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Where do I sign up for DVD Buyers Anonymous, because clearly I am an addict. Saw an ad for Return of the King for $14.99 + free popcorn at Target and I couldn’t resist. On top of that I ordered from Amazon Buffy seasons 5 and 6 and the World War II Collection which has the new Saving Private Ryan DVD and a couple of documentaries. And to think I have no job.

I asked my dad if he saw my Matrix Reloaded DVD like 3 months ago, and he said he didn’t know. So naturally I assumed it was lost forever. I did DVD inventory recently to see if I was missing anything else and printed out a list and gave it to my mom. This was easily done because I use the DVD Profiler software to keep track of my discs and it has many features such as printing out reports. Anyway, she finds the missing DVDs the next day. She said they were at my dad’s office.

Does anyone else notice the mass marketing for Shrek 2? I swear I see Shrek everywhere I go. Besides the TV commercials for the movie and Sierra Mist, I went to Baskin Robbins and saw Shrek themed ice cream sundaes. Then on the same day, I went to 7-11, and they had a Shrek slurpee. I really flipped out when I saw Shrek at the post office. I don’t know, it’s just annoying.

Dear Best Buy Customer-
Best Buy has become aware that you were inadvertently charged California sales tax on your redemption of one or more BestBuy.com digital coupons. Enclosed is a refund check for the full amount of the sales tax you were overcharged.
We sincerely apologize for this error and any inconvenience this may have caused.

Funny thing is I had no idea I was being overcharged. They gave me a check for $3.25 and a $5 digital coupon. I’m not complaining.

Speaking of Best Buy, I was there last week and picked up the new Enter the Dragon SE DVD; The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly; and The Great Escape. Watched Enter the Dragon couple days ago. I was amazed at the picture quality. They really made this 30 year old movie look like new. The sound however, is not as amazing. It was a nice flick to watch again, and there are alot of great documentaries about Bruce Lee.

Seems that my house had a termite problem and needed extermination. We also have a few roaches around. So my parents hired some guys to kill things. They put a tent thing over our house and we had to get lost for 3 days. I stayed at a Motel 6 for one day by myself, boy did it suck. It had a funny smell and I was really uncomfortable there. So I rejected a second night stay and treated myself at the Holiday Inn. I didn’t get much sleep both nights because I had two midterms to study for. I am pretty confident I aced my calculus exam, but the physics was a downer. I didn’t spend the time I needed to study for physics, but it was just plain hard anyway. Just glad the week is over.

I went to the Electronic Entertainment Expo yesterday. It’s a videogame convention and this will be my third time going. It seems that every year I get less interested in the stuff and more tired. It was cool to see all my friends at Square Enix again, I see most of them from time to time, but some I only see once a year at E3.

Anyway, Square had a nice setup this year. It was pretty elaborate and stood out the most to me. They had a circular theater thing where all the seats were on top of a rotating platform that turned to different spots of the 360 degree screen. They showed all the games they had playable demos for outside: Final Fantasy XII, Final Fantasy XI Chains of Promathia, Kingdom Hearts for gba, Front Mission 4, Full Metal Alchemist, Star Ocean, and Samurai Legend Musashi. The other stuff they showed video for were Kingdom Hearts 2, which looked really cool, some cell phone games like Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest, and a Final Fantasy VII prequel called Before Crisis. They also showed the new trailer for the DVD movie Final Fantasy Advent Children, which was almost orgasmic. Make sure and check out the new trailer, with Tifa footage :D.

I was looking forward to playing Halo 2 at E3, but I didn’t see it anywhere. That was disappointing. I guess the other big things were the Sony PSP and Nintendo DS. The PSP was on display running some videos, but I couldn’t hold it or see it run any games. It looks cool. From what little I have seen on the Internet, it seems pretty powerful, and the games on it look promising: Metal Gear Acid, Gran Turismo 4 Mobile, Tales of Eternia. I didn’t see the DS because I didn’t really explore the Nintendo area too much, there was a long line for something, but I just walked passed it. I did stop to play a little 4 player Metroid Prime 2.

Another area I spent a little time in was the Konami booth. I’m really excited about Metal Gear Solid 3. They showed a trailer and had it playable. It was very cool. Definately getting this game. Konami also has this female wrestling game called Rumble Rose. When I saw it, it looked like a rip off of Dead or Alive and would be a stupid game. But I guess the gameplay is actually pretty good. I raised an eyebrow when I saw the mud wrestling option. Speaking of Dead or Alive, the Tecmo booth was a little dull. They kept showing some horse racing game. The Sega area was pretty dull too. They had a big announcement that were going to publish the Matrix Online game. Wee. They also had a new Outrun game, some sonic game, Otogi 2, and the usual sports line up. On the bright side, Sega gaves me a free Coke.

Browsing the Sony area, Kill Zone looked really good. It’s a first person shooter that has really good graphics. I’m not sure how it plays because I didn’t get a chance. Gran Turismo 4, I just walked by. I saw enough of it at last year’s E3. I’m just waiting to play it at home. Devil May Cry 3 looked ok. They had a larger EyeToy demo area than last year. I guess they are selling well.

The Xbox area, I basically just walked in and out. Took a quick glimpse of Doom 3 and Conker. Looked for Halo 2, didnt find it, and left. But they gave me free months of Xbox Live so not all was a loss. Ah free stuff, I got some inflatable plastic balls, a couple of keychains, a couple of tshirts, and some posters. I didn’t take many picture at all this year. I figured I could always browse e3girls.com if I wanted to have pictures of the babes.

All in all I guess I had a good time. My feet ached. It took me forever to get home. I spent 10 bucks on parking and 7 bucks on a burger and fries. I played maybe a total of 5 games for a short period of time. I’ll be going next year.

Today, well technically last night, I attended the Final Fantasy concert held at the Walt Disney Concert Hall. I was anticipating this for some time and was very excited. Nobuo Uetmatsu is the composer of the music for this popular video game series, and is a great influence on me and the video game industry. There is a worldwide recognition of his work by mainly videogamers, but I think events like this allow it to reach to more people. It’s great that music in videogames can be just as influential as in movies or musicals. I was a part of history, taking part in the first videogame concert in the United States.

First thing I remember was arriving at the concert hall. The building was very noticeable in downtown Los Angeles. It’s a very funky building with lots of large metallic pieces everywhere. You might recognize it from some car commerical I’ve seen before. Got inside and noticed a huge screen display that had a screen visible from every angle. The LA Philharmonic was tuning tuning their instruments.

At about 7:30 the choir walks into their places and the conductor stumbles in and they begin with Liberi Fatali from FFVII. After it finished, James Arnold Taylor, the voice of Tidus from FFX, comes in and gives an intro. He comes in at about every 3 songs to give a little talk and introduce the next 3 songs. I don’t quite remember the order of the songs, but I think it went like At Zanarkand, Terra’s Theme, Rydia, Love Grows, Vama’alla Flamenco, Dear Friends, Aeris’ Theme, Ronfaure, a medley of several songs (they played the Chocobo theme and it got some giggles and then a quick applause), a new piece from the FFVII Advent Children movies, and finally the song simply called Final Fantasy. I might have left something out, I’ll edit it if it comes back to me.

Then Nobuo himself came up to give a little speech and to many of our surprises he introduces Yoshitaka Amano and Hironobu Sakaguchi. Amano is the artist that designed some of the characters and alot of the artwork for Final Fantasy. Sakaguchi is the mastermind and creator of the FF series. They had a translator, and one funny point was when Amano was speaking he went on for ages and the translator obviously couldn’t remember all of it. After they finished and got seated we get one more song, One Winged Angel (w00t).

I had a great time. Before the concert and during intermission, I tried to go buy a program for my girlfriend. But the lines were so long it was impossible. We got one after the concert, got my girlfriend to talk someone into letting her cut in up front of the line to buy a program. Girls always get their way :P. Ran into a couple of friends I used to work with at Square, and we left and had dinner at a cafe. I enjoyed myself and would attend the next concert in a flash.