12.27.07
The End Is Near!
So, we’re coming up on the end of 2007. It’s been a good year, to be honest; lots of little things went very right, which far more than made up for the things that went wrong. Rather than detail everything, I figure it’s best to just say “it was a good year” and move forward.
There’s some developments recently that are worth mentioning. I hit the used movie store with some of the Christmas money and managed to reach over 50% collected on the Reclamation List. Which was a pretty big goal for me, actually, especially given that I expected it to take a lot longer and a lot more money than it actually did. (For those of you keeping score at home, that’s 59 items reclaimed of 117, with another 24 items on top of that listed as ‘will not reclaim’. For an overall percentage, I’m just shy of 71% done.) Some were multiple items (I counted the Matrix Trilogy as one item, even though I bought the discs separately), and others are somewhat more difficult to find or afford (read: Lunar, several PS1 titles). As a result, over the coming weekend I’m going to redesign the Reclamation List, put a couple more items onto it, and have a fresh sheet ready for 2008.
And I will ignore that list due to trying to work through the Backlog of Moderate Annoyance. I’m taking a page from Rick’s moratorium on purchases, and re-establishing it on my own end for the first few months. The only planned purchases right now are Smash Brawl and Professor Layton, both in February– and Prof. Layton might be dropped off if I don’t have at least two Game Clears before the 10th. The earliest I’d be looking to work on Reclamation List ‘08 would probably be the end of March or the middle of April, when Tekkoshocon happens.
Speaking of Tekkoshocon. I decided to double-check the date for the coming year and found that the venerable convention– which has been at the Monroeville ExpoMart for the two years that I was in attendance– is actually changing venues, jumping across town to a different convention center. This is because the ExpoMart is being demolished. I guess the pungent aroma of Otaku Funk was just too much for the hall to bear… or, more likely, it was just damn old. Which it is. But I like my explanation better, because it makes my chosen subculture feel more important and mainstream than we really are. *ahem* Anyway, I’m hoping that Mad Gear shows up in the Dealer’s Room this year; yeah, yeah, commercialism is bad, but I like them, and their staff is very friendly.
Hey, that takes us nicely to game news. It’s amazing how smoothly I link these things, huh? Anyway, a couple of things worth mentioning here; I found this morning that Marvelous Interactive, who publish the Harvest Moon and Luminous Arc series in Japan, are opening a US division within the year. On the one hand, I’m thrilled that another niche publisher is taking the plunge on a US distribution arm, but on the other hand, it means that we’re likely going to be getting an unproven translation team for Luminous Arc 2. Which worries me greatly.
Oooh, SimCity DS 2 looks to be using the MySims art style! I like that. It’ll probably never leave Japan, but I like it.
There’s also some other things coming up, but I’ll go ahead and use those for the next couple of days’ entries. Stay tuned, folks: we’re going to become staunchly resolute before the year is out.