matt hackmann - web developer - artist - nerd

I don't make it a secret that I have thoroughly enjoyed the Ace Attorney. series. There's so much to enjoy about them; the crazy cast of characters, the edge of your seat stories and the twists they take out of seemingly nowhere. Be it Mr. Wright himself or his vest wearing successor, Apollo Justice, there's no doubt that these are incredibly addictive, quality games. However, there was one character that we as fans had always wanted to play as, but were only given the opportunity briefly; the egotistic, pompous and slightly emo Miles Edgeworth. Well, Capcom heard the cries of the fans and bestowed upon us Miles Edgeworth: Ace Attorney Investigations.

So, after that crazy run of reviews, it turns out that there a few things I missed. And I'm really kicking myself for missing these because they were all high caliber titles. So, a few weeks late and out of context, I bring you the remainder of '08-'09 reviews.

Professor Layton and the Curious Village

So, I've been out of school for nearly two months now. Of course, it took them this long to get me my diploma. Now, I am usually a fairly patient person, but there is one exception to that rule: mail order. Waiting for this diploma was like ordering something from Amazon and then having to wait two years for it to get here. But, it's here now and all is right with the world.

Well, it would be if I had a job. I've applied to three places now, those being ConocoPhillips, Griffin New Media (both web dev jobs), and a contract motion graphics job out in Florida with Feld Entertainment. Phillips I didn't hear back from for a month and a half and at that the only contact I had was a short note saying I'd been passed up. I got calls from both Griffin and Feld (on the same day even), but Feld never called back after their initial call.

Griffin, on the other hand, has taken an interest in me and I've had two interviews there now (both of which went pretty well, in my opinion). The people I've interviewed with have been extremely nice and seem to have my interests in mind as well as theirs. My first interview seemed mostly to quiz me on my web development knowledge in addition to establishing what the position I'd applied for entailed. The second was more formal in terms of the questions asked and the environment in which it was conducted. Also in that interview, I had to take a skills test in which was given an hour to design and code a small contest entry page. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to finish everything on the list, though my design was good and my HTML validated first crack out of the barrel. So, at this point I'm waiting to hear back from them. I'm really hoping for this job because it's everything I've been working towards the last several years and the environment and people working there are really nice.

Outside of job hunting, there hasn't been too much more going on in my life. So, instead of wasting precious bytes telling you how awesome the Taiko no Tasujin series of games is, I'll wrap it up here.

Now, I realize that the "system specs" spewed forth in the above video were probably intentionally skewed so as to follow the whacky, 80s style zaniness, but as an uber nerd and somebody who's intimately familiar with NES hardware, I feel compelled to correct their errors.

Claim #1: 3.58Mhz video core clock speed

The NES video processor, a Ricoh 2C02 "Picture Processing Unit", or PPU, is actually clocked at 5.37Mhz. The CPU is exactly one third of this, or 1.79Mhz. The figure they're quoting is the timing of a color NTSC signal.

Claim #2: 240x226 resolution

The PPU actually worked with an internal resolution 256x240, though most old TVs did not display the first and last eight scanlines effectively making the resolution 256x224. This was the same for both NTSC and PAL models.

Claim #3: 16 sprite pixel depth

I don't even know where to begin on this one. Firstly, the NES had enough sprite RAM (object attribute memory, or OAM) for 64, 8x8 or 8x16 sprites. Secondly, every sprite could have three colors (four if you include transparency) from a palette of 53 colors. Every scanline could hae a maximum of eight sprites, and when this limit was exceeded some sprites were not drawn causing the infamous flicker. Finally, you could have a total of 25 colors per scanline. What the hell they were talking about to begin with baffles me, but there were no 16s involved there at all. Except maybe that internal 16-bit PPU register that could be written to through dual writes to address $2006....

Claim #4: NES has a Zilog Z80 processor

This one's easy. The NES did not have a Z80. It had a Ricoh 2A03, which was a 6502 without decimal mode and a set of sound instructions. The Gameboy, however, had a Z80 and the Sega Genesis used one as its sound processor.

Claim #5 It's an 8-bit system

Well, that's about the only thing they got right. Though, the system did have a 16-bit address bus....

Well, I'm finished. I'm sure somewhere God has smote a kitten for my nerdy rantingness, but it had to be said and I said it. Caio.