What we aim to do is pitch Great Falls as the epicenter for the independent video games industry. We are working on making a tech demo of our game, Shattered Soul, which we will use to win a multi-million dollar contract with a major publisher to bring jobs and opportunities to our town–we will then use this momentum and work with the Great Falls Development Authority (www.gfdevelopment.org) to bring even more studios and companies here, giving Great Falls a new business and economic frontier!

Please vote!
http://www.refresheverything.com/gfgames

First of all, thank you to the numerous groups and individuals who helped us bust a move in February–you all rock!

Second, time to really shine! Let’s make March our month!

Josh

Go to www.refresheverything.com/gfgames and vote for us! Out of 729 competitors we’re currently 66th–and we once jumped 131 spots within 40 minutes so these remaining 56 spots WILL be a cake walk with YOUR HELP! You have been following us for a while, help show the world what the TK crew and its’ fans can do!

Josh

More and more, people have been asking me, “How do I make it in the game industry?” Kind of a hard question to answer in one sense, I am still trying to make it myself–and, while TK has a good map forward and we are on a good course towards making it, the reality is we are still in the process. However, I hope to be of some assistance so here is my rundown of important things:

For General Game Design

A) This first one is important for any member of a game design studio! Grab a notepad (or keep tabs mentally, if you think you can retain it) and draw a line down the middle. On one side, write, “What I like” and on the other write, “What I don’t like”. Play as many games as possible (each game having a different sheet or group of sheets). Whenever you are struck by something enough to write it down, don’t just write it! Look at it after you wrote it and ask yourself the questions most people don’t, “Why did I like it?”, “Why did I hate it?”, “Why did it resonate with me the way it did?” If you liked something, try to break it down as much as possible and get to the basic building blocks that built the experience you liked–then think how you can make it your own when designing your own game (through additional gameplay, art and story elements created by you). If you hated something, don’t just say, “It sucks”, sit for a while and try to figure out what exactly bugged you about the element. Then, try to figure out how you would turn it around and turn it into a positive element if you were in the game designer’s shoes. What would you change to turn a frustrating, repetitive or boring element into a blockbuster set-piece worthy of showing off in the commercial? Thinking this way will be hard at first, but over time you will slowly begin to develop your own style and critical thinking skills that are important to creating unique and exciting experiences in games.

B) Talk with as many different people as possible. By this, I mean develop relationships with Programmers, Concept Artists, 3D Artists, Animators, Game Designers, Marketers, Business People, Average Gamers and anyone else you can possibly meet. The more you understand human behavior, the more you can work fluidly in a team. Also, if you are planning on creating a project with a group of people it will help immensely when trying to get new talent to join you if you ’speak their language’ a little bit. For instance, a lot of Programmers have a hard time joining indy projects because, 9 times out of 10, they end up being one of the few hard workers committed to the project. However, if you are proposing to one that he/she join your team and you are upfront about the work done so far, the work in progress and the map ahead, you just told them that you understand their concern and have worked towards making sure they aren’t the only worker. Developing this empathy and ability to see the situation from someone else’s shoes will give you an important advantage in moving your indy project forward. People are far more willing to work (for payment and/or sweat equity aka free work) for someone they know cares about them, so this is absolutely critical.

C) Be humble—don’t take it offensively if someone gives you constructive criticism. They are just trying to help. If they give immature criticism–just listen then walk away. Later, after the initial sting wears off, try to remove the insult from what they said and see if anything is usable–if there is use it, if not then move on.

D) It isn’t just your art anymore: you may have the most awesome idea for a game, but here is reality: the moment you form a team to bring it to fruition it isn’t just your art anymore. Team members need to feel that they have a voice–there can and should be 1 leader who has the end-word, but if you are that leader don’t let the power go to your head—the swing vote of the leader should only be used once in a while. At the end of the day, everyone is putting in their blood, sweat and tears, so it isn’t just your art anymore!

E) Get resources! www.udk.com is one great one (free Unreal 3 engine to dev in). On Epic’s site (which is linked on www.udk.com), they have tutorials on how to create games in Unreal 3. Study them, a lot of the design ideals convey over to development on any engine or platform–and the free current-gen-grade engine is a great place to jump in. Play a little bit with all sorts of fields. 3D art, Animation, Texture Work, Programming, Overall Game Design, Writing—try them all until you find the one that resonates with you the best! Then, use sites like the Unreal one (plus any others you can Google up) and train yourself. If you are about to go to college–look closely at colleges like Full Sail, The Art Institute and many others that can offer you classes–what you learn in your free time will help you understand your classes easier and grow faster as an artist (and the classes will hone your indy skills!).

F) Got an idea? Commit it to paper! Writing it down (either digitally–and if you do digitally, print it off and save a hard copy!, or on traditional pen-and-paper) will garner you (under US law) a basic Copyright (for a full blown Copyright, you have to apply to the Copyright office and pay a fee–but the idea will still be yours since you committed it to paper). This is important, and is a vital step in motivating yourself and your team in turning that idea in your head into a playable reality!

G) Network! Search out indy development websites and indy teams. Ask if you can so sweat equity for indy teams in return for the learning and experience (plus getting your name out on completed projects—portfolio WIN!). Even if they say no, try to stay in contact (if they are interested, don’t be a stalker!) and be friends–you can learn as much from friends as you can co-workers! Plus, if you are trying to form your own team, being friends with other indy studios can provide important information and contacts that can assist in bolstering your team’s numbers and reach online.

If You Want to Start A Studio

A) First and foremost, like I said in F of the last section, commit your ideas to paper!!!!!!!!!

B) Pick up Guy Kawasaki’s The Art of the Start, a sage book that will teach you some of the basics investors will look for. If you plan on pitching to a publisher (like EA, Activision, Sony, MS or Nintendo), realize they will look for a slightly different pitch (they aren’t as worried about projections, they know those numbers better than you, they are more interested in what you want to do in a game and if you are capable of pulling it off), realize some of the info doesn’t carry directly over (for instance, Guy says your plan shouldn’t be over 25 pages, our pitch to Sony last year was 77 pages and they read every word–most of it was info and art on Shattered Soul)—but still, amazing advice none the less.

C) Contact your local SBDC (Small Business Development Center)! Usually, if you Google your city/town with SBDC you should pull it up (ours, for instance, is www.gfdevelopment.org). If you can’t find it that way, try looking up your area’s chamber of commerce in the phone book and giving them a ring–they’ll be able to hook you up with the right people! SBDC’s are awesome–ask for a time to meet with them and tell them what you want to do and ask (politely I might add) for their assistance. They will be a necessary ally in your rise to domination!

D) Network! Look, I posted Networking a second time! Because, in this day and age, it is the lifeblood that will pump through your veins. Pony up the cash to have a website made. Make a MySpace, Facebook and Twitter account (and link them as needed). Seek out people in your industry to follow and become friends with. Seek out people in your community of ALL walks and follow/friend them on these sites. Go around town and ask for opportunities to create presentations for community groups to show what you want to do for your region through your team and business. Most of this stuff is free or low-cost to do, and it will get your community on your side and start the ripple in the pond that will grow to the tsunami you want! Realize that you ARE going to be doing a lot of running around, answering emails, talking on social networking sites and other guerrilla marketing techniques for which you will not be paid: while you can most likely make money down the road a lot of the set up work for a business is done for the bigger picture and passion, not the quick and easy payout!

E) Make a tech demo: once you get a team and concept going, make a 1-level tech demo that shows what you want to do gameplay wise and, to a degree, art wise. This can be made either on PC or through solutions like Xbox’s Indy Developer Program (even if you intend to pitch to someone other than Microsoft)—the people a tech demo is meant to pitch to won’t care about what platform the demo is on, they are looking for ability to create an idea and execute it in a fun, playable way. This is where we are at with TK right now–working on our tech demo! It’s very important and an absolute for your studio.

Hope this helps! If you need more info, please head over to the Contact Us section and drop us a line, I’d be happy to chat more!

Josh

Pat Douglas of the Great Falls Tribune did a story on Josh and Trevor, the Co-Founders of Add-A-Tudez Entertainment Company and Team KAIZEN. Read about it HERE! The Story covers several things, for instance:

My Evolution’s Shattered Soul Song
You read it right! LA-based rockers My Evolution (here is their website and myspace) did the theme song for our in-development game, Shattered Soul! Very soon (as in, sometime next week), the song will be available as a FREE ringtone, and the purchasable version will be available via online outlets like iTunes sometime within the next 60 days (of course, once it drops we’ll hit up Twitter, FB, MySpace and every known spot to man letting everyone know). If you want to listen to it now, head on over to My Evolution’s MySpace–it is the first song in the que! They even wrote an awesome blog post about us:

In May of this year we met Josh and Trevor Hughes of Team Kaizen video games in Great Falls Montana while touring with Static-X. The crowd was definitely bad-ass and showed ME a tremendous amount of love. After our set Josh and Trevor hung out with us at our merch booth as we signed merch for fans and told us of their new martial arts based game entitled, Shattered Soul. When we left Montana, en route to Minnesota, we noticed that Josh and Trevor had made sure to contact us at all of our available contacts such as myspace, facebook and our website myevolutionmusic.com. They wanted to get us involved with writing a song for their game Shattered Soul and they wasted no time in asking for exactly what they wanted, which is something we respect immensely. Upon our arrival home we continued our email conversations/negotiations, in which Josh asked point blank, “How do we get My Evolution officially involved with our game Shattered Soul?” We spoke about what they wanted in a song for the game and later that week, wrote the game’s official theme song. We got to show them and early version of the song live at our rehearsal room in North Hollywood when they visited LA for the Play Station Blog Meet Up Party and Sony E3 Press Conference. They LOVED it!! Next we handled the legalities, then recorded the song, and the finished product is now here!!! We are very proud of the new song and are honored that Team Kaizen (esp. Josh and Trevor) asked us to be a part of it. The song kicks ass and the game should be nothing less…..MY EVOLUTION and TEAM KAIZEN present SHATTERED SOUL!!

Go have another listen!!!

*uber nerdy geek voice* ROCK ON DUDEZ!

Happy B-Day PlayStation!
Sony Computer Entertainment Japan recently created a website, linked HERE. Has it really been 15 years? LOL I remember my 6th grade year back in 1995–my NES (the only game console I owned up to that point, GameBoy and GameGear notwithstanding) had just bought the farm. I went upstairs in a sad stupor, turned on the TV and was blown away by what I saw. I got my first taste of the infamous U R NOT E (you are not ready—the ‘e’ in the ads was colored red, thus the red ‘e’ was ‘ready’, get it?). I went to Mom and told her of my NES plight and asked her if I could have a Sony PlayStation to take its’ place. I first had to convince her that a PlayStation wasn’t some sort of PlaySkool play set where you play in a small plastic house or kitchen, then I was met with a ‘we’ll see’. The launch day for America (September 9th, 1995) came and went as the painful waiting game for my birthday (September 30th) crept on. Roughly half way between the two dates, Mom told me, “Oh honey, by the way, I got one of those PlayStations for you on launch day–we took it out of the box last night to test it. I can see why you are excited for it, it is pretty impressive!” For getting it launch day, she got (and passed on to me) a black CD titled, “Hear it NOW, Play it Later” which contained music tracks by ‘Up and Coming Sony Bands’ (including Korn before they actually got big–to my knowledge all the other bands flopped) as well as tech demonstrations of the PlayStation’s power (including a fun mode where you control a walking T-Rex). I still have that CD proudly on display in my room! Thanks to PlayStation, I experienced my first true 3D fighting extravaganza (still have my original copy of Battle Arena Toshinden in near-mint condition), my first heartfelt story telling experience in a game (currently have my original copy of Final Fantasy 7 in near-mint, plus a Japanese International Edition in shrink-wrap, a second glitched American copy and a digital copy) and I also got my first E3 experience (both the show and Sony’s Press Conference) out of being a fan of PlayStation. Been an awesome 15 years, can’t wait to see what the next 15 brings!

Happy Holidays!
Well, 2009 is less than 30 days from being purely in the history books–and I can’t wait for 2010! FF13. White Knight Chronicles. Bioshock 2. God of War 3—all in the first 3 months!!!!! WOOHOO! Not to mention, we here at TK will keep toiling away on our tech demo as we inch closer to being able to repitch to Sony. Exciting times indeed! Happy Holidays everyone–may 2010 make 2009 look like a simple proof of concept

Josh, Trevor and the TK Crew

First of all, if you are worried about a REAL impending apocalypse within the next 3 years please read HERE and HERE. I am about as big of a fan of the US Government as the next guy/gal, and I enjoy me some conspiracy theory once in a while–but I think it has to be said that NASA does a fine job of dispelling the myths. You can breathe easy. Oh, and don’t forget: I am STRONGLY considering throwing a party at my place on Jan 1st, 2013….in case of Apocalypse Jesus will fill you in on change of venue (HAHA! That one doesn’t get old–thought it up a year ago when someone on the net tried to predict the Rapture as happening this past May–but that is a whole different tale). (Of note and disclosure: I believe in God, Satan, the Diety of Jesus and the existence of Angels and Demons–just I enjoy being somewhat antagonistic to people who try to predict when the end will happen when Jesus himself had the good sense to say he had no clue!).

Ok, jokes and rumor dispelling aside, on to the film! I need to reiterate that I am going to be typing freely so do NOT get testy with me if I spoil a part of the film for ya! If you need to see it pure, please go see it then read this post

Overall, I think I was impressed. 200 Million Dollars sure as heck buys a lota purdy pixels, so the special effects feel very Michael Bay-ish (take that or leave it as you might–I don’t totally mind the man personally so it is put into the plus column for me). I guess saying, “I think I was impressed,” sounds weak…and, through the course of this post you’ll prolly see why I am so tepid on the film as a whole…..some elements were downright striking. The visuals. The cinematography. The intensely human story that takes snapshots of several lives and makes them so endearing I teared up at least 4 times. There is a lot to love and, for a death, destruction and da-speshel-effects film, there is actually a lot of uplifting material that reminds us all of the better parts of ourselves. There was so much that made me want to love this film (as opposed to merely ‘like’)! However, some pieces of the film jarred me violently out of the fantasy and kind of peppered the experience with a bad flavor. Upon reading my admittedly short laundry list of complaints you may find me to be whiny–I don’t want to be impossible to please but, for one reason or another, these little tidbits held the film away from greatness in my mind:

A) Super Plane Escape Go!
I am sure you have all seen the commercial. If not, here is your shot:

Epic footage huh? Actually, I had never saw that specific trailer before (I had only seen a severely truncated version). The one I was seeking out only showed the little white plane escaping from a crumbling California city, with an epic dive through 2 towers crumbling in a way that has seems to have a strong emotional undercurrent connection to 9/11. That was a compelling trailer. A little off (how could a taxi driver drive on the only street not crumbling, get to the only plane undamaged, take off from the only safe runway and fly under 2 towers? Deus Ex Machina anyone?) but still compelling. Not so compelling when essentially the same damn scene replays itself for a full 3 times throughout the film! What is worse, they show you the other 2 times in this trailer! The same plane makes the EXACT same daring escape from a fuel-up in Yellowstone National Park, then the crew aboard this craft switch planes in a different city and have the exact same escape AGAIN, only in a bigger plane and with more people with them. It is truly hard to determine if they have the crappiest luck in humanity (having to escape practically certain death the same way multiple times) or if they have the absolute best in all of humanity (by sheer fact that everyone is able to repeat these escapes–several different towers crumbling and all–with no one dying out of this little mini crew until way after all 3 plane scenes occur). Either way, if the film were to be split up into 3rds, the entire middle 3rd would be dedicated to repeated airplane fiascoes that seemed to be copied/pasted with minimal changes.

B) Maya Who?
I bet that trailer really set a tone for you, huh? An ancient civilization, now forever lost, has predetermined our doom by airplane fiascoes and Naval-Destroyer-toppling tsunamis! If only we had listened to them! Well, actually, that trailer does MORE to mention the Mayan culture and calendar (neither of which, BTW, predict a real-life apocalypse–but I am NOT dinging the film for this–just adding it in!) than the full 3 hour film does! A brief mention is made (actually, the news footage in the trailer of the cult that committed mass suicide at the Mayan temple–this footage lasts exactly as long in the film as it does in the trailer), however the trailer does far more to bring the Mayan people in than the film does. The film instead chooses to focus on natural phenomenon and science–which is good–but methinks that, for a film that promoted itself so heavily on the Mayan culture and alleged Mayan End of Days, maybe one of the airplane scenes could have been deleted to make room for more references. It would have added a level of mysticism and ethereal fear that, if done correctly, could have been a great foil and balance to the Science and Natural Phenomenon in the film.

C) Natural (Writing) Disasters
Here is where I really think some of you will think I am nit-picking–but here-goes anyways. The first scene to strike ire in me is the one involving Yellowstone National Park. As many people know, Yellowstone (in real life) is the remains of the crater of an ancient super-volcano, and many scientists have theorized that, if it were to blow, it’d be a life-ending event (as in, all life on earth). Technically, they play it well into the film for the exception of 2 major things. The first is a wacko (played brilliantly by Woody Harelson–sorry if I mispelled), who stands on what he believes to be the rim of the crater. You get this amazing view of the mountains starting to flatten themselves, then a MASSIVE explosion. The shockwave only knocks him over, he gets back up laughing before being taken out by a flying parcel of land. Maybe I am straining here, but I would assume most attendees understand a thing or two about history. History tells us the Mt. Saint Helen’s explosion in the 80’s was hundreds (HUNDREDS) of times stronger than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. I visited Nagasaki (the other Japanese city bombed in WWII, if I remember correctly with a bomb weaker than Hiroshima’s) back in 2002 and the devastation of what such a force does was made very apparent in their museum. Buildings are toppled, trees stripped bare and laid in radial patterns on the ground, flashes of light and super-displaced air so brilliant it immediately vaporizes peoples’ bodies and burns their shadows into the ground like a photograph. Remember, that is, at the very most, 1/100th of the power of Mt. Saint Helen’s, and presumably a minute fraction of this Yellowstone blast portrayed in the film. SO, I ask in all that is internet blogging, how is this man just knocked over? There shouldn’t have been a smile, there should have been a ‘dust it off before getting nailed by flying land’…there should have been immediate vaporization for any organic matter in a multi-state diameter (not to mention the family of protagonists–who were rushing away for their second magical plane getaway, with the pyroclastic flow and dust cloud moving just slow enough to enable a RV to get to the plane, then the plane to get airborne). The other thing is, as the plane is taking off (already in its’ very unrealistic version of reality), it gets hit by the dust cloud without taking any real damage to the engines or occupants. I am no avionics engineer, and I don’t have a degree in geology–so technically I could be wrong about this, but something tells me a prop-job that, at worst, is built for normal inclimate weather won’t take well to superheated gas and rock flying through the air. Just a guess. Not to mention I am not even going to go that far into the theory that, since Yellowstone’s volcano is pretty much an existence-on-Earth-ender, wouldn’t that have essentially been the end of the movie? Vaporized peeps just don’t make good protagonists, if you don’t believe me look at what they did to Obi-Wan once he dematerialized in the original Star Wars!

OK, next natural flub-up! An ocean liner is out at sea. If all the land is falling into the ocean, sounds like the perfect spot right? Not if Hollywood has its’ way (hey, atleast they were courteous enough to get the doomerz hammer first!). Tsunamis (caused by world-wide earthquakes, both on land and undersea) rise up and topple the thing like a toddler sinks his rubber ducky in the tub. One problem. Your average high school freshman knows tsunamis don’t rise in the ocean. In the middle of the ocean, if you were swimming, you could be hit by one and not even know it–it’d be the height of a normal wave. Tsunamis don’t reach their people-killing proportions until riding up onto land, the people on this ship would have been perfectly safe (barring drastic climate change due to all the chaos and/or starvation once food supplies ran out). To see this immediately pulled Trev and I out of the fantasy, which is sad because the moment is truly built up in a very emotional way. There is a lot going on and the last thing you want as a story teller is your audience being pulled out by a technicality.

In Closing
Yeah, I had some problems with the film. Yeah, my response to a 200 million blockbuster could probably be best described as tepid. However, it isn’t the run-of-the-mill tepid. Run-of-the-mill tepid consists of when a movie had elements that neither inspired hate nor love in the audience, and that is assuredly not the case here. While I hated the natural-disaster flubs, the regurgitated airplane scenes and gaps in the promotion of the film and its’ end product, I still felt there was something worthwhile there. The very emotional stories, the phenomenal cast (with highlights from Danny Glover, Oliver Platt, Woody Harelson and several other actors and actresses whom have had some parts recently, but really pick this as the film for their talents to shine) and jaw dropping effects definitely put in enough work time to make me feel as if my 7 dollar investment was, at the very least, met. It should also be said that it could have been a very easy route to just model some destruction in whatever 3D program the film crews chose and had actors run around. Instead, they added humanity to the chaos. If there is one area where 2012 succeeds resoundingly, then it must be how the very human stories told therein actually are able to outshine severe hundred million dollars worth of 3D magic. Even as I sit here, I am thinking of the people stories I saw, not so much the blowing up landscape or falling cities. That has to stand for something.

In the end, if you were to ask, I’d say it is worth the movie night to check 2012 out. Be forewarned: it probably will NOT make it into your top 10 films of all time. But, then again, I am not totally sold that every film has to be the next ‘Silence of the Lambs’ or ‘Matrix’ to forward the art of film, or even (on a more humble, yet bigger level) teach us something about ourselves and our humanity. If you have survived this blog post and don’t feel the film is spoiled for you, please go check it out! You probably deserve a night out from reading internet blogs (but, seriously, bookmark this one!) If you have survived it and felt I ruined for you–just remember you are exactly like the peeps in the film, it wasn’t like you weren’t forewarned

http://www.teamkaizengames.com/kblog/greatest-vacation-evar/ shall suffice. It is an article I wrote on this blog about our journey to E3 earlier this year—actually, only one paragraph is relevant so why don’t I just copy-paste it!

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(from older KAIZEN Blog Post)
After some minor delays and frustrations (again, minor–overall we didn’t mind) we arrived at the park. Six Flags Magic Mountain, as a park, is very much a downer and trashy in comparison to Knott’s. Notice, I said the park not all of the coasters. If you are a coaster fanatic, take it as a spot of advice from one coaster fanatic to another, there is some coasters at Magic Mountain worth crossing off your list but, once ridden, you will realize those coasters could be better served by being uprooted and placed at a place like Knott’s that would appreciate and take care of them better. The park itself feels like a prison going in, with people being searched as if they are going to the airport (whereas Knott’s checked bags and had security, Magic Mountain went way above and beyond that because they used to have severe gang problems, so they went to the extreme opposite end of the spectrum) and, on top of that, the park is a hardcore money grab. Most parks place free lockers or cubby holes at all of the attractions so loose articles may be placed in them. Six Flags, on the other hand, charge 1 dollar per ride to hold on to your loos articles in electronic lockers so glitchy they have attendants at the stations specifically to undo bad things, out of the 5 rides we rode 2 of the lockers glitched (one didn’t open after payment the other jammed shut and the attendant and I had to work together to ‘break’ back into it to get my stuff out). So, like I said, the park is epic fail but the coasters themselves are epic win, or atleast some of them.
—————

Upon returning to Great Falls, we couldn’t stop talking with people about how awesome Knott’s Berry Farm was. Their coasters (with the notable exception of Ghost Rider) aren’t as big as Six Flags’, but the soul Knott’s had more than made up for it. Knott’s had security, but I still felt welcome there–they wanted to make sure I wasn’t bringing trouble but, as security was cleared, it was apparent I was a valued guest. Knott’s Berry Farm has a permanent seal of Team KAIZEN approval on it–safe, secure and awesome. On the other hand, we joking called Six Flags Magic Mountain park ‘Guantamano Bay: The Park’ for its’ ridiculous security, moody workers and general lack of upkeep (if you look at most of the coasters, they almost all have peeling paint jobs, worn down stations and generally feel like a senile version of something that was awesome back in the day, but left to die–only X2 looks like it is totally taken care of–and I am sure they meet safety standards I am only saying this from a visual point of view).

In spite of that, Colin (one of our 3D guys whom we met at the PS Blog Party) told me once or twice I should give Magic Mountain a second chance–that they aren’t as bad as I was saying. So, on our way to Japan last month, we had a 24 hour layover in LA. During this layover, Ben (another 3D guy on staff met at PS Blog Party) and Colin met up with us at Knott’s. After having some fun riding Silver Bullet and Sierra SideWinder (BEAUTIFUL coaster BTW!!!), Colin suggested we head to Magic Mountain. He hadn’t ridden X2 since its’ repainting and rechristening, and I thought it’d be cool to get a staff photo of us riding it (since, after all, X2 is such a unique coaster), so we headed out to Valencia to get some more coasters on.

While waiting to go through the prison-like security, Colin joked with me that I should give them the second chance now and hold of on continuing to call them Guantamano Bay: The Park. 30 seconds later, he wasn’t so turned off by that name.

See, back in the day Colin injured his back. Back then, he was given a temporary prescription for Vicodin, which had run out with time. He has family members who also have prescriptions so they gave him 2 emergency pills to hold on in a little metal box the size of a credit card. While walking through security, a guard noticed it and asked Colin if he had the original bottle or a doctor’s note on him. Colin told him he did not and told them he got the pills from a family member. Also, Colin will be the first to tell you he understood them having a problem with this, as do I. As kind as the gesture is, it is still technically illegal and the guards had every right to say something and get the nearby Sheriff Deputies involved. However, what transpired past that point is what I take issue with today.

The Sheriff Deputies were very respectful to Colin and vice-versa. Colin openly told them how he got them and apologized for any trouble it caused. The Deputies searched his car and, upon not finding anything else, thanked him for being so cooperative and not jumping them or anything–they even told him it was refreshing to question someone who didn’t immediately turn belligerent at the first sign of law enforcement! They told him he could go without a ticket or anything and told him they trusted him to dispose of the pills (they said California law prevented them from being able to touch and/or dispose of it themselves).

The guards, however, made a show of it. First, they surrounded Colin while he was being questioned by the Deputies and pointed and laughed at him. We still were not sure what was going on (and, remember, we had already paid something to the tune of $111.00 for Mom, Trev, Ben and I to get entry tickets) so we asked what was going on. One of the guards looked at us with a smile on his face and said, “We can’t comment on an on-going investigation” as if he was this week’s guest star on C.S.I.! I couldn’t believe he said that–I can understand not commenting, but this guy was openly treating this as if it was a joke and they all apparently had nothing better to do than harass and embarrass someone over something as trivial as 2 pills that were already being handled by the Deputies. One guard caught the pills, but as soon as word traveled around the ring of them around Colin numbered around 10—if the park truly has the security problems Six Flags claims warranted the ridiculous security–shouldn’t those guards be on the lookout for real threats to the park instead of nerds like us and Colin? These bullies acted as if they had the bust of the century when it was pretty obvious that any individual out there who could represent a real threat to the park would make them wet their pants and tremble in their boots. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing! On the one hand, you have the professional Deputies there to do a job–and they did it very well, taking the chance to make it a teachable moment. On the other, you had these rent-a-cops (I usually HATE that term as I respect authority, but these clowns are no replacement for law enforcement) acting so unprofessional that I half wondered if they were just losers picked up from the local pre-release and bought a dollar store badge on the way to the park. All they cared about was their ego.

So, one of these guards (with a Deputy in tow) told Colin that, while no charges would be filed, he wouldn’t be allowed into the park for 24 hours. Colin was our only ride–we told this to the guards and asked if we could have a refund. They told us we should, “Enjoy our day at the park since we already paid for it.” Yeah, right. Your friend was just nearly arrested and the guard is telling you, “Hey, go ride the rides while your friend watches from the gate.” My conscience wouldn’t allow that, Trevor’s or Ben’s or Mom’s wouldn’t allow it either–I don’t know what kind of friend these guards are to their ‘friends’ but real friends don’t do that, especially to the guy gracious enough to drive you all around LA! Plus, before it was decided Colin wouldn’t be arrested, we thought his car might get impounded. When we talked to the guards about this and told them he was our only ride–they told us, “Too bad, we didn’t ask him to bring stuff into the park!” When we advised them we may need a refund to pay for a taxi back (which would probably have been 2-300 bucks), they told us the same thing again, as if we somehow were responsible for Colin bringing the pills in and our punishment was to loose 100+ bucks to Six Flags before the taxi ride home.

We were still passed security and Mom had already entered the park. She left the exit to find us again and she had to try and pass security a second time. This time, the guard found some felt tip pens (NOTICE: I said PENS not MARKERS–these are pens for writing checks and the like). He took them out of her purse and said she could not take them in because they somehow constituted a threat to the park (what were we going to do? Try to clean up their shoddy paint jobs???????)—-how the hell does this math add up:

51 year old mother of 2 + felt tip PENS = serious security threat to Six Flags Magic Mountain?????????????

By this point I left the security area–Mom saw this and took her pens and left the security area too.

I went to the ticket booth and talked with the attendant. She told me that Six Flags policy is to never give refunds under any circumstances. As she was telling me this, I am getting more and more upset (even to the point, I am ashamed to admit this, I dropped an F-bomb–normally I don’t mind the word itself just dropping it in a customer-service situation bugs me) and a customer behind me said, “You could always sell the ticket to someone else in line–you will lose some value but at least you get some money back!” Capital idea I thought, I asked a customer if she was interested (this being the first time I ever tried to sell a ticket like that–I have no idea if it is illegal or what–can’t imagine why it would be….) and one of the rent-a-cops approached and said I could be arrested on the spot for trying to sell my ticket. So, let me get this straight:

A) We paid $111.00 for tickets.
B) One of our group won’t be allowed in.
C) This makes it so we can’t go since we are all 1 group with 1 car.
D) Six Flags won’t refund our money, instead they will pay us with a bully attitude and snide remarks.
E) I can’t sell the ticket to anyone else, even though it is my ticket I bought fair-and-square from Six Flags–they already have the money for it and only 1 person per ticket will get in, we aren’t gaming the system in any way!!!

So, Mom stepped in. She said, “Fine, I will keep the tickets and write the Governor.” The guard looked her straight in the face and said, “Miss, we get that every day.”

At an amusement facility that is open to the public, you should plan to once in a while get the crazy people. Some people can’t be pleased, and some are just assholes. However, if you get people threatening to write the Governor every single day over the quality of your park (to the point that you admit this at the drop of a hat), methinks maybe all the complaining people aren’t the crazies……. Maybe your jerk wad security guards, moody attendants, money-grab policies and shoddy upkeep add up to an offensive plot of land that stands as nothing short of an insult to the brilliant minds at firms like S&S, B&M, Intamin and Great Coasters International, the geniuses who built the coasters that attract the crowds you so love to both financially bleed and oppress.

As we were leaving the park, Colin was nearly shaken to tears by the treatment he endured–and, for good reason. It was very understandable to ask him to dispose of those pills and talk to him about it. However, once we got into the realm of screwing other people out of their money, forming mob-groups of security guards to publicly shame guests and acting as if a felt tip pen was a threat to the park, Six Flags ran out of excuses. Colin doesn’t argue with the name anymore. If you want the Guantamano Bay experience, you don’t have to leave for Cuba anymore!!!!

On our first trip, one of our drivers told us that rumor was holding that, with Six Flags entering bankruptcy, that Magic Mountain was on the chopping block. I hope that is true, then a good park the likes of Knott’s or Cedar Point could buy the coasters and give them the TLC they so deserve. After this trip, one of our hotel’s concierges (upon hearing the story) insisted he believed it was racial stereotyping. I told him I had a hard time accepting that, seeing as 90% of the involved people where white on both sides, but the concierge held firm and said you wouldn’t believe all the forms it takes. Regardless of whether it was racial or not–some of the stereotyping or mistreatment themes ring through, where a small issue is taken as an opportunity to blow something out of proportion just to boost one’s own ego at the expense of someone else.

I will write some more blogs soon, I need to blog about the rest of our trip (which was AWESOME) on top of a blog I had been meaning to write for a long time explaining how to be a start-up business in the game industry. However, I felt that this was paramount to get out there: this park is toxic in its’ insistence in treating patrons like crap. If the gang-related problems of the past at Magic Mountain were caused by mismanagement or lack of management, that mis/lack management is only outmatched by the horrid management that exists today. I don’t have any other referent for Six Flags. Despite being a hardcore coaster fan, Magic Mountain is the only one I have ever visited, and 2 for 2 it has been poor experiences. If any of you live in different parts of the country–could you please sign in to Kaizen World Online (KWO) and post on whether other Six Flags are like this? It would suck to know other great coasters like Kingda Ka live in such filth–however it would also be uplifting if I found out that Magic Mountain is just the bad apple in what is otherwise a great chain–either way I yearn to know!!

So, what should we leave you with in our absence? Indeed, there will be a full report upon our return, but what can KAIZEN fans watch in the interim?

How about a blood bath in which a delightfully large helping of Teletubbies pay the ultimate price for their innate ability to steal our souls and irritate us to death?

Yes.

I am not a big L4D fan personally, but this is just the kind of thing that makes me squeal like a little girl hehe! One of the best mods I have ever seen (as far as comedy is concerned)—-the only thing I would have done differently is made different classes of zombies different colored Teletubbies instead of relying on only one type of zombie for them all, but fun none the less!

Let’s start with a few links shall we?

Here is the PlayStation Blog’s Write Up of the PS Blog Meet Up Party on May 31st. It is a general Write-Up of the party Trevor and I attended. It started at 6 PM, Trevor and I camped out since 9 AM (with others starting at 10 and 11 AM–a lot of us were hardcore and hung out together until the madness started!).

Here, on the other hand, is PlayStation Universe’s write up, which happens to mention Trev and I by name!

What you get from both is the fact it was a cool party! We already knew the first 100 to show up would be given rare access to Sony’s E3 Press Conference that coming Tuesday at the Shrine Auditorium. That is why Trev and I camped out for it! What we didn’t know was a little surprise Jeff and Chris of the PlayStation Blog had in store.

Halfway through the party, Jeff gets on a chair and bangs a cup. He says that they decided to incentive things a tad bit more, Sony had decided to drop the money necessary to get the first 100 also into all 3 days of E3! Full grown men were welling up with tears and the screams and cheers were louder than any concert I had ever been to! This all took place in Mama’s Hot Tamales, a tiny restaurant in LA focused on helping people turn their lives around through the restaurant trade–I promise I will have more on that in the upcoming TKTV as I took footage there and Mama was kind enough to do an intro for TKTV!

Trev and I were mystified—us and our new found friends (shout outs to Colin, Ben, Charles, Miguel and the countless others that were there–including Team KAIZEN modeler Adam Hannig who also got in the first 100!) were fulfilling a life long dream to go to E3! The vacation was already tipping high on the awesome meter so maybe we should rewind a day though.

Trevor and I arrived the day before (Saturday, May 30th) in LA at 9 AM after 3 hours of flying. Realizing we had an entire day to play, we decided to take the Los Angeles Metro System to Knott’s Berry Farm, a park I had heard of since I was little and wanted to experience for myself. The Metro is a very slow system, it took us until 2 PM to reach the park (although, it should be noted both of our drivers, one on the 439 the other on the 460, were incredibly helpful and kind!) so it felt like we had crossed some sort of concrete desert to reach the steel utopia oasis of coasters known as Knott’s! I have been to many parks in my life, and Knott’s ranks pretty high on that list! All the attendants and employees obviously enjoyed their jobs and had fun doing what they do, which in turn made our experience all the more awesome.

Knott’s had several awesome coasters. We only got to ride 3 of them though due to lines (the largest wooden coaster in the west, Ghost Rider, the largest inverted steel coaster west of the Mississippi, Silver Bullet and a family coaster called Jaguar) as well as Supreme Scream, the world’s largest drop tower (250 feet tall, doesn’t feel like the breaks engage until the last 30 feet, nothing short of an out-of-body-experience engineered out of steel–was only the second S&S power ride I had ever rode, the first being Japan’s DoDonPa–so their track record with me is currently flawless). Ghost Rider fooled us. We thought, it being wood and all, it’d be a dinky coaster. A good experience, but dinky none the less. Trev and I rode in the very back (pro secret: ride in the back, you experience greater G forces as well as greater speed) and couldn’t see the front of the train. We started hearing screams and said, “Why are they screaming…we aren’t over the top yet”. Of course, that is what we INTENDED to say, we didn’t get to finish the sentence because the front had indeed crested the top and ripped us over. We found out why they were screaming, and soon we joined in the chorus as we rushed down hill and learned why we should NEVER under estimate a coaster. By the time we reached the station, we were giggling like grade school kids. Ghost Rider was my first wood coaster as an adult (I had only ever ridden one before that once when I was very little) and Trevor’s first wooden at all, and by all accounts Ghost Rider broke no sweat in setting a HIGH standard (which was barely broken later in the week, but more on that in a bit). After Ghost Rider, we immediately went to the B&M inverted coaster, Silver Bullet (B&M is a European coaster firm famous for really smooth, yet incredibly insane, coasters. Montu, Raptor, Riddler’s Revenge, Shiekra and Silver Star are just a sliver of their well known works). Silver Bullet was a beautiful coaster that featured 6.5 inversions (which, for inverted coasters, is .5 inversions shy of matching Montu’s record holding 7 inversions), two of those inversions being a BEAUTIFUL Cobra Roll (a Cobra Roll is a giant half loop to a half corkscrew to a second half corkscrew going the opposite way followed by another giant half loop, the entire effect looks like a giant cobra head with its’ hood extended out and sends riders back the way they came). Here is a pic of the train coming off of the Cobra Roll:

After that, we went to Johnny Rockets for a bite to eat. Then, we got into line for Xcelerator, the ride that is the prototype for New Jersey’s Kingda Ka and Ohio’s Top Thrill Dragster. After waiting in line for 45 minutes and working our way to the front, Xcelerator broke down and we didn’t get to ride. So, we made our way over to Supreme Scream, aforementioned tallest drop tower in the world. Incredibly smooth ride, terrifying and awesome as all get out, but also so smooth it almost feels creepy. You expect a 250 foot drop to be violent, but Supreme Scream actually turns it into a soft spoken venture, you don’t feel like you are being beat up by the restraints and you can instead focus on the adrenaline laced symphony of falling that distance. It was nothing short of awesome and I officially want one for our back yard.

So, after all of that, we rode Jaguar (cool coaster, not much to talk about but it was fun–we flew close enough to the crowd that I shouted, “HELLLLLLO!” to a random girl on the walkway, only with her to give the most perplexed look back–totally worth it ha!) and tried to get back in line for Ghost Rider, which experienced a minor malfunction while we were in line (got caught on the chain lift, it was fixed before we left but we figured we were done). So, we decided to head out with our new army of on-ride photos and Knott’s branded keychains (yes, we are that hardcore of dorks for rides—rides and video games are our own unique blend that sustains us hehe) and catch the cab we ordered. Our driver, who from here on out will be referred to as Mr. Crazy, was very apt at earning his nickname. He talked about random stuff and we tried to sustain the conversation, but we were so beat from the day we were more fantasizing about the pool and hot tub that awaited us. On the highway, he was topping over 100 MPH (which, of course, is illegal in LA) and someone (who signaled appropriately) tried to change lanes. Cussing in both English and other languages, Mr. Crazy hit the brakes and we skidded over 100 feet down the middle of a busy highway in LA–and I was so tired and out of it all I could think was, “I hope we don’t wreck, that’ delay my appointment with the pool!” Of course, after getting some rest, I was shocked that was my only feeling of the event, but hindsight being 20/20 we avoided cabs the rest of the trip and relied on Hotel-approved Town Cars (basically, a high-class taxi that follows more strict rules and conduct) as well as our new found fellow PlayStation Friends Charles and Colin.

After the pool and hot tub worked their magic (and we met a cool guy named Joe who talked with us about everything from the pool to watching Kung Fu Panda with his two daughters–all our conversations with him spanned 2 nights t the pool–really cool dude) we crashed and then got up early the next morn, got a town cab and camped out for the PS Blog party. After all the PlayStation insanity (and I do use insanity in a VERY fond context here–crazy but very lovable) Charles drove Trevor and I back to the hotel, the whole time swearing he still couldn’t believe what had just happened and he refused to believe in it until he was sitting in the Shrine Auditorium waiting for the press conference to begin. Once back to the hotel, we hung out with Joe at the pool and generally just hung out waiting for the next day. The next day, Monday, was a free day so, in advanced, we paid 99 dollars apiece for us to take a tour bus to Six Flags Magic Mountain.

After some minor delays and frustrations (again, minor–overall we didn’t mind) we arrived at the park. Six Flags Magic Mountain, as a park, is very much a downer and trashy in comparison to Knott’s. Notice, I said the park not all of the coasters. If you are a coaster fanatic, take it as a spot of advice from one coaster fanatic to another, there is some coasters at Magic Mountain worth crossing off your list but, once ridden, you will realize those coasters could be better served by being uprooted and placed at a place like Knott’s that would appreciate and take care of them better. The park itself feels like a prison going in, with people being searched as if they are going to the airport (whereas Knott’s checked bags and had security, Magic Mountain went way above and beyond that because they used to have severe gang problems, so they went to the extreme opposite end of the spectrum) and, on top of that, the park is a hardcore money grab. Most parks place free lockers or cubby holes at all of the attractions so loose articles may be placed in them. Six Flags, on the other hand, charge 1 dollar per ride to hold on to your loos articles in electronic lockers so glitchy they have attendants at the stations specifically to undo bad things, out of the 5 rides we rode 2 of the lockers glitched (one didn’t open after payment the other jammed shut and the attendant and I had to work together to ‘break’ back into it to get my stuff out). So, like I said, the park is epic fail but the coasters themselves are epic win, or atleast some of them.

The first coaster we hit was the world famous X2 (formerly just X until a 2007 rechristening and paint job redux). X2, along with Japan’s Eejanaika (which I have mentioned in this blog before–Trev and I got to look at Eejanaika but not ride it, something we will remedy soon) are the only two true 4rth Dimension Coasters on the planet. By 4rth Dimension, we roller coaster aficionados mean the seats are mounted on the side of the track (with each row having 2 seats on either side for a total of 4 riders per row and roughly 10 rows per train) and the seats are capable of flipping. By true 4th Dimension (my own personal way of looking at it) I mean that the seats don’t flip freely, there is a computer controlled mechanism in the track that pre-determines the flips. So, every ride on X2 or Eejanaika will be exactly the same, where as there is 2 other ‘4rth Dimensions’ that are far smaller (as in, drops that can be measured in the 10s of feet instead of the 100s) and the seats flip freely, but those smaller coasters pale in comparison to X2 and Eejanaika.

X2’s Station. Took us 2 hours in line to get to this point, and another 30 minutes to actually get to the coaster itself. 2.5 hours for a 2 minute ride, sounds crazy but it actually was worth it!

I took this while in line, it is X2 rushing along its’ course. Notice the riders on either side of the tracks!

Here is X2 in the station. The screen in the back showed CG effects while speakers constantly played sounds like, “Is everyone in? Is everyone in? The ceremony is about to begin!” There is also speakers mounted on the cars next to the riders’ heads, which you will be able to see better in the next picture:

Here is a close up of the seats, with the speakers easily viewable. The speakers played Harry Connick JR’s It Had To Be You leaving the station, which phased into Metallica’s Enter Sandman as the train hit the chain lift. Keep in mind, this is all going on as riders are ascending a 200+ foot chain lift backwards, only to have the speakers exclaim, “We are way high up!” before tilting the riders so they face the ground and making them skydive 200 feet, only to tuck and roll out of it. Awe inspiring, but scary as all get out!

Here is a YouTube video by Timothetoad that is a Point-Of-View on X2. It has profanity in it (I know some readers are sensitive to that, so I wanted to give a heads up–but as a nicety Timothetoad actually censored his own video, rare for YouTube fare). On his video, you can hear the sounds we heard, hear peoples’ reactions to the elements and see one of the most breathtaking things of X2 in full glory: two flame throwers mounted on either side of the track that are so overpowered and so close Trev and I actually felt the intense heat! Enjoy!:

After getting the onride photos of X2 (another money grab, most parks let you buy as many or as few onride pics as you want, Six Flags makes you buy ‘packages’, so instead of getting one a ride like at Knott’s we had to buy 4 per ride at 15 bucks a pop, but hey they did get the money from us–we had to show everyone our experience on X2!), we rushed over to the world’s largest flying coaster, Tatsu (which was built by B&M, which means I was already a fan). I had heard of Tatsu before, how it was inspired by the Japanese Torii gates at Shinto shrines (which already had me at, ‘Japan’) and that it was inspired by the legendary flying beast of Japanese mythology called Tatsu. I was giddy in line, and it was nice that Tatsu’s line moved much faster (45 minutes tops is infinitely more palatable than 2.5 hours hehe) and, while in line, I got some stunning shots:

Here is some of Tatsu’s supports intermingling with the people and trees. This reminded me of Japan’s Meiji Shrine. After passing under a Torii (the aforementioned gates that inspired Tatsu) you are in a very beautiful wooded area just like this—so this scene brought back memories and an awesome feeling realizing that, at the intersection of the country I love and live in and the country I have adopted in my heart, an amazing product and memory emerged, it is hard to fully describe the elation of that feeling.

Here is Tatsu flying along the track. As you can see, riders are oriented so their spines are parallel to the track, essentially giving a flying sensation. This is very unique and, quite frankly, with my neck and spine injuries I thought I might experience pain and discomfort. Not in the slightest did I feel either pain or discomfort though, and this stands as a testament to the mastery of the art of building coasters B&M has attained, thus my undying fanboyism in them. Their other coaster we rode there, Riddler’s Revenge, did give me a headache, but I do think that is more due to me not pulling the seat down far enough and creating the problem myself–I think if I were to ride it a second time I wouldn’t have an issue.

NormNorman on YouTube took a camcorder on Tatsu, so I have embedded the video below for your digest:

After Tatsu (and a quick bite to eat), Trevor and I headed on over to the wooden behemoth that just turned 10 days old, Terminator Salvation: The Ride. You read me right. 10. Days. Old. And, Freakin’ Epic! I later found out that Great Coasters International, the same team behind Ghost Rider, just finished building Terminator Salvation: The Ride, and it shows. The magic B&M works on steel is matched by Great Coasters International’s touch on the wood coasters. After being in line for 45 minutes (another more palatable wait!) we were ushered into a dark room. There, actors from the film were shown on screen talking about finding a bombed out amusement park and finding a room of people in a bunker (the people being the riders), the clips then detail the panicked conversation (via radio) between the two people as they escape attacks from robots while trying to engineer the escape of all the riders. At the climax, the female actor desperately urges the male actor to get the people to the escape trains, and an attendant appears and ushered all of us to the actual station. Our blood was already pumping. We weren’t at Six Flags Magic Mountain waiting in line for a coaster anymore, we were transported elsewhere to an epic alternate reality were we were about to make a daring escape from humanity’s greatest enemy. The magic set in. However, we weren’t the first in line, so we got to see some others board first. We noticed, during this, that there was a small roof above the loading train that we assumed to be just part of the decor. Turns out, it isn’t part of the decor. We felt the rumbling that seemed like an earth quake and heard loud screams, all of a sudden the other train (the one currently running the ride, not the one loading) RUSHED through the station on top of that small roof and over the heads of the people currently boarding, which of coarse shocked all of us in line and then got us all jazzed to experience it ourselves. On the ride itself, you understand you do that maneuver (rush through the station) but, at something to the tune of 60 MPH or more, it happens so fast it doesn’t register. The whole coaster was buttery smooth and intense and beautiful, to the point I was tearing up exciting the ride. I didn’t ride some dinky or measly coaster, I experience something Leonardo DaVinci would have built, a technical marvel whose intense schematics are only outmatched by its’ intense and inherent beauty. Here are some pics:

A big, beautiful arcing turn on Terminator Salvation: The Ride.

One of Terminator Salvation: The Ride’s trains traversing that big beautiful arcing turn.

Photo I took of the station. See that black blur up top? That is the train, with its’ joyously terrified occupants, making its’ split second pass through. First time it did that made us jump, it was unbelievable and paradigm changing to see a wooden coaster pull off such insane maneuvers.

Sharpproductions on YouTube took a camcorder on so here is Terminator Salvation: The Ride in its’ video glory:

After that, we hit up Riddler’s Revenge. Fun B&M but, like I said, it was very bad for me because my head bounced between either side of the restraint like a pinball machine so I got a headache. It is a standing coaster and you have to pull the restraint down to your level, and I don’t think I pulled far enough–had I pulled far enough I think it would have been better. I was in no real danger, but it was uncomfortable. I did get some epic pics while in line though:

Riddler’s Revenge doing a slanted loop. A slanted loop looks like a normal one, but is tilted to the side so riders don’t actually go upside down, just to a banked turn with an extreme turning angle.

Here is Riddler’s Revenge going into a diving loop. Crazy stuff.

Ryan120420 at YouTube snuck a camcorder on Riddler’s Revenge, methinks you know the routine by now:

After all of that, we hit Goliath, the 10th tallest coaster in the world (and the 3rd out of the top 10 we have rode, FujiYama and Thunder Dolphin being the first two we hit). I did take pictures of Goliath, however they are all pretty unremarkable so I would say that, if you want to see it, hit up YouTube or a Google/Yahoo image search, they will please your eyes much better than my pics did. However, previously sourced Sharpproductions over at YouTube was also kind enough to score an on-ride vid of Goliath. Here you go:

So, after all that, you’d think we already had the best vacation evar right? A PlayStation party and 2 parks? Well, that wasn’t the end! We still had to hit the LA Convention Center for E3! BTW here is some pics of the LA Convention Center I took on the day we went to Knott’s (before we realized Sony was paying for us to go there):

Here is the front of the LA Convention Center with a massive picture of Brutal Legend on it.

Here is the entrance to the West Hall, where Sony, Nintendo, Activision, Nyko, Bethesda and several others called home for the 3 days of E3. Microsoft, EA, Square-Enix and several others were in South Hall which was closer to the main entrance. Both halls were roughly equal in size and, with the exception of Target’s BullsEye Lounge inbetween the two, comprised all of the exhibits of E3.

On the Hotel Figueroa (which is essentially dead center) they placed 3 individual 20 story tall posters for Final Fantasy 13 depicting different characters and a ‘Spring 2010′ moniker. I wanted to get a better picture of them, but it is hard on a moving bus and, honestly, when we were actually going to E3 I was so into it I forgot about the posters! Sorry about that hehe!

The three actual days of E3 were awesome. I took more video than pictures, so keep your eyes peeled for a new TKTV soon. Anyways, it was just awesome. I have known Ted Price through email and phone conversation before (a mutual friend introduced us, he is the President of Insomniac Games) and we finally got to meet face to face at E3. I also got to meet Adam Sessler of G4 and countless game designers and industry professionals, all of whom were asked to sign our PSP cases. Trev got to meet a lot of people too, including having a lengthy conversation with the Sony Producer charged with Slant 6’s new PSP title, Socom Fire Team Bravo 3. Above and beyond that, we got to make many new friends like Ben, Colin and Charles with whom we shared similar passions and goals in life–many of these guys are now in talks to join Team KAIZEN even! Like I said, video is coming but for now I got two pics for ya:

Here is the ‘Best Kept Secret of E3′, the PSP Go! It takes away the UMD drive (rumor has it Sony will institute a trade in program for existing UMD owners to get all their games in digital format) and replaces it with bluetooth, a 16 gig drive (upgradable via micro memory stick slot) and a slider format where the screen slides down to hide the buttons, d-pad and analog stick. Honestly, I fretted about this. I don’t like the DSi’s flat d-pad and buttons (on that side, I prefer the DS Lite’s set up a lot more–the DSi feels clicky to me and uneven) so I thought the PSP was going in the same direction. However, once I got my hands on the unit (whilst playing the new LittleBigPlanet for PSP), I do what my obsessive-compulsive-when-it-comes-to-d-pads self does, I did all the typical fighting game maneuvers on it (such as ones required to throw fireballs or uppercuts). Strangely, I was impressed. It didn’t feel clicky, but it DID feel responsive and nice. The change in placement of the analog stick actually makes your thumbs more comfortable, something pretty much everyone attested to. Trev had a gripe with the fact that we have to buy new memory cards, and I do agree with that. We just paid 79 bucks for 8 gig cards before we went to E3 to find out they are now obsolete, however I also do have a camcorder that uses Memory Stick Duos so I can still use my stick so I am not as worried. I hope Sony finds a way to over come this too, although for me while it is frustrating, isn’t a total deal breaker. I still loved the unit overall, it is smaller (while barely sacrificing screen size, it is a hair smaller), sleeker and 16 gigs of onbaord memory (before any sticks added) is very welcome–I love having all my media onboard without having to switch discs so this iteration of the PSP is, mostly, right up my alley.

Me with Ratchet. You know, it’s funny. When I see videos of people in DisneyLand running up to Mickey and giving him a bear hug I think, “What dorks!”. Well, upon seeing big fluffy Ratchet, that got thrown to the wayside and I became just as big of a dork. Charles one-upped me even, Ratchet didn’t have time to turn around before Charles jumped on him giving him a massive bear hug. Something about Ratchet as a character already has a, “Oooh here is a fluffy kitty/doggie/thingy” so, when a man dresses up as Ratchet, he better be prepared to face an onslaught of gamer nerds like Charles and I who are desperate for hugs and pictures. E3 was definitely DisneyLand for nerds and I am an uncurable nerd, uncurable by choice that is! I’ll take Ratchet over Mickey any day! BTW, Kotaku posted the following pic that Sony Japan sent to try to explain how to put this suit on, it is really funny. I will post it next after this fun little fact: it is the second time I had my picture taken with this Ratchet. Trevor and I ran into him back in 2007 at a small Japanese gaming convention where he was wearing a Japanese festival uniform on top of the pre-existing suit and playing a Japanese Taiko Drum for kids. This is why Ratchet has black eyebrows in this–the American Ratchet sports brown eyebrows the same color as his stripes while, in Japan, they made them black. So this suit and I have met up on both sides of the Pacific! Here is the instruction on how to get inside the Ratchet suit–let’s see if you all can figure it out!

After the last day of E3, we met up with My Evolution (whom I have blogged about before, check out my posts on Static-X, whom My Evolution opened for when they were in Great Falls). We went with them to their studio in LA and listened to them jam out, including them performing a song you are sure to be hearing more about soon hehehehehe Here is a few pics of the session:

So, that’s it for the photos and blog side of this! Don’t forget to check out our video blog when it goes live (I will notify everyone through here, Twitter and Facebook). Special thanks to Jeff Rubenstein, Chris Morell, Seb Hayes, Eric Blattberg, Charles, Colin, Ben, Adam, Alfredo (of the Hotel), Mark (of the Hotel), Marina (of the Hotel), Lizandro (our Town Car driver), My Evolution, everyone at Sony, Mama of Mama’s Hot Tamales, the ladies who drove the buses 439 and 460 on May 30th, Joe and everyone else who, even in a tiny way, helped us to make this trip the best vacation evar! Thanks everyone, we won’t forget our experiences with you and here’s to many more in the future!

Josh (yay 2 AM time to crash!)

When they get to showing the still photos taken with fans, Josh and Trevor are actually the first ones shown! Some of the footage (not a lot) shows their performance at the Mansfield center, but either way you can get an idea for how energetic and unique this band is!

Josh