Probably one of the best commercials in a long time...

I recorded this using my digital camera, so the quality isn't all that great. However, you can hear it fine and the awesomeness still comes through. The first few seconds are from the ending of the ad before it, just ignore that nonsense.

If anybody out there has a full rip of this commercial at good quality, let me know.



Oh, and here's a bonus of Bowser freaking out after getting stuck in the pillow case to his dog bed:

19 Days Until E3

E3, the video game industry's most important and largest exhibition, begins in 19 days. I'm all set and ready to go, I just need to keep counting the days. I'll be mostly involved with the Nintendo DS side of things, but I'll surely get my chances to play the Revolution, PS2, PS3, GameCube, Xbox, Xbox 360, GBA, and PSP titles on the floor. I'm really looking forward to my 4th straight years going to E3 and second with Advanced Media Network. I'm excited to working closely with the DSA team members that will be present (myself, Stephen, Wes, and Agustin) and the rest of the AMN crew that will be working hard. Hopefully we can get the rest of the DSA team at E3 next year, even you Migs!

Each year I end up planning on taking a bunch of pictures but they always end up taking a back seat to the games. I'm sure it will be the same this year, but I'm going to try hard to get a bunch of additional pictures taken to put up on the blog. I know that Advanced Media Network will be hosting literally hundreds of pictures and tons of video of the show floor and games being presented.

Here are a few shots from past E3 shows. The first two are from two years ago when the DS was the highlight of the Nintendo presence at E3. The first picture is just a shot of the entrance to Nintendo's booth and you can see several of the names of games that were present that year. The second shot is the entrance to the DS theatre that was at the back of Nintendo's booth and was quite the wait to get into and see. Wes is directly in front of me in that picture with the sling bag. Wario was making all sorts of sarcastic and funny commments to those passing through the line.

The last two pictures are from last year's E3 and are part of what GameCube Advanced collected in their picture snapping spree. The first of those two shots shows a Zelda ad on the stairs before they allowed show attendees in. The second shot shows how they were letting people play the GameBoy Micro - tethered to a booth attendant. So, enjoy the pics, there will be many more this year!

A new blog is born...

I recently started up a new blog that is dedicated 100% to documenting my progress on getting my MAME cabinet built and running. A link to the blog is in the sidebar, but here's a direct one: Step-by-step Mame Project.

I plan on documenting my process from start to finish with photographs. Hopefully it will become a useful resource for others that are looking into doing something similar.

Photobucket has Video Now...Good News for the Blog

Now that Photobucket hosts video, I'll be able to post clips here on the blog. That should be a nice addition.

Here's one to test it out. It's Bowser out in one of the last snow storms we had, and it was really windy outside.

Happy Easter from the Riveras!

My wife and I went out last night and bought some baskets, eggs, dye, candy, and some stuff to decorate with and we came up with some nice things to create our Easter baskets. Here's what we ended up with:



And poor Bowser, we even made him a part of the festivities too...



Well, it was fun, and tomorrow we're going to slip something into each other's baskets before giving them back to each other. It's nothing major, but it's fun and it was a nice way to spend the holiday weekend doing something together.

Here's a bonus pic of Bowser. He seems to think that the couch was turned over to him recently...

Designing my MAME cabinet

I still don't have a cabinet to work with, but hopefully by next week or so I'll know if I'm going to need to build one or if I'll have a used one. I've already started designing the artwork for the cabinet and marquee, but the control panel is still a bit up in the air. My inspiration in the design is a kind of heroes and villains theme. The right sides of my cabinet, marquee, and control panel are all blue with well-known heroes and protagonists from a variety of fighting games. The left sides of my cabinet, marquee, and control panel is red with villains taking up the space. I'm not sure that I really want any character art on my panel, so I may just go with colors that match the theme and some nice clean design.

I have some ideas for the control panel, mostly based of the work done by Pixelhugger and Knievel over at the BYOAC forums (http://arcadecontrols.com).

I'm probably going to go with an identical control stick and button layout that is pictured below, but I'll need to change up the color scheme and such to match what I have going on with the marquee and side art on my own cabinet. I had pretty much drawn this up on paper a while back, but actually seeing it pulled off so perfectly got me excited.

Here's a look at the work that Pixelhugger (designer) and Knievel did (builder) with the Arcadues MAME cabinet:

Control Panel (unlit):


Control Panel (lit):


My sideart design (preliminary):


My marquee design (preliminary):


I'll update with new pictures each time I make a revision and get more shots up when I have a cabinet to work with or begin cutting wood to assemble one.

25 Years Old

Well, yesterday was my 25th birthday. It's not really all that exciting of a birthday number, but at least I'm now going to be able to get that automatic car insurance deduction. Overall it was a nice birthday and I celebrated it with my wife and family.