SDCC 2014 - Preview Night

So! I'm trying to keep up with this. I'm a little late because by the time we got back to the hotel last night, we were exhausted. And also kind of bummed out. But I'll get to that.

So Wednesday is a little bit more of a chill, exploring kind of day, because Preview Night doesn't start until 6pm. So we really had no rush to get up and about, we could take our time with getting showered and eating breakfast. But around 10:30am, Andrea and I headed off to the nearby Fashion Valley Mall to get our "shopping day" started. I think we both only actually bought anything at JC Penney, 'cause they have awesome prices (I swear I'm not being paid for advertising). We checked out the Lego Store and a few other places, but that was about it.

After shopping was done, it was time to head to the Convention Center. This is where we get a little boring. We got there easy, got in fast, grabbed our badges in no time, and then sat and waiting in line for THREE. HOURS. so we could get into the exhibit hall early and get to the Funko booth. Funko has all kinds of awesome exclusives for SDCC (google Funko Pop! SDCC exclusives and you'll know what I'm talking about). We dedicated our Preview Night entirely to this cause.

So when we were finally let in, it was such a disappointment that we couldn't even get in line for the booth. Ten minutes before the doors opened, a bunch of exhibitors crowded the line and it was capped off before anyone was let into the hall. And worse, the guy in charge of letting people into the line was awful. He would only let people in randomly, without any system or tips on how he would choose. He was just very unfriendly and unhelpful.

So after about an hour, hour and a half of making passes by the booth and getting rejected, but seeing him let other people in, we gave up and headed elsewhere. We found a few other booths selling the regular non-exclusive Pop! figures and both managed to find some we liked. We kind of gave up at that point and headed out of the Convention Center to meet up with Natalie for dinner.

Afterwards, we headed back to the hotel, ate the rest of our cheesecakes from the night before, and headed to bed. We were feeling pretty defeated, and sort of pessimistic about things at that point. But don't worry! Thursday is going MUCH better, so don't worry, things will cheer up soon! I promise!

And I will say, our shopping time was awesome. We had a great time. And our three hours in line at the convention center helped me get a lot of reading done on The Clockwork Princess, and Andrea read lots of comics. So there were some good points. But yeah, I'm gonna end this here. Look forward to my Thursday post, 'cause it's gonna be AWESOME.

SDCC 2014 - Travel Day

Hello from San Diego! That's right: it's Comic-Con time again! So I'm ACTUALLY going to make an effort to keep my blog up for this! But don't get too excited. Today was just the "travel day" so it's not nearly as exciting as the rest of the trip will be (and hopefully I will keep up with this so you'll know the excitement, too).

I'm actually going to start with yesterday. I decided to take the full week off work, meaning I had a whole extra day off just to prepare. It was great! I made myself a list of things I needed to do, and managed to check them all off one by one as the day went on. I even managed to remember my US cash this year so there was no late night panic running around trying to find an ATM. The plan was to go to bed early, and I was all packed early enough, but I was still awake until about midnight.

So then 5am rolled around and it was time to get up. Again, everything went well in the morning! Rob and I were on the road by 6am, traffic wasn't bad as we made our way to pick up Andrea for 6:25, and we got Rob's work stuff done and headed for the border. And while the trip itself went fine, that's when Andrea and I started to have some technical issues.

As soon as we got into the good ol' US of A, we switched our SIM cards over to use Roam Mobility, 'cause they are awesome and cheap and why wouldn't you? So Andrea's phone worked fine, but mine decided to give me trouble. I couldn't figure out why it wouldn't work, and when I tried to call, it was a long wait on hold, so I just left it until we made it to Seattle 'cause my battery was dying trying to deal with the issue. Once we made it to the airport, there was a crazy line for check in, and then a crazy line for security, but both went super fast, and we had the easiest time getting through security. Like, way easier than ever before. So we found a spot to sit and plug in my phone, and I called Roam, and after about five minutes on hold, the guy saw that my plan hadn't started when it should have, he reset the start time for ten minutes from then, and then I waited and it worked fine! Hurrah!

But then, Andrea began to have issues with her phone, too. But worse. The power button on the top of her iPhone was being all wonky making her phone refuse to sleep, and then refuse to wake up, and then try to turn itself off, and then not want to turn on, and all kinds of weirdness. But there wasn't anything we could do about it at the moment, so we decided to go to the Apple Store S soon as we got to San Diego.

The flight itself was great. We took Southwest Airlines, and it was pretty awesome, especially considering its a discount airline (our tickets were so cheap!). We made it to San Diego on time, not ten hours late like last year, and it was great! We grabbed our bags, hopped in a cab, and met our roomie for the week, Natalie, at the hotel, and got situated. Andrea thought ahead and backed up her phone to her computer, and then the three of us headed to nearby Fashion Valley Mall.

Turns out, no easy fix to Andrea's phone problem, so the guy at the Apple Store exchanged it for a new one, and actually, problem solved pretty easily. And with the backup, she's back up and running! We had dinner at the Cheesecake Factory, and took our cheesecake to go, and have been chilling at the hotel ever since.

So we've had a couple of crises, but we've overcome them, and we're having a lot of fun! And I haven't even mentioned the best part! Andrea and I have teamed up to create Sigma Flight, our new joint venture in nerdiness, so follow us on twitter @sigmaflight for more updates and pictures during our Comic-Con adventures! And this post is way longer than it needed to be, but I'm just so tired that I kind of rambled on forever... Sorryyyy... I'll try to be better at this for the rest of the week. So stayed tuned for our Preview Night adventures tomorrow!

SDCC Is Right Around The Corner...

So. San Diego Comic-Con 2014 is right around the corner, and for the fourth year in a row, my excitement is building exponentially as it gets closer! For the last couple weeks Comic-Con's Toucan Blog has been been doing a "Tip of the Day" post every day on all of the things not to be missed at Comic-Con, and that gave me the idea to do a post about what I can't wait for this year.

The first thing I'm excited for doesn't actually have anything to do with Comic-Con itself, but it's one of my favourite things about visiting San Diego. The food! After a long day of exploring the convention centre, there's nothing like grabbing a drink and some delicious food. And my favourite place to do that is a great place in the Gaslamp Quarter that Andrea and I found our first year, La Puerta! I've talked about it before, but it's worth mentioning again. They have fantastic guacamole, and between 3 and 7pm every day, it's Happy Hour! Meaning cheap delicious drinks and food. I can't wait to go back there, and find some great new places to eat!

The next awesome thing I'm excited for is the exhibit hall! The whole place is a madhouse full of awesome exciting things, but crowded with thousands and thousands of people. In particular, I'm looking forward to seeing what's new at the Marvel booth. In 2011 it was decked out for the Avengers, 2012 it was Iron Man 3, and last year they had a SHIELD setup featuring all kinds of cool Marvel Studios props from all of the different movies. With a lot of big Marvel projects on the way, there's sure to be something cool. And there's sure to be tons of other awesome booths to check out, too! All of the comic book companies, TV companies, movie companies, toy companies, and video game companies. Plus all of the smaller booths for webcomics creators and various other awesome things.

I'm also really looking forward to all of the awesome panels! Andrea and I have already booked ourselves for Thursday July 24th at 3:30pm to be in Ballroom 20 for... TEEN WOLF! We've become somewhat obsessed with the show, and we both can't wait to see the ridiculousness of the cast. That and the promise of sneak peaks into what's coming. We've also decided to focus all of our former Doctor Who energy onto getting into the Marvel Studios panel. And I'd love to get into anything else Marvel related, as usual. I'm also hoping to see anything Nerdist or Geek & Sundry to get my Chris Hardwick and Felicia Day fixes, and any good movie panels would be great to see as well.

Besides the exhibition hall and the panels, there's also all of the awesome costumes to see. The cosplayers tend to do a pretty fantastic job, so it's a lot of fun spotting the great ones and getting pictures of/with them. There's also the hunt for free stuff and convention exclusives. I know both Andrea and I have seen tons of awesome stuff we want from the Funko booth, so we need to hit that, and there's bound to be plenty of other things for us to spend our money on. There's also the Nintendo Lounge next door to the convention centre, and all of the cool stuff that gets set up outside and nearby. I'm really excited to experience all of the fun surrounding Comic-Con.

And there's still our shopping day before SDCC begins! I can't wait to head over to Fashion Valley Mall near our hotel and see what we can find there. It's a really nice outdoor mall that just feels like San Diego to me. It's become tradition to spend a few hours our first day checking out all of the stores in there. The Lego Store, the Nike Store, the Apple Store, JC Penny, Old Navy, and all of the other stores. I don't even remember them all at this point. There's also the Cheesecake Factory which will need to be visited, and our annual tradition of seeing a movie at the AMC Fashion Valley Cinemas. I'm not sure what we'll see this year, but I'm sure it'll be something fun and scifi-related.

So there we have it! A rundown on some of the awesome stuff I can't wait for! I know I don't have a great track record with keeping up with this blog during Comic-Con, but I'm going to try to update it during the trip. And Andrea and I have some fun ideas for this year that we'll hopefully manage to put into action, so stay tuned for that! I'm not sure if I'll post again before the trip, but if anything exciting happens, it'll show up here at some point!

The E3 Rundown

E3 was last week! And you know what that means: time for thenoblehero's recap of awesomeness! I was going to talk about everything E3, but then I realized how bored I was writing about it, so I'm just gonna skip through my favourite things. Just a warning, it'll be pretty much all Nintendo, 'cause Nintendo wins E3.

First thing: more new characters for Super Smash Bros. were announced! Mii Fighters in three customizable varieties are on their way, so finally you can enter the battle. They also added Palutena from Kid Icarus (cool I guess? I'm not really big on that series), and Pac-Man! Now they've got mascots from a bunch of the big video game companies, and they showed off a battle between Mario, Sonic, Mega Man, and Pac-Man to demonstrate.

Next up, Nintendo showed off its next Yoshi game: Yoshi's Woolly World. I've always liked Yoshi, but I've never actually bought a Yoshi game. This game is changing that. It just looks so adorable and very fun. Yoshi is a crochet doll version of himself! I'm really looking forward to this game.

Another new game I'm looking forward to is Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker. This game spins directly out of Super Mario 3D World where there are little sidequest-like levels in which you take control of Captain Toad and go through an odd little 3D puzzle level. I'm not describing it well. This game takes that concept and dials it way up giving the titular character more abilities and more complicated levels to get through. It looks awesome.

There are two new Zelda games coming. Hyrule Warriors is a mashup of Zelda and Dynasty Warriors. It looks pretty fun, and you get to play as a bunch of different Zelda characters (including Zelda herself). It's a hack and slash action game that's sure to be a hit. The other is a new formal Legend of Zelda game (currently untitled) that is probably still quite a ways out, but the quick video they showed looks beautiful! I am very much looking forward to seeing more.

There was a little bit of news about Pokémon Alpha Sapphire and Omega Ruby at and around E3, as well. There was a trailer showing off a little bit of gameplay, and four new Mega Evolutions, plus two Primal Evolutions were shown off. Mega Sceptile and Mega Swampert will round off the 3rd generation starters' mega forms. Mega Diancie and Mega Sableye made appearances, and the versions of the legendary pokémon on the box-art have been revealed to be Primal Groudon and Primal Kyogre. Clearly I'm excited for these games.

Nintendo also showed off a new game called Splatoon, which could be a pretty big hit. I recommend looking it up 'cause I don't think I can describe it and give it justice. It's a team battle game where you play as little squid people who spray coloured ink everywhere to take over as much territory as possible. You can turn into a squid and swim through the ink rapidly, but get stuck when you hit the opposing team's ink. Like I said, it sounds odd, but looks great!

The last game I'm going to mention is a new game exclusive to Xbox One called Scalebound. It looks like you play as a dragon knight battling monsters and stuff. The trailer looks fantastic. Go find it!

Better yet, I'll post links below. If I can figure it out. Perhaps I'll post liks to all the trailers of games I'm excited for but don't feel like talking about, too! Yeah! I may later give my impression of the actual press conferences too, but at this point, probably not... Anyway! Links below!

Nintendo:

Super Smash Bros. for 3DS - October 3rd, 2014
Super Smash Bros. for Wii U - Holiday 2014
Yoshi's Woolly World - Holiday 2014
Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker - Holiday 2014
Hyrule Warriors - September 26th, 2014
The Legend of Zelda - TBA 2015
Pokémon Omega Ruby - November 21st, 2014
Pokémon Alpha Sapphire - November 21st, 2014
Splatoon - TBA 2015
Mario Maker - TBA 2015
Fantasy Life - October 2014
Mario Party 10 - TBA 2015
Mario vs. Donkey Kong - TBA 2015
Professor Layton vs. Phoenix Wright - August 29th, 2014

Xbox One:
Scalebound - TBA 2015?
Assassin's Creed: Unity - October 28th, 2014
Dragon Age: Inquisition - October 7th, 2014
Sunset Overdrive - October 28th, 2014
Ori and the Blind Forest - Fall 2014

PS4:
inFAMOUS: First Light - August 2014
Ratchet & Clank - TBA 2015?
LittleBigPlanet 3 - November 2014

PC:
The Sims 4 - September 2nd, 2014

Comic Books!

Two posts in two days? What's going on here?! Well, on my way home from work today, I was sitting on the train (forever) thinking about the comics that came out this week, and realized that I felt like talking about them. By that, I mean the comics that I actually picked up. Tons of comics came out, but I am pretty biased in my Marvel love, so there won't be any DC, Darkhorse, or whatever else here.

Let's go alphabetical. All-New X-Factor #9 came out this week, and while I love Peter David, and loved the previous run of X-Factor, I'm finding it hard to keep interested in this book. I just don't really get it. The draw to the previous book was that it was a detective agency investigating the mysteries of the Marvel universe. It all started with Decimation and grew into this crazy awesome book full of mystery and adventure and fun. This book, I just don't know where it's going. I'm still on board 'cause I want to know where it's going, but I'm starting to worry that it's just not as good as the previous book. It's not bad. I just don't get it.

Up next is Amazing X-Men. There were actually two issues of Amazing X-Men this week. And they were very different. I started with Amazing X-Men Annual #1. This one was bad. Monty Nero is new to Marvel, and it shows. The story was pretty lame. I got about halfway through and realized I just didn't care, so I just flipped through the rest looking at the pretty pictures. Salvador Larroca generally does a good job on the art, but I find his iteration of Storm pretty ugly.

On the other hand, Amazing X-Men #8 was pretty great. Craig Kyle and Christopher Yost generally make me pretty nervous when they show up in my X-Men comics. The last time they took over one of the books I loved, they killed off a bunch of my favourite characters and I was furious for months. But then they went and made me love the book even more. I'm pretty excited for this "World War Wendigo!" story they've started. It takes place in Canada, and it features members of Alpha Flight! That's the start to a great story! But after the first issue I'm worried they're up to their old tricks again.

Next was Miles Morales: The Ultimate Spider-Man #2. If you're not reading this, do yourself a favour and get on it! This is only the second issue of this new series, but there's a lot to catch up on if you so choose with 200 Ultimate Spider-Man issues in several different series. Bendis is great in general, but this new story has me really excited to see what's going to happen next.

New Warriors #5, also written by Christopher Yost (minus Craig Kyle) is another fairly new book that I'm enjoying. Most of the characters are new to me, but I love team books, and especially teams of young heroes. We've got classic New Warriors team members Justice and Speedball, the new Nova, a brand new Inhuman named Haechi, a technology user named Sun Girl, an Atlantian named Water Snake (who may be related to Namorita?), the spider-clone Scarlet Spider (Kaine, not Ben Reilly), and someone named Hummingbird. I'm not sure where this book is going, but I'm very much drawn in by it.

Now, the last book I picked up this week was a doozie. The end was just... Wow... there's a picture of the tweet that explains it perfectly (please excuse the misspelling of the letter "W", I was trying for effect and I realized too late that I dunno how to properly spell it). Original Sin #3. Marvel's latest big event series. Like I said: crazy pants. If you haven't been keeping up, the gist of it is that someone killed the Watcher (the giant bald dude that watches over all of the big events of the Marvel universe, hangs out on the moon), and the heroes are trying to figure out who did it. In the mean time, a villain, or maybe a group of villains, ended up with one of the Watcher's eyes and has unleashed a bunch of secrets, and that's gonna cause some problems. But seriously. The end. Crazy pants. Go read it.

So yeah, there was some good, some great, and a bit of mediocre. But it was a memorable week for comics!

WWDC 2014 News

Alright. So, this Monday, Apple kicked off WWDC with a bang when they announced a ton of awesome new software developments. Apple's big Keynote was full of goodies, and I'm gonna talk about a few of my favourites. To start off, iOS 8 was announced with quite a few interesting improvements.

The first thing I want to talk about is the updated Messages app. This is actually one of the biggest things for me. They've packed a lot of features into the app. It's now possible to send quick voice messages within the app, as well as pictures and videos. It's easier to manage a conversation, making it possible to add and remove people from the conversation, or leave it yourself. You can set a conversation to "Do Not Disturb" so you don't get constant notifications. You can also name a conversation, and share your location with the other participants. You can also view all attachments that have been sent and received under the "details" screen so you don't have to scroll back through hours of messages to find a particular picture.

Another really interesting thing is the new Family Sharing feature. You can now share content between family members allowing all members to have access to each other's music, movies, TV shows, books, and apps, as well as shared calendars and photo streams. Find Friends and Find My iPhone have also been worked into it. My favourite part of this is that you can set it so when your kid wants to buy something from the App or iTunes Stores, it pops up with "Ask" instead of buy, and it sends a notification to your device to approve or deny it.

The new Health app provides a central place to find all of your health and fitness data from other apps. It also lets you set up an emergency card with your important medical information, just in case. iCloud Drive improves on previous iCloud functionality, adding a central place where you can manage all of your files, and not just the ones used by iCloud apps, but you can now store any file and access it on all of your devices. And Spotlight continues to evolve into a powerful search engine.

On to OS X, the new version is called Yosemite, and they've made some pretty nice visual improvements to the interface, and updated the app icons. Many of the features added to iOS 8 have been implemented here as well, and that's just a start.

The biggest thing I am excited about in OS X Yosemite is the ability to make and receive phone calls on your Mac. If someone calls and your phone is in the other room, you'll get a caller ID notification on your Mac, and you can answer it right there! You can also select a contact or a number from a website and start a call right from your Mac, through your iPhone. This also applies to regular text messages! You can now answer all of your messages on your Mac, not just your iMessages.

Another bit of new functionality is called Handoff. If you're working on something on your iPhone or iPad and walk up to your Mac, an icon will show up and you can instantly pick up your project without missing a beat! And it works the other way as well.

In Mail, they've added the ability to send large attachments with Mail Drop. Large attachments will be sent to iCloud and then downloaded again on the other end. You can also Markup attachments in Mail before sending them. You can draw on pictures, full out PDF forms, and even sign documents.

There's tons of other new things coming with these updates, but those are the ones I'm most excited for. They're still a ways off though, with a tentative release date of "fall", so the excitement will have to wait for a while.

Pokémon! I Choose You... Again!

You would think that, by now, I wouldn't get excited about things like Pokémon game remakes, but MAN am I excited!

The day before yesterday, it was announced that remakes of the third generation games, Pokémon Ruby Version and Pokémon Sapphire Version will be updated and released this November as Pokémon Omega Ruby, and Pokémon Alpha Sapphire. These will be released using the same engine as the current Pokémon X and Y games, which means a significant update to graphics and game mechanics, much like past remakes in earlier generations.

While no real details have been released, The Pokémon Company is promising a rich new world and brand new adventures. What this means, we'll have to wait and see. Along with the announcement, the game packaging was also unveiled, featuring images of Groudon and Kyogre looking powered up and intimidating. It was mentioned that there is a significance to their souped up looks, so we'll have to wait and see if this means new forms, or perhaps Mega Evolutions for these legendary pokémon. I'm also curious what that will mean for the third member of the generation III legendaries, Rayquaza.

If there are, in fact, new forms to these legendaries, how will they incorporate that into the story of the game? Will they follow the story of the originals? Or take it a brand new direction? Will we be seeing Team Aqua and Team Magma up to their old shenanigans again? Will mega evolution be possible in Hoenn? Will we finally see mega evolutions for the Treecko and Mudkip lines? So many questions! But with this only being the initial announcement, there's plenty of time before the November release period for them to slowly feed us details.

And one more thing... In X/Y they introduced the blue pentagon symbol that represents that a pokémon was caught in the Kalos region... Will they have a new symbol for Hoenn? And will it be immediately compatible with Pokémon Bank so we can bring back our favourites from the original Ruby and Sapphire games for this new adventure? So much to think about!

So that's what I'll be looking forward to for the next six months. Perhaps it's time to get X and Y out again and get back to shiny hunting... Anyway, that's all I've got to say for today!