebble Version should continue to update normally). Hmm... I've been noticing that a lot of popular web comics have fan made entries on Wikipedia. Unfortunately, Pebble Version isn't there yet. Not to nag or anything but if any of you are big Wikipedia users and have some time to spare...

Anyway, if you're on break like I am have a great time! If you're not, ha, ha! I'm on vacation and you aren't! Course, I'll be going back to school on May 9 so you'll end up with the last laugh there... See you wednesday!

Josiah

New bonus comic, as always, so remember to vote.

Just about done with finals! I just need to do the last part of my web project, take some tests, and help my group edit our public service announcement. Can't wait for break! I'll be heading back home on wednesday, unfortunately I only get to stay for a week and a half. Someone screwed up the schedule for this semester so there's hardly any break before the summer semester starts. Sigh... Oh well, a short break is better than none at all. Hopefully I can catch up some stuff, go see some movies, and just relax. Plus I'll get to spend time with my family and friends.

Ever feel like you just want to smash something? I do from time to time. Especially right now... The guy in the apartment next to mine must have a really great stereo system with one incredible bass hooked up. How do I know this? Because he/she likes to play it, really loudly, especially at night... I'd really love to go over them and totally demolish that thing. To bad its illegal. Maybe if I pled temporary insanity...

See you next week!

Josiah

New ROM today. And, for those of you with slow net connections, Shauni promised that, from now on, she'll keep the comics smaller which means less scrolling and much faster load times. Yay!

A quick final project update... Two complete, two half complete, and one not even started. Course, that's not counting tests but I'm not too worried about those. I've certainly learned a lot this semester. Level Design was really interesting. I've been paying a lot more attention to the level flow and layout in games. It can really make a huge difference. Take Growlanser III for instance. It's a very solid strategy RPG with a good story, interesting characters, and lots of nitfy tweaks and features that I wish more games used. But the dungeons certainly drag it down a bit. The only good thing about them is that they're short and there aren't all that many. Which is good cause they're boring enough as is. The simple grid layout combined with square cookie cutter rooms are really uninspired and it doesn't help that, aside from a different coat of pain, all the dungeons are pretty much identical. The dungeons do one more thing wrong as well, dead ends. Now I have nothing against multiple pathes and dead ends in dungeons but if I'm going to spend my time exploring a long dead end passage there better be something good at the end to make it worth while. Empty dead ends suck and dead ends with basic healing items aren't much better. The guys who made Xenosaga 2 should learn that as well.

See you friday!

Josiah

Still no donations this month? Aw... Remember to vote and see friday's bonus comic. Gee, this reminders are really getting old. Meanwhile, back in the comic, it looks like Brendan and May have stopped goofing off and are finally ready to go after the thief and retrieve the Devon goods. Unless they get sidetracked along the way, which is pretty much guarenteed.

Well, let's see, what have I been doing? Went to see a commedian saturday night, that was fun. Finished my level design project, did some shopping... I got Munchkin, now I just need to find someone to play with. Well, at my school that shouldn't be much of a problem. I've been living here for nearly four months now but from time to time I'm still surprised by the sheer amount of stores. In ten minutes or less I can drive to just about any store imaginable (often two or three locations of that store). Make it twenty minutes and I can drive to any store imaginable plus several different malls. Huge malls. And that's not even mentioning IKEA, which is nearly as big as a mall all by itself... It's nuts. Do people really need five Fry's within an eight minute drive? Or three Home Depots within fifteen minutes? Probably not but they're here so I assume people go to all of them.

This is my last week to work on my final projects so it's gonna be busy. I'd better get going. See you wednesday!

Josiah

See, told you all the TMs and HMs wouldn't be cameos. Well, the promised ROM comic is up (sorry if it takes a long time to load, I compressed it as much as I could) as is the usual Pebble Version bonus comic for everyone who votes for PV on Buzz Comix.

I haven't finished any of my final projects yet but I'm most of the way done with two of the biggest, which is good. On a related note, nothing sucks more than putting a significant amount of time into something only to have it fail for no apparant reason and have to scrap the whole thing and start over (thanks a lot Neverwinter Nights...). Oh well, at least the new simplified version of my level is working.

Not much to say. It's been getting kinda hot here (in the 90's) but it's supposed to cool down in a few days. I really haven't been doing much outside of school stuff. There's some movies I want to see but I doubt I'll have time until finals are over. Have a good weekend people!

Josiah

No ROM today but Shauni says that there will be one on friday instead. Oh, and in case you were wondering, not all the TMs and HMs are going to be cameos.

Well, I'm hard at work on my final projects. On the bright side, my 3D Max assignment is coming along very nicely. On the downside, the scripting my Neverwinter Nights level refuses to work for no apparent reason, which really sucks since the rest of the level is almost done. Did you ever notice how sometimes computers just refuse to work even when you're doing everything right and there's absolutely no reason for it to fail? That's happened to me way too much this semester and it's driving me nuts. Anyway, working on final projects, especially when you're going to a computer school, tends to involve staring at a monitor all day. I was trying to get a lot of work done yesterday, which I did, but I probably spent around seven or eight hours on the computer and my eyes are begging for a rest. Maybe I'll try to tone it down a bit today.

Strangely enough, despite all the work, I'm getting more exercise than normal. Turns out that Growlanser III has this nifty secret trick. If you plug a dance pad into controller port two arrows appear on the screen every time your characters or the enemy characters cast attack or healing magic. That's your cue to hop on the pad and hit as many arrows as you can during the spell animation. The more you get the more power your magic gets and the less power enemy magic gets. I can usually add an extra 100-160% added to my stuff and reduce the power of enemy spells by 40-60%. Pretty cool, especially in the more difficult battles. I wish more games did that.

See you friday!

Josiah

You're probably all tuning these reminders out by now but I'll just say it anyway, vote to see friday's bonus comic! Doesn't that item ball in the comic look big? I originally had it half size but then I looked back at the game and it actually is that big. And they fit that in a backpack? On another note, if there anyone out there who actually uses the various x items in Pokémon games? Personally I always sold them as soon as I could.

Well, I'm finally finished with Xenosaga 2 so I started on Growlanser III. Had a good weekend, did a little homework, but not much, and now I'm rested up and ready to get back to work on all those projects. For those of you who didn't watch SNL you should have, the weekend update bit was really good, but then again it always is. And, on a rather distant note, there's a chance I'll be at Anime Expo in July. Nothing definite, but it's possible.

So, is it just me or are TV commercials getting stupider each year? I mean, I know they want commercials to be memorable and all but some companies' commercials are so consistently stupid <cough,Old Navy,cough> that I feel like boycotting the entire company in the slim hope that they'll go broke and I won't have to watch those stupid commercials any more. I have to wonder how much some of those commercial writers get paid to come up with that junk. I mean if it's only ten or twenty bucks then yeah, I guess it wouldn't be so bad but if they make as much as I think they do the companies are getting ripped offed. Do they really think people are dumb enough to like those things? Then again, considering that they keep making more and more dumb commercials, maybe we are. One of the worst offenders, or at least the one that bothers, is video game commercials. If I'm watching an ad for a game I want to know about the game. I want to see game play footage and hear about the story and/or features. I don't want to watch some weirdo running around in a costume or spouting ridiculous monologues. What does that tell me about the game? Absolutely nothing. All the game companies really should look at Square-Enix, who had made some excellent commercials (with the exception of the FF Crystal Chronicles one). Anyway, I'm not saying all commercials are lousy, Geiko for example does some pretty good ones, but the majority range from ho-hum to horrible. Which raises the question, do they make commercials like that because they're out of touch with what people like or because people actually do like them? I sure hope it's the former.

Josiah

New bonus comic so vote, vote, vote! And don't forget to donate. Remember, if the donation guage reaches at least $25 you get commentary and a chapter of ROM The Novel!

Well, I've decided to take the weekend off from homework. I'll have a lot to work on starting monday but I already spent my last two weekends doing homework. I need a break or I'm going to be completely burned out, which definately wouldn't help the quality of my homework. Besides, I have other things I need to get done.

I've been watching Futurama more often lately. Man, that is such a great show, so many little hidden jokes... Too bad that they don't make new episodes any more. I've noticed something else, most TV commercials are really really really stupid. I can't believe they actually pay people to write these things. Hmm... I may have to do a rant on this. Maybe monday.

Well, I'd better get going. Have a great weekend!

Josiah

There's a new ROM comic. Also, remember to donate if you want the first chapter of ROM The Novel!

Well, I'm caught up on homework, which is good. Although, with final projects coming up, I'm not gonna have much time to relax. As for Mikumari, I give up. I hate to do it, I'm the kinda guy who tries to do all the optional stuff in games, but I've had enough. I figured out a great strategy and how to deal with all Mikumari's moves, except one. I could take his Creeping in the Dark attack and his Between Heaven and Earth attack but not his freeze the game whenever he's losing attack. I've put around 60 hours in Xenosaga 2 and the game only freezes during that one battle and only when I'm about to win. I'm beginning to think the developers actually coded it into the game...

I did say I'd talk about something else didn't I? Hmm... Random comments perhaps? Bamboo is very easy to care for and makes a good house plant. Le Modesitt Jr.'s book Legacies is very good. Homework usually takes longer than you think it will. NYPD has great pizza if you live in the Pheonix area. AZ doesn't use daylight savings time. On one hand, daylight savings time is kinda pointless. On the other hand, the rest of the country does it and it's kinda weird being an hour different than everyone else. Dragonball GT is pretty lame. The original Dragon Ball and Dragon Ball Z are much better. My anime club is going to do a trip to Anime Expo in CA this summer. I'd love to go but that'd take money, something I'm probably not going to have much of for a while, unless I suddenly get a job or something.

And that's about it for now. See you friday!

Josiah

Remeber to vote, of course. Anyway, I've added two sites to the Link Exchange. First up is Comic About Carl, a very random comic that I've been meaning to link to for ages, next is Tri-Something, a site with three different comics.

Ever have one of those days where you're just a bit out of it? That basically sums up my sunday. Anime club was fun but other than that I spent most of the day working on my level design assignment which didn't go quite as smoothly as I'd hoped. Looks like I still need to put a few more hours into it. I did take a short break to play Xenosaga 2, which I would be done with by now except for one problem. There's this optional boss called Mikumari. Not only is he an overly powerful pain in the ass, but the game also has a tendency to screw things up just when it looks like I might be winning. It's pretty annoying when Mikumari suddenly speeds up for no appearant reason and gets three critical hits in a row (which pretty much kills my party). He's done that way to many times, including once when I only needed one more attack to kill him. Even worse, the game seems to like to spontaniously freeze during the last part of the battle (of course it never freezes anywhere else...). Nothing sucks more than having to restart a half hour battle because the game froze.

Hmm... Seems all I've been talking about lately is homework and Xenosaga. Probably because that's really all I've been doing lately. Ugh, I can't wait till the semester ends, I really need a break. Well, I'll try to think up something else to talk about for wednesday. See you then!

Josiah

I really wanted to do something cool for April Fools day this year but I've just been too busy. So much homework... Oh well, there's always next year (probably gonna take that long to reach the next gym). At least I did get a new bonus comic done so be sure to vote. And, unfortunately, we didn't reach any of the donation goals during March. However, I still want to do the ROM novel so, if the donation bar reaches at least $25 during April you'll get the first chapter for May.

Hmm... I already talked about homework on wednesday but I really don't have anything else to talk about. Aside from school and playing a little bit of Xenosaga 2 I really haven't been doing much. I did rip some CDs to my computer. Of course, I had already ripped them to my computer around a year ago but Rio Music Manager mangled the track lists so badly that I had to delete the albums and start over to fix them. From now on I'm sticking with Windows Media Player 10. Rio makes pretty good hardware but they really need to spend more time on the whole software thing. On the bright side, it did give me an excuse to clean