"He Was Aware That He Was Still A Child"
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Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in
Rocco's LiveJournal:
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| Tuesday, January 22nd, 2008 | | 6:15 pm |
today's tragedy
is that Juno got nominated for Best Picture | | Tuesday, October 23rd, 2007 | | 3:28 am |
cake for you
yeah so I think this sums up my week pretty well
| | Tuesday, September 11th, 2007 | | 3:17 am |
dicks with time machines
I was about to talk about how lousy today was, until I finally finished reviewing PAX footage and remembered that I filmed one of the former American Gladiators hiding behind a curtain and jumping out to tell the camera that he was going to kick its ass.
That was all I needed.
Current Music: cutie honey theme | | Monday, September 10th, 2007 | | 4:59 pm |
AN ULTRA EXCITING POST ABOUT INSURANCE!!!!!!!
Does anyone out there know anything about insurance?
I ask because there have been several instances this year of companies asking me to get additional coverage/certain types of insurance before working with them. And every, single time it is a mindblowing hassle.
Here's how it goes every single time:
1. Company says "OH BTW YOU NEED THIS KIND OF INSURANCE, DUDE IT'S SOOO EASY TO GET, JUST WALK IN ANYWHERE, LITERALLY ANYWHERE, AND IT'S SUPER CHEAP, OH DUDE IT'S SO EASY"
2. Every insurance place in the country says "WHAT WE'VE NEVER HEARD OF THAT, UMMMM LEMME ASK MY BOSS, NO, HE HASN'T HEARD OF THAT EITHER, UH SORRY.... UM MAYBE IF YOU PAY FOR THIS ONE KIND OF INSURANCE THAT COSTS $10,000 IT WILL BE COVERED, I DUNNO"
So that's where I'm at right now, and it sucks because it's preventing us from getting some really huge work done. Has anyone at all been in this situation? Any advice? | | Thursday, August 23rd, 2007 | | 1:18 am |
why would you buy water it's free I set up a Flickr account so that I can automatically upload my iPhone camera photos to the web. Check it out! http://www.flickr.com/photos/roccobotte/We're going to Seattle tomorrow. I'm sure I'll be uploading some gems from there. Current Music: Freezepop - Robotron 2000 Remix | | Sunday, August 19th, 2007 | | 2:24 am |
LIST OF THINGS THAT AREN'T FUNNY
-Doing the robot
-Doing that one dance where you lift up your leg and grab your ankle and the back of your neck or whatever
-"Got ______" (Anything in the style of the "Got Milk?" ads. Got _anything_ is not funny.)
-George Lopez
-Jokes about Christopher Walken being "scary"
-Penguins
-Clowns
-The concept of clowns being "scary"
-Homestar Runner
-Anything involving the movie 300.
-Anything with pirates and ninjas occupying the same space.
-Anything involving Happy Tree Friends.
-Any Big Dog shirt ever made.
-Chocolate Rain: STOP SENDING ME THIS VIDEO GUYS I'M NOT JOKING AT ALL, IT'S BEEN THREE MONTHS, IT'S NOT FUNNY, STOP
-Frasier
-Scrubs
-The War At Home
-Adam Sandler
-Andy Milonakis
-The movie "Waiting" starring Andy Milonakis
-The Andy Milonakis Show
-Dressed up dogs
Is there anything YOU don't find funny? Contribute to the Livejournal community and comment with some of your choices!
Current Music: Queens of the Stone Age - Turning On The Screw | | Wednesday, July 18th, 2007 | | 4:02 pm |
| | Thursday, April 19th, 2007 | | 11:25 pm |
Super Paper Mario is really boring. I dunno, it's just more RPG than I wanted, I guess, and the only time I'm into RPGs are when they have interesting/captivating/badass stories. SPM is in none of those categories. SPM is in the "hur hur" category. I guess it doesn't help when you're getting interrupted by phone calls all day asking for interviews about Andrew Rosenblum. I had no idea I was in his top 8 friends on Myspace. I've been seeing my picture with Miyamoto scroll by on the news channels all night. Crazy. Long day tomorrow. Dying to play a fun video game before sleep. Can't think of one. *SIGHHHH* | | Friday, April 13th, 2007 | | 10:42 pm |
| | Saturday, April 7th, 2007 | | 3:52 am |
So today I had a hose up my butt. | | Wednesday, March 14th, 2007 | | 2:16 am |
GDC07 FOR REAL (NO BS HERE)
I was thinking the other day about how much more often I used to write in this thing. It's fun to look back but I think I wrote a lot of dumb crap that should have never been comitted to text. I think it's a shame, though, that I never really wrote about a lot of important/fun/crazy things, because even though I always feel like my memories are enough... sometimes my memory really sucks. So I thought right now I'd write about one of the craziest experiences of my life- Game Developers Conference 2007.
First of all, the weeks leading up to the event were, off and on, pretty hellish. Nintendo's people (who were surprisingly so gung ho about Miyamoto doing a skit with us from the very beginning) just couldn't commit to saying he'd be there for filming, and that kinda messed with me. See, I'm really picky about topping myself. I'm never content with staying at one level of anything for a very long time (which I think has helped me achieve a lot of cool stuff in my life, but at the same time, I'm never really content, and it kinda sucks sometimes in some departments). Working with Miyamoto on a video was on such an insane level that I was willing to risk anything to make it happen. A while later they got back to us and said that he just might have an open slot during his keynote rehearsal, Tuesday from 11 to 2. Our plane tickets were already booked, and we were to land around 11:45 or 12- Right smack in the middle of it, which was juuuuust nerve-wracking enough for me to lose sleep over it. What kinda eased my mind, though, was Meggan from GDC just constantly reminding how uncertain this whole thing would be at all. Even down to the last minute, he just might find he doesn't have the time to work with us. Whatever, then. I figured it was out of my hands and it wasn't worth killing myself over.
We flew to San Francisco, and even when we stepped off the plane, nobody knew anything. We waited at the airport for a little bit, and then eventually got the call- Meggan with a resounding "You're in." We booked it over to the Moscone Center where we waited to meet Meggan. She let us past security and into an empty room where we were to change into costume and await Nintendo's orders. We scouted out a perfect alley on the side of the building, and waited there in our stupid costumes.
After what seemed like an eternity, Meggan comes through the door, and she looks at us with this grin on her face, that same glowy smile that someone gives you when they're about to bring you your new puppy, or your new baby brother. She knew how epic this was- Mr. Miyamoto and his entourage was right behind her.
As soon as Shigeru walks through the door, he sees us in our stupid costumes and just starts cracking up. And then we all started cracking up. I think that little moment was one of my favorites ever in getting to work on this crappy little show of ours. Just thinking back to Derrick and I hiding under the West Hills bleachers in our Mario costumes, the first thing we ever filmed, all the way to this moment, was just nuts. It doesn't get any more full-circle than that.
We shook hands with him and got right to work. Bill Trinen of NOA translated our directions to him, and he just went all out. He was gung ho for anything. It was really cool. He couldn't do anything serious without cracking up, though. Some of the raw footage we have of him just cracking up is pretty entertaining actually!
We thanked him and shook his hand a thousand more times, he signed some of our stuff, and he was on his way. It couldn't have gone any smoother. We filmed a few more shots of us messing with people, then headed back inside Moscone, where we learned we only had an hour or two to edit the video. That was a tense message, but it wasn't terribly hard to pull off. I don't really enjoy editing on a Mac as much as a PC (sorry), but it was stable and error-free, I'll give it that.
Just as things were wrapping up, one of the producers informed me that there was a problem with all our videos- the audio was out of sync. There was an immediate pit in my stomach. I walked into the main hall and they showed me the clips in question- A couple Sam and Max FMV clips provided by Turner. There was no problem with any of the Mega64 clips, they called in the wrong person. I informed them that this snafu proved we were better than Turner, and headed back.
That night we went to a party at Jillian's by the Metreon just on a whim. It was pretty insane. I was actually surprised at how many people I knew there. I was even more surprised by who knew me! Tetsuya Mizuguchi was there and apparently knew of Mega64 (whaaaat). He seemed like he spoke pretty decent English, so I attempted to lay some humor on him and told him he "had a few decent games, I guess." I got this vibe that he didn't get it, though, and I felt like a jackass the entire rest of the week.
I talked to Tommy Tallarico that night too. We were cracking jokes and riffing on stuff right and left. It's so funny- I never would have guessed in a million years that we would be friends with Tommy. It just still seems so out there to me. But I love him.
The next morning we woke up for the Sony keynote wayyyy too early. We were there before anyone. We got free breakfast across the street (thanks again GDC) and came back to find that now there was a monster line. Great. We got to see Raychul though, she's super nice. And while limited, the keynote was pretty cool.
We stopped by the Ziff Davis offices to join Shoe and Crispin from EGM for lunch. The 1up crew is like, the one group of people I've met in all this where I really like every single person there.
That night were the awards. I had caviar for the first time. I got more excited about that than I should have.
I was so happy to see the guys from Behemoth win a bunch of awards. They deserve it. I love those guys. I was also excited to go with Derrick to their table and tell them about how Sony's new LittleBigPlanet was totally ripping off an Alien Hominid minigame. Boom. Dramabomb.
I got goosebumps when they honored the inventor of Tetris. I'm not the kind of person that wells up when meeting famous figures, but dude... it's Tetris. The game that's on every electronic device ever invented.
We slumped in our chairs every time one of our videos came on. Jane Pinckard sat next to me and she was very supportive, but it didn't help me much. They still went over really well though! i thought we lost them on our Feel the Magic XY/XX skit, but the ending brought it home. Following it up with the SMB/Miyamoto skit didn't hurt much either. I don't ever think anything I'm a part of will ever get that much applause again, ever. It was so insane.
We talked to a million people afterwards. I bumped into Reggie from Nintendo. I told him he was my brother and I loved him. He said "alright my man" and complimented Shawn on his part in the video. That was pretty cool. He had a surprisingly soft handshake, though.
The next day we did the Nintendo keynote, and then Shawn, Derrick, Garrett, and Raychul went to see the sights in SF, while I stayed at the expo and checked out stuff with Mariel. I've never really been big on sightseeing stuff- I was here for the game industry. I actually really enjoyed Aonuma's Zelda panel, it was pretty much an hour of Wind Waker company drama.
At one point that day I believe we ran into Geoff Keighley again. Anyone want to tell me how that guy knows everything? Every time we see him he zips out some fact about us that I SWEAR I never told anyone.
We went to a bunch of parties that night. 1up's party was totally fun, and then at some other party down the street, I was introduced to the creator of LocoRoco, who communicated to me by doing an impersonation of our Mario skit. That image will be forever engraved in my brain.
A minute later as I was reaching for a drink, one of the guys from the Shadow of the Colossus team flagged me down too. I was floored. How the hell did this happen? Seriously. How did me and my friends acting stupid get me to be able to breathe the same air as these dudes?
I had a great time chilling later while the other guys played pool. It was just us guys. Was it fun? You bet. Was it gay? Always.
Mariel at that point had gone off to some other party across town called "GAMECOCK." We were fairly certain she would be raped at said juncture. She ended up going to some other rape-free gathering at the head GDC dude's suite, so i guess it worked out.
The next day we had lunch with a guy who might potentially be our business manager in the near future. That was really exciting. Some of the stuff we talked about was pretty nuts! He took us to a pretty fancy pants restaurant where we sat right beside the chick from Punch Drunk Love. The food was expensive but actually really delicious, only marred by the waiters that stood behind you and kept trying to take your plate from you every time you set your fork down.
We went to Video Games Live that night. I was most excited to see Koji Kondo, but that part was just okay- The best performance of the night was a guy shredding through Contra on an electric guitar. It really could have been two hours of that.
We woke up the next day, checked out of the Westin St. Francis, discovered that since we touched things in our minibar it automatically charged us hundreds of dollars, argued a little, got it taken care of, and went down to the Metreon and saw 300. Neat looking flick but oddly enough it didn't really do much for me.
We headed to the airport after that. The whole flight home was kind of a bummer to me. It was like a gradual plummet back to reality. The whole week of GDC I felt like I was walking on air, and now it was back to everyone having to go back to their part time jobs and other lame crap. But the more we talked about the stuff coming up that we're filming, I got excited again.
This has been such an insane journey. I'm proud. I'm proud of all my friends. I say it all the time, but I really can't believe what's happening sometimes. It feels like too much. I try not to ever take it for granted. Right now I feel like, even if Mega64 were to end tomorrow, I'd probably just look back on the week of GDC 2007, think about all the little moments that made it what it was, and be pretty darn content with how far we made it.
And for me to be content for once? Maybe that's something I can live with.
Current Music: salame | | Sunday, March 11th, 2007 | | 2:36 pm |
| | 1:59 am |
GAME DEVELOPERS CONFERENCE 2007:
Holy shit. | | Thursday, February 1st, 2007 | | 2:24 am |
VIDEO GAME WRAPUP REPORT
Okay here's the deal- I wrote a bunch of update stuff for this here journal around New Year's, but Firefox inexplicably crashed and I lost the will to write since then. Whatever. It had a ton of pictures and stuff. You won't get that here... but since I thought 2006 was actually a pretty good year for video games, here's all the games I played and short, badly written reviews of each.
METROID PRIME HUNTERS (DS): I thought this game was totally enthralling. Enjoyed the hell out of it. Controls, levels, everything. Tons of people told me this game was just some "generic FPS with Metroid's name on it" and I didn't get that at all. Whatever.
TETRIS DS (DS): Possibly my favorite DS game. The multiplayer on this is essentially perfect. It slayed both the 10 hour drive home from GDC and the 30 hour wait for the Wii outside Wal Mart.
ELDER SCROLLS IV: OBLIVION (Xbox 360): I'm sure this game is great for someone. I think it's boring as hell. I feel no drive to accomplish anything.
KINGDOM HEARTS 2 (PS2): YAWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWN
BRAIN AGE (DS): What a fun, brilliant idea that seemingly came out of nowhere. I love this thing. Nintendo was brilliant to give it out at their GDC keynote, I wouldn't have played it otherwise.
NEW SUPER MARIO BROS. (DS): This game was exactly what I wanted. A new Mario game working within the confines of one of the old ones. They promised that, and delivered exactly that. Perfect. Thank you.
JAWS UNLEASHED (XBOX): You get to PLAY AS JAWS. How do you screw that up? Yuck.
DEAD RISING (Xbox 360): One of my favorite games, ever. My first thoughts on the game were that it wasn't as care-free and fun as the demo they released on Xbox Live. I felt really confined by the time limits and crap. But after a while, I learned that I didn't really have to follow the game's story/timeline to have fun. Once I knew that, it was a blast. It's one of those games I can just turn on, accomplish nothing, but just spend hours admiring all the little things. This'll sound a tad gay, but for a game about zombie survival, it's really... adorable.
NINETY-NINE NIGHTS (Xbox 360): Yeah, I know it's just a hack-'n-slash, but I didn't mind that. Nay, I hated this game simply for its checkpoints. Too far between, felt like my time was being wasted. Pass.
STAR FOX COMMAND (DS): Uhhh, good fun, just kinda repetitive. Worth buying if you can find it cheap, I guess. I just don't see why they couldn't have made it story-based like Starfox 64 instead of all this map-strategy-crap. No seriously- Why does Nintendo NOT want to make another Starfox 64?
LOCOROCO (PSP): What a beautiful, beautiful, fun, simple little game. Stale by the end, sure, but still, just a really _neat_ game. The music alone is worth getting it for. Dude.
LEGO STAR WARS II: THE ORIGINAL TRILOGY (Xbox 360): Sure it's kinda cinchy, but still great, simple fun. And co-op is fantastic. For what it is, perfectly done. I don't know why I never, ever get sick of the old Star Wars trilogy.
FINAL FANTASY XII (PS2): I think I have the exact same opinion of this game that I do of Chrono Cross- Totally engrossing world, insane amounts of detail, fantastic design, fun battle system... but ultimately, no good character development and kinda piss-poor storytelling (both games have a horribly delivered twist in the end as well). I loved playing FFXII to death, but please don't give me a bunch of totally interesting characters and not develop them. I guess I'm alone in playing FF for the story, but I don't see how anyone could have been satisfied by the last act of this one. Overall though, design-wise, still a great step forward for Final Fantasy (I haven't liked any previous ones since VIII).
LUMINES II (PSP): Just Lumines with a fresh coat of paint. All I really expected. Still addicting.
EVERY EXTEND EXTRA (PSP): Doesn't have the addictive simplicity of Lumines, but pretty darn fun! The continue system is kinda harsh, though.
GUITAR HERO II: It's Guitar Hero, of course it's fun. Songs aren't as good as the first one though- I'm more into "poppy and fun" then "masochistic and metal."
GEARS OF WAR (Xbox 360): Just shy of my pick for game of the year. One of my favorite games ever. The cover system is perfect, graphics are perfect, co-op play is perfect. Perfect.
YOSHI'S ISLAND 2 (DS): I flipped out when I learned they were making a sequel to possibly my favorite game of all time. The end result is... pretty good. You can really tell they just grabbed the guts of the old game and slapped new stuff into it, though- The clash of two totally different art styles is really apparent to me. But whatever, it's okay.
FINAL FANTASY III (DS): I bought this the second it came out and played it for maybe an hour. Graphic design is rad but the game still remains old school, which is cool, but uh... I'll get back to you on the rest.
SONIC THE HEDGEHOG (Xbox 360): Worst game of the year. We gave you another chance, Sonic Team. You blew it. Sonic is dead.
RESISTANCE: FALL OF MAN (PS3): Nothing revoltionary for an FPS, but actually pretty darn fun! I think it overstayed its welcome a little by the end, though (HEY HERE'S ANOTHER BIG MECHANICAL SPIDER KILL THIS ONE TOO THERE'S FORTY MORE AFTER IT K)
RED STEEL (WII): Really great ambition here, totally... But the end result plays like an N64 game to me.
LEGEND OF ZELDA: TWILIGHT PRINCESS (WII): Game of the year. One of the best paced games I've played, I never felt bored. Completely engrossing in every way. Nothing really revolutionary (I think they'll need to change stuff up for the next one), but it didn't need to be. It worked within the limits of the traditional 3D Zelda and took it as far as it possibly could. And for some reason I thought the ending was fantastic. What else should I say here? It's Zelda.
TRAUMA CENTER: SECOND OPINION (WII): Totally rad game for a quick pick-up-and-play, that is until it totally jumps the shark and adds the GUILT virus to the game, effectively turning the game into a series of monster battles. Nahhh, I just wanted to do regular ol' surgery, thanks.
WII SPORTS (WII): This game, in all its simplicities, kicks ass. It's the most chill game released in a long time. But if you have a Wii you probably have this already anyway!
ELEBITS (WII): Great, Katamari-ish fun, but don't get mad at me if I don't want to replay a level because I missed something just as it hit the 16 minute mark.
DEAD OR ALIVE XTREME 2 (Xbox 360): Kind of a... lazy sequel, huh? But whatever, it's retarded fun and I still love it.
POWER STONE COLLECTION (PSP): yeah so this is just power stone from dreamcast but on psp so yay
PARAPPA THE RAPPER (PSP (import)): yeah so this is just parappa from playstation but on psp so yay
FAMILY GUY (PS2): GAME OF THE FUKKEN YEAR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
WATCH AFRO SAMURAI
Current Music: Tenacious D - Beelzeboss | | Monday, December 11th, 2006 | | 2:50 am |
| | Monday, November 13th, 2006 | | 10:52 pm |
I never thought I'd turn on MTV and see Rake Yohn and Brandon DiCamillo from Jackass making fun of me and my friends in a video that my brother filmed in front of Claim Jumper. | | Tuesday, August 29th, 2006 | | 9:20 pm |
OH MY GOD!!!!! I just popped in the new South Park season 8 DVD and WHAT DID I SEE A TRAILER FOR????  IT'S FINALLY COMING TO DVD!!!!! OH MY GOD THANK YOU!!!!!!! Current Music: Seriously, I think it's my favorite comedy movie ever. | | Friday, July 28th, 2006 | | 9:59 pm |
| | Tuesday, July 25th, 2006 | | 9:53 pm |
| | Wednesday, June 14th, 2006 | | 11:57 pm |
What's with the sudden backlash against New Super Mario Bros.? It's the best game they've ever made for the DS. Shut up and play it. |
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