Archive for January, 2008

No Internet

Tuesday, January 29th, 2008

I recently moved from the temporary place I was living in Shinjuku to my new normal apartment in Ebisu and I don’t have internet yet, hence no updates. I’m not really sure exactly what I need to do to get it yet either – it depends on how the building is wired so I’m waiting on information from the landlord. 100 mbps fiber is the norm and costs about $40-$50 a month… that’s over 12 megabytes a second download, or 1 gig in about 80 seconds if you can max out your connection. I downloaded Team Fortress 2 from Steam at my old place in about 5 minutes. Hopefully I can get the same type of connection at my new place. If not I’m stuck with normal DSL.

The good news is that my new place is awesome, primarily because of its location. It’s about a 1-2 minute walk from the train station to my apartment and the area is loaded with cool restaurants, bars, shops, etc. Ebisu is in Shibuya-ku, or Shibuya ward/county, which also includes the areas of Shibuya, Harajuku, and Daikanyama.

Anyways, I’ll put up some pictures when I finally get my internet service sorted out!

Posted in japan | 1 Comment »

I’m in Famitsu

Wednesday, January 9th, 2008

Doing cos-play of all things if you can believe it. It took me two months here in Japan to achieve this magnificent feat – slow, I know – but now I can die happy. Before I explain, you can view the shameful evidence here.

The title of the page at Famitsu says, in a loose translation “New Year CongradulaTRAVIS – thanks to our fans party.” Grasshopper had an event to give insight into the development of No More Heroes and to kind of give back to the fans. There were developer interviews with all kinds of collaborators on the game – internal and external – as well as a concert by our musicians (all sound is done in-house). Check out the link for plenty of more pics. The one I’m in is pretty small so here is a slightly different picture but a higher resolution version from my own camera, click to zoom:


My job was to dress up as the main character and welcome people to the event and generally act goofy like the character does (”moe!”… play the game to see what I mean). I didn’t have much time to prepare – I was programming up until about an hour before the event – so I didn’t do anywhere as good of a job as Sugiyama-san did. She is a pro! That outfit really looks like the character from the game. Sugiyama-san is one of Grasshopper’s secretaries, she used to be an anime voice actress and has a voice to match. I didn’t think her voice was real the first time I heard it, it is extremely high pitched.

I thought the event was really cool in terms of a developer giving something back to the hardcore fans that were interested in this kind of material. I haven’t heard of an event like this in the States but if I was a big fan of the game I know I would want to hear about its development.

I don’t know if this picture is also going to pop up in the weekly Famitsu magazine but Suda-san has a good relationship with the guys over there so it’s possible. I’m going to be on the lookout. Until next time…

Posted in game development, japan | 6 Comments »