Archive for the ‘Toys 'n' Games’ Category

The long-overdue post

Tuesday, January 29th, 2008

Today I had the chance to read a few of my older posts and I was cracking the hell up at how funny some of the comments go to be. Namely, Jorge’s and Adam’s contributions to the discussion. They were often dry, witty, or just plain irreverent. But mostly always funny.

Jorge and Adam have been good friends of mine for years now, and even though I only met Jorge a few years ago, it feels like I’ve known him forever. He and I have had similar upbringings, we are both huge nerds, and we both have insatiable appetites for samosas. Oh, and we’re both members of the “Brown guy, white girl” club.

Lately I’ve been keeping busy by writing a whole lot. I do some freelance stuff on the side but I also have started to write at work, in-house. In fact, I believe my title will be changing shortly to something along the lines of Writer/Content Producer, which is kind of cool. I know I’ve talked in passing about how awesome my job is, but I’ve never really gotten into detail about it. I don’t believe I ever will because in doing so, I will unintentionally slag, in detail, my previous job.

In fact, I was thinking about my previous job today and how happy I am that management there was so messed up. If it wasn’t, I’d never have been inspired to try and leave. Sometimes we need a shove out that door, and that was mine. Oftentimes people will mention to me that they feel like they’re in a slump or dead end – it happens to everyone at some point or another. I guess my only advice for that is to just go for it. Go for your dream because you may not get another shot. Be ready for anything. Be prepared to move on.

Getting back to writing, I’ve been lucky enough to have joined the staff at one of my favourite gaming sites: 4colorrebellion.com. So far, I’ve only posted a few stories (check out the site because everyone on staff is aces) but it’s been a really great experience corresponding with the site’s staff because they share a crazy passion for games and, well, being crazy funny.

Toronto Thumbs is going well, too. The team over there is made up of my nemesis, Bugsy, as well as Adam, Jorge, and me. We’ve also got two contributors who are pretty cool guys: Frank and Tetris Maximus (cool name, that dude – wish I thought of it).

You know what’s funny? Most of the search terms to my site are for my DJ FINISH HIM flyer. But the searchers aren’t looking for me. They’re just looking for FINISH HIM for whatever reason. I urge you not to search for that in image search because sometimes some pretty nasty stuff shows up.

Every so often I will come across a band that I love so much they just take over the music portion of my brain. At the end of last year, it was Priestess. But now, it’s Electric Six. Now there’s a band with a lot of balls. Literally. It’s six guys, so that’s about twelve balls. Don’t they look kick ass? Multiply their ass-kicking look by infinity, because that’s how much ass they kick musically.

Lastly, here is a Valentine from Killface that I found in the trash.

I Just Wanted To Say…

Sunday, December 16th, 2007

Phantasy Star 1 - 4

There goes all my free time… Right up there. Thanks, kindly, Peter.

Toronto Thumbs: News For The Canadian Gamer

Tuesday, December 4th, 2007

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE – Monday, December 3, 2007

Contact:
Shaun Hatton
Editor-in-Chief, Toronto Thumbs
torontothumbs@gmail.com
http://torontothumbs.com

Get Ready for a New All-Canadian Gaming Website Featuring News, Reviews, and Editorial Content Devoted to All Aspects of Gaming

TORONTO, ON – December 3, 2007. At long last comes a website devoted to video gaming from a distinctly Canadian perspective. Toronto Thumbs is a non-profit, ad-free gaming site featuring reviews of games from today and yesteryear and editorial content relevant to the Canadian gamer.

Gaming journalism has never been as competitive as it is today. But Toronto Thumbs isn’t your typical gaming site. Its clean, uncluttered interface is no accident, either. A design think tank spent hundreds of overtime hours pouring over the details, pixel by pixel, before unveiling the final design. Because there is no advertising, Toronto Thumbs’ reviewers can focus on the reason video gaming exists: the fun factor.

“It can be hard to trust a website’s opinion of a game when there’s advertising for that same game all over it,” Adam Russell, Special Features Editor, says. “Since we’ve decided never to sell ads on our site, there won’t be any question as to whether or not our reviews are fair assessments of the actual games or paid advertising.”

“The main reason we started Toronto Thumbs is because we love video games and we love talking and writing about how much we love them,” adds Shaun Hatton, Editor-in-chief. “There are hundreds of gaming sites out there, but we found there aren’t many Canadian gaming sites. We also found that many Canadian sites covering gaming do so almost as an afterthought. You won’t have to sift through complicated navigation to find the game news on Toronto Thumbs. It’s up front and relative to Canadian gamers, no matter what city they happen to live in.”

About Shaun Hatton:
Shaun Hatton has been playing video games since the age of three, when he received his very first video game: a tabletop arcade version of Nintendo’s Donkey Kong Jr. He has 20+ years of expert gaming experience to draw upon when approaching video game reviews. In 2000, Hatton graduated with Honours from Humber College’s prestigious Journalism program. Since then, he has contributed reviews and features to several publications, most notably Chart, Canada’s national music magazine.


Contact torontothumbs@gmail.com for more information, or visit http://torontothumbs.com to check it out for yourself.

Xbox LIVE is, er… 5IVE (Not my words)

Wednesday, November 14th, 2007

Hey Xbox LIVE users!

Carcassonne is a free download for 48 hours starting on November 15 in celebration of LIVE turning, as Microsoft is putting it, 5IVE. This is not to be confused with the crappy boy band 5IVE, who are hopefully all dead now.

Also, if any of you want to battle me in any games, my username is Megashaun.

Another Photo Post

Saturday, November 10th, 2007

I need another AV switchbox now. And one of those power strips that account for giganto A/C adapters. Seven systems! I don’t know why I’m so crazy.

Gaming Setup

Gaming Setup - Detail

Wii Goodness

Sunday, August 12th, 2007

Last week was quite eventful in terms of Wii news. First off was a firmware upgrade that includes among other things the ability to use a keyboard on the message board and Shopping Channels. The second thing was a video preview channel specifically for Metroid Prime Corruption. Right now there are two videos viewable in this channel. They’re both streamed to the Wii when selected, meaning that the videos do not reside on the Wii itself.

The quality of these videos is pretty decent. Definitely better than YouTube looks on the Wii. The fact that this preview channel exists is promising as it shows potential for future channel possibilities. The same channel could be updated after Metroid is released to show demos of other games, too. A channel for movie trailers would be pretty cool, come to think of it.

In terms of Virtual Console possibilities – a demo channel could stream demos or even full versions of smaller games for systems not found on the Virtual Console (Sega Master System, Atari 2600, Intellivision, etc.)

Here’s a photo of the keyboard I’m using for Wii. It’s neat because the blue glow of the keys reflects the glow of the Wii’s disc slot.

Saitek Eclipse Keyboard on Wii

The 7 Most Useless Transformers Ever

Thursday, July 12th, 2007

Courtesy of Cracked.com, I present you with the 7 Most Useless Transformers Ever.

This thing just made my day.