Can Rockman

New Year Greetings from Platinum Games

We received this a while back but I forgot to tell people about it.

(Sorry for the crappy image quality - my mobile phone sucks at it)

The perks of mixing work and hobby

Here's one:
You get to meet people you look up to and ask them for autographs

GDC warmup

Next week will see the biggest event for video games professionals: Games Developer Conference
It's an event where most of the industry people gather, attend sessions, meetings, discuss stuff and try to do business as well.
It's my first time going to the San Francisco one (I went to the one in Paris last year) so this is pretty exciting - lots of people, lots of sessions, lots of things to learn !

If you are in the industry as well and attending the event, see you there !

Snowing in Tokyo

It's March already and it started snowing like crazy just earlier.
Roads are already covered, being slippy etc...

Agile development and project management

Few months ago, I was looking for a simple way to organize my tasks and keep track of my work across the multiple projects I am working on.
I didn't find anything suitable at once so I just resorted to using post-its.

Then yesterday, a friend sent me a link to the software they just adopted at their company.
It's an agile development and project management tool:
http://www.rallydev.com

We hear a lot about agile development these days, specially in the video games industry (most of the time combined with extreme programming).
I never really took a look at such a tool, even though we're using scrums ourselves.

So I subscribed and am using it for my daily tasks. After playing around with it for a day (learning and planning tasks for next week), it looks quite powerful and useful though maybe a bit overkill in my case (many tasks across unrelated projects)
If it proves to be really worth it, I might pitch it to my boss for our projects - I only hope for them that they have a Japanese version :)

Fat Cat and his best friend, Owl

I stumbled upon this shoot'em up game and I have to say, I'm a fan now.
You control Owl with the mouse and Fat Cat with the arrows on your keyboard.
Owl is pretty much invicible and has to lead Fat Cat to safety.

The gameplay, while basic (move/shoot for each character) takes all its "challenge" when having to control both correctly.
It's fairly simple, not difficult if you are used to keyboard/mouse combo and shoot'em up games.

Level design is quite simple as well and once you get used to it, it's easy to play through.
However, it's still a refreshing game for those like me who crave for 16-bits style graphics and soundchip music.

Fat Cat Get the Cat safely through the levels.

Play this free game now!!