Category: articles

NISA Press Event 2017

Post author By Kevin
Post date February 20, 2017

I haven’t missed the NIS America annual press event since I started going in 2010 or so, and yesterday I spent my evening mulling over video games, musing over cocktails (well, ginger beer in my case) and pizza, and listening to professional nerds tell me about their upcoming products. It’s my favorite event of the year simply because they produce the types of games I’m personally interested in most: dungeon-crawler RPGs and Disgaea.

Disgaea is love. Disgaea is life.

Last night, they were showing an obscene number of titles for the modestly-sized company they are – 19 in total, up from the 8 they showed in 2016 – ranging from visual novels like PSYCHO-PASS: Mandatory Happiness, to their powerhouse murder-mystery series Danganropa, to the afore-mentioned Disgaea 5 Complete for the upcoming Nintendo Switch. The biggest news was that all of the titles they named would be released at some point in the 2017 calendar year, but that only matters if the games are any good, so it’s worth taking a look over the full list.

Tags Disgaea, NISA, press events

articles reviews writing

I Was A (Really Bad) Teenage Game Reviewer

Post author By Kevin
Post date February 18, 2016

Back in the school year of 1999/2000, about 16 years ago, I started writing video game reviews in a school notebook when I should have been studying electronics. I would’ve been about 15 at the time. And instead of being fascinated by the electronics room’s dissected Atari 2600 heavy six-switch (though admittedly I was), I was dawdling writing my thoughts about games that had spent their fair share of time in my home consoles. And the first, which I remember with some clarity, is why this comes to my mind now: I reviewed Pokemon Yellow for my Game Boy, a game now being re-released nearly twenty years after its initial launch in Japan. I don’t still have the ripped-out page for that review, which is for the best… I feel like reading it back now would bring back my desire to burn things.

articles book writing

November Eight: “Progress” Report

Post author By Kevin
Post date November 9, 2015

Word Count: 21,411

Also known as, NO PROGRESS WHATSOEVER. Because I am a big ball of suck.

I could make an “excuse” for this lack of development, for example working on a couple game reviews (one of which is up, one of which should be finished and published soon). I COULD SAY that working through these games for review, as well as performing stand-up last Tuesday and preparing a few jokes for my upcoming stand-up at Rooster T. Feathers on Wednesday the 11th (/shameless-plug), has taken up enough of my time that I simply haven’t been able to properly focus on my manuscript as I’ve meant to through the month of November.

IMG_20151108_192059676 — Accurate hoodie is accurate.

I COULD do those things. Or, I could also acknowledge that I’ve been reading – finished The Accidental Billionaires on the first and have plugged a bit between two other books – and that YouTube has all kinds of interesting content to peruse. Meaning, I’ve been both busy AND lazy. If nothing else, that should be an achievement in and of itself.

But Mondays are my day for catching up, so as this is being published in the wee hours of Monday morning, I will make an effort to get some time in writing fiction instead of just criticism, and… yeah. I’ll stop being such a busy-lazy ball of suck.

Stand Tall, and if you know any good insults for being lazy I can write on Post-Its and stick to my bathroom mirror, let me know ‘em yeah?

Tags nanowrimo, stand-up

articles games

April Torrents

Post author By Kevin
Post date April 22, 2015

There haven’t been many showers lately here in California (April or otherwise), but I know I’ve been involved in a torrent of content from the beginning of the month, and it ain’t over yet. I’m not complaining, I’m thoroughly enjoying writing the stuff, but it HAS kept me away from the blog and the book for some time, and that’s a little disappointing. But in case anyone was wondering, no this blog hasn’t been abandoned, I’ve just been… busy.

That’s my common statement when I can’t get to updating The Taller Eight on my own time, business. And lately, having to think up and write two articles a week has scratched the itch of “typing faster than my brain can think, then editing the crap out of what I just wrote to try to keep it coherent”. I’m nowhere near the fastest typist in the world, but I once did clock in at about word per minute (my resume says 65+), and that would beg the question: does your brain EVER just shut the hell hell up?

No. No, it doesn’t. And thankfully for me, otherwise I’d be screwed in thinking up and writing eight articles so far this month – six features and two reviews – or else I’d be in some mental anguish.

But now that I’ve found a little time between pieces, I thought I’d share with you just what I’ve been up to lately. Yay, it’s a catch-up post! Everybody likes those (I hope)!

Tags recap

articles news writing

February Recap

Post author By Kevin
Post date March 2, 2015

Man… I’ve been meaning to write more, but between games I have to play for review and the articles themselves, just been distracted while still getting some content out into to the world. I’ll be around more this month, you have my word. I was only able to get through about a hundred pages of what I’m re-reading right now (1984 by Orwell), so I haven’t had time to read read – let alone review – another book with the workload I have currently.

Speaking of books, MY novel is still being worked on in second-draft form. It’s slow-going (also from the reviews and previews distracting me from it), but it is still coming along. I’ll include the prologue chapter of the second draft at the end of this post for anyone interested in a short teaser. It’s brief, but hopefully it well represents the tone I’m hoping for in the finished story. I hope you like it!

Tags game revolution, novel, uzn