Quarter Circle Punch - Games & Anime Blog

“Guess Who’s Back”

So I’m sure you’ve noticed I haven’t updated this site since the spring.  Since then I’ve gone heavy into the fighting game community competing in Evo (I’m the guy on the right), going to E3, attending Wednesday Night Fights and this weekend I’ll be participating in So Cal Regionals.

I’ve neglected this site purely out of laziness because I have a ton of stories to tell.  I’ll be doing a lot at SCR and will be updating this blog along with my blogs on SRK and Capcom Unity.  Stay tuned for tons of fighting game info.

p.s. I have a lot to say about anime too so more posts on that as well.

The Street Fighter fight Club will be epic.

Daigo and J-Wong will be facing off at tomorrows fight club.  Ono-San as well.  I’m leaving work early for this.

The Awesomeness that is Super Street Fighter IV is coming.  This upcoming launch party for Super SFIV is one of the reasons I love living in California.  Not only am I a short drive away from some of the best arcades in the U.S. but I’m also in the entertainment capital of the nation.  Every game company ends up throwing major events in L.A. or the Bay and Capcom is no exception.  Given who popular the launch was for SFIV this should be even crazier.  I’m making sure I show up two hours early this time.

Kof XIII is revealed!!! And Mai is back.  GET HYPE!

KoF XIII got revealed today.  Mai is confirmed to be coming back, as well as Yuri and King.  The fighting game blogs and forums are ablaze with posts.  NeoGAF and SRK are the best places to for the discussion.  Links to those threads and youtube videos below.

NeoGAF - http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=388534

SRK - http://www.shoryuken.com/forumdisplay.php?f=308

Iplaywinner - http://iplaywinner.com/news/2010/3/25/king-of-fighters-xiii-mai-oh-mai.html

Youtube vids - http://www.youtube.com/user/samalus#p/u

The end of super anime blog Random Curiosity

(Click on the picture for the full article)

It sucks to see that Omni is leaving.  Maybe Divine and one of the other writers can take the reigns but I don’t see that happening.  Fortuanetly many other blogs like psgels, sea slugs, and THATanimeblog have become insightful and detailed like Random Curiousity so its not like there is nowhere to go to find screencaps and articles.  Its just that RC had a level of detail and quality so much higher than anyone else out there.  It was a pleasure while it lasted.

Legendary Producer Nujabes has passed away

 Today I learned the sad news that Japanese hip hop Producer Nujabes (Jun Seba) has passed away. Like many of you I first learned about him through the music he made for the anime Samurai Champloo.  After hearing his music on that show I instantly became a fan of his work.  I now own every LP he has made, all of his side projects under Hydeout and the majority of the features he had on various compilation albums.  Nujabes was very private and didn’t do many shows or interviews.  I was hoping to see him once when I traveled to Japan but now I will no longer have that opportunity.  I express my condolences to his family and friends, and hope his legend will live on through his music.

The truth about playtesting. You may not know this about your humble blogger, but I used to be a videogame play tester.  Being a play tester seemed like a dream job, you get to play video games all day, Right.  Wrong the truth is you play the game for maybe 3 hours of a 10 hour shift.  The rest of the time you are writing reports, and verifying bug fixes.  While this was still a fairly easy job, it was very taxing given the long hours and repetition.  The hardest part of this being ad-hoc testing.  This was when you are simply assigned one level and have to spend the whole day finding bugs.  Sounds simple enough, but keep in mind you don’t know what is supposed to be or not supposed to be in the game.  So something you think is a bug, is actually meant to be part of the final game.  Still I can’t complain to much because I got to work on one of the biggest titles of the decade.  I’ll give you a hint the sequel to the game I worked on made a billion dollars in sales in 2009.  I’m just really glad other people in the industry know how difficult this grunt work really is.

Yakuza 3 Heading Westward in 2010

This announcement just made my day.  The Ryu Ga Gotoku (Yakuza) series has been one of my favorites since SEGA first announced it.  I was so excited for ryu Ga Gotoku 3 that I imported the game.  However I couldn’t get over the language barrier and wanted to know more about the story so I sold it in the hopes SEGA would bring it to the U.S. or Europe with English Subs.  Now they have confirmed this which is great news.  I think this is one of the best titles on PS3 and will be picking it up the day it comes out.