INsanityDesign

Just a quick Merry Christmas to all readers. Have a good time, many presents and relax! At least that is what I am trying to do.

Finally, after years of blogging (and month of !blogging) I decided to show myself to my humble but crowded community. As a friend of mine and me myself were playing around with Gravatar we portrait ourselves. He used the commonly known South Park Studio and I made a copy of my first and best Mii Character. So…

Here I am! Here it is! My full body portrait!

I take requests for life-size poster prints through the comments. Costs vary by service and postal rate to your location.

PS: Even if this happens to be my Mii Character I ensure (and many friends will too) that this is very accurate. If you think this is a hoax, rest assured IT IS NOT!

A Happy New Year to everyone reading this (Yeah, you two! [Damn, worst joke ever!!!]). I hope you enjoyed your New Years Eve, had much fun and are eager to read much more stuff I’m writing about. For me myself I just got smoothly into the new year as I have a cold and far to many things to think about!

Two of those things that troubled me the last weeks (besides Christmas and New Year) were the announcements or better first/new materials of Street Fighter IV and Duke Nukem Forever (And YES! I always believed it will be released…).

Street Fighter IV
First of all Street Fighter IV was announced some weeks ago with a very stylish trailer.
After much speculation about which dimension Street Fighter IV will conquer (3D like Street Fighter EX3 or 2D like the old Street Fighter World Games, which we liked so much) two weeks ago 1UP (better EGM) had an exclusive first look at an early development stage of the game… and damn, it looks very very good.

It will be a 2.5D fighting game as the whole graphics are 3D (not really classic Cel-Shading but very pastel like texturing and colouring) but the fighting will be on a traditional 2D layer with some additional special effects and environment interaction. Not much is known at this moment as the Capcom states that the development has just started, so the release won’t be before the end of 2008 (and a new “Happy New Year” post ^^’) but EGM managed to get some information out of the developers.
The characters of Ryu, Ken, Chun-Li and Dhalsim are already somehow integrated. No final word on the character selection later on. Additionally to classic “Hadokens” and fighting there will be Ultra Combos integrated (probably known from games like “God of War”) and a “Rescue System” that will allow players on the edge to come back with some kind of blowout. For the whole story (I am too lazy to retell it here) have a look a the 1UP Feature.

Besides a new game in the franchise the rumour about a new movie (after the disaster movie with Jean-Claude) was spread month ago and they came out true. With “Street Fighter – The Legend of Chun-Li” Andrzej Bartkowiak (director of DOOM and respected for his camera work) will helm a new movie starring Chun-Li (hard to tell). Less than for the game is known what the movie will deal with (but Chun-Li) but what is known already is that the main actress will be Kristin Kreuk. Most people probably know here as Lana Lang from the Superman-Series “Smallville”. And actually as much as I think she looks lovely I cannot really think of here as Chun-Li.
But until we know more, see the first trailer and watch the final cut we can kill time by watching the hilarious Later Years of Street Fighter!

Duke Nukem Forever
Another bit news story made our Christmas more wonderful than the last 6 years. As Broussard lashed his men to finalize the first trailer since E3 2001 Duke Nukem Forever lives again. Declared dead by many, honoured with a Vaporware Lifetime Achievement Award but the Duke IS Forever.
Much could be said to this achievement, a recap of the last ten years with Duke Nukem Forever has been summed up by Shacknews so I let them do the writing and just give you the trailer.
But remember: Broussard once declared on the 3DRealms Board that the first new material will be shown if the release is within the next 12 months. So let’s hope he is right and is true to his words!

I prepared the Duke Nukem Forever Trailer from ‘98 and ‘01 for your pleasure after the jump!
Thanks to 1UP/Gamevideos, Gametrailers and the developers for those great resources!

Read more…

Let’s make it quick: I AM ALIVE! I am still bloggin’ and I will still share my mental constitution with you!

But first: I wish you a MERRY CHRISTMAS!

I’ll be back with new posts, new nonsense and many MANY links to click on! First new entry tomorrow!

Long time, no see! Your hopes and prayers have not been heard by the lord itself as I am still blogging and blogging on. But first and foremost I wish every reader (yes, you two) a Happy New Year and a wonderful 2007. That your finest hour may come.
I know I haven’t posted something for a long long time but I was somehow distracted (and as the title of this blog suggests, gone far beyond INsanity). From now on I will try to keep up a regular post frequency (at least this is my New Year’s pledge ^^’).

I don’t want to make this very long as the new year has just started and should not be filled with that much stupidity right along but what troubled me the last weeks:
I got my Wii as the countdown suggested and I am very happy. It is a good and solid console with more good games to come. The control works great as if you have never used anything else before. The Party Games like Wii Sports and Wii Play are pretty good. Much fun with some people and some beer ^^’. The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess is just terrific, great, best game from Nintendo ’till this day. Most other games don’t work as they should but time will tell if Nintendo can keep up some more good games, as every console has a hard game start. Red Steel should have been the new experience in the Ego-Shooter genre but it did not quite work out. Most reviews rated it pretty bad. I tested it for 2 days and I must say: The controls could be better but are easy to adopt. After some hours you will know how to fight, how to move. From then on it is a funny and cool game with intermediate graphics and a very nice Arcade-Feeling like House of the Dead with your Lightgun. A sequel is already in the work so I hope they learn from their mistakes and will make a great next-new-gen-Ego-Shooter ^^’. And as NexGen Wars shows I am not alone with my positive thinking.
Two things could be better. First the Virtual Console. Itself is just a great idea and works great but the prices for such old games like the first Sonic, the first Legend of Zelda or R-Type are with 5€ to 10€ just by far too much. And the overall internet capability of the Wii is pretty limited. Currently no game can be played with others online, not even Red Steel and things like the WiiShop are pretty slow. Everything requires reload. I hope Nintendo will improve and focus their work on these two things.

Everything else just somehow goes and goes on. University sux as always, still no very concrete diploma thesis. Life itself is the hell of a burden ^^. Some good movies have been released. Apocalypto by Mel Gibson. Maybe controversial but I pretty much liked it. It was true and strong with great stills. The newest James Bond… long story short, best Bond movie with the second best Bond actor. Now I am looking forward to Babel and Pan’s Labyrinth, two very promising movies and I will tell you about as soon as I have seen them.

For now… the end is near… the year is over… another one just started… 2007… The End!