Hello! Mr. Brian Ashcraft is hiding for the remainder of 2008. I am here to take his place. First: I'm going tell you a little bit about myself. You are advised to skip this post.
If you're seeing this far, you've already clicked on "More", which means More Hits and More Ad Impressions, so if you're still reading, I'm "doing my job". Yes! "Professional Blogging" is really easy. Before continuing to write this post, I am going to update my CV.
"2008-2009: Guest Editor at Kotaku.com" now sits right at the top.
Moving right along, these are my vital statistics:
Name: tim rogers (uncapitalized by preference)
Birth date: 7 June, 1979 (age: 29.5 years)
Height: 179 cm
Weight: 66.5 kg (up 8 kg since last month thanks to creatine use)
Body fat percentage: (current as of yesterday) 6.2% (aiming for <3%)
Jeans size: 26-28 (depends on brand)
Resting heart rate: 38bpm
Bench press: 45kg
Imaginary allergies: Mushrooms
Blood type: AB-
Occupation: Freelance writer, freelance translator, fashion model, part-time game designer
Ambition: Would like to someday direct a videogame (or just work for Infinity Ward)
I am diabetic, and I am a vegetarian. My hobbies include playing guitar (Gibson SG '61 reissue in sapphire blue through an Orange Crush amp) and singing "lead vocal" in a noise-rock "band". For a while, I was running marathons for health, though these days, I have decided that Getting Ripped is probably the better course of action. To paraphrase the late Yukio Mishima, if you're a man, and you're not Ripped, then there is a chance you are not really a man.
If any of you see Santa Claus this week, tell him that the child he never gave any presents to (he'll know who you mean) is having trouble reaching him, and would appreciate a Big Chest on Christmas morning.
Another hobby of mine includes lazily editor-in-chiefing a video-game-review "blog" called Action Button Dot Net. I could have mentioned this before the two paragraphs about weightlifting, though I figured it might be better to wait, you know, so you see what you're getting yourself into before you click. Be aware that Action Button Dot Net (ABDN) is neither "serious" nor "a joke". It is somewhere in between. For a very long time, I wrote horrible, hilarious faux-serious articles about videogames, though eventually people started parodying my parodies, which resulted in heartbreaking amounts of hate mail.
Really, though, putting all that aside, I don't really hate videogames. I just wish they didn't suck so much, sometimes.
In a way, I find it hilarious that I've been asked to post on Kotaku.com about Japanese videogames, considering that I've spent all year either looking forward to or playing Gears of War 2 and Left 4 Dead.
You readers most likely want to know what qualifies me to post on Kotaku. Well, I would like to know that myself.
I've wracked my brain for five solid seconds and determined that I might have been asked because I have some "several years' experience" "working" in the "Japanese games industry", that I currently still do work in said industry, at a company many of you might have heard of, even. Or maybe it's because I have written columns on Edge Online about Japanese videogames.
In the course of my career, I have met many "important figures" in the Japanese games industry, such as Akio Otsuka (pictured above), voice actor of Solid Snake. As you can see, in person, he looks a lot more like Big Boss from Metal Gear Solid 3.
No, the real reason I have been chosen is most likely because of my "side-job" as the president of a small (one-man) postmodelling agency. The role of a postmodel is to show up at a large corporate office when summoned, and proceed to either do pushups or shred fierce guitar solos in the middle of the boardroom table for the duration of their super-serious meetings. Much as I'm no stranger to toning my pecs, it really sucks when I have to do pushups two days in a row. Either way, lots of my clients are game companies, and during these sessions as a "Motivational Existence", I overhear a lot of juicy secrets, which I then will wait to turn into news stories on Game Watch or Famitsu before reporting as fact.
Finally, a disclaimer: know that every post I write is written on an iPhone 3G while doing infinite high-speed orbits of a spherical cage aboard my dirt bike. Therefore, please, excuse any typos.
Getting serious: hello! My name is tim rogers. I have lived in Japan for about a decade. I first came here thinking I would start a hardcore noise rock band and maybe learn Japanese, then I tried to write about bizarre underground music for a living, which didn't work, so I ended up having to write about videogames instead. I ended up working with them — on the marketing side — and have spent the last five years disenchanted with videogames to the point that I rarely have anything nice to say. I continue to play my guitar because without some outlet, I'd start kicking puppies or shoplifting any and all games starring anime maids just so I can burn them in a bonfire. I've been asked to post news stories on Kotaku while Brian Ashcraft takes a vacation because I'm awesome, and I've accepted because I am very nice.
What you call "Christmas", Japan calls "Next Thursday". There is no Christmas in Japan; there is no God, there is no Jesus, there is no Santa Claus. There is only New Years, which is celebrated as though it's everyone's simultaneous birthday. Which kind of makes it a bit bigger than Christmas, actually. It is going to be a slow two weeks, with probably zero big news announced. That said, Dissidia: Final Fantasy is released two days from today, and I will gladly bite the bullet and play it for your amusement. White Knight Story is released one week from Thursday, on Christmas day, and I promise to spend Christmas at home, alone, liveblogging the experience of playing White Knight Story (after I get home from spending nine hours in my office).
Most importantly, here at the end of this mammoth introduction, I make the following pledge: At no time in the next two weeks will I
1. Get married or even engaged to be married
2. Impregnate any of the (literally billions) of woman I neglect to marry
3. Witness the birth of any of those children that are clearly not mine
I may, however, make the important life decision to purchase another Care Bear.
If you have any questions, do not hesitate to ask in the comments. And if you have any ideas for news stories or requests for wacky stories you'd like to see, please send them along.