My love for Japan

Everyone knows how terrible the disasters are in Japan. Hearing about these Earthquakes and Tsunamis hitting the land of the rising sun really upset me. Usually when disasters happen I just think “well, thats nature” but selfishly I felt alot more upset about this disaster.

For as long as I can remember I’ve always loved traditional Japanese culture and Japanese pop culture. Everything ranging from Japanese television, videogames, animation, movies, music, food, and art. Basically I’m what is known as a weaboo. 

First I want to talk about my earliest memory of my love for Japan, which is Anime. The first japanese cartoon I watched was Dragon ball z when I was probably 5 years old, followed by Sailor Moon. Yes, Sailor Moon is typically a girl’s cartoon..but I loved it. Especially the opening. I eventually found out these cartoons were from Japan, and I was amazed. My dad use to take my to China Town where I was able to buy bootleg anime VHS tapes. It was amazing, I’d be watching dubbed anime years before they ever came over to America. Such as Rurouni Kenshin, Cowboy Bebop, and Trigun. Japan is also home to the greatest horror movies I’ve ever seen. Movies such Tetsuo, Ichi the Killer, and Battle Royale are amazingly brutal and brilliant horror films that the likes of America could never dream to make. When it comes to Cinema, the Japanese have no limits, everything is exposed..which makes these film shed much light on their viewers. I’ve felt moved more by Japanese Horror films than I have any American Drama film, which is a very bizarre statement but it’s the truth.

Anyways, personal feelings aside Japan needs our help. This amazing website offers awesome shirts, bags, and other things with all the profits going to Japanese aid. I went to college with the dream of Majoring in English, that way I could teach English in Japan. I still would love to do that one day, but for now I can only donate money to help.

Nintendo 3DS

After years of the Nintendo DS having over 20 million sales Nintendo reveals their newest handheld gaming console, the Nintendo 3DS. Since 3D is all the rage these days it isn’t a surprise that Nintendo wants to capitalize on the idea.(They tried back in the 90s with the Virtual Boy, but that failed) The games look interesting enough, but of course you can’t see the 3D effects through images online, and it’s pretty awesome that you don’t need to wear any 3D glasses.

The realease date is the 27th, so only a few more days until we can get our hands on it. However, it’s been released in Japan and the reviews on the system aren’t what I expected. Highly praised videogame website IGN, gave it a 7.5/10 stating that the 3D effects work more effiently with the built in software rather than the seperate games. I admit I was a bit disapointed, not to mention battery life is expected to be three to five hours long. I’ve been a loyal Nintendo fanboy since I was a child, but I do believe the 3DS will be the first console by Nintendo I’m going to hold off on from buying on launch day. Instead, I’ll wait for the next model to be released with a better battery life.

Anyways, do any of you have plans on buying the 3DS?

Atari 2600

First, I want to say I’m working on a video for this post, but for now I will just do a quick post about it. I’m also updating a video I made showcasing my friend’s craft show creations.

So my younger, and older brother like to collect videogames. My older brother plans on opening a videogame lounge one day, so I suppose that’s a good reason to collect them. However, they went out to Red bank to buy an Atari 2600 collection off a seller on Craigslist. For $120 they were able to buy three Atari 2600s, 10 joystick controllers and a shi*load of games. Of course many of them are doubles, and some of them don’t even work, but I guess thats the risk you take on videogames over 30 years old. You really can’t get any more retro than Atari when it comes to videogames, which makes me wonder why my older brother thought it would be a good idea to buy all this stuff for his gaming lounge. Kids today want HD graphics, ultra violence, and orchestra soundtracks; I personally think he just wants to relive nostalgia feelings and keep the games for himself.

As I said before a video is coming which will really show off their recent purchase, but for now I leave you with a few photos.

The Atari 2600s

There’s at least 60 games to go through

 

Of course lots of them are doubles(this isn’t even half the Asteroids)

 

E.T. aka the worst videogame EVER

 

The classic, Frogger

A joystick and a button was all you needed back then

 

“It’s a Gundam!!”

My younger brother, Dan, has a pretty impressive collection of Gundam toys. The time has come where getting a car is more important than holding on to childhood memories. He gathered his collection and found a buyer, who is going to buy his collection for 650 dollars. Yes, thats right.. 650 dollars. Below, is a video of my brother packing away his Gundams to be sent to his buyer, and him talking about his interest in the Gundam anime series on Toonami.



Quick update

It’s been awhile since I last updated, but I’ll be serious..nothing much is happening this week. No new games, movies, tv shows, nothing much is going on. Whereas, two major events are happening next week. The first being the Apple Conference, and the other being the release of Pokemon Black & White for the Nintendo DS.

So for this week, or what’s left of it, I wanted to do something toy related but I had no idea where to start. Then it hit me, my younger brother dug out his “Gundam” action figure collection. He’s going to sell them for 650 dollars, yes he has a TON of them. So I’ll be making a post focusing on his collection, and maybe just other Gundam related posts all this weekend. Keep an eye out.

“It’s Mahvel Baybee!”

What do you get when you mix the best comic publisher with the best videogame publisher? You get Marvel vs Capcom 3. The box art may be ugly as hell, but the game is pure heaven.

(Ugly, ugly)
Yesterday was the official launch date. My brother and I preordered the game from Capcom’s official website, but didn’t receive it until today. But thats okay, even great videogame companies can make mistakes, or perhaps I should blame UPS. Doesn’t matter, we got the special edition version and so we did a little unveiling.

(Beautiful)
Well there we go, that’s much better! This is the cover art for the special edition, blows away the regular edition(as pictured above) out of the water. Besides, everyone loves a nice shiny tin case to display. Now for the bonuses with the special edition..

A comic book, pretty awesome..but really, what did you expect from Marvel?

And a t-shirt, adding to the awesomeness. But now, let’s get to the game..

It’s amazing. The graphics are beautiful, the sound and voice acting is top-notch, and the gameplay is fun and easy enough for any 2D fighting game novice to jump right in. The character choice may seem a little iffy (X-23? Trish? …MODOK, really?) but they are actually all pretty fun to play as. I ended up using Amaterasu(Goddess of the sun in dog form), Super-Skrull(Villain from the Fantastic Four) and Thor(He needs no explanation, I hope) and enjoyed playing against my brothers and online against strangers for a few hours. I highly recommend picking this game up, that is if you’re a fighting game fan, and by that I mean you really want to engage in it and not mash buttons. Kids online are ruthless and button mashing won’t get you very far.

And now, I recorded my brother’s playing a round. And that’s them providing their own commentary

quick update, and ARCADE FIRE!

I’m working on my first real NJ GEEK LOVE post..It’ll be up likely tomorrow or Wednesday. And I wanna say CONGRATULATIONS to Arcade Fire for winning the album of the year grammy last night, beating Eminem, Lady Gaga, and Katy Perry. My favorite band beat the mainstream and showed the world that the underground/indie scene is the shi*.  And here’s a funny blog showing how clueless/confused people are from last nights win NO ONE SAW COMING.
http://whoisarcadefire.tumblr.com/

 

Test test test

OKAY, so I put about 3 hours into work with creating my own theme.. photoshop, taking pictures, CSS blah blah blah..just to be told “Oh you gotta pay like 15 dollars a year to edit your own CSS”..okay, I dont mind paying that money, but I wish I knew this before I put that much time into work! So for right now my blog is going to be boring, but just you wait it’ll look cool.

Anyways, this is my blog. NJ GEEK LOVE. Okay basically I’ll blog about all the best geeky stuff.. vinyl toys, movies, videogames, retro games, arcades, stores to visit, anime, japan in general, music..what music would a geek listen to? Electronic music of course. gloomy bears, ugly dolls, cons, gadgets, shoes, food…okay you get the point. All the best stuff, but with a non mainstream touch to it. I’ll be posting hopefully daily so keep your eyes open on the geekdom.