Break Out the Blue

Break Out the Blue,
originally uploaded by End of Level Boss.

Australia's answer to the Cherry Blossom. The Jacaranda. Now is full bloom and very very dramatic!

Last Sunday we hiked about in the Blue Mountains. Wentworth Falls to be more precise. Turns out Sydney's grand Tourist Attraction is there not because of the sisters alone! I took a total of 190 odd photo's of which I have posted the best on Flickr.com.

The grand highlight of the day was a team of abseilers we spotted scaling a 300 metre waterfall into a lake below. Logan couldn't help stripping down and diving in like some Tarzan wannabe! LOL That guy is nuts. But it looked like fun diving in. I never expected to see enough water in that section to be able to swim in. Guess I'll know next time and try it on our next trip.

10 Reviews In One Day!

Well OK I cheated. I scanned them from old old issues of Megazone I had stored away in the garage. But the transfer from print to screen was not smooth. OCR (Optic Character Reading) technology is a little wishy washy at best. But sure beats retyping them totally. These are the old games revisited: Gauntlet: The Third Encounter - Atari Lynx Test Drive 2: The Duel - Mega Drive Streets of Rage - Game Gear Mick & Mack: Global Gladiators - Mega Drive RoadBlasters - Atari Lynx NHLPA Hockey 93 - Mega Drive Mickey Mouse: World of Illusion - Mega Drive James Bond: The Duel - Mega Drive Contra III: The Alien Wars - Super Nintendo F22 Interceptor - Mega Drive Yeah I know. Some real crusty ones in there. But I'm extrating these reviews as I find them. No order of preference! Quite a trip down memory lane indeed!

End Of Level Boss

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Job Envy

Just got word that a mate of mine who use to be all jealous of the fact that I was working for Sega here in Sydney Australia on the Sega Hotline as a professional game player is now working for Sega in Japan! So basically he saw my Sega Hotline job and raised me a Japanese location! This guy speaks fluent Japanese which is something I never got the chance to learn in school. Back in 1990 I was running my own Fanzine (as we didn't have internet back then we resorted to more dire actions to get our opinions out there!) called "The Sega Times" and once I got my job in Sega I kinda let it go and stopped running the fanzine. But we wanted to run up a magazine of our own simply called Vid Gamzin' which was going to feature ALL consoles. We had our own artist who thrived on drawing SF2 characters with huge muscles and small heads! We had mates queing up to get reviews printed. There was me with the internal access to Sega and Gwyn my mate who wrote the longest reviews in a flash and LOVED RPG's!

Well the magazine didn't eventuate for one reason or another. Mostly because I was as poor as anything spending money on going out on the piss! But mostly because some people who promised to kick in and fund it ran off when the time came to produce the dough. But who'd have thought 10 years later there'd be this whole internet thingy and games would be downloaded and portable colour games would be played via a thing called Wi-Fi and against people from around the world?

Good luck with the job in Sega Gwyn and you know one thing is for sure. I'm as jealous as all *(^)#_&! LOL

Tokyo (In A Chestnut)

I have always had an unhealthy appetite for video games. My first game I ever played would be Space Invaders to risk sounding like a cliche but for those not around at the time of Mi-Sex's hit "Computer Games" Spacies WAS big. Space Invaders even had it's own hit song back then which was heavily played on the radio while we spent obsene amount of hours shooting away at the MYSTERY BONUS. But way back then in 1980 in a corner milk bar standing in amazement at the new "colour" edition of Space Invaders I had no idea of the culture that spawned those addictive 20c coin gobblers.

I've been accused of liking Japan simply for it's creation of the video game industry. At first this would have been a fair statement. But after serious time spent sifting through Japanese text filled magazines to find the screen shots of what games will hit Mega Drive next you can't help but notice that behind the amazingly standardised but creative media that was gaming stood a culture that was as intriguing as the very games that were exported from it. But it wasn't till a game called Shenmue for the Sega Dreamcast gave this meatpie munching Aussie who came from an area that looked like a scene from Skippy the Bush Kangaroo an insight to the culture that is Nippon Japan. The game allowed the player to "live" the life of a Japanese teenager as he woke up, worked, explored and lived the life of a typical Japanese local in the 80's in extrodinary conditions. I've read complaints from some saying why would you wanna play a game where you do everyday stuff in real time. My answer would be to experience a life style that would normally elude you. Now some years after first experiencing Shenmue 1 & 2 I have come to appreciate the attention to detail Sega were to bless this title with.

My first moment in Japan was spent greeting the many people gathered to meet us for our arrival. After the initial nicities were exchanged I noticed the amount of blinking warning signs, audio auto annoucements and dependancy on order that was present at the airport. I was to later find this to be constant in my travels around Japan as I journeyed to my friends house 2 hours North East of Narita. Even the convenience shops were nothing but orderly and arranged in an efficient manner. The first of many comparisons to Shenmue were being made.

But later in the night life of Tokyo the comparisons came to an abrupt halt. My time in Tokyo was to be brief. This was a sad fact that I was not happy with but decided that I simply must absorb as much of the atmosphere as possible. But walking under one of the many Japanese JR train over head bridges I saw a site that you'd only be able to appreciate if you are there for yourself. I noticed in the mild conditions a homeless guy lying on the footpath. Every city has their homeless issues to deal with. But how many have homeless that read Japanese Anime comics? This is probably no big whoop for a local to see but as a westerner with something of a sketchy understanding of their culture I was not prepared for an image like that!

9pm on local roads in Sydney would be quiet and eerie. But Japan is a buzz of energy as local shops stay open to take advantage of the swarm of possible customers who negotiate every traffic light like obediant masses. Even though shops are closing up the crowds still seem to meandre about looking for bargains, gifts and prize gifts to add to their hull.

A dinner under a busy Japanese subway brings out the nicest aspect of Japanese lifestyle. The Japanese's drive to keep the customer happy. The Japanese have a saying. It's not "the Customer is Always Right". Instead it reads simply "Customer is King". Enter any shop and you are welcomed by a collective scream of "WELCOME!" (in Japanese of course) and if you have a query you'll either have the staff member readily accomodate you or frantically find someone else who can.

RIP Snoopy 1991 - 2006

Today just before heading off to work I learnt of some news that I knew would come some day soon. Our family dog, Snoopy, has passed away. This old boy lived two lives. One as a family dog in Menai with us as Wayne and I were finishing up high school. The other as a guard dog with the parents as he headed up with them to Wellington. He managed to even have a litter with Patch which is where my old dog, Kimba, came from. When he first entered our lives I was just starting off work in Sega, no internet was mentioned in public and mobile phones were those ridiculous things you saw on Miami Vice. He survived freezing nights and boiling hot days at Wellington and was as active as a pup almost to the end.

The last time I saw the old boy was Christmas last year but I kinda felt that it was to be the last time. I did hope to catch up with the dog in a few weeks time to see him off but not to be. I remember teaching him how to look for the tennis ball, catch a footy in the backyard and chase off rogue dogs out of the street! He impressed Mamiko and Megumi (my Japanese pen pals) with his athletic abilities as he somersaulted his way to catching balls and he was a permanent figure in the back yard. It’ll be hard to think of the back yard without him.