Will

For sure, $2m won`t get them very far on a game of this type at all. I imagine they`re hoping to get closer to $5m from the kickstarter and then double it from other investors (Sony). With $10m they may just pull it off.

I didn't manage to in the end. I quit my job but they re-employed me in one of our Tokyo offices part time. Don't think I'll ever get away.

Six months ago I decided to quit my job and move to Japan to learn Japanese. I`d been trying to learn it for a few years and never really got anywhere on my own, work would get in the way or I`d miss one class to many and the learning would stall. I figured I needed to to something drastic if I was ever going to get better. Actually being here has been great, the school I`m going to really has taught me a lot of stuff and then getting to use it every day for practice means its come on a long way since I got here. I can understand 90% of non-work stuff now, or at least pick out enough to get the context of a conversation. Speaking is a little more difficult, especially in a group as I can`t pull relevant stuff out quickly enough keep up. One on one isn`t too much of a problem though. Ultimately I`d like to be able to work only in Japanese but I think that may be a little way off for the time being.

Ah SEGA, I don't remember why I wanted a Game Gear to start with but I definitely remember going to buy it and spending a ridiculous amount of time playing with it. I had it from Toys R Us for my birthday when I was probably 7 or 8 years old, I remember getting the little tickets for the console, Sonic and a Spiderman game then having to wait at a special counter to pick them up after having paid. For the next couple of years all of my presents were either games or accessories to go with it. The real start of my SEGA love was the Mega Drive though. A couple of years later I had a Mega Drive 2, Royal Rumble and Mega Games 1 for a birthday. I wasn't able to have too many games at this point, with Sonic and Knuckles being the only game I added to this collection, but I was allowed to have one game rental every week from Blockbusters, which lead to many many hours of various games being played, though nothing quite beat the 2 player fun I had with my best mate playing Royal Rumble and World Cup Italia 90. They may not have been the best of games but to us they provided the best times two friends could have. The end of my Primary School years is basically memories of those games, riding bikes and watching/re-enacting various WWF events. I wouldn't say I really kept up to date on games during this period, but one summer, around the time of me starting secondary school my family went away to Spain, it was my first ever holiday abroad and to see me and my sister through the more boring parts we went to buy some magazines beforehand. I picked up a couple of games magazines. This is where I first heard of the SEGA Saturn, and for two weeks I didn't stop going on about how amazing it was, the great games and how much better it was than the current Mega Drive in the house. We got home and it was almost my birthday, so off we went and bought a console, Virtua Fighter 2, SEGA Rally and Athlete Kings. Wow! Of course VF2 and SEGA Rally were utterly amazing, but the multiplayer of Athlete Kings again provided hours and hours of gaming for me and my best friend. It was around this time that I started to receive and allowance, I negotiated with my Dad for £45 per month, coincidentally the same amount of money as a nice new Saturn game cost. From here on in I was a gamer... I would say at one point or another I owned pretty much every Saturn game worth having, though my absolute favourites would have to be: NiGHTS / Christmas NiGHTS This was just amazing, I play this game as often as I can, and Christmas isn't the same without a blast on the Christmas version. When I completed this with all perfect ranks I ran to get my sister and we sat through the ridiculous 20 minute special ending song going crazy - I loved it. Virtual On This was robot fighting at it's best, I always wished I had the twin sticks to go with it but it wasn't to be. The music was utterly amazing, listening to the track below makes me love video games again. Fighters Megamix Still my favourite fighter of all time, it may not have had the tightest of gameplay styles but the amount of content and special SEGA touches made all of that forgivable. Having so much great content saw me get lost in this game for hours and hours and hours. SEGA Worldwide Soccer 97 At the time this was absolutely amazing, I was glad I had a Saturn to be able to play it. Another game my best friend and I spent hours and hours playing, even before the launch we played the one half demo for months waiting. In later years we would play co-op world cup on extra hard as the ultimate challenge. It was pure joy when we won that for the first time. Sonic R This game wasn't even very good, but we played it all the time purely for the music. Street Racer A (cheap looking back on it) imitation of Mario Kart. It rocked though, so many hours of fun with this unlocking everything and finding out absolutely every hidden thing. Virtua Fighter 1, Remix, 2, Kids Loved these, especially the ridiculousness of Virtua Fighter Kids. Just a generally awesome fighter game series. Virtua Cop 2 Best gun game ever. Winter Heat Crazy characters from Athlete Kings come back for more action at the winter olympics. There were many many more games I loved on the Saturn, but I can't really go into them all. For me it's the best console of all time - I love it. Of course when the time came I got myself a Dreamcast, I was so excited! I think I was the first or second pre-order in my local Electronics Boutique at the time. My Mom picked it up for me on day 1 as I was at school, playing Sonic Adventure and SEGA Rally 2 for the first time was a real thing of beauty. By this time I was busy with school, soon to be doing A-Levels, and the N64 had won out as the breaktime console. I still bought pretty much every game going, but the Dreamcast's limited time was all too short. As is probably the case for many my fondest memory was playing through Shenmue 1 and 2, being blown away by the level of detail that game contained. After the Dreamcast I continued to look out for SEGA games wherever they popped up. Without SEGA the Gamecube would not have been as good as it ultimately was. Super Monkey Ball was, for me, the best launch game, and the other content SEGA put out on that console was really back to their glory days for me. Even now there is great content coming out of SEGA, while it might not be as frequent as it was in the past there is still something distinctly 'SEGA' about many games they put out. I'll continue to be a fan!

Having watched the footage of the crash I'm amazed he's not dead. Just a tiny fraction for to the left and I'm 100% sure he wouldn't be here anymore. It does seem like there must be more to this than a driver error. The way he goes off track and the angle doesn't seem like a spin or something he could have done much about. I'm sure we'll hear more about the lead up to the accident but it definitely seems like something must have happened beforehand leading up to it. Hope he makes a speedy and full recovery.

About six months ago I did this with work, finally announced so I can post stuff from it...

Not right now, if I see one come up I'll be sure to pass it on to you!

I've been living in San Francisco for almost 4 years now, there are definitely pros and cons but on the whole I've found it a massively positive thing and would absolutely do it again. In fact, I'm in the process of working out a move to Tokyo to continue the adventure. I would say without a doubt the biggest negative is moving away from friends/family. Of course my very best friends are still just as close as we always were, albeit we can't hang out every weekend etc. but we make time to meet up and go on holiday together which keeps the bond. People that we outside of that circle tend to drift away very quickly though. I notice being something of an outsider at bigger group things with my friends back home now, which is a shame, but I guess not totally unexpected. Another factor is cost of moving/living, and how that stacks up with what you're used to. I'm in the extremely fortunate position that I was transferred here through work and make pretty decent money. A lot of things were taken care of for me and what I earn allows me to be pretty flexible with things I want to do. If my friends are planning a trip I know I can go with them, if I want to extend a business trip I can do it etc. etc. I can imagine things being pretty tough if you're just trying to scrape by. For my next move I'm anticipating not working for a while, so I'm aiming to save enough money to get me through the first year or so and not worry about it. Definitely work out what things will cost though, for me rent is way more than when I was in London, as is grocery shopping. But then restaurants are much cheaper - so I now eat out pretty much every meal whereas I would cook back there. The culture of spending where you move to will shape the way you live, it's worth looking into and seeing if you think that fits your needs. I didn't really do this moving here and just went with the flow, it worked out fine but it could be very different. Work/Life balance is very different, back in London my company was younger and hungrier. We worked hard and then we went out drinking together. Here it was older and more set in it's ways, people went home to their families and there wasn't much mixing. Work is very very different, and that is specific to my company, but I associate it with having moved abroad. On other bad points I can't really think of any. Positives massively outweigh them all. It's a great experience, an adventure that most people don't have. Meeting new people, learning how different people do things and generally rounding out as a better person overall. If it's something you want to do, and you can plan it out to work for you I would 100% recommend it.

I've been thinking of quitting my job for quite some time now but something always pops up that makes me stay. My plan has been to save money, move to Tokyo, go to school for 3-6 months and then take it from there. My current role is likely to change so I look after all research for the company which would of course look great on my CV. Add to that living in San Francisco and the crazy money people earn over here and it's a really tough call to make. When I spoke to my boss about all of this he offered to look into a transfer to our Tokyo office for me - I think that would be by far the best thing that could happen, but put the chances somewhere between slim and none.

Games are (from left to right): Eternal Darkness Super Mario Strikers Luigi's Mansion Soul Calibur 2 Starfox Adventures Crazy Taxi SSX Tricky Pikmin Super Monkey Ball 2 Super Monkey Ball Beach Spikers Wave Race Mario Kart Virtua Striker Smash Bros. Mario Sunshine The spice gamecube is lovely. A very good $30 spend :-)

Found a bit of extra money over the weekend. A trip to Akihabara later and I now have this:

Yeah it seemed to be getting great reviews and was within my price range so I thought I'd test them out. Went and had a go today on the 2013's and they were able to order me one of the first 2014s for next week. Super excited to go and pick it up and add some cycling to my fitness plan.

Put down a deposit on this:

Work promotion! I'm now Publishing Manager for our mobile division. Comes with a nice payrise and my bonus % is doubled from what it was before. Have been doing the job for over a year so it's nice to finally have the title to go with it.

Will do, I'm home on Wednesday and they should be waiting for me, will get a few pictures taken for you. :-)

Bit of a spending spree at the moment, bought a Hue starter pack:

A few bits and pieces:

So I haven't really been on the forums too much lately, so had no idea this was happening. But, I just landed in London for business! I may well try to come along too if I'm allowed?

Me at E3 (on the right). Only just saw this via other members facebook pages.

Sat in a bar, Reggie is at the next table. Pictures may follow.

I was just waiting outside the Nintendo E3 booth waiting for a tour (which got cancelled) and Iwata-san walked past us and gave a little head nod to us. Not that amazing or anything but was a little thing of note I suppose.

Very rarely does work stuff turn out to be super cool, but today two things happened... Firstly I was asked if I'd mind working at E3, of course I'd rather not but a friend needed help so I said sure thing. A few minutes later I get an email confirming that I'll be ok to work on the Nintendo booth. Which if it's anything like last year means working with the cutest girls at the show. Then, a little while later, my boss gave me the following, brand new and never opened:

Once again we seem to be off to a great season start. Really mixed up set of results again which I think is nice. Very happy to see Alonso win, hopefully he can keep it up all season.

I'm not sure what the official line is on Wii U so can't comment. The game is looking great though, I think we'll please a lot of people with the game.

It's multiple platforms, I think that just happens to be the PS3 announcement.