I think Sony’s PS3 has a lot going for it in 2008. Some great games are coming out this year. Just to name a few:

2 Days to Vegas
Alone In The Dark
Army of Two
Burnout Paradise
Devil May Cry 4
Dragon Ball Z: Burst Limit
Dynasty Warriors 6
Eyedentify
Fallout 3
Final Fantasy XIII & Final Fantasy Versus XIII (if out in 2008)
Gran Turismo 5 Prologue
Gran Turismo 5
Grand Theft Auto IV
(more…)

Good news is that the developers are working hard on porting the arcade version to the PS3. Tekken 5 Dark Resurrection Online has given them some good data to work with. They believe it’s possible to have 60fps online battles. Me personally have really been enjoying Tekken 5 DR Online, works great. Sometimes you get a guy with a slow connection, but other than that, it’s great.

All the characters from previous Tekken games will make it into Tekken 6 due to requests of the fans. Guess nobody likes Gon or Doctor Boskonovitch from Tekken 3 But there was a girl that threatened to kill herself if her favorite character wasn’t included in the next game. So developers keep the character. Not sure which one it is. They have been so dedicated to Tekken 6 that 15 developers have lost their girl friends. I hope they find one after Tekken 6 is complete.

The producer also mention possible downloadable content like new characters and data download. On future, Harada hopes there is a chance to do some crossover with other fighting series, something along the line of “Tekken vs Virtua Fighter vs CAPCOM vs SNK”. Finally, Harada says while fans of respective series may see it as fierce rivalry, the developers behind these fighting games are actually very close together.

That could be very interesting. I’ve never been a Virtua Fighter fan though. I’ve been a fan of Tekken since I saw it in the arcades. I road my bike about 5 miles to the local arcade to just play Tekken 1 once, lol. Been hooked since

Producer Talk Tekken 6 At Taipei Game Show

[Update]

Gary sent me this story. There is a bonus stage at the arcades in Japan with a huge robot called Nancy. Her life bar is much higher than normal, maybe even 10X! She doesn’t block anything you throw at it, but she can attack you will your attacking! Click the image below for a larger view.

I got this for playing around with Ubuntu 7.10 Linux on the PS3 and writing messages & browsing the web in the XMB. It works quite well actually. Very easy to pair with the PS3, and it stays synced. I even turned it on while in CoD4 to type some names for my custom classes, since they mysteriously disappeared again … found it after 1 or 2 seconds, very quick.

I’m much more willing to send and reply to messages in the XMB now. The built in mouse pad works well too. On the far right there is a scroll sensor, very easy to browse web pages now. You can actually use the mouse pad to navigate the XMB too. You can tap the mouse pad to click on links in web browsers, or even to select things in the XMB.

Now on the Linux side, I found some instructions for getting it synced and it worked, mouse pad and all. But I accidentally hit the reset button on the back which is very easy to do if you grab it just right. So it lost connection to Linux, I had to repair it. Since then I have put some tape over the reset button, lol. Problem solved

One thing that bugged me though. When booting into Linux you have to hit enter to start the booting process, but at that point it doesn’t see the bluetooth keyboard. So I have to hook up a usb keyboard just to hit enter! Then I can use the bluetooth keyboard to log in.. There may be a way to sync the bluetooth keyboard so I don’t have to usb keyboard just to hit enter once! Hitting enter doesn’t bug me. It’s that I need a usb keyboard just to do that.

Side note on Linux, PS3 firmware 2.10 broke the wireless in Linux Please Sony correct this or let us Linux users how to fix it.

It has some keys marked on the keyboard as x, circle, triangle and square. But it has no start or select button. I wish it had dedicated PlayStation buttons but not a huge deal. There are some media playback buttons at the top: reverse, play, forward, and BD/DVD Menu. But if I was watching a movie I’d rather use the actual PS3 remote control. But it’s nice it’s built into this keyboard.

Out of curiosity I tried this keyboard with my iMac and it works. You can also use a mouse in addition to this keyboard with the PS3 / Linux / or iMac. I don’t have UT3, so I can’t test if it works playing PS3 games.

Overall I really like it, matches the look of the PS3 well. Typing and using the mouse feel good. It’s lightweight, does feel a little cheap. Not to pricey ($61 from Amazon). If I had to rate it a 8.9 of 10.

You can view full size photos here

I wasn’t sure about this game until I tried the demo, but it’s actually pretty fun. I bought the game for my girlfriend because she tried the demo and was instantly hooked. So the impressions below are mostly from me watching her play the game. Because every time I try to play she insisted on playing, lol. So if you see me online playing Toy Home it’s her

You steer the car with the sixaxis only, I wish there was analog support but no big deal. Steering could be a little tighter though. Everything in the world you can smash into, from little toys, dominoes, cereal boxes, even huge boxes. It’s very fun using your boost to smash into things. The goal is to get all the circle gates before time runs out. With each gate you get you get 10 seconds added to your time. You also get extra time for smashing into objects and getting special glowing items. Your car doors even fall off if you hit something with enough force.

What surprised me that this game even has online battle support. I tried it out a few times, not bad actually. Sometimes it hard to find somebody available to play though. You basically compete for the most coins and special items. There are power ups you can get for your car. A few I remember are homing crayons, invisibility, super jump, warp behind your opponent, some kind of gravity attack that causes the other car to flip over. There may be more. Ram your opponent to knock the coins out of them and collect them for yourself. It’s just one and one though. If you check out the leader board, you can see the people with the highest score and even download a replay of it.

To bad there isn’t a free roam mode, I’d love to explore the room more. Is it worth $9.99, you bet. It has 8 levels, 2 bonus levels, and 2 cars to pick from. At least try the demo.

I saw this quote on the official Studio Ghibli web page.

Up till now Miyazaki and the Studio Ghibli staff pursued elaborateness. This time they threw that style away. “The number of SAKUGA will be unprecedented!” said Miyazaki, daring to try and use hand drawings in an age in which CG can draw so much in a short amount of time. “I always tell my staff that if they don’t like to draw by hand deliberately, then they should give up animation. It’s easy to distinguish if pictures are drawn by machines or human hands. If we give up the tough way, we will lose the richness in our art.”

All films that are overseen by Mr. Miyazaki are amazing films. Even his very first film “Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind” still holds a special place in my heart. I watched this movie in Japan when I lived there from 83 - 85. Didn’t understand it due to it all being in Japanese, but I still enjoyed it. I watched it over and over threw the years. And I finally got a subtitled version of the movie in 2000. The animation of the movie is still impressive to this day!

My future wife Clara got me a Ohmu model for Christmas and I’m still putting it together, but it’s looking great! I’ll post it on my flickr account when it’s done. Here is some history about the Ohmu.

The kanji (Chinese characters) used for Ohmu are “King” and “Insect”, so it means “King Insect” or “King of Insects”. Reading those kanji as “Ohmu” is a bit unusual. According to Miyazaki, the sound “Ohmu” came from “Oh Mushi” (king insect), “Ohkii Mushi” (large insect), “Sando Uomu” (Japanese pronunciation of “Sand Worm” from “Dune”), “Aum” in Buddhist belief, and others.

Studio Ghibli has some cool collections you can get from the Nausicaa movie as well. See here.

Every movie made my Mr. Miyazaki I love, they are movies I look forward to watching over and over. They have such a human element to them that nothing else has. Hard to explain, but you’ll know when you watch them. It’s all the little details he puts into his movies that makes it special. His movies are all very memorable too. Even if you not a anime fan, give his movies a try. You’ll be pleasantly surprised!

Here are my favorite movies from Mr. Miyazaki:

Nausicaä of the Valley of Wind
Laputa: The Castle in the Sky
My Neighbor Totoro
Kiki’s Delivery Service
Porco Rosso
On Your Mark [Music film]
Princess Mononoke
Spirited Away
Howl’s Moving Castle
Ponyo On A Cliff (out in summer 2008, but I know I’ll love it! )

Metal Gear Solid 4 & Metal Gear Online (MGO) will be one game. MGO will be integrated into MGS4. Online will support 16 players in the following modes: Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch, King of the Hill, and Team Sneak. You can customize your character with up to three skills from a large selection. A couple examples are “Marathon” which allows you to run faster or longer (not sure), and “Narc” which reveals the location of the enemy trying to kill you. They’ll be over 100 different weapons you can use online.

The magazine includes a 2008 PlayStation calendar, nice too. There are some tips to creating custom classes in Call of Duty 4 as well.

But the biggest surprise is the photo below!

MetalProxy noticed that my Kanji Theme was in the latest issue of the Official PlayStation Magazine, Jan. 2008 with MSG4 on the front! I’m on page 11 in the bottom right. Here is a scan of it, click on the image for the full version.