I want to thank my buddy Rob from figuresandmore.com for providing me with this magazine clip. This featured item article comes from the February 2008 issue of Previews magazine. Now I will say that I am no longer the Final Fantasy fan I once was 10 years ago, and I call that progress. However when I first heard about this little news tidbit from my friends I was in disbelief, well just read it for yourself.

So in FF XIII the female lead is Cloud redesigned? Have I missed something? Was there some press release that I missed along the way because I don't recall hearing this before. Cloud is now redesigned, with a vagina. I'm sorry it's either just not processing in my brain or I plain don't get it. Is this really all Square Enix can do to make money, continue to milk the FF VII cow? I guess it doesn't really matter, people will still buy it and fanboys can feel a tad less insecure about wanking to him/her/it.

Want to know why there haven't been any updates in forever? Well now you know, I've been busy getting my production company off the ground. We just got our website up and running and made our first page update. Go over and check it out! Soon enough when I get the time again I will come back and continue with my personal blogging, but I gotta have my priorities.

DPadProductions.com

Just in time for Halloween my little sister made a little something for the contest the Double Fine people are running. So awesome...

Ladies and gentlemen, the console wars of 15 years past will now finally be waged on the battlefield. Sonic is now officially a character in Brawl. This is a clear note of progress in gaming today in combination with the addition of Snake, rival companies coming together to create something great.

Link to the trailer on GameTrailers.

DigitalLife in NYC is for the most part a tech trade show, but video games do get represented quite a bit. I played Guitar Hero 3 and to me it's just the same game with new songs and a battle mode I'm not too fond of. The game at the show that really wow'ed me was Eye of Judgement. If you are unfamiliar with the concept then where the hell have you been? Go watch Sony's E3 presser from two years ago and come back.

It is a solid card game which makes the digital aspect of it that much cooler with online play and different boards to play on. Games can go from anywhere as short as 20 minutes to 2 hours. The camera on the PS3 reads the cards amazingly well with little difficulty. What I am worried about is the price point because there is no way people will buy a PS3 just to play a card game that doesn't unnecessarily need the PS3 to play. The game comes with a deck, mat, and camera for $70 with cards costing about $3.75 per booster pack and $12 for a deck.

My primary concern was counterfeiting, what if anything was being done to combat it? From what I got at the Wizards of the Coast booth, there is a special kind of ink being used and they assured me that there were other methods being implemented and that it was very hard. Any more questions and I bet they would have to kill me. I got curious so when I got home I broke out the scanner and gave it a try.

This is the promo card being distributed at the show taken with my digital camera:

Note that the hieroglyphic looking things on the top and bottom of the card determine which card it is and the neon green arrows help determine the direction its facing. Now look what happened when I put the card through my scanner:

Colors are changing! The hieroglyphics and card background when seen with the naked eye are grey, but when seen through a consumer grade scanner the color turns to brown. Also the arrows on the side of the card go from a neon green to a lime green. I imagine the game must be programed to only read the hieroglyphics if they are of a certain color. Kudos to WotC for thinking ahead but it makes me wonder if someone out there will indeed crack these cards.