Winnitron NYC being introduced to the world!

May 12th at the NYU Game Center event No Quarter we will be unveiling the Winnitron NYC indie games arcade cabinet that I have been working on with my friend Alex K for the past month or so.
We are about 95% of the way done with the cabinet and just need to put in the marquee and load in the software when we get it from the Bit Collective guys in the next couple of days and we can have the cabinet up and running.
If you are around the New York area definitely come check it out from 7-10.
I am really stoked about this!

Getting stoked for the first part of the arcade cabinet build!

Well, these past couple of days have been crazy. I was checking the internet the other night looking for Arcade Auctions. The reason I was looking was because I am going to be working with a friend of mine in New York on what we hope to be the first Winnitron in the United States.
As I was looking for auctions I ran across one that was going to be happening the very next morning just a couple of hours away in Harrisburg PA.
Onis and I woke up at 530 am and rented a uhal van to head up there. When we got there we couldn't believe our nerdy little eyes.
There were probably over two hundred different games to play for the first couple of hours. We got a chance to play a bunch of cool stuff and mostly a lot of crap but a few gems.
Since I was going to look for broken cabinets I was upset to see most of the stuff working by the time the bidding came around. Unfortunately the bidding on the cabinets themselves was started about 5 hours after the bidding started. They went through bar signs, pinball machines, kiddie rides, racing games, pool tables, dancing games and all sorts of other crap.
I eventually got to bid on some of the cabinets that I was looking at and got two out of the three that I really wanted. One was a Tekken2 cabinet that I really liked the look of and the game still played well. The other was one that Onis and I split that was called Zero Gunner. It was a pretty cool game that you could tell wasn't originally in that cabinet. I really like the look of that cabinet too so we decided to get that one too.
Onis was really infatuated by a game called Twin Eagle II. This is a really cool shmup with helicopters where you can do a bunch of crazy moves and it's two player.
Well it was certainly fun trying to get the all the cabinets in the van and back home but once we got them home and set up then we got to play them and that was pretty awesome having an arcade set up in my house.
Check out my other blogs to track the progress of the new Winnitron that we are going to be building in New York. Also, we are going to be starting a Kickstarter at some point to fund some of the little things we are going to need on the project like new joysticks and controls and computer parts.
We got some photos of the event here, check them out.
Thanks for reading!

3rd and final post for the day!

So today I took my first foray in to pixel art and I think it came out pretty alright.
Sort of a Flash Gordon type character pressed up against a wall listening in on something just around the corner.

(The shading on the stomach didnt come out right but I know what I did wrong I just didnt feel like fixing it...)

Let me know what you think!

Also, worth mentioning

I have started to sit down with Gamemaker again in the past few days this time I am learning GML. Last year I messed around a lot with Gamemaker and Unity and threw together some little bullshit projects that I didn't really follow through on. I think part of the reason for that is that I am really having a hard time realizing any of my ideas with the drag and drop features. GML is a lot more empowering and gives me more of a sense that I have control over what I am doing.

I will post more as it develops.

and we're back

Hi again internet,
So since my last post a lot has happened. I made the arcade cabinet thing for the people up in NYC and took it up there. Unfortunately there was a big miscommunication and they weren't able to use it in the show. That being said I am still looking to be involved in future projects they might be putting together.
So, just a few days ago I set up a show here at the house and had Bodycop, Birthnoise, The Deads and AMFDM play and it went really well. Also, I "built" something for the house that I will continue to update for future shows.

check out the video HERE!

We are going to try to have more events after the show that center around games.
More to be posted soon.

Also check out the facebook group for upcoming show info!

So, I am on the internet

So I moved to Philadelphia about a year and a half ago. I moved here when I decided that the West Coast wasn't really 'working out.' I got an offer from a friend who said that we should share a tiny room no bigger than a closet and split the rent. For a while it was fun, then it got crazy and then it was fun again. He and I played Left 4 Dead all day and sometimes we went record shopping.

I was thinking that living here would be a stop gap in between either working on an anti-whaling vessel or moving to a Nordic country.

What I ended up realizing is that I didn't really have the training to go on a large anti-whaling ship and that they weren't going to bring me on and that moving overseas is right pain in the ass... not to mention expensive as fuck.

So while I have been in Philadelphia I have made a couple of really great friends, worked a couple of different jobs and really started to feel pretty settled.

As far as jobs go, I was working for a couple of different computer repair places. In one shop I was working on taking a bunch of old busted up computers are turning them in to a couple of working ones. The problem there was I was working with almost all shit parts and the pay was of the same caliber. At the other place, which was miles outside of Philly I lied and told them that I had a car and could get all over Philly easily. One part of that was true. I could get all over Philly pretty easily... just on my bike. I used my bike to get to different appointments all over the city and fix people's computers either in their houses or in businesses. The problem with this job was that we offered free diagnostic work so people were calling us in to tell them what was wrong with their computer and then trying to find a better rate somewhere else to get the work done. It wasn't until I was about a week away from quitting that they figured out a way to get money out of these people.

The house that I live in is amazing, it's an early 1900s Victorian in a pretty great part of West Philly. We have some pretty great neighbors too, a lot of older folks that are really supportive when we have shows or parties. We have had a few shows so far, you can actually check out information about shows at the house here.

My girlfriend's birthday is coming up soon and I am going to get her a really great gift that I think she is going to love. I am having it made but I don't want to say anything here and spoil the surprise. Once I give it to her I am hopefully going to get some pictures of her with it. The end of October is when we started dating so it will be one year for us at the end of the month, which is pretty exciting.

Really the last couple of exciting pieces of news are that my good friend Onis and I are working on a couple of songs that we are making together. He has some equipment at his house and I got him the latest version of Ableton 8.1.4 so we have been jamming out and making some electro/house/disco craziness. I am really excited about what we have done so far and if you want to check out the rough draft of our first song and also some other stuff I have worked on alone then check out my soundcloud profile. Oh, and if you have any interest in having your own, fulling functional copy of Ableton then just email me because I have all the newest releases.

The other thing is that I went to GDC2010 this year hoping to start meeting some people within the games industry. Reason being is that if you know me even a little bit you know that I am obsessed with games and everything having to do with them. With minimal programming knowledge but a love for the craft I went hoping to meet some East Coast people who I might get involved with on projects in the future. I expressed met a bunch of really great guys from New York and while hanging out with them I expressed my love of classic arcades, my want to build arcade cabinets and my hope to be involved in anything like that in the future. Just in the last month my friend in New York has been working with the people from Babycastles as they are going to be opening a Video game arcade in a Manhattan studio just a few block from Times Square. He told them about my situation and I am going to working for the month of October to build them an arcade "cabinet" for the show. I put cabinet in quotation marks because what I am building is more of a housing. It will probably be about 6-7 feet tall. It's internal frame will be made out of wood and chicken wire and will be covered in giant, hand sewn quilt. I am calling it the cloth monster and I am really excited about it. They seem to be excited too, which is encouraging.

Well that is pretty much all that is going on in my life right now.

More updates as they come.