Remember that sketch a day routine I suggested last week. Well it's back, only not quite so themed. The reason I stopped in the first place is because thqat Midna picture really bummed me out. It sucked. Hard core.

Well, I've actually got two days worth of drawing goodness, so I'll give you the first one:

From left to right:

My Guitar Hero guitar. Take special note of the Limozeen and Teen Girl Squad stickers. Okay, they're kind of hard to see.

Yuna, a la Final Fantasy X

Some teacup from my sisters' tea set.

Mario as seen in Mario Sunshine (an awesome game). I'm really pleased with how that came out. Also, there's Toad. I wasn't really trying to get a good shape or anything, I just wanted something to test my new pens out on. Up at the top is a little tuft of hair. Just wanted to practice some hair shading.

Keep those RSS readers tuned to here for more arty updates. And other.... stuff.

Today is my second day of being unemployed. It's a somewhat bittersweet feeling. It's awesome not to have to have the nightmares of work hanging over my head, but on the flipside I won't be able to hang around with all the pals I made over the last year and a half. Not to mention the seemingly endless supply of money is non-existant now. Oh well.

What really sucks, though, is the fact that I've been sick the last several days. Actually it's more allergies than anything else. I blame the rotting vegitation due to receeding flood waters.

I recently finished Crackdown. It's an awesome game but the ending really, really sucks. It sucked so bad I haven't played it since. Originally I bought Crackdown for the Halo 3 beta (which I never really played much) but the main game is still pretty sweet. I probably will start working on Final Fantasy XII again or maybe Halo 2. Come to think of it I haven't even finished Halo 1. Oh, Xbox 360 extended warranty ftw! I'm no longer paranoid about using it.

Well, I have an important nap I have to take, so later!

I'm going to do something interesting this week and post all sorts of nonsense top 5 lists. Why? Because I can. That, my friend, is the beauty of the internets.

Top 5 Games I Wasted Too Much Time Playing

5. Guitar Hero (I and II)

I will go on the record and say this is probably the best game of this generation. If I were getting paid per hour to play this game the same amount I'm getting paid to push carts I'd be freakin' rich. I figure I've probably played Freebird alone somewhere around 50-100 times and it's a ten minute song. It never really gets old.

4. Final Fantasy VI

Only the best RPG made for the SNES, nay, of all time. I've fully completed this game three times, partially many more, and I plan on playing through it again before I head off to college. It's that good.

3. The Legend of Zelda - A Link to the Past

I remember the first time I finally made it through this game. I'd been playing it for darn near a year. I probably explored every nook and cranny and thensome. I've since made it through twice on GBA and clocked many more hours on PC via emulation. Defeinitely one of the best games ever.

2. Super Mario Bros. 3

The very first game I ever played. I haven't played this one to completion as many times as other games (due mainly to the fact that there's no save in the original NES version) but I did play it almost every day for pretty much the entire life of my first NES (two or three years). I have it on for my NES now (and I crack it out once in a while) and have the GBA version. This game pretty much set and holds the standard for all patforming games. Nothing's come close since.

1. Tetris Attack

Oh, my gosh. Where to begin. I've clocked more hours on this game than probably all the others combined. I've spent countless hours writing this game on five different occasions (and am currently doing so again). I haven't bought Plant Puzzle League for DS because I'm a Tetris Attack purist. Give me Blargg or give me death! Actually, I probably should buy it just for the online play, but I'd use standard controls. None of this touch screen crap.

I do need to mention that Rogue Squadron, Episode I Racer, Zelda OoT, and Mario 64 are close runner ups. So, there you have it. Day one completed. Stay tuned for more inaninty on here at dxprog.com.

Because I completed yet another work of art!

Overall I'm pretty pleased with it. It's a far sight better than the original pencil art I had. However, the top part of the body seems to be a bit too small compared to everythiong else. But, considering I don't draw girls very often I'll give myself a break. I suppose it's one of those things I'll need to work on eventually.

This whole mess of pictures actually comes from one piece of art I'd drawn a while back for a comic (the point of which now escapes me). I've enjoyed being able to make purty art again and I may keep it up just to keep me busy until September.

Speaking of which, I've begun searching for a roommate. I've e-mailed a couple guys now and I hope to hear back from some one. Also, I'm pretty darn sure that I'll be adding animation as a second degree. Drawing these pictres has really hit home that, hey, I'm not that bad of an artist and, most importantly, I had a hell of a time doing it. So I'll need to e-mail them and see how much it'll cost me to tack that on. That'd also mean spending twice as long at school, but it's so freakin' cool that's hardly a problem ;-).

I completed a new piece of art today. I'm following in my FFXII series and bring you a new, better picture of Basch - man of awesomeness.

Wow! Two posts in one day?! I must be on crack! Tonight I give you another sad venture into art on my behalf. This time it is Terra of Final Fantasy VI fame. If you couldn't tell this one was done in colored pencil.

I haven't been posting here very much lately. Why? Well... I dunno :-P. Firstly, though, I'll get the comic links up to speed:

Plan 4 World Peace (filler)

The Fruit Saga, Parts 1, 2, and 3.

The fruit saga is more or less based on real life. I did purchase a Mac mini with my tax refund and, despite my years of rampant Mac hatred, I must admit that it is a nifty piece of hardware. I do have a copy of Vista installed (thanks to bootcamp), but I haven't booted out of OS X in several days. I haven't done much more than piddle around with stuff, but I'm going to start learning the APIs and maybe write a game.

Full Sail, my college of choice, has been "pestering" me lately and I guess I need to call them back and start getting things setup to sail away in the fall. I'm not sure what kind of course I want to take. Back when I heard about them it was game programming hands down, but I do enjoy drawing and would like to do more film projects. It's a real toss up. I may go with game programming yet because, of those three options, it's probably my strongest area. We'll see, though...

As far as work goes, it's pretty much usual. I'm cashier mostly, but since I recieved my CSM powers I've been doing that some too. Just yesterday, in fact, they pulled me off a register to cover for somebody whilst they went on break. I'm sitting in a pretty sweet position in that I can do almost anything in the store from CSMing, to cashiering, to cart pushing, to unloading trucks, etc.

Well, I'll close this blog post with a little piece of my art featuring Basch, my favorite character from FFXII:

Firstly, today's comic.

I'm not sure if I've said or not, but I'm currently in the middle of my two week hiatus from Wal-Mart (unpaid, sadly, but I'm not one to quibble when it means two weeks of care free goodness). One of the things I vowed to do in my two weeks of freedom was teach myself how to play piano. Overall I'd say it's going pretty well and having a keyboard that totally rocks helps ;-). But don't take my word for it, here's me playing a little piece of Zelda music (actually, I've been passively working on learning this piece for over a year :-P):

[video=http://www.youtube.com/v/BJCFtI9wjcQ]

I'm hoping that by next summer I'll be proficient enough to play the song in its entirety (without screwing up) along with some others (Final Fantasy X's To Zanarkand being of them).

Speaking of FFX, I am currently enjoying being beaten by the game. The story started off kind of slow (almost to the point of me deciding never to play again), but it's picked up to the point of having me completely sucked in. So I've been playing a bit lately (excluding all my annihilations I believe my play time is somewhere around 26 hours) and hopefully I'll have beaten the stupid thing before I have to go back to work (at which point I'll start playing FFX-2).

I've started on a DS game. That's all I'll say because I tend to make these announcements with all sorts of grandiose promises and give up after about five minutes of coding. Yeah... it's dumb.

Okay, now you're all caught up for the next several months. I'll probably post something again before I go to college next fall.

Comic

Okay, first of all I'm really ticked at myself for spelling crystal wrong in the comic title. Oh, well, I'm too lazy to change it now :-P.

The idea behind this is pretty self-explanitory. Oh, an Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles is a darn fun game (not to mention probably the prettiest game I've ever seen).

But that's about all I have to say about that.

Comic

Yeah, so I bought a PS2. For me, this is a rather huge ordeal because hating the PS2 (or anything Playstation) was like a strange sort of religion. I grew up on Nintendo, everything else was just... well... evil (though, I never had a problem with the xbox, go figure).

So, yeah, I bought a PS2 for Guitar Hero which is, in my opinion, one of the greatest games ever made. It's kind of like DDR for your fingers, but also has some really great music to boot. From great oldies to some new stuff (like "All of This" by Shaimus). Currently I'm making my way through hard mode which is quite a challenge (especially when the devil pinky won't cooperate).

I do have some more stuff in mind for my little PS2 (emphesis on the little as I got a slim). I bought the Gameshark media player for it which'll stream my videos over the network (very sweet) and, of course, I'll invest in Guitar Hero 2. And probably the Final Fantasy titles I've missed since VI for the SNES (which will always be my favorite, though).

Ah, well, I got a little long winded. Guess I'm enjoying this PS2 thing more than I thought I would ;-).

The last real missing piece of the redesign is now in place. Just take a look to your right and you'll see what I mean. To save having a really short post I suppose I can give a general update on what's going on.

Let's see... I'm still a cashier/cart pusher. I'm enjoying Halo's online play immensely. I'm almost to the floating continent on FFVI. I enjoy going to college with Elvis on the weekends, and I'm thinking of moving out. Yes, you read that correctly, I'm going to college with Elvis ;-).

Seriously, though, I am making plans for moving out of the house and into an apartment. A couple of hurdles I need to get over are lack of GED and car, but otherwise I think I'm in a finacially tenable position to pull it off. Jeff also wants to move out and board with me, which would be cool. I'm already dreaming of the awesome Smash Bros. game-a-thon parties I could host.... oh, yeah.

Just a quick low-down before I launch into more Matt lore. We've started ripping up carpet in the house and using the hardwood floors underneath. I've also decided that I'll be writing a platform game as my next project.

But without further ado, here's what you've been waiting for!

My First Love: Nintendo

Ah, the Nintendo. Such a wondrous machine that could send one on fantastic adventures. My first encounter with the magical gray box was in the early '90s. I believe that one day Dad just showed up with an NES (rental). He got it all hooked up and slapped in Mario 3. My world was forever changed. I don't remember exactly how old I was at the time, but I'm thinking probably four or five. After the first encounter we would every so often jaunter down to Popingo (long since out of business) and rent a machine and good ol' Mario 3. Now in my mind this was a good as it got. I don't think I ever really thought of owning one (maybe in my dreams), so it was a complete surprise when that day came:

It was a usual day; I was waiting for mom to pick me up from school (yeah, I went to school at one time). She pulled up and I plopped myself in the backseat and next to me was a box and inside that box was an NES. My first thought was "Whoohoo! Another weekend of fun!" until Mom said "It's ours". My Uncle Dan had mailed us his old machine and game collection. I believe the games we had were: Top Gun, Spy Hunter, Mario & Duck Hunt. About a year later he also sent us Paperboy (which had apparently been sitting in his car). Needless to say I was probably bouncing off the walls with joy. The next big thing was the day that Dad rented the original Zelda (though to this day he denies that he's the one who picked it out). So that was that: I was a Nintendo Fanboy for life.

Over the years we expanded our game collection. We eventually bought Mario 3 which has an interesting story behind it. Apparently some guy bought it thinking it was an SNES games. Of course it wasn't so he took it to some video rental store (name escapes me) and they sold it dirt cheap. We also picked up some other games like Star Trek and Gauntlet II.

But after a while the same old games are, well, the same old games (though I still enjoy Mario 3 to this day). So I started pining away for the new kid on the block (which was about four years old at that point :-P): the SNES. Whenever we'd go to a store, if they had an SNES set up I'd be there playing it. At one point I actually had enough money to buy one... and then it went off sale. I was pretty ticked. My Uncle Dan was down and I know I tried to get him to give me enough money to buy the thing. <WARNING>DEEP DARK REVEALED HERE</WARNING>I even went so far as to write a priest friend of mine saying more or less:

"I broke a lamp and my mom wants me to replace it but won't let me do any kind of fund raising and I don't have any money. Could you lend me $50?"

Yeah, lying to a preist. Reeaaall smart :-P. Needless to say I didn't get a reply. I saw him a few years after I wrote that letter and I was afraid he'd mention it. Maybe he didn't see it, maybe he forgot about it, maybe he realized that I was a stupid little kid then because he never mentioned it.

But anyways, I believe it was that Christmas of that year, 1996, that my dream finally came true. I remember it like it was yesterday:

* rip rip rip *

Me: (hold SimCity in hand) Why did we get an SNES game if we don't have an SNES?

My thought process at that moment was: Well, maybe some games work in both NES and SNES. I was trying not to be too hopeful.

Chris, a couple feet from me, was taking the paper off the machine. Well, screw that thought.

That was a pretty magical time. Probably the high point of my gaming experience. Not too long after Christmas we, Jeff, Chris, and I, were going to buy Yoshi's Island. I could have afforded it myself but, as happened earlier, it went off sale. But at the last minute Chris backed out to pursue his own whims and we couldn't afford it anymore. So I opted for Zelda: A Link to the Past instead. All I had to do was borrow a dollar from Jeff to make ends meet on that one. It was probably one of the best games I ever bought. It took me over a year to make it through that game (recently I beat it in about a week :-P).

There's a tale that I have to tell and not sure where it fits in chronologically, so I'll tell it here. I was pals with an older dude (I call him a dude because he was one) called Dick. I knew him mainly through the Knights of Columbus breakfasts. A side story: I remember one time when he came to school to drill my class on math facts. Everybody was appalled that I called him Dick "*gasp* You're supposed to call him Mr. Kamp!". He never had a problem that I called him, in fact, I think he got a kick out of it. But anyways, he would often bet me that I couldn't do something (and I usually couldn't). So one day he said "If you can make it through Link's Awakening I'll take you out to eat if you don't you'll buy me breakfast." Well, I nought him breakfast. But along with Zelda he also lent us Final Fantasy III and Donkey Kong Country (yeah, he was a dude ;-)). The next time I saw him I bet that he couldn't make it through _my_ Zelda game (same deal, go out to eat or buy breakfast). Well he didn't make it through so one afternoon we went to Murphy's. That was probably one of the best afternoons of my life. I was glad that we did that before he passed away.

Somewhere in our SNES the N64 was released. I remember well playing Mario 64 at Wal-Mart and being absolutley blown away by it. 3D games were something I had never really thought about so this was something totally new to me. As with the SNES I would play any N64 I came accross. But it was never to be that we'd own one and thus I entered the Dark Times.

We had the Dell by that time and I was starting to get a sense of the vastness of the Internet and somewhere in there I discovered ROMs and emulators. I believe it was on a Zelda site that I first discovered them. So I got to thinking: If they have these ROMs of Zelda perhaps they have them for other games. Yeah... they did. I believe the next thing I got was Final Fantasy III. It went around like this for a little bit until one day I went looking for N64 ROMs. I found them and being on dial-up at the time was appalled at the size. Mario 64 I was able to get in one run when Mom and Dad were out and Zelda 64 I downloaded over the course of several 20 miute spurts when Mom would take Dad back to work (see the trend here?). But I didn't stop there, I also got Star Fox 64 and Mario Kart 64. I was a crazy little copyright infringer. Then came the big hard drive wipe (my fault :-P). I never really delved into emulation quite as much again.

Christmas 2001 was the next major step and probably the most shocking of all the Christmases: Jeff, Chris, and I all got our own Gameboy Colors (mine was purple ;-)). I couldn't believe that that was actually happening. It started with Chris opening his and I thought "Lucky butt". Then Jeff opened his and I was more like "Oh.. my.. GOSH!!". We quickly forgot about the fact that the SNES had been put up forever becuase now we had portables! Chris went on to own every GBC Zelda game there was (and they are good, good games too). We have such a large number of GBC games it almost rediculous. This came, hilariously, around my decline in the video game immersion. Out of the 15-20 GB games we owned, I had two.

We were happy for a year or more until all the good old SNES games started coming out for GBA (Mario 3, Yoshi's Island, etc.). That's when we started yearning for more (greedy little brats we are, eh? ;-)). One day last year I just upped and said "I'm buying a GBA whether you like it or not!" and mom said "OK". Well, that opened the door and everybody got GBAs (curse them, why can't _I_ be on top? ;-)). Well, actually, that's a stupid question there because I do own the brunt of the GBA games now: Zelda: Link to the Past, Mario 3, Minish Cap, an eReader. Sometime this year, and I really couldn't tell you why, I decided I'd rather have an SP. So I used some of the money I got from felling trees to upgrade and I am really happy now that I did. Heck, even mom likes the thing :-P. It's the perfect portable: small, foldable, very sleek. I have a media player for it and so it's also my "iPod". My ultimate goal is to have all the games that I played as a kid on the SNES for my GBA and then I think I can stop there (Jeff and Chris went on to get DSes, I'm pretty happy where I am).

Now that the GBA stuff is out of the way there's only one last thing to cover: Gamecube. 2003 came and we had been console-less for a few years. The Gamecube was the new trinket so I made it my goal that Christmas to make sure I could squeak in a little Gamecube plug to the parents. I never actually expected it to work, but apparently it did. I was shocked to say the least. It's been fun to be riding the edge for a change and the games for GC are awesome. Mario Sunshine is every bit as fun as Mario 64, Wind Waker just rocks the house as does Super Smash Bros Melee and I'll be looking forward to playing Twilight Princess this fall.

So there you have it. Our journey towards Nintendodom got off to a rocky start but we're certainly in the thick of things now. And one thing I forgot to mention: It was probably Nintendo that sparked my intrest in becoming a game programmer (as you can well see it certainly played an integral part of my childhood). Looking towars the future I plan on owning a Revolution if not just to have all those wonderful NES, SNES and N64 games at my fingertips. That's all for this entry, tune in next time for: Memiors of a Kid.

I'm currently bogged down by a bunch of various projects and am having some trouble getting myself motivated to complete them. The biggest is, yet again, Tetra. I'm also starting some GBA dev and trying to get ACPD3 finished.

In other news, I finally seem to have gotten accustomed to the grips in my bowling ball. The other night I shot my current all time high of 172... very sweet :-D. I also shot an all time high series of 501.. also very sweet ;-). I'm hoping to take advantage of some of that beautiful free bowling tonight or tomorrow. Dad's got the rest of the week off so I don't think it'll be too hard to swing ;-).

I've gotten myself hooked on Final Fantasy III/VI again. Console Classix is a very, very cool thing :-) (though, I'm kind of mooching off my younger brother's subscription ;-)). I'd forgotten how great that game is. I'm considering getting the FF anthology that was released for the Playstation, but I'm not sure yet. One thing I am sure of is that this weekend I'll be reserving my copy of Twilight Princess... it looks oh so cool!

Well, I'm sure I've bored y'all to tears, but hey, now you get ae more personal insight into the person known as... dxprog!