Alicia and I have finally recovered from our whirlwind trip to Japan last month, and taken our first stab at narrowing down the large number of photographs into something worth viewing. We only visited four cities during our two-week journey (Tokyo, Kyoto, Osaka, and Hiroshima), and it feels like we barely scratched the surface of the country. Needless to say, it proved to be a fascinating and refreshingly different culture, one where old traditions collide with new technology and forward thinking.

A lot of people have asked why we chose to visit Japan, and to be honest, I’m not entirely sure. I think we were looking for a challenge of sorts, a bigger trip that would top some of our previous vacations and end up being a true adventure. Alicia had taken a class in Japanese so she knew a little bit of the language, and myself being a video game and gadget addict also felt drawn to this country for obvious reasons. Maybe I’ll write up something more about the trip down the road, but in the meantime, feel free to ask any questions you might have in the comments.

On a related note, I’ve also put together a new 8 Tracks mix of Japanese bands, some of which I had already been a fan of, and others that I discovered while on the trip. It should provide a sufficiently wacky and eclectic soundtrack while you browse our photo album.

I’m not a huge fan of everything on Adult Swim, but I always take notice whenever Adam Reed and Matt Thompson, creators of Sealab 2021, have a new series in the works. This time around, Adam Reed has struck out on his own to do a new show for FX called Archer, and after watching the first episode I can say that it’s very much in the same vein as Sealab and Frisky Dingo.

The show is a James Bond parody of sorts about a douchebag egomaniac spy whose mother runs the International Secret Intelligence Service (ISIS). As you might expect there’s not a ton of action and it focuses more on the mundane, but the animation is slightly higher calibre than Adult Swim. Episodes are also a full half-hour, but the only thing that sucks is that the show doesn’t actually start until January and the season is only 6 episodes long! Well I guess it’s all about quality over quantity, right?

I’ve been wondering for a while now how exactly these DJ games are going to work and whether or not they will be even remotely as fun as Guitar Hero or Rock Band. I gotta admit, this trailer does a pretty good job of selling it.

Bossa nova or Chevy nova? In celebration of the 25th Anniversary of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, 4Kids Entertainment is making a direct-to-DVD animated movie called Turtles Forever where the new TMNT team up with the 1980s TMNT in a collision of art styles and culture. Unfortunately they couldn’t get the original voice actors for some reason, which is pretty lame, but I’m still curious enough to check this out. It will air on CW4kids at some point over the next couple of months, then be released on DVD before the end of the year.

Source: Topless Robot

They say that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, but at what point does friendly imitation become an insult and a rip off? In the world of video games, the idea of plagiarism is almost a moot point. Perhaps it is because video games are a part of the digital age, or perhaps it is because recreating other games is easier said than done, but you don’t often see game designers accusing each other of theft. When it comes to Shadow Complex there’s no question where the inspiration came from. It is a masterful clone of the 2-D Metroid games, and even though it features so many elements lifted directly from Super Metroid, I cannot help but admire its tight design and attention to detail.

One thing that Shadow Complex does differently is that it restricts you to 2-D movement within a 3-D world, which makes the game feel modern while maintaining the purity of the 2-D gameplay. Sometimes this creates confusion as you move across a room, since you are unable to judge where the ledges and platforms are just by looking. On the other hand, it creates a sense of depth by allowing you to aim your weapons into the frame as well, which is kind of cool.

The game disguises itself with a different story and contemporary setting. Loosely based on the Orson Scott Card book Empire, it feels more like Metal Gear Solid than Metroid and doesn’t have quite the same eerie mood. But the bottom line is that you’re still using missiles to open red doors, bombs to open green doors, a flashlight to scan for weaknesses in walls, a hook shot to climb walls, and so on and so forth.

In the end, the gameplay mechanics and exploration still make it an absolutely addictive and absorbing experience. My only complaint is that there isn’t much variety in the enemies, and the final boss fight is a bit of a let down. Either way, it’s well worth the $15 download and probably the only game I’ve been truly hooked on so far this year.

If, like me, you listen to a fair amount of different podcasts, you’ll probably agree that the addition of direct wi-fi and over-the-air downloads on the iPod Touch and iPhone is an amazing feature. However, you’ll probably also agree that the current iTunes interface for managing podcasts is severely lacking. To be honest, they don’t even have really have one, since you can’t actually “subscribe” to podcasts on the iPhone, and what’s more, you can’t download podcasts that aren’t listed on the iTunes store.

So if you’re looking for something to make your podcast addiction a little bit easier to handle, you might want to check out the iPhone/iPod Touch app RSSPlayer. Luckily they managed to get Apple to allow it on the App Store (which is surprising since it does duplicate some iTunes functionality), and at a cost of 99 cents, it’s definitely worth the download.

Basically RSSPlayer will give you the ability to subscribe to all your favourite podcasts (yes, even ones that aren’t in iTunes), and with the click of a single button, check for new episodes and queue them up for download. It also doesn’t have a download size limit over a 3G network (although I think Apple got rid of that in the iPhone 3.0 update).

It does store the podcasts separately from the rest of your iTunes directory, so you can’t play them through iTunes itself, but their own player is quite good. The only criticism I have is that sometimes it’s confusing to tell which episodes you currently have downloaded because by default it filters out podcasts that are partially played. Also, a word of warning: the default settings will auto-delete any podcast that has been marked as played (even if it was only partially played before you exit). You definitely want to make sure you change this in the Sync Options.

Other than that, what are you waiting for? Download RSSPlayer on iTunes now.

It’s been a while since I’ve written anything about video games, but with the recent return of Monkey Island (one of my favourite adventure game franchises of all-time), I thought I would offer my thoughts on the release of Tales of Monkey Island: Chapter 1 from Telltale Games.

The good folks over at Toronto Thumbs were kind enough to publish my full review of the game. So head over there and read it now!

I guess this is a few months old but I must have missed it the first time around. Even Elmo can’t keep a straight face.

You may have noticed that I did a little bit of tidying up on the site today, and in the sidebar I also added a list of my most recently shared links on bit.ly. Allow me to explain what this is, and why you might want to consider using it.

For a long time, I was using del.icio.us extensively to bookmark interesting links and then repost them here, but I kind of stopped using it after Twitter took over my life (and everyone else’s). As I mentioned not too long ago, Twitter has taken the place of this blog in a lot of ways, and I’ve been sharing my random linkage on there instead. The problem with Twitter is that the posts can only be 140 characters long, which has made URL shortening services essential. This is where bit.ly comes in.

Unlike a lot of the other URL shortening sites, bit.ly offers some cool additional features if you sign up for an account. It will store all of your recent links and give you a compact URL, but it can also track how many people have clicked on it, and it offers an API and RSS feed for your recent links. While it doesn’t allow you to enter tags or any additional information about the links like del.icio.us does (leading to some ugly and/or useless titles for the links), and it doesn’t have a full social network built-in as of yet, it can auto-post your links to Twitter and also back up the page you are linking to in case it gets overloaded with traffic or eventually goes away. Some people have suggested that it might have the potential to become the new Digg.

Either way, I’m going to start using bit.ly in basically the same way that I used del.icio.us previously, so if you want to see what I’ve been stumbling across on the web lately, you can subscribe to the RSS feed for my account, or just check out the sidebar of this site on a regular basis.

Ahh, New York. The city that never sleeps. There’s nowhere else in the world quite like it (you know, aside from the many other large and congested cities on this planet). But it’s not just a place to live… it’s also an attitude! Here are some photos from our trip to the Big Apple (does anyone actually call it that anymore?) a couple of weeks back. All pictures were taken with a Sony DSLR-A200 that I still don’t really know how to use.

Check out the full Flickr set here.