Matthew Skyrm’s .Plan in Japan

Goodbye, for now!

Hello, again!

Apologies to my readers for the lack of activity recently. I had a death in my immediate family in July that naturally put the blog on low priority. I now have some major updates to share…

After a fantastic nearly 2 years I have decided to leave Yahoo! and will no longer be running the Y! Messenger client products. I am returning to Tokyo to work at Sony alongside my great friend Takeshi Honma. We’ve got plenty of things planned that I will post about here at a later date.

In between jobs I am vacationing again in Turkey and will also be stopping by France and Germany for a week to see family and friends. My very close friend Baris and his family are hosting us here in Turkey.

I’m writing this from my trusty 12″ PowerBook G4 connected to a Turk Telekom 1 megabit ADSL line which Speakeasy to SF seems to think gets about 200 kbps down and 81 kbps up, however I was able to achieve over 800 kbps down on a download from Europe. I’ve also got another Turkcell SIM card which I’ll be posting a definitive guide to later on.

It makes me feel like an old man to say it — I am just not into the games that all the kids like these days. I want my old school Ken dragon punches with an 8-way/6-button digital joystick.

Which makes this news very cool indeed — according to an article on QJ.net, Capcom is bringing Super Street Fighter II Turbo to both the PlayStation Network and Xbox Live in HIGH DEFINITION. I have to admit, this may be what it takes for me to plunk down the cash for a PS3, though I am a little concerned that the only people I’d end up playing against would kick my ass and take the fun away…

T.Hawk “Before” and “After” from Capcom’s upcoming SSF2T HD

While my favorite is still SF2T (Hyper Fighting), SSF2T and I have a long history together…

I first played it in the arcades when it came out, then bought the nearly perfect arcade port (with CD audio) for the 3DO along with an extremely rare SNES->3DO controller adapter in order to use my very authentic arcade controller (which now has been converted to a PS2 controller for improved cross-platform compatibility). Some years later I ended up buying a Japanese sit-down Neo Geo MVS arcade cabinet that happened to have a working US CPS2 SSF2T JAMMA board in it.

Old School Arcade-style Fighting Stick with PS2 Guts Inside

Japanese “Candy” Neo Geo MVS Arcade Cabinet with SSF2T

While I mainly use Macs at home and work, I believe that Sony makes the best Windows personal computers. They are beautiful and innovative. IDG takes a brief look back at 10 years of VAIO.

According to my bro Takashi, Windows 95 was profoundly important in spurring personal computer adoption in Japan. So I’m really glad the article covered the importance of Windows 95 in Japan.

Many homes in Japan didn’t have a PC at the time. They relied instead on dedicated word processing machines that fell somewhere between electric typewriters and laptop computers. But the launch of Windows 95 helped expand the PC market in Japan, in part by offering an interface more friendly to Japanese users.

While they got the Vaio 505 for its thin and elegant design, the MPEG encoder card in the first desktops, and the inclusion of iLink (i.e. Firewire i.e. IEEE 1394) — they neglected to mention the first integration of a webcam into a notebook, the inclusion of a memory stick reader in most models, and other things now common in competitors’ models.

Sony VAIO PCG-C1VN PictureBook — Circa 2001

I have noticed quite a few of my friends who haven’t been to Tokyo believe that Akihabara is some kind of haven for DVD movie and video piracy. That really couldn’t be further from the truth. After spending many, many weekends going through every little corner of “Akitown”, I can count on one hand the amount of times I’ve seen anything related to piracy. I have seen a few guys on the street selling video game ROMs for absurd amounts of money (¥30,000 or about $300 for one disc full of Neo Geo game roms) and cable TV decoder boxes, but that is about it.

However, Dragon Computer is a physical shop that carries mod chips for both the Xbox and PS2. That’s not to say I believe the only reason to buy a mod chip is for piracy purposes (legit uses include playing personal game backups or running homebrew software) but usually pirated games and tools that enable piracy (i.e. mod chips) can be found in the same place. Dragon Computer doesn’t appear to be selling any games, just chips. I haven’t bought anything from Dragon Computer and can’t vouch for them in any way.