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An Update, Finally

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  • Tuesday, December 20 2005
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The last few months have been very busy. Travel alone has taken me to London, Amsterdam, Toronto, and Seattle (twice). And I'll be back in Toronto next week for Christmas and New Year's. Amsterdam was for X05, Microsoft's worldwide launch event for the Xbox 360. London was a solo trip - I demoed the multiplayer component of The Outfit for Xbox 360 to key press and retail from across Europe. It was received very well. I happened to be there for the European launch of the 360 as well (see this guy's photos - I didn't bring my camera).

Work is very busy as we're in the final stretch of The Outfit. The product's website launched recently, so you can finally check out (in detail) what I've been doing with the last 18 months of my life. The game is getting some great press - just today it was rated the second most popular upcoming Xbox 360 game on Gamespot, beating out Halo 3.

Lara and I celebrated our first year of marriage by going to Seattle, staying at our favourite hotel, and seeing The Sound of Music at the Fifth Avenue Theater. It was an awesome trip and a great show. It was exactly one year previous that we had Edelweiss as our processional, so seeing it performed live was a real treat. My dad always made us watch Sound of Music as a kid, but now I love it on my own accord.

From One Loud, Crass Spectacle to Another...

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  • Sunday, May 29 2005
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In the last two weeks we've had two spectacles. The first was E3 - or Electronic Entertainment Expo - the annual videogame tradeshow in Los Angeles. It was here that THQ announced the title I've been working on for the last year, The Outfit for the Xbox 360. For more info, see www.theoutfitgame.com. There are also first look articles on IGN, Team Xbox, and Gamespot.

The other spectacle was the WWE Raw event that came to Vancouver tonight. It was Wrestlemania Revenge at the PNE Agrodome. THQ scored us 6 free tickets - three rows from the ring - so we could see the spit and hear the racial slurs coming straight from the wresters' mouths.

All the top WWE Superstars were there - everyone from Triple H and Batista to Kane, Christian, Edge, Chris Jericho, Chris Benoit, Viscera, Tyson Tomko, Christy, Victoria, Shelton Benjamin, Tajira and more.

Five WWE observations:
1) You can really tell the bad actors from the good ones when it's live
2) Wow, they are in incredible shape
3) Ric Flair is too old to be wrestling
4) Gene Snitsky has some serious steroid-induced back acne ("bacne" for short)
5) Rowdy Roddy Piper was coked to the gills.

To check out my photos from Wrestlemania Revenge, click here.

PlayStation Portable vs Nintendo DS: A Trouncing in the Making

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  • Sunday, April 10 2005
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When was the last time you saw two competing products launch at the same time, yet be so mismatched? If you follow videogames at all, especially the handheld market, you'll know this happened recently when the Nintendo DS launched at virtually the same time as the Sony PlayStation Portable (PSP). The Nintendo DS, a silver plastic number that's main claim to fame is its dual screens (get it? DS!) went head to head with the Sony PSP - a glossy black handheld with a gorgeous 16:9 widescreen LCD. The PSP delivers games that look and play like games from its beefier sibling, the PlayStation 2. The graphics are stunning and like I said, virtually on par with the quality you'd see on your TV screen when playing a PS2 game. Add to that the PSP's ability to play movies and music, as well as displaying photos, and you've got - as Sony likes to claim - "the Walkman for the 21st century".

Now back to Nintendo's DS and its two screens. Two screens should be better than one, especially if they look anywhere near as good as the PSP's huge widescreen. But they don't. The DS screens have nowhere near the resolution or color depth of the PSP. This shortcoming is compounded by the DS's woefully underpowered graphics and CPU - leaving Nintendo's handheld with games that look at least one full generation behind the PSP, if not more. At this year's Game Developers Conference (GDC), Nintendo debuted some of their best hopes for DS software, titles like ElectroPlankton and Nintendogs.

Wedding (and Honeymoon) Photos Are Here!

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  • Tuesday, December 14 2004
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Our wedding photos have arrived! View all 300+ of them here!

If you'd like to have any professionally printed and mailed to you, click the thumbnail image twice to view the super high-res version, then click "Print This Photo with Shutterfly" in the upper right corner.

Huge thanks to Hamid Attie, our very wonderful and talented photographer.

Just Added: Photos from our reception in Toronto and our honeymoon in Cuba.

From The Editor's Desk

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  • Sunday, October 31 2004
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Thought I'd drop an update on adriancrook.com, since it's been too long.

We've been very busy lately, mostly with taking care of loose ends before our wedding on December 4th, but also with work. Lara is in Toronto right now producing a Microsoft awards show for the fourth year straight. I'm still in Vancouver, my days spent hard at work at Relic (aka THQ Canada) where I'm working on their first console game. Very exciting, very challenging.

I spoke with Perry today and we spent about an hour swapping stories from our mutual addiction to election news coverage of the online variety. He's hooked on the LA Times electoral college tracker and I rotate between Electoral-Vote.com, the Google News election thread ("3,581 related articles"), and Horserace.MSNBC.com. Provided the election is decided on Tuesday I stand to reclaim a large chunk of my attention span by week's end.

Our condo is coming together nicely with everything in place except the 42" plasma TV - a post-wedding purchase - and the sectional couch (to be delivered in a couple weeks). Our cat Newton has adapted marvellously to the new place given her age (nearly 17 years). Her favourite piece among our new furniture is the bed as it is of the low, boxspring-less variety - allowing her to more effectively beg to be let up by placing her paws on the frame, elevating her head to my level, and extending her paw to take swipes at my sleeping head.

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