I just read on a friend’s lj that Palladium games, makers of the RIFTS, Robotech, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Role-Playing games, have suffered between $850,000 to 1.3 million in losses due to embezzlement.

This, combined with losses taken producing a RIFTS game for the Nokia N-gage, as well as stalling in the production of the RIFTS movie, and a general lull in the demand for RPGs has created an environment

Kevin Siembieda has posted an open letter to the public asking for financial support to get his company through the year. To generate this support he is selling a numbered art print of Palladium’s cast of characters from their various games.

“- I, Kevin Siembieda, will draw a special, pencil drawing with key characters from our entire game line to be made into a simple, black and white, toned piece of artwork, 11 x 14 inches, printed on a good quality paper.

- Each print will be hand signed by me. I’ll indicate which number that print is (i.e. #1, 2, 100, 1000, 2010, etc.). I don’t know how many there will be in the end; I pray for thousands!

- EVERYONE who purchases the print will see their names appear in the back pages of a major book listed as “Heroes of the Megaverse®!”

- The print will sell for $50.00 plus shipping and materials (envelope, protective cardboard, etc.), probably about $2.00-$5.00 by regular first class mail.

- We need those sales NOW!!! If 4,000 or 5,000 people all order that darn print within a month or two, it should give us the money we need to get back on our feet! Without a shot in the arm of some big cash, and fast, I fear Palladium is gone. That kind of jump start should carry us through the year and should enable us to do the other things we need to do to keep the company going for years to come!”

Buy a print and support a company that has entertained so many, and continues to exercise the creativity and intellect of youth and adults alike.

Here is a link to buy a print.

Here is a link to the lj where I heard about this.

These days it’s hard to get me excited about up-coming video games. The most exciting game I can think of that came out in the last 6 months is “shadow of the colossus,” and I can’t think of even one really new-concept title for the PC in the last year/year-and-a-half. This game looks amazing. I watched the entire movie in awe at the scope of it. Check it out:

Well, I got myself an old Sega Dreamcast for about 30 bucks the other day. It came with 2 controllers, a lightgun and a couple of memory cards as well as a couple dozen games. What a fricken deal! The dreamcast has some great titles that just can’t get ignored. My personal favourites:

-The light gun games (There are only 3). Especially House of the Dead 2, and Confidential Mission.

-Jet Grind Radio: A Japanese version of Tony Hawk. The object: Rollar blade around putting up graffiti tags and busting up rival gangs. Try and avoid the police, attack helicopters, tanks, and swat teams. This was one of the first games to use cell-shading, and the first one to do a good job of it.

-Crazy Taxi(1 and 2): Drive around frantically trying to get fares before the clock runs out.

For a small price, this system is giving me hours of retro-gaming fun.

That time of year is coming, so here’s some stuff I think is worth buying:

1. The IPOD nano. I’ve never really been that interested in the IPod, but the nano may make a convert yet. My biggest problem with the IPod has always been the hard drive that it uses for storage. You see, one of the major appeals for me, as far as MP3 players go, is that they were originally solid-state with no moving parts. This feature was appealing to me because that meant no skipping songs, and no parts to wear out. The IPod HD was something destined to fail. With up to 4GB of storage, the nano can hold something like 3 days of music. Some people say that IPods are all over-priced. I think that the IPod interface, and the fact it auto-syncs with I-tunes make it worth it. I don’t own one of these myself, but if I did I’d probably buy the Logitech Wireless Music system for it.

2. Now if you think that loved one will want more space, and don’t mind the fact that it’s a HD player, you should check out the iaudio X5. This beauty has a 14 hour battery life, a 20-30GB HD, and a reasonable price. It also has two things that the big IPOD doesn’t:

-An FM tuner,
- And VIDEO!

Pretty cool I think. I’ve read some complaints about the interface, but most agree that if you take the time to learn it you can navigate pretty fast.

3. I got a Sony PSP on my birthday and loved it. Even though it is expensive compared to a Nintendo DS, it is definitely in a different league as well. I’d say that the PSP is targeting an older audience than Nintendo. I fell in love with the PSP when I was in Costco one day and saw them on display. I was very impressed with the screen. Even then, I wasn’t completely taken by the PSP until I found out you can run homebrew. Since the 1.0 firmware got exploited and Wipeout Pure was used to access a web-browser, homebrew for the psp has only gotten stronger. There is a ton of information out there on running dozens of emulators on the PSP. These include emulators for SNES, Gameboy, MAME, Turbo Graphics 16, NES and a slew of others (including SCUMM the lucas-arts engine). On top of that there are dozens of other homebrew aps from e-book readers, to media players, to organizers.

Unfortunately if you want to get a lot of mods, you are going to need to buy a bigger Memory Stick Pro DUO. I have a 256MB card, which is starting to feel small. Even without all of the mods, hacks and homebrew software, the PSP is a very capably video player. I often bring an hour of TV with me on my PSP (I could bring more but my card is pretty small). This is the perfect toy for someone who loves playing with ROMS and tech toys. The best games out there for this puppy are Ridge Racer (racing), Lumines (Puzzle), Metal Gear (Turn based card game), and Burnout Legends (Racing).

This post is mirrored on both my wordpress blog and my livejournal blog. The comments aren’t mirrored though, because I’m not that good yet.

Here’s a small list of stuff I want. It’s not really a christmas list, but I have it here so that people can use it as such if they want to. I’m planning on making a wishlist section on my new homepage

Books

The art of Oddworld Inhabitants

Art from my favourite series of video games. These games had both style and substance. I’m still amazed that they had to put out an old-school platformer when everyone else was doing 3d crap. Unfortunately not sold on Amazon. I want the hard cover–but not the overly expensive leather bound one. Cost: 50 US. Plus shipping

Anansi Boys, by Neil Gaiman Latest book by my favourite “new” author. I can’t wait to get my claws on this puppy.

A Feast of Crows, By George R.R. Martin. An older “new” author. latest in his ‘Game of Thrones’ series. It’s the only epic worth reading.

My Amazon wishlist.

Contains some of the books/dvds I have contemplated buying but not quite gotten to. A quirky list at best. I paired out about 20 listing recently because I’d either purchased them or didn’t want them any more(more the latter).

Toys

The Xbox. I’m hoping it will sink to sub-100 dollar prices for the holidays. I just wanna mod the hell out of it. Xbox360 is for suckers with more money than sense.

Sigma 18-200mm F3.5-6.3 DC The next lense I want for my Canon 350d.

Intuos3 9×12 tablet. This isn’t high up on my list as I just bought a fully functional Graphire3, but I really like it. I’ve promised myself that if I do enough digital art to justify it I’ll get one.

That’s it off of the top of my head. I’ll update this post, and maybe throw in my holiday gift suggestions in the next little while.

This post is mirrored on both my wordpress blog and my livejournal blog. The comments aren’t mirrored though, because I’m not that good yet.

This is my new centralized web-site/Blog. I will often use it to mirror entries in my other blogs(livejournal and Deviant art).