Random Old Article

[gdedi]

Hey I remember digging up this old article when I was scowering the internet for cheez related things. It was a competitive pokemon event hosted by Jade and Ryan

palgn.com.au/article.php?id=273

[soundbreaker]

That would have been an awesome event to attend, had I lived near Darling Harbour at the time... and also known about the event.

I have attended various Nintendo event tours around Queensland over the years, but unfortunately they weren't hosted by Jade and Ryan. Usually it was some old fat bloke who didn't have a clue what he was announcing, but was obviously hired by someone so out-of-touch with the world of games themselves that they thought "Oh, this guy was a spruiker at a shopping centre for years, surely he'd be able to handle a group of young people and a few video games. Nothing to it."

;D It was amusing to hear the announcer struggle to sound like he knew what he was talking about. "Oh, watch out for that blue guy, he's gonna getcha! And here comes the big blasting attack! Ah... yes, the Hydro-Pump, gotta watch out for that... It's super-effective, apparently..."

[gdedi]

Funny, I had EXACTLY the same experience. I went to a Mario Kart Tournament a couple of years back. The announcer was some old guy, an employee of the shopping centre, and he had next to no idea what he was talking about half the time. I was talking to him afterwards and he says Nintendo would give him a run down of stuff to say only the day before, so you have to give em credit for being half decent For the record, I came second by a few hundredths of a second. It's been slowly eating away at my soul ever since



Oh and I find it kind of neat that they mention first impressions of Metroid Prime in that article. It ended up being one of my favourite ever games, it was amazing! Fast forward a few years and I've been lucky enough to break into the video games industry. The first thing I bought with my first ever pay cheque was a resin statuette of Samus, which now stands guard over my desk at work.



In a way, it ties my childhood and my current life neatly together, theres something beautiful in that

[soundbreaker]

A few hundredths of a second? Man, that must have been frustrating! Were there any good prizes?

Many years ago, I ended up winning the local heats of a tournament held for the release of Mario Kart for the GBA, but they didn't have their act together way back then, so there wasn't any higher stage to go to. I got a Pokemon Badge and some stickers for winning. I have to agree, Nintendo Tours nowadays are much better.

And that is a nice sentiment, with the Samus statue and all it represents, good on ya for makin' it into the industry! What kinda work are you doing? I can never seem to stay in the field for very long once I get in. Unfortunately for me, freelance designers are a dime-a-dozen nowadays.

[gdedi]

First prize: An years worth of DS games
Second prize: ...nothing! for the next week I was having flashbacks of all the little mistakes I made during the race haha

But yeah, Nintendo tours are pretty good these days. Anime conventions are pretty good for console games comps too. I won a neat little GBA Micro for first place in a Super Smash Bros comp at AVCon. You guys would have SupaNova coming up over there.

I'm a Programmer at Krome Studios, started a few months back. They were working on the Wii/PS2/PSP versions of Star Wars: The Force Unleashed before I got hired. Current project I'm still not allowed to talk about, but it's a Wii/PS2 game due on the shelves in September. Krome Melbourne though have just announced their Transformers game for Wii/PS2, a tie in with the new movie.

Didn't know you've done design work? What kind of stuff have you worked on?

[soundbreaker]

Yeah, I usually go to Supanova when it's on. Last year they had a couple of Mario Kart Arcade machines set up, which I was excited to play for as long as they'd let me. However, it's at the annual Animania convention in Brunswick Street where they usually hold a Smash Bros Tournament. Some of the best players in Queensland turn up, and it's fun to have a go and try my luck against them.

Oh snap! Krome? Man, you're way above me! I've just been doing small-time print design and flash stuff. One of the better jobs I picked up a while ago was for the Department of Education and the Arts for the Qld Gov. They basically just wanted me to make educational flash games for kids on the distance-education program. Easy money.

I've got a half-completed website at hyrule.ash8.com with crap that I've just thrown on there. It kinda looks like my band folder vomited on the internet, and I'm too lazy to properly format and organise it.

[gdedi]

A lot of hard work and a bit of luck got me into Krome. 3 years of uni followed by 8 solid months of working ridiculous hours on a Half Life 2 mod with some TAFE artists. I actually emailed Ryan, cheez tv Ryan, and he offered to write us up some custom music tracks for it! They were really pretty awesome! He really knows his stuff about movie tunes especially, but we never ended up using his tracks because of some people issues at our end and the scope of the game changing.

www.moddb.com/mods/mentality

4 of those TAFE guys are now at Team Bondi, working on LA Noire. So yeah, a bunch of us got hired after only a few months of modding, which is pretty cool ;D

Awesome work with the site man! Love the stupid questions rap and the rest of the music, really good stuff. If you ever want to apply for krome brissy, let me know and I'll try to pull some strings...not sure what sort of power a newbie programmer like me wields though

[soundbreaker]

Damn, that HL2 mod looks freakin' scary/awesome! The description makes it sound like something along the lines of Eternal Darkness, but it's got the gameplay of an FPS, which makes it look faster and more immersive. I'm amazed and impressed that you got Ryan to make some tracks for you! It's a shame you didn't get a chance to use them.

Thanks for the compliments man! And thanks for the offer, but I'm not exactly sure Krome Brisbane would be looking for a hobby musician or small-time designer.