Obligatory Top 10: Xbox Live Arcade titles I'd love to see

Boring day at work today, really nothing to do (or that I feel like doing), so here goes, another blog post. This time, I figured I'd succumb to the tried and true (read: cliche) Top 10 list syndrome and feature my personal Top 10 games that I'd like to see on Xbox Live Arcade, in no particular order.

I encourage you, the reader, to reciprocate and show the world just what you want to play on XBLA. Who knows, we get enough games in common and some XBLA high-up comes browsing through we may get our way. Wishful thinking never hurt anyone.

Speaking of wishful thinking, I'm sure there are some of these that aren't at all possible to put on XBLA for various reasons, such as maybe file sizes are much too big, but anyway. Without further adieu:

* Street Fighter 3: Third Strike
* Street Fighter Alpha 3 Upper
* Quake
* Marathon
* Carmageddon
* Blood
* MegaRace 2
* Killer Instinct
* Perfect Dark
* Goldeneye

There we have it. Lots of shooters in there, but I can't hide my roots. DOOM was too much of a teaser for me to not think about how great some of those games would be to have. Perfect Dark especially after the letdown of Perfect Dark Zero. It's very obvious to me that all the greatest minds who worked on the original and Goldeneye for N64 were the ones who jumped ship from Rare to start Free Radical, designers of the Timesplitters franchise, Second Sight and the forthcoming title Haze.

Those of you who never played MegaRace 2... I'm sorry. It was fantastic. Control was a little sluggish, but it was an extremely fun battle racing game. I've been toying with the idea of buying a "new" PC that I can run it on because the Pentium II that I have sitting around, nor Virtual PC on my PowerMac G5 can't run it quite well enough. it's that good. MegaRace 1 was way too easy and was primitive for the time (racing mostly on straightaways with slight turns) and MegaRace 3 just plain sucked. So there we go. Microsoft, individual developers, anyone.... make them happen.

Posted by BrokenDesign @ 4:16 pm EDT | Permalink | 2 Comments

Last minute project / Awesome app review

Last night I was up fairly late-ish working on a freelance project for my old job. Not any later than usual, mind you, but still. No one is ever a fan of rushing things because someone in the order of operations took their sweet time. I was pleased to get the project done in the window of time that I'd stated I would get it done in, it's always nice to be right. Even if you're barely right. Of the 1-2 hours prediction I'd made, I "clocked out" of the job at 1 hour, 54 minutes. Awesome. Doesn't look half bad either, I'm pleased. Now I just have to hope that the customer agrees, but that's nothing out of the ordinary. I guess you could say that I'm officially all grows up, doing some freelance work that's got cash money attached to it to the point where I need to generate invoices.

Which brings me to the application I am using for the time tracking and invoice creation, On The Job from Stunt Software. It's a fantastic Mac app that has a very clean, simple and easy to use UI and does everything that you (or at least I) could ever hope for. One very nice feature is the built-in readme file. When you load the application for the first time there is a bezel with an arrow pointing down to an arrow in the lower left of the window, instructing you to click it to begin. Upon clicking, it creates a general job/company listing that you are asked to name. Next, you click on another plus sign in the panel to the right of the first, where you add a specific job to the general one. From there, you just have to click on the large play button in the upper left and it begins tracking the time spent on the project.

Let's face it, sometimes we get distracted by things and aren't completely mindful of certain small but important details. The developers of On The Job realize this and have included a feature to prevent distractions from costing your clients any money. If you have gone idle for a user-defined amount of time, it will present a reminder to attract your attention and will give you the option to subtract the time that you have been idle when you return. Very nice. There's also the ability to control the starting and stopping of the clock from the Dock in OSX, another time-saving and handy feature. Additionally, the dock icon can be set to display the time you've been working, and if the clock is paused or not.

The aforementioned invoicing feature is very excellent. Simply enter values into some pre-determined fields, create custom fields, and with the touch of a button your invoice is automatically drawn up and can be output to different file formats such as PDF, text or XML. Just because I'm a designer doesn't mean I particularly want to spend a lot of time designing an invoice to charge people with. Not yet, anyway.

I was lucky enough to score a deal on On The Job through MacZot, a website that offers discounts on miscellaneous Mac apps, and since then have been dying to use it. Last night was my initial run with it and I couldn't be happier. The learning curve is very shallow indeed and I was running with it as though I was a seasoned veteran instead of a newbie. High props, On The Job gets an enthusiastic "BUY" rating.


Posted by BrokenDesign @ 5:26 pm EDT | Permalink | 1 Comments

One quarter century down, several more to go.

Good day to all, greetings and / or salutations. I'm finally here, aged to much less than perfection but at least I'm aged to 25 and able to join up with all you who are 2old2play. Perhaps now I'll be inclined to take my copy of Halo 2 online more often so that when I get my ass whooped at least it'll be whooped by people who don't have condescending, belittling nature and brash superiority complexes. I'm looking forward to having some of that thing called fun when I play online.

As I'd mentioned in my very first forum post in the 'New in Town' section, I've technically been a member of the community for a number of months preceding my 25th b'day, helping CodeMonkey get each issue of 2o2p Magazine out the door on time and to tip-top quality standards. My role is to make pretty pictures, serving as assistant designer to Lunatikzx. I hope that everyone has been enjoying the magazine a great deal, I've been really enjoying working on it. Certainly the most fun "job" I have going on right now. Something I can look forward to that will be my personal testing ground for anything new I come up with that I want to try and I'm sure it'll end up being a really excellent portfolio piece to help me get a better job in the future. I remember back in the Timmy-age days when the "future" was that one thing that those people went back to that one time in those movies. Now it's like... a *concern*. Yeesh.

I'm also helping CodeMonkey with the TechDiversions store he and Jen are starting, doing the logo and general site design. Gotta give him props, he's doing all the coding for the site. His is the chocolate filling to my candy coating, so to speak. Got a number of other freelance projects down the pipe that I'm working on, so it's certainly a busy time. Also started a part time job at the Apple Store recently, which is 167% kickass, so that drains the free time a fair amount as well. Pretty little amount of time for gaming, unfortunately, especially since I have a nice new copy of Test Drive Unlimited just... sitting there. Haven't gotten the chance to play it yet and I've had it for a few weeks now. Got to play a bit of Saint's Row, that's pretty cool so far.

I'd imagine that my boss would appreciate me getting back to working, so I suppose I should do that. My gamertag is Broken Design on Xbox Live, feel free to send a friend's request. I'm all for adding more people I can commune and game with, especially since currently you can count the amount of Live friends I have on 2 hands pretty easily. Looking forward to taking part in Monday Night Racing and Tuesday Night GRAW in the community, I'll see you on the servers. Pumped for the next 2old2con. Peace.

Posted by BrokenDesign @ 12:34 pm EDT | Permalink | 5 Comments