ACX Headquarters

NOTE: For personal reasons, I decided to write this away from ScrewAttack. For the record, I’m totally fine. Also, don’t speak as I’m the only one in this, because to be completely honest, I’m barely qualified to talk about this in the first place, as I’m just a spectator around a small crew. I don’t need sympathy, though I do appreciate it – what we need is to continue to do what we do best: be ourselves.

For most of you guys, the sole thought of losing a dear friend is something truly serious. For me, however, it meant something a bit different.

It’s not so much about these two peculiar friends as simply being close to me – quite the contrary. They have never quite managed to be as close to me as they did to my best friend, Ravenstyles, who is currently in a devastated mood. However, it’s their personalities and the things they did 5 years ago that gave me a purpose in life.

It was around September, when Raven and Darkhand – good friends of mine since high school – invited me to Anicardios. It was a barebones site with almost nobody around to talk with, with a few minor exceptions. I then learn that it’s meant to be a secret site for personal projects between people with an equal mind-set. It was evident that I was being slowly accepted by the small group, getting along with the likes of the “don’t give a crap” Raven and the antics of funny-guy Holy. Soon, however, things took a turn to the unexpected, when two more friends joined the crowd: Holy’s eccentric sister, Veronica, and the love-freak Cosmic. The way they wrote their witty stuff and made me go nuts was something like falling in love with someone in first sight. it was certainly weird, in retrospect, but thinking back, I was just a teenager starting to learn what the internet is all about. That is, when I learned the truth: they were actually people who lived close to me.

I remember it like it was yesterday: Raven told me about how his friends would be around town at some point. Sadly, this was a time when I still didn’t have a driver’s license and not much liberty to run amok, so I was very exited by the fact that I was finally going to be able to hang out with Raven’s intriguing friends. Holy – a charismatic, jester-like dude who always seem to have a joke at the right moment; Veronica – a creepy goth girl who tends to press the patience of those who dare get close to her; and Cosmic – a sweet girl-next-door who was also an avid otaku and has some kind of obsession towards chibis for some reason. The reason why I was so amazed by them wasn’t so much about their personalities – I would’ve figured the world had millions of their own kind scattered around the globe. But rather, it’s because they existed right where I lived in – for once, I thought, I would never feel alone. For the first time, I felt that I fitted in a crowd.

That’s how much Anicardios means to me, to the point that I still remember everyone who joined in the forums and had a blast with all of us. Amaya – a motherly figure with a mischievous roleplaying skill; the Rose Twins – one being a self-contained whacko, the other a shy girl with real otaku issues; Darkhand – a childish teenager who had a hard time establishing his identity; and Luvly – a woman who has more roleplaying characters and usernames than we could ever shake off in any indefinite time. The crew went on to be called as the Anicardios Crew Alliance, or AcA for short, and I had the privilege to be one of their key graphic designers – so much, in fact, that Raven wears it proudly on his clothes wherever he goes.

Sadly, I never did have the chance to meet most of them in person. That fateful day only ended in failure, with me leaving downtown only to hear Raven from my phone that they were just a couple of meters away from me after I turned my back. Only a select few of them keep in contact with me after all these years. That said, I still heard from them, and I was overwhelmed with happiness when I finally got Veronica’s approval of our friendship after years of bad communication and Imaginer shenanigans. To think she and her brother would be gone by now is just unheard of.

This is why Anicardios is mourning the death of these two people (Holy and Veronica), and perhaps most importantly, it drives me to keep pushing towards my ultimate dream: one day, we will all gather in one place at a single time, doing what we do best: doing stuff together.

I’m one of the few who were late in the party. I got my SNES back in 1995, well long after its initial release in 1991. In all honesty, though, it matters little. Hell, I could say it mattered the most since it was the year when the SNES was at its prime, with such a huge library and games that came and go like crazy. Looking back now, it’s hard to imagine myself without a SNES. Arguably the best console ever made, the 16-bit beast was host for a ton of classics that I don’t know where to start.

Starting with this blog post, I’ll make a series of 5 lists in which I detail many of the games that I considered influential in my time with the precious console, in no particular order of preference or quality. Keep in mind that all of these games mentioned here have been games that I’ve either owned, rented, borrowed or played in some shape or form, and while I might not own some of them physically, they’re in my “must get/download to VC soon” list. With that being said, it’s time to go nostalgic!

Investors are pressuring Nintendo to start developing games on smartphones such as the mega-popular iPhone and the open-source Android phones by Google, but Satoru Iwata is shooting down every dream (or nightmare, depending on which side of the fence you’re at) of seeing Mario or Zelda outside the Nintendo 3DS or Wii. It just boils down to a single statement: so long as Iwata is in charge, there will be no chance that a first-party game will ever appear on a smartphone. Pokémon doesn’t count anymore; they’ve become more or less a separate identity and made themselves completely independent (for the most part), with only the major titles like the main entries or the spin-offs being published by Nintendo like any other second-party series. That doesn’t mean we’re about to see Pokémon on a Sony or Microsoft platform – it simply means that they have far more liberty than any of the other Nintendo franchises. Why do you think they could create the awesome Golbal Link and Dream World for PC in the first place?

But here’s the sad truth: smartphones are becoming more and more as the mainstream device of choice whenever you want to choose an entertainment device. I’m not talking about the reason why the 3DS flopped – that was just Nintendo’s stupidity to release it way too early in the first place. They’re losing stock not only for their errors with the console, but also because they’re sticking to an age-old formula of doing things your own way, without hearing what people want. This was somewhat rectified thanks to the Wii U, but even then people were confused after E3 went by thinking if this was a new console or a new controller, or if the Wii U will ever have quality titles on launch unlike the 3DS.

And now the 3DS has a price drop, and investors are just shrugging it off like it’s a laughable strategy. “OH LOOK!! THEY’RE DESPERATE!! Fuck you, Nintendo, I’ve got an Android to TLC.”

Is a Nintendo Phone imminent? Probably not. But I can bet your ass that if the 3DS doesn’t skyrocket the way it should by the end of the year, prepare yourself for the announcement of the Nintendo 3DS Phone.

Look, the whole “touchscreen and 3D don’t mix well” excuse Iwata gave is just plain bullshit. Look at this smartphone here:

The HTC EVO 3D. Multi-touchscreen, glasses-free 3D. Sleek and smooth, uses Android technology, can take 3D pictures. But I’m not here to promote a Sprint phone, I’m mostly pointing out that a touchscreen within a 3D screen is entirely possible, and Nintendo should have known that from the start. Of course, a multi-touchscreen is far more expensive than the DS’s single-touchscreen, so I can see what Nintendo meant. But a phone isn’t meant to be cheap – after all, you’re gonna make a 2-year data/phone contract with that greedy wireless service just to get that awesome gadget they’re offering. So Nintendo shouldn’t be scared of taking that risk in the first place.

Now, a 3DS Phone you say? How would it work? First of all, Nintendo already said that they won’t do their stuff for another platform. What’s the next step? Make your own! By bringing the 3DS Phone into the market, not only you’ll give people an option for people to jump in a different smartphone, but you’ll also have access to Nintendo’s 3DS library, the eShop, and of course, backwards compatibility with the DS. Even if they used a proprietary OS, if it’s easy to migrate from other OS sources, other companies will be more than happy to develop for the new gadget.

And now you ask: but what’s up with the Xperia Play? Didn’t that flop as well?

The Xperia Play was a frickin’ experiment by Sony to see if there was a market out there interested in a smartphone like that, but they flopped because the phone simply SUCKED like the rest of the Sony Ericsson line. Nintendo is different. They deliver quality stuff in whatever they do. And besides, the XPlay had PS1 ports; the 3DS has (and will have more) games made from the ground up for the console, which makes it even more appealing.

And finally, it boils down to aggressive marketing. Apple succeeded the same way with the iPhone. I don’t see why Nintendo shouldn’t do the same. Give out a smartphone that has all the features of the 3DS, improved battery, controls, a growing eShop library, Virtual Console support, PLUS 4G technology from the most reliable network on the USA…Verizon Motherfucking Wireless. With just that, not only you would be a huge contender for the poor iPhone and all the little Androids…but also take a huge chunk out of Sony’s PlayStation Vita as well.

Nintendo has the chance to make their portable industry fun again…it’s just up to them to switch focus and plow through.

Since this blog entry is going into every outlet I’m in (Facebook, Blogger, Deviantart), I’ll be very brief and cut to the chase: it’s been an awesome weekend with you guys and gals. I’ve only went Saturday, but the aftermath as I shared pics in Facebook and the thrill of thinking that I might end up joining in the cosplay hobby is just pure awesomeness. Thank you, especially those who not only let me capture on camera, but who were willing to start a new friendship with me.

This is not the end! I’m already looking forward towards future events, and it looks like Central Fan Fest might be the next place to go. Can’t say I’ll be going as someone there, though – any cosplay I might do may be for either next year or for Kaisen 9 this next Fall/Winter. So look out – The Jetman is blasting off to new heights, and not even the universe itself will stop him from reaching his goals! See ya around.

I was never fond of third-party controllers, and this guy was the culprit. It’s not a bad controller by any means – in fact, I like it because it has a very interesting design and includes features like turbo and slow motion – but the d-pad turned me off big time. Partially because I could remove it easily, and its rubber pads became loose (I changed them with an old Dualshock rubber that was no longer functional). Hell, these controllers were cheap – I remember my aunt buying these controllers for her kids only to be destroyed one week after. At least my SNES original pads were durable enough to resist any kind of damage.