What comes around

The animated gif you see above was referenced on this week’s episode of the Retronauts podcast.

The creator designed a low polygon bowl of ramen.  A style of design not seen since the  32-bit era.  I believe it was Chris Kohler from the podcast that referenced the gif and noted that this generation of gaming (PS4/XBO/WiiU) will probably start designing games with this type of style just as the previous generation (PS3/X360/Wii) used the pixel art style that mimicked 8-bit and 16-bit games.  I hope this is true because I love that kind of aesthetic.

During the 32-bit era, this was the gen where game artists were moving away from 2D designs to polygonal 3D designs.  And due to the fact that console CPU and graphics rendering were new to polygon generating, the poly counts were low. Well, based on todays standards anyways where they are now able to generate 1.6 billion polygons per second with the PS4 while the PS1 was a paltry 360,000 polygons per second.

Attention to detail were neat to checkout during the 32-bit generation.  A lot of creativity was probably poured into 3D designs because, at the time, they were freed from the shackles of expensive manufacturing costs for cartridges that included chips and boards to a simple press of a CD.  This allowed them to go wild with art aspects.  Also add that they now had a wealth of free space to deal with.  600 megabytes compared to ~8-15 megabytes for 16-bit cartridges.

What was

I’ve been a fan of Bleach ever since the TV series began airing here in the states.  Shortly after it began airing I decided to get into the manga, which is now my preferred way of progressing with the series.  I fell behind a few years ago because there was a time when they were releasing the books very scarcely for about two years.  I’m catching up now and am currently at volume 50.  50!

With the start of a new arc, they’ve been showing single panel flashbacks from scenes as far back from the first few volumes.  Having all volumes up to 50, I’ve been re-reading the first 10 books.  Man, Kubo’s art style has changed throughout the series!

While reading these books, I totally forgot he used to dedicate the last few pages for character descriptions.  I used to love these because he even gave each character a theme from a real song.  I used to hunt down and listen to some of these songs to get figure out the relation of the character to the song.  In addition to this, I loved how the first volumes seemed to have a heavy influence from music in general.  Really subtle things like a t-shirt a character would be wearing.  Even the title of the series -- Bleach!  I don’t know if it has been confirmed in an interview, but the rumor was the name was based on the title of Nirvana’s first studio album.  That would be so rad if that rumor was true.

I’m about 10 volumes behind the current one and hope to catch up to it soon.  The anime series is right behind me and I want to read what happens rather than watch it.

16-bit Seinfeld - The Sixth Strip

1) Happy Mother’s Day to all those wonderful mothers out there.
2) Here’s the latest 16-bit Seinfeld.  Consider this my Mother’s Day gift to you.

WQXR

I absolutely love this advertisement campaign for this classical music radio station in New York City -- WQXR.

I caught these pics on Twitter and was immediately interested in this station, and the weird thing is I don’t even like classical music.  Now don’t get me wrong; I don’t hate the genre, it’s just not on high on my list of music I would listen to.  I was impressed with the selection of programs they have on the station.  I also liked that they have an iPhone app, which is what I’ve been using to listen to the station since I live across the continent.

Huh, I guess advertising is everything.

Sound check

"Check.  Check.  Check 1.  Sibilance.  Sibilance.  Check.  Check.  Check 2.  Sibilance.  Sibilance."

It’s been a few days after I’ve updated the CMS, but the problem still exists.  Oh well, might as well go forward and have this website burn up as a white hot flame rather than a fizzle; even though that white hot flame will be fueled by a low octane level of gasoline I call “content.”

I have a few more ideas for the 16-bit Seinfeld series, so that will continue for a little bit, plus some other stuff.

We are experiencing technical difficulties - please stand by

Well, I guess there were some problems with the update I applied a few days ago.  Posts will be limited until the next update which should be occurring soon.  In the meantime I'm still creating some great stuff for this site.  Hope you'll stick around.

16-bit Seinfeld - The Fifth Strip

This one is also too big to show here.  See it after the jump.

Transmission interruptus

I haven't posted in about a week because I was doing an update to the backend of the website.  It was the first time I updated the CMS so I wasn't sure if it would screw anything up.  Well, it's been about a day since I applied the update and so far everything looks like it's not on fire.  All the pages seem fine and this blog entry looks okay, so I think we're back in business.

Hope everyone's liking the website.  Got some good things planned for content.

16-bit Seinfeld - The Fourth Strip

This strip is too big to be posted directly on the front page, so check it behind the link jump.  Here’s a tease of what it entails.

Decisions and relics

I’ve had a Sega Saturn for a few years now and I love it, but back in the day I did not have one.  I had to choose one console because when you’re a kid, money is very hard to come by for buying dumb stuff like video games.  For the previous generation I had a Genesis.  I loved Sega and was glad I jumped the Nintendo boat when it came time to choose either the SNES or Genesis.  For me and my tastes in games, Sega had the better games.  My friend was a Nintendo kid so he had a SNES.  This meant I was still able to play the exclusives at his house and vice versa.  We would always have debates on which console was the superior one.  Fun times were had by all.

Then came time to move on to the next generation of consoles.  My friend would get an N64 at launch, including a few games.  It was really fun to play Mario 64 and Pilotwings 64, but then came the question: what am I going to get?  I loved Sega, so the logical choice would have been to get the Saturn, but something about the Saturn did not get my attention as much as the Genesis did.  My other friend had a Saturn and he always talked about games like Virtua Cop 2, Daytona USA, and NiGHTS.  I was at a crossroads.  I was planning to get a console for my birthday and that was rapidly approaching.  What was I to do!  I know; these are the tough choices you have to make when you’re a kid.

But then something unexpected happened.

My friend who had the N64 had an older brother who had something called a PlayStation.  While his older bro was out he took me into his room to show me the PlayStation.  We played Tekken and Revolution X and that’s when I decided that my next console was going to be PlayStation.  Looking back that was the best choice because that was the top banana of that generation for it was the most popular with the most games to choose from.

But if I were a few years older, say in my late teens or in my twenties with a larger amount of cash to spend on stuff like games, I probably would have chosen the Saturn.

While the PlayStation gave a little something for everybody and the N64 seemed to be pointed more towards a younger crowd, the Saturn seemed to be for an older group that had a core interest in gaming.  You know, a more tight-knit community always talking about the latest news for the Saturn and whatnot.  This group would have some rough times ahead when Sega decided to give the console an early death to make way for the Dreamcast.  If you were into the Saturn, it seemed you were the type to start investing in Japanese imports.

When I started to dig deep into forums about Saturn related stuff I would occasionally run into a post where someone is referencing one of two websites dedicated to Saturn.  One is Dave’s Sega Saturn Page and the other is Dustin’s Saturn page.  I would definitely see more referencing the latter.  A few years ago, Dave’s Sega Saturn Page was brought back to life, though it’s mainly a site for archival purposes.  Most of the content was written during the time the Saturn was active.  Dustin’s website, however, was a tough one to find.  It took me a while, but I was finally able to find a link that I was able to plug into the Internet Archive and something turned up!

Both of these sites are great and have a wealth of knowledge about the Saturn.  Now I know why they were such great references for back then.  I figured they might be entertaining to peruse through so here are the links for them.

Dave’s Sega Saturn page

Dustin’s Saturn page