Violin virtuoso plays a theme from Zelda Ocarina of Time

Unboxing Nintendo Wii Fit

Some two weeks ago, I got an SMS that my preordered Wii Fit balance board had arrived. Here are some pictures when unboxing the new thing:





An yes, just in case you might dought, I set a goal to lose some weigth that was nicely met this weekend...

Unboxing Wii Mario Kart

My children love playing Mario Kart on their Nintendo DS. Therefore buying them Wii Mario Kart was a no brainer. It will predictably be a hit with them. I preorder the game and an extra Wii Wheel at Game Mania and today I got an SMS alerting me it arrived. I was in the neighbourhood of the shop, so here are some unboxing pictures:




Official release of the game is foreseen for tomorrow 11 april 2008. Some predict shortages of Wii Mario Kart already. So if you consider buying the game, you better hurry to the shop.

GDC 08: Day 3 : Become a "spornstar"

"A future Wide Open: Unleashing the creative community" by John Schappert from Microsoft (see picture above). The new features of the Unreal engine looked cool. They announced games for the Zune (Zune what ?). An important message was that they will democratize game development with the Xbox Live Arcade. They even talked about a Belgian game : “Little Gamers.” This is a 2-D high definition action side-scroller based on the famous Web comic “Little Gamers” created by Loïc Dansart, a 24-year-old software developer from Belgium.


"Procedural Music in SPORE", Aaron McLeran and Kent Jolly (in the picture above). This talk actually blow my head. They used open software, called Pd (developed at UC San Diego), to generate music. So instead of listening to a track, in Spore, you're listening to a program. The program reacts, and hence the music, on events in the game. Very cool.

"Pollinating the universe: user-generated Content in SPORE", Caryl Shaw from Maxis.

It looks like Spore is the internet made easy. Basically they took over known internet community facilities to stimulate communities around Spore. The trick to hide the procedural stuff as payload in a PNG file is very clever. I remarked that one of the contributor to the sporepedia had as nickname "spornstar". Hence a new name for somebody who want to know everything about the Spore game and the title of the blogpost. Spore will be released on 5 September 2008 in Europe and a few day later in the States. The reason for that is that the market for PC games is bigger in Europe then in the States.

"How heroes are Made: A collaborative Approach to Serialized Content in a Transmedia World" by Jesse Alexander. This talk was cancelled. So I went to:
"Wii Fit : Creating a brand new interface for the home console", Takao Sawano from Nintendo.

My first experience with the Wii Fit was not instant fun. So my initial enthousiasm about this tempered. Bye, bye, Narnia.

Spore comes to Nintendo Wii

I've just read an interview with Will Wright. He announces some marvelous news: his new game "Spore" will also be released on the Nintendo Wii in the second quater of 2008. Just to wet your saliva go and look to Spore on EA's 360° panofantastic display.

Also "Lego Star Wars" is coming to the Wii end of 2007. The online mode is reserved for Xbox 360 and PS3 only. And Guitar Hero 3 for Wii and ... I'm gone write that nice letter to Santa Claus soon!!!

From 2399 to 2400: more then 65 love games needed

My collegue aiming for the ultimate 2400 Nintendo Wii Tennis level has continued his quest and completed already 65 love games. He says he'll persist in the chase of 2400 fame until 140 love games. Stay tuned.

From 2399 to 2400: more then 43 love games needed

The chap stryving for the ultimate 2400 Wii Tennis level has completed 43 love games. I somehow hoped for the jump to 2400 after 42 love games ;-). He says he'll persist in the chase of 2400 fame until 140 love games. Stay tuned.

If your Wii Tennis level is 2399, can you reach 2400 ?

A collegue reached a 2399 Wii Tennis level:


I wonder how much love games he has to play to reach 2400. If he will ever. To get from 2398 to 2399, 13 love games were needed. Already 24 love games with 2399 have been played. Stay tuned.

Absurd Nintendo Wii Tennis level ?

Since a few month, we have a Nintendo Wii installed in the coffee corner at work. Quite a lot of collegues play on it now and then. Francis is an avid user. Recently he reached a score of 2230 points in Wii Tennis. He's obviously has pro status. As you can see in the picture below, even Nintendo has not foreseen such high skills as the line runs into the title of the page!

Perhaps Francis should join Wiimbledom ?