So I’m pretty sure everyone has seen this ad for Halo 3:
But I bet most of you haven’t seen the virtual fly through of the entire diorama! Halo 3 “Fly Through”
Check out all of this “making of” stuff, the ad campaign they interview all the survivors and veterans of this war that takes place in the future, it’s pretty amazing. Halo 3 “War Stories”
Interview with the creators of the commercial (and diorama): Halo 3 “Making Of”
An excerpt from one of the interviews:
“Tell me about New Deal, Stan Winston and MJZ director Rupert Sanders’ work on the diorama.
SD: You have to understand that for the diorama, it turned into becoming the focus point for this campaign. We wanted there to be a museum where the diorama would just be a part of the museum. Rupert Sanders orchestrated this whole thing. The vision for us was to make this story come to life with real figurines on a real set and a massive diorama. It was time and cost-prohibitive to say the least, but Rupert just wouldn’t take no for an answer. He teamed up with Stan Winston and New Deal Studios in making this thing come to life completely—30 feet x 40 feet, 900 figurines or something like that and every weapon and vehicle.
MH: Those figurines are based on scans of real people.”
A few posts ago, Marshall linked to a message board conversation concerning the nerdliness of Dungeons and Dragons. Here is a (seven-year-old) response to that.
This should be quite familiar to any fan of table-top role playing games. Or to basically any geek who spent more Friday nights at a kitchen table covered with character sheets and multi-sided dice than in a parking lot smoking cigarettes and drinking Mad Dog 20/20. OH LIKE YOU WOULD PREFER THAT BETTER.
Perhaps you’ve heard of the Guitar Hero, the Playstation 2 and Xbox 360 game that uses a guitar shaped controller. Its upcoming competitor, Rock Band, originally announced for just the next-gen systems Playstation 3 and Xbox 360 was just announced to now include Playstation 2 as one of it’s platforms. The difference in Rock Band is that it supports two guitar controllers, vocals, and a small drum kit all at once, hence the name. Guitar Hero has been an amazing hit, consistently staying at the top of the charts even after being out for more than a year, an almost unheard of feat in gaming. The sequels Guitar Hero II and Guitar Hero Encore: Rocks the 80’s have also done blockbuster sales.
I still think Guitar Hero will come out on top, with it’s more intricate songs and built in install base but Rock band coming to PS2 really complicate things, especially if it supports the Guitar Hero controller and Karaoke Revolution microphones. That way, someone who already has those just has to pick up the drum kit and they’re ready to go. Since the PS2, PS3, and 360 all have USB ports, they could conceivably have just a single version of the drums.
The Atari Flashback Portable looks like a winner. Apparently it’s going to come with pre-loaded games, but you’ll be able to download more via the USB port.
What I am
I’m a lawyer and health care compliance analyst. I’m also an incredibly lazy rock musician. But I don’t write much about these things. Instead, this is mostly a place for me to engage in an occasional bit of Web dorkery / punditry.
I don't post here all that often. I encourage you to check out my more active link blog life is a thrill. It's basically a random stream of awesome, and it's perfectly calibrated for your workaday, ADD lifestyle.
I’m a lawyer and health care compliance analyst. I’m also an incredibly lazy