The iPad has been a real trendsetter when it comes down to magazine publishing in the digital age. And, for the first time I have begun to dabble in these experiences. The mag that caught my attention is the Atomix Magazine App.

It’s the first video game magazine for the iPad. It’s a mixture of video and text articles, reviews and opinions. The guys behind the magazine have worked on great prodctions like The 1up Show and Co-op. Creatively, I feel it’s done really well. The UI is really easy to use and there wasn’t much of a learning curve. Swipe left to right to go to each page. Up and down to read the articles. You flip the ipad to the landscape orientation to see large pics of the subject you are reading.

Right now, each monthly issue will set you back 99¢. They will figure out a subscription model soon, but the price is perfect. You just can’t say no for that price and for the content you get, it’s a steal.

The download for the issue I bought (#2) was a whopping 680 mb. Which is big, I know, but you get the convenience of having the videos embedded so that you can play the video articles locally without being at a wifi hotspot or 3G enabled.

So if you like video games and have an iPad, this is the app for you. If you like video games and don’t have an ipad, buy one.

incredible is game zombie new brand a for trailer this.
So just watch it.

Every once in awhile I have dreams that stick to me. Kinda like the way peanut butter sticks to the gums of your teeth. So I need to clear my head and just write what happened…

Last night I was Marcus Fenix. You know who that is right? The dude from the Gears of War video games. Well, I was being chased and I was firing my machine gun like a madman while running. I wasn’t going down without a fight. Somehow, I made it onto a roof of an underground train. Blasting fools left and right. It was awesome. Then this Giant Spider came. This giant spider is from the game too, they are called Corpsers. This was when it got kinda freaky. I couldn’t see much but its 8 million eyeballs. So, I started blasting away at every little eyeball I saw. It didn’t seem like I was making a dent at all. Read the rest of this entry »

Almost a year ago I wrote about the Korg-DS10 making its way to Japan households and how excited I was to get my hands on it. Well, I finally did and so far it hasn’t disappointed at all. I seriously picked this thing up and within 2 minutes I was rocking out to my own custom synth beats. You get a couple of keyboard tracks, drum tracks and an actual mini piano you can pull up at any time and rock out with. You can save your tracks and play them with friends, there’s even a multiplayer mode. I have to commend the genuis’ who made this thing possible. I’m no musician by any stretch of the imagination. Okay, I did play the bass in a college band, but I was terrible at it.

It’s really neat how all these little features are hidden everywhere. You can blast your block-rocking beats while experimenting with all these features. You can even check out the tutorials on the Korg DS10 website. I’m thoroughly impressed by this little gadget. I really wish I wasn’t so damn lazy and actually upload a demo of me messing around with the thing. I opted to YouTube some videos for you to see instead…
Read the rest of this entry »

Well, I’m back home from a month long holiday trip that has taken me from Chicago to New Hampshire to Aruba back to Chicago. Now that I’m going to be back in the saddle of my everyday life I’d like to reflect on some of my new year resolutions I’ve been brewing up.

1. Be a good parent and provider for my family. I think this one should go without saying, but it came to mind so I’m writing it down. It’s going to be my first full year as a father and a husband. I need to balance my life so that I spend as much time as I can with my wife and daughter. It’s great that I work from home cause this allows me to do that with a bit more ease. 
2. Push my creativity as much as I can. Whether I’m working on a design project personally or for work I need to push my creative abilities as much as possible. Creativity is often scaled back for me do to my “just get it done” nature. I’m gonna push it this year. I’m going to be more demanding on myself and others when it comes to this stuff. So the guys at work better watch out cause I might be a little intense imagine me intense, haha. I’m also going to do more personal projects. Maybe some experimenting on this site. Maybe learn a new skill. I’m definitely going to be on this video montage gig for my family. I think family videos are great. My brother does them all the time. It’s a great little outlet to do something nice. In all, creativity in my life is a must have and I really want to push my abilities to the fullest.  
3. Win at Fantasy Baseball. Last year I was the best team in my divison then I lost my first playoff game. It was terrible. Should’ve done better, and I will next year.
4. Play more video games and read more books. This is always a must. I think what this really means is for me to have some time for the things I really enjoy. I have plenty of games to play and I want to get  to at least 1000 gamer points behind kapnasty or close to his score. I’m sure it won’t happen, but I want to give it a shot at least. I’m hoping to read a lot more books as well. I’ve finished Watchmen, which is a graphic novel, and I wouldn’t mind reading more novels like that. I’ve always been a fan of The Punisher, and I know there are some great war journal stories I haven’t read. Starting there shouldn’t be hard. Maybe I’ll find some more Hubert Selby to read. I love the way that dude writes. He really creeps me out. 
5. Find a bad ass band to listen to. Music has been hard to come by recently. I hope to discover new music at least every couple of months. I’ve been scowering for things I like, but maybe I’m being to critical. I need to open myself to other types of music.
6. Live a healthy life. I really need to watch what I eat, cook more, excercise. All this stuff should be a no brainer. I’m a sucker for the fixings at Chipotle. What I should really do is make rice and beans myself and make my own burrito bowls. I’ll start there and see where it goes. I need to promote a healthy living and be a good example for my little one.

It’s really weird that a magazine that has been hanging around for so many years just all of the sudden stops printing, but it did with EGM. Unfortunately, the magazine has stopped and the peeps are all losing their jobs. It really sucks because this magazine was the best in my eyes. I remember when I was a kid and it was either EGM or GamePro. I’d love reading the Quartermann’s rumors and checking out the latest reviews of my old Turbografx games. Even now, it was my mag of choice on long plane trips. I could always count on Hudson Newstands to carry the mag. It was part of my flying ritual. This ruins my flight pattern. Its going to be a weird adjustment.

Apperently, Ziff-Davis, the old parent company has been going through some hard times. That stuff happened about 9 months ago. I read about it and really didnt think much about it and thought everything was going to be fine. Then just a couple of days ago I read about the acquisition of the magazine and 1up.com. They got bought out by UGO Entertainment. They are a website that deals in all kinds of tech stuff. They’ve been around for quite awhile, but I pay no attention to them. Well, when they acquired them they were only looking to develop and work with the website (1up.com) and not the magazine. Those cold hearted bastards just let the mag die.

You can read about the UGO acquisition here. Also, the Editor-in-Chief wrote a blog about what was going on. They have a never-going-to-be-published February magazine that will be available through 1up.com in a PDF format sometime in the near future. I wish all those EGM guys luck in these economic hard times. I’m sure a lot more info will be coming soon tomorrow during the 1up Yours podcast when its posted.

I’m totally all over this New Xbox Experience. It’s there new operating system for the 360. It’s got razzle and a little bit of dazzle and I’ve automatically fallen for it. The interface is as smooth as can be with sliding window pains and seemless loading of dynamic images, graphics and all that stuff. You now can stream your NetFlix movies over to your 360. Its a seemless process and setting it up with an existing account took a little less than a minute to setup. You can now download your games to the hard drive so you don’t have to hear that roaring of the disc, which is awesome. Should improve your load times as well. Although some games might run into problems like Halo has, its a small bump on the road to a great and fulfilling new experience.

The Avatar creation is something not really new to the console. The Wii has them and it seems Microsoft took advantage of the power of the 360 to make them cooler. The many options they have for you to create your character gives you a lot of possibilities. You can go traditional and make your avatar look like you or you can go nuts and create an alter ego with scars or a monocle on your face. I’m really excited to check out everyones characters. Too bad some people named fabes have gone online and never made their avatar…nerd. But this can be a great way for advertising too. Since Microsoft is a giant and american they have an opportunity to do unique things with these Avatars. My idea would be for you to buy the likenesses of your favorite cartoon characters. I’m a big Futurama fan so how cool would it be to create your own Bender Bending Rodriguez or be one of Zapp Brannigans minions in a velour outfit? They have the power to do something like that. It will be interesting to see how they will monetize these things. Microsoft has done this very very very well. I’m glad they can get something right, hahaha.

It’s been really tough to find the time to blog and chat and anything of that nature these days. I must say though, its really nice to have a life to help bring up in the world, and days are very happy having my family around all day. I’ve managed to find a system of listening to my podcasts, playing video games, watching shows and most importantly getting my work done. It seems like the late nights are becoming my time to play. I’ve played a lot of Fable, but have put on hold as I try and defeat the Horde in GoW2. Its a fun game, a really fun fun game. It’s so dope, could be my game of the year so far. I’ve also had the chance to watch Futurama’s Beast with a Billion Backs. Its a great show, but I’m wondering that 90 minutes of Futurama is a little too much to handle in one sitting. Nonsense, I love that damn show too much and just seeing Zapp Brannigan makes me laugh. Well, as time goes by I’m sure I’ll be more and more comfortable managing all the things I want to do. Until then, hit me up to play some GoW2. I really want to get some peeps together and do this Horde mode thing.

Oh man, looks like the composer of UNLV’s fight song is suing Electronic Arts for using it in the NCAA video games they make. EA never asked permission. The composer Gerald Willis owns the rights to the song and UNLV has a license to use it, EA doesn’t. Kinda funny to see this story hit the interwebs.

Composer Gerald Willis is suing Electronic Arts for using the University of Nevada Las Vegas fight song in ten different EA Sports titles without permission. Willis has held the copyright for the song “Win With the Rebels” since 1990. EA never approached him about using the fight song, although it’s used in NCAA Basketball 2009, NCAA Football 2006, 2007, 2008, and 2009, NCAA March Madness 2006, 2007, and 2008, and NCAA Baseball 2006 and 2007.

The past few weeks has had me crunching down all my video game cravings. I’ve beat the streets of GTA, taken apart The Orange Box collection (minus TF2, wanna play?), and now I’ve mastered my ninja skills in Ninja Gaiden: Dragon Sword. All these games were so awesome. Hammering through all of these were very important though. First and foremost, we have a little one on the way and she will be here at any moment now. Second, its that time of the season when a hole heck of a lot of games are coming out.

This season of video games has Fable 2, Gears of War 2, Dead Space, Prince of Persia, Mirror’s Edge, and so many more. Fable 2 will be my first purchase. It’s a great series from the super brilliant british guy, Peter Molyneux. It’s set in a fantasy world where you create your character and all your actions dictate the type of story you play. In the original game I played as the good guy. My dude turned into a bad-ass gandolf the white looking kinda guy. It was sweet. The game was really short though, which was kinda lame, but it allowed me to go back and play it a second time as an evil guy. The new thing about Fable 2 is the accessibility to transport your character to other worlds your friends are playing online. Perpetual says he’s gonna come to my world and terrorize it. Haha, should be really fun. So, in the meantime I’ve been playing a little Doom which only costs 400 points right now and some Halo 3, cause that never gets old.