gama galaxy austrian kasparov fire weblog?

So since I last updated, Gamasutra, the online arm of Game Developer magazine, has posted the latest piece I've written for them, an interview with John Ricciardi of InterOne about Japanese/American gaming contrasts (free registration required, grr.) It talks about how you adapt American videogames to actually sell copies in Japan, and the best way to translate Japanese titles for the Western market, among other things - hopefully an interesting angle on a perennial problem.

Oh, and I got a cool email from MJ Simpson, writer of the Douglas Adams biography Hitchhiker, since it turns out Shynola's involvement in the HHGTTG movie, as I mentioned last month, hasn't really been noticed up to now, since US electronic paper-mag XLR8R isn't a place Adams-philes generally check out. So I pointed him to the specific reference and he posted about it on his excellent Douglas Adams news site, which also has prototype pictures of Marvin from the imminently in-production movie. Oh, and, if correct, I think Martin Freeman as Arthur Dent is rather wonderful, bewilderbeast-styled casting.

Meanwhile, apparently I'm big in Austria, thanks, I suspect, to Stefan Trischler, an old Mono-friend who once helped me smuggle contraband out of a party at Ars Electronica, and is now helping publicize netlabels on the ORF site (the Austrian equivalent of the BBC.) Good to see Monotonik and other, cooler netlabels get more props for giving away free music with some kind of alleged quality threshold. [EDIT:Apparently, Michael aka Artifact was responsible for the specific article, thank you!]

Final paragraph round-up: purchased Virtual Kasparov for GameBoy Advance cheaply at Costco, heh - it's actually pretty good fun playing it on a TV with the GameCube GBA adaptor, and you play through ranked opponents with personalities - I choose you, Kasparov! Otherwise, wading through Alan Moore's Voice Of The Fire for possible Slashdot book review - amazing novel, albeit with almost Tolkien-like impenetrability upfront. Oh, and did I mention that my friend Raj has a MovableType weblog hosted on this domain now, joining the ranks of the ever-marvellous Khonnor? Well, he does, so there. Anyone else want to jump aboard?