FrankCastleAZ

NINTENDO DS

Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin
is finished at 998.8%
Great game. About 20% of the side quests and a few small hidden rooms here and there are the only things I left unscathed.
The side quests were a bit annoying and not the least bit important to the storyline. They only offered extra skills and items that by the time were acquired, were outdated or would go unused.
Other than that, it was a typical 2D Castlevania; which means it was fun and worthwhile.

Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow
I’m about 23% complete so far, which is probably out of 200% as the game judges.
Haven’t played it too much due to the next DS game listed

Advance Wars: Dual Strike
I’m on Mission 23 or 24 right now. I’m in heaven with this game.
Strategy at it’s best with grid style movement, tons of different military weapons each with their own movement range, shot range, strengths, weaknesses and the designated half ass storyline.
I love the fact that I can level up my used characters (each with their own styles and specials)
And… I haven’t even touched the real time mini-games yet.

PLAYSTATION 3

Comet Crash
I’m on Mission 15 or so
Tower Defense with an offensive twist. Setup your maze and upgrade your towers, but don’t forget about having to build and upgrade your offense.
Although I’m a big fan of TD games, I’ve never seen one where you attack your enemies.
It also offers 4 players at once on the same system, but if it had online multiplayer, it’d be much more of a hit.

Age of Booty
Not too deep into the single player, but have been playing online
Civilization style movement with a grid, but in a real time fighting style over seas instead of LONG turn based over land and sea.
It’s you capturing towers and having to defend them while capturing more, all while gathering extra resources to upgrade your towers and your ship and gathering powerups to use against the enemy.

Look for me online

-FrankCastleAZ

And I need to get some more shit done.

That is all

-FrankCastleAZ

FrankCastleAZ, Duncs and TDotimus chill with nasty Natural Ice beer and pizza and talk about this weekend’s Cosplay events, Anime news, Comic news, Gaming news and what we are doing in each of the BIG 3 (Anime/Comics/Games)

Shownotes and Download here:

http://www.arizonahp.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=7602

-FrankCastleAZ

Not many people know about Project X so I’ll reveal a tiny bit of info.

• Who:    FrankCastleAZ and some friends
• What:   Secret Project
• When:   2010
• Where:   Online
• Why:   Fun
• How:   I have knowledge and experience from doing AZHP so many years

Work ahoy!

-FrankCastleAZ

I’ve decided on Merc (Mercury) from Mirror’s Edge.

It was almost a immediate decision after playing thru the first 4 chapters and seeing concept art.

To Girlfriend: Thanks honey, buy me a game you know I want and I end up wanting to cosplay someone from the game. See what happens? Maybe you should buy me games more often.

lol jk <3

-FrankCastleAZ

FrankCastleAZ, Duncs, JENOVA and TDotimus cover the AnimeFest/GamingTournaments/ComicSigning, we mention AniZona, next weekend’s Arizona Asian Festival and do NEWS on Anime, Comics and Games and talk about what we are doing in Anime, Comics and Games

Click linkage for Shownotes and Download:

http://www.arizonahp.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=7597

-FrankCastleAZ

The entire weekend was great!

The AnimeFest and Gaming Tournaments had about 200 attendees. There was around 50-60 people in cosplay, 60+ people in gaming tournaments and a lot of others just hanging out and having fun.

On the Anime side:
Cafe Moe had a huge crowd and was highly entertaining, the game shows allowed attendee partcipation and prizes, Iron Cosplay was fun/funny as usual as the theme was Dragonball Z characters and there was a considerably large gathering of Ball Joint Doll people outside enjoying snacks and taking photos.

On the Gaming side:
Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo HD Remix was cancelled due to lack of participants (I knew it’s happen that’s why it was scheduled so early)
Super Smash Brothers Brawl was LARGE as usual with a little under 40 partcipants
Street Fighter IV was very competitive with 20 participants many of which were using arcade sticks
Guilty Gear XX Accent Core Plus was small with 4 or 5 participants but they enjoyed themselves (I also knew it wouldn’t be large because it’s a bit too fighting niche)

On the Comic side:
There wasn’t a tremendous amount of people who came with the intention of picking up “Jesus Christ: In the Name of the Gun” and getting it signed. But I have a feeling that between the occasional anime or gaming fan and the comic fans picking up their stacks for the week, they did better then most had expected.
They’re both really cool guys and you all should check out the comic here:

Afterparty:
Was very chill and humorous with about 14-16 people. No video games, movies, anime or computers were running. Just a bunch of people socializing and drinking a nice little Trashcan Punch (fruit punch and Everclear) that got everybody a good buzz.
Good times on a good weekend.

Keep a look out on DragonLenz’s website for pictures of this event.

-FrankCastleAZ

I beat “Flower” the beautifully amazing $10 PSN title the other day.

The  dark and sinister level really caught me off guard after playing thru the first few levels of such serene and peaceful landscape. It was a good changeup and really gave an unexpected emotion and feeling to a game featuring no characters or dialogue.

Although it’s a bit short, Flower has a good replay value in it’s trophies (which I have yet to acquire all of) and I can tell it will keep me coming back and playing thru it multiple times.

Mos def worth your $10

-FrankCastleAZ

After a night of editing, I’m finished with episode 4. I’ll be burning copies onto CDs and having some of the AZHP people hand them out to people at the Atomic Comics AnimeFest/VideoGameTourney/ComicSigning on Saturday. Helping provide entertainment and information for the Arizona people  is what I strive to do. Also the experience I’m getting from recording, editing, producing and participating in these podcasts is tremendous.

Linkage to Podcast episode 4 and shownotes:

http://www.arizonahp.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=7579

-FrankCastleAZ

Just need to do some editing and release it.

I will also burn a bunch of CDs with the podcast and hand them out at the Atomic Comics AnimeFest/GamingTournaments/ComicSigning on Saturday and hopefully people will enjoy it and check out the future podcast releases.

It’s late, I’m off to bed.

-FrankCastleAZ

I walked thru the Atomic Comics Mesa store today with NyuNyu and the store manager Julian and checked out where we’ll be putting the AZHP run gaming tournaments as well as the Anime and Comic events for next weekend. It all seems that it will work just fine and it should be a packed house. Saw Wakkatana shopping a bit while I was there and caught up on things with him since I hadn’t seen him in a while.

Should be a good weekend.

-FrankCastleAZ

Met the girlfriend’s dad at Tempe Martketplace and had sushi at Kabuki. He’s the typical military man type of guy but seemed to be pretty laid back. I’d say it went pretty well.

While at Kabuki I got a text message that said:

“I spy a Frank Castle at Kabuki” from Maja, who happened to be there celebrating his birthday.  So we hung out for a while after dad left and ended up at Patties bar in Old Town Scottsdale  (which is a huge pain in the ass to drive and find anything in)

Maja + Drinks + Dancing = Funny

Drunk girls who no one knows  grabbing the girlfriend’s arm trying to get her to dance with them is funny too.

Good times.

-FrankCastleAZ

On Wednesday, I took the tour of the hotel for SabotenCon 2009. It’s a nice hotel although it seems quite small for a convention expecting 800-1000 attendees.

Rather than attendees complaining about a lot of people in a bunch of small hallways like last year, they’ll be complaining about a lot of people in the main hotel lobby.  Oh well, people will ALWAYS complain.

AZHP’s Gaming Room at SabotenCon 2009 will be the Kachina Room A+B which is a combined 1200 square feet. It’s the second smallest space we’ve had in all of our convention gaming rooms but I guess that will make it easier on a staff level. I’m worried about us breaking fire code though and it means we may not be able to run tournaments if any at all.

Here’s the layout and some pics

We’ll see what we can do

-FrankCastleAZ

I’ve been a little frustrated as of late with the Arizona hobby community as a whole.

Everything’s a big fucking popularity contest, hardly anyone wants to actually help out and make a difference and everyone bitches and whines about the small details; but when it comes time to put up, they run away or act like they’ve been scared silent.

It’s quite annoying.

I’ve continued to stay strong and keep doing everything I can to help improve the community and provide services for the people, but it seems although people will never be happy. I wonder how much I’ll be able to take.

-FrankCastleAZ

Well at least one of them.
I’m a bit nervous that I meet the girlfriend’s dad tomorrow.
I know I shouldn’t worry and I will just be myself and hope that he likes me.
Wish me luck!

-FrankCastleAZ

I picked up a bunch more stuff on PSN lately including:

• Astro Tripper
• Burn Zombie Burn
• Flower
• Noby Noby Boy
• Savage Moon

I beat the everloving shit out of Savage Moon already. Got 100% of the trophies by mastering each level and I rank in the top 200 on some of the levels on Vengeance mode.

It’s the first game in a while I couldn’t pull myself away from.

Ironicly enough, Pixeljunk Monsters and now Savage Moon are the only two games I’ve got every trophy for on PSN, so I guess that says something about me and tower defense games.

I’ve been playing a little bit of Burn Zombie Burn and Noby Noby Boy since then, I’ll update on those once I’ve gotten a bit more play in.

-FrankCastleAZ

The usual blog or journal is nothing but a bunch of emotional bullshit full of whining and complaining about the world.

THIS will not be that type of blog.

I wanted a personal and a business progress journal so that it can help me improve as a person and manage my work and play time in a more constructive way.

It shouldn’t be too tough for me to blog every once in a while about what I’ve done.

-FrankCastleAZ