Eric Caoili
Articles by Eric Caoili
The DS Life: Phosphorescence
Even as a kid (or perhaps especially as a kid), artist David Gibbons had a fascination for all things glow-in-the-dark. Really, though, what's there to not like about glow-in-the-dark junk? David covered his bedroom walls with every glow-in-the-dark decoration he could find -- posters, stickers, and stars. He even wore glow-in-the-dark pajamas and braces! While we never went that far, we happen to have a glow-in-the-dark rosary hanging off our car's rearview mirror (It's a Filipino thing! Also, it makes it easier for us to pick out our car in the mall parking lot at night.).Anyway, David used his childhood glow-in-the-dark obsession as inspiration to create the art piece we've featured a today, an illustration depicting all of the Christmas toys he wished for as a kid while laying awake at night, gazing at all their glow-in-the-dark incarnations blue-tacked to his walls and ceiling.
The DS Life: Center of attention
Despite the aged look of this week's image, this photograph was actually taken quite recently, as evidenced by the DS Lite. The scene is a familiar one, especially at family get-togethers, when gangs of younger cousins, nephews, and nieces roam the house, desperate in their search for any entertainment. Join us past the post break for the full photo.[Update: Original image has been removed at the request of copyright owner. To see the image, please visit this link.]
The DS Life: Sleepy underground
We've featured "subway gamers" in the past, and we've also posted images of sleepy gamers, but this week, through the magic of candid photography, we have a scene that captures both of those elements together. It doesn't sound that amazing, right? Well, join us past the post break to see why we thought this photo is so special!
Nintendo DSi: The Unboxening and Impressioning
Yes, several other outlets have already posted their unboxing photos and first impressions of the Nintendo DSi, but we've put together our own article documenting the imported system's arrival, as we have a few new things that we can share with you, those things being: Photos of a cat stalking the box while we unearthed the DSi Surprises that we didn't expect with the DSi Video of us trying to load DS Fanboy on the DSi's new Browser Video of DSi Sound's 14 music visualizers Music from a renowned Wu-tang Clan rapper All of that, past the post break!
The DS Life: A young Hylian boy
Halloween is only a day away -- do you have your costume ready yet? Still looking for video game-inspired ideas? How about Dr. Kawashima from the Brain Age series? Phoenix Wright? Travis Touchdown? How about Mario?Need a female costume? Maybe you can dress up as one of the ninja sisters from the WarioWare games? Midna or Rosalina? Peach or Samus? Mama? Struggling for a dog outfit? Well, there's always K.K. Slider. Or, um, Nintendogs?And when all else fails, whether you're a boy, girl, or puppy, there's always ... Link! We've featured several costume variations of the young hero -- Phantom Hourglass Link, Four Swords Link, and, of course, Hugging Girls Link -- but today's photo puts an actual kid into the green outfit! Slip into your Pegasus Boots and dash past the post break for the image!See also: Top 5: Spooky Gaming Moments
The DS Life: i
As far as the Nintendo DSi's new features go, most of the opinions we've heard seem to think unkindly of the upcoming hardware's cameras -- some calling it a gimmick that needlessly raises the system's price, others describing it as an absent-minded addition that hardly competes with their digital cameras or phones.As someone who runs a column on photographs about handheld gamers, however, I'm thrilled about the whole deal! I expect to see a lot more image submissions from our readers after next, um, April, when the updated handheld finally comes to the States.With only eight days before the DSi debuts in Japan, Nintendo has put out a trailer with a guide for the portable's new features, including the camera and image manipulation capabilities. Join us past the post break for the four-and-a-half-minute clip.%Gallery-33263%
The DS Life: Four Swordswomen
With Halloween on the way, it seemed like a good time to feature some cosplay in The DS Life! As you can likely guess, the most popular costumed gamers we've posted about so far were the cosplaying Link duo (see gallery below), who took their inspiration from The Legend of Zelda's Four Swords spin-off.We've picked out another group who've dressed themselves up as the colorful Link clones, and while they might not seem as "sensual" as the blondes we featured before, we think they better capture Four Swords' bouyant, playful feel.%Gallery-17571%
The DS Life / Promotional Consideration: Leopard print ad
Yes, two columns for the price of one! The price, of course, being nothing.This week's installment of The DS Life / Promotional Consideration looks at an advertisement for Mystery Case Files: Millionheir that ran in several "mainstream" publications like celebrity gossip magazines In Touch Weekly and Us Weekly. The print piece features Ugly Betty's America Ferrera and sub-Saharan Africa's leopard. Surprisingly, the latter doesn't maul the former, despite the ESRB's "violent references" warning.
The DS Life: Vanilla Beans
Rena and Lisa make up Vanilla Beans, a Japanese pop idol duo with a fanciful style that separates them from typical J-pop groups. The two recently appeared at Tokyo's Shibuya Crossing to promote their new music single with an interesting publicity stunt -- dressed as retro flight attendants, they sat inside a window-fronted truck for passer-bys to watch and wonder, "What in the world are those strangely dressed girls doing in there?"Sitting inside a closed window display all day can get boring, but the two thoughtfully brought something to pass the afternoon.
The DS Life: A DS Country For Old Men
Over the course of this human-interest column, we've collected photographs of gamers from a variety of countries, collecting scenes from Spain's parks, South Korea subways, La Palma's streets, and even Antartica's glaciers.For this week's image, we'll visit a new region, Central America -- Guatemala specifically -- where a young girl is teaching her uncle how to play with a Nintendo DS.
The DS Life: Wish Tree
"As a child in Japan, I used to go to a temple and write out a wish on a piece of thin paper and tie it around the branch of a tree. Trees in temple courtyards were always filled with people's wish knots, which looked like white flowers blossoming from afar." - Yoko OnoSince the 1990s, Yoko Ono has helped install Wish Trees around the world, just like the ones she used to see in Japan, inviting passerbys to write down their wishes and tie them around the tree's branches. So far, the project has gathered over a hundred thousand wishes.Many of the wishes are what you'd expect from such an idealistic installation, hopes for peace on Earth and goodwill towards all men. Some are goofy, like petitions for super powers, and a few are even vulgar, such as this one here. The bit of paper we're featuring for this edition of The DS Life, however, is a wish that might melt your heart. Join us past the post break!
Your Saturday just got better: Mega Man 9 songs
While Siliconera has put up an some excellent impressions of Mega Man 9's official soundtrack in Japan, Rockman 9: The Ambition's Revival!!, Youtube user Blulohhoi has taken it a step further, posting 21 songs from the 31-track production for fans to stream and enjoy.So far, Blulohhoi has put up the tracks in five videos, one we've embedded above and the other four we've tucked past the post break. Make sure to listen to Part 5 at the 00:12 mark for the shop theme -- it's aces.%Gallery-30253%
Henry Hatsworth in the Trailer Adventure
Though there've been some great screenshots and amazing art released for Henry Hatsworth in the Puzzling Adventure, we've had to rely on old indirect-feed videos for previews of the action/puzzle hybrid in motion. Not so anymore! EA put out this short trailer to show off Henry's upcoming adventures, and it pretty much looks as awesome as we thought the game would be, if not awesomer. The game even has a combo counter at the bottom right, just like one of our favorite 2D platformers, The Legend of Spyro: The Eternal Night! %Gallery-29510%
The DS Life: His and hers
As someone who planned and enjoyed a wedding less than a year ago (actually, my wife organized it all, as I was busy blogging), I can tell you this -- it is a difficult thing to find a good wedding photographer.It's tempting to hire anyone local who seems the least bit adequate with a camera, so long as they're cheap. Even worse, you might consider relying on that friend of yours with a fancy digital camera, or on some dude videotaping the ceremony.But if you manage to fight off that rational part of you that keeps begging you to hire a photographer for a sensible price, the next time your friends pull out their bland wedding photo album, you'll be able to smugly think to yourself, "Ha, our wedding totally kicked their wedding's ass."
Quick guide for running Neo Geo games on your DS
If you've often daydreamed of running Neo Geo games on your DS, but never thought it'd actually happen because of your technical incompetence, unfounded fears, or bad credit, Racketboy will make your dreams come true with a homebrew guide for loading up NeoDS and playing these expensive arcade releases.Though the process is a bit more complicated than emulating (non-pirated) games for other systems on the DS, this walkthrough breaks down all the required steps for getting started. Jump past the post break for a video preview of Fatal Fury: Mark of the Wolves, King of Fighters 2003, and Metal Slug X will look like on your portable once you get NeoDS running.
The DS Life: Prank call
Midas wasn't sure what he should do when the phone, which sat unattended across from him, began to beep. His father left the handset on the chair before stepping away for a moment, and Midas was too young to know what the appropriate action would be for situations such as these.Would it be rude if he answered the phone? How would he explain to the caller that his father was currently indisposed? What exactly does "indisposed" mean, anyway?Children aren't known for their patience, so it was only a few seconds before Midas hopped off his chair, peeked at the mobile's screen to see if it was a number he recognized, and lifted the phone to his ear.
Wii Music offers new opportunities for 'This one time, at band camp' stories
Wii Music won't only help you re-imagine yourself in a rock band; it will also enable you to live out your dream of playing in a marching band! Remember how you used to envy all the geeks performing during half-time shows at high school football games? Now you, too, can be one of them! Nintendo also introduced two instruments with demonstration videos over the holiday weekend -- the violin, piano, and guitar. Unfortunately, it's hard to relate any of those music devices to band camp. Still, you can check out videos for them past the post break! See also: Nintendo introduces Wii Music's instruments one at a time%Gallery-27713%
Knytt Stories to see a DS port
Celebrating the one-year anniversary of Knytt Stories's release for PCs, homebrew programmer rrc2soft has released a video for his DS port prototype of the freeware game. in case you've never had the pleasure of playing the original game, it's a neat 2D platformer from Nicklas "Nifflas" Nygren with a heavy emphasis on atmosphere and exploration. instead of graphics and combat.As with the PC release, Knytt Stories DS looks to be a collection of short adventures starring Juni, an agile character that can learn several abilities, such as a double jumping and wall climbing. Rrc2soft also hopes to eventually allow you to download and play through user-created levels, a feature we've already seen implemented wonderfully in StillAliveDS.The clip only shows the tutorial level, but expect to see more as development continues! Wacky Japanese games, emulation, DS Fanboy's recommendations, naughty homebrew: our recent week of homebrew coverage had it all. Don't be put off if you're a beginner, either -- we have guides and a glossary for the newest of newbs.
Age Of Mythical Creatures All Up In This Piece
THQ wasn't exaggerating when it promised giant mythological beasts for Age of Empires: Mythologies, the turn-based strategy follow-up to 2006's DS sleeper hit The Age of Kings. The only legendary creature missing from the above trailer is the elusive Phelddagrif.Gone are the days of filling your army's ranks with pikemen and samurai; now you're more likely to rely on sphinxes and centaurs. Personally, we would have preferred to stick with more traditional units, but we understand that there are a bunch of you out there who prefer to play with pegasi! Are you a strategy nut? Check out our coverage on titles like Fire Emblem and Advance Wars! We even put together a collection of strategy recommendations for crazies like you!
The DS Life: Missed Connections
Aug 27 - Girl At Keisei Takasago Station - m4w - 37 - (Katsushika) pic Reply to: pers-8160291452720@craigslist.org [?] Date: 2008-08-27, 11:59PM JT